Canadian HR Reporter - Sample Issue

CANADIAN HR REPORTER OCTOBER 2018 8 NEWS (51), and leaving out or ignoring successful women, or downplay- ing their achievements (both 50 per cent). Mostly, it feels as if tall poppies are being penalized, said Lauren van den Berg, national vice-presi- dent of government affairs at Res- taurants Canada in Toronto. "Whether it was doing a good job on a project or making a win on a particular policy issue, whatever the case was, it was downplayed in public, it wasn't celebrated the way the successes of my colleagues, my male col- leagues may have been — to the point where you start thinking you're taking crazy pills," she said. "And that sort of self-doubt per- petuates itself." For Jennifer Petryshen, a law- yer at the Office of the Attorney General of New Brunswick, it was mostly behaviour you would characterize as bullying, so "peo- ple just refusing to speak, people being overly critical of things that were either minor mistakes, or not really mistakes at all, which this one person escalated to the point of yelling at me in front of a waiting room full of people, like 'I don't know why you think you're so special.'" And the response from the organization was disappointing, choosing to view it as a personal- ity conflict with the mantra that "people just need to get along," she said, when the situation was clearly beyond that. Sometimes, it can be more passive-aggressive behaviour, ac- cording to Reva Ramsden, associ- ate dean at the School of Manu- facturing, Automation and Trans- portation at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, in recall- ing a meeting where a supervisor was explaining an issue and said it was probably too complicated for some of the people in the room. "It was so subtle and so inap- propriate, and I thought about it after, and I'm like 'Does he even realize how that came across?' I don't even think he was aware of it, because it was accepted for so long." At a previous employer, Jenni- fer Cordeiro, manager of talent ac- quisition in consulting and deals at PWC in Toronto, was faced with women who had been there for a long period of time and re- sented her success. "ey didn't like that so much and would try to sabotage that. So (that meant) not delivering on my client messages, not taking the or- ders from clients that would call, things would go missing — just so I would then have a fall from that." Productivity issues Not surprisingly, this kind of be- haviour takes its toll. Seventy per cent of respondents said it impacted their productivity at work. Sixty-five per cent cited lower self-esteem; 60 per cent said they downplayed or didn't share their achievements; and 46 per cent had negative self-talk. "If you're spending eight, nine, 10 hours a day at your job, osten- sibly it's because you want to do a good job. And when there's no acknowledgement or recognition for that, you start to second-guess yourself. And that's sort of how the poppies can, I guess, cut them- selves down," said van den Berg. "It also had a very isolating effect." It got to a point where Pet- ryshen wondered if she just had a problem with women. "It does really lead you to ques- tion yourself," she said. "And I couldn't pin it on anything else. You know, I got along with every- body else. It was unusual for me, all of a sudden, to find a group of people I couldn't get along with, but it ended up really being de- moralizing," she said. "It just sort of sucks the joy out of the work- place… you start having the Sun- day night dreads and 'Oh my God, I have to go back there.'" Most often, tall poppies who had been cut down at work came to feel a lack of trust of co-workers (70 per cent), or were either disen- gaged from their work or looked for a new job (both 59 per cent), while 57 per cent were disengaged from their organization or experi- enced imposter syndrome (mean- ing they felt inadequate and filled with self-doubt despite being successful). Fifty-three per cent said they felt disconnected from their peers or co-workers, while 46 per cent actually left a previous job be- cause of the behaviour. irty-six per cent were disengaged from meetings while 20 per cent were absent from work and 19 per cent gave others credit for work they had done. "It got to the point where you couldn't do anything without be- ing criticized for it. And I ended up switching and transferring to another hospital in town," said Petryshen. "Management didn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, the union didn't want to touch it, and there was really no resolution to it, except somebody had to leave the workplace for it to get better." It can be difficult raising the is- sue, she said. "Any of these things taken indi- vidually are so tiny that you either feel silly complaining about them, or you do complain, and they're like, 'Well, that's ridiculous, suck it up, buttercup.' And so, though it's really subtle, it's sort of this death by 1,000 cuts." By doing a great job, Petryshen said she faced interpersonal con- flict around whether to go the ex- tra mile. "If you see the opportunity to take care of something in the de- partment, do you do it? Because, you know if that person sees it done, it's just going to make your life worse… you feel sort of like there's just no way you can win in that situation, after a while, and the best solution is just to remove yourself, if no one else is going to do anything about it." Fifty-seven per cent of respon- dents said they felt pressured to downplay or not share their achievements at work. Almost half (49 per cent) said the behav- iour impacted their desire to apply for a promotion while another 49 per cent said they felt they would be penalized if they were per- ceived as ambitious at work. "It contributes a great deal to what makes a toxic work envi- ronment toxic, because if your best people don't feel engaged or recognized or appreciated, they're not going to be your best people for very long, and all you'll have left is the middling back-end of the pack. And the organization as a whole will suffer — deliverables, outputs will suffer, members and clients will suffer — but so will the industry, reputations, brand, all the good work that has been done will be sort of brain-drained," said van den Berg. "As much as it made me angry and motivated me to do better, it also was like, 'Well, why the hell am I giving you my best effort when I'm not getting anything in return, if I'm not benefiting in some way, whether it be through promotion or recognition, or a pay raise or title or... quality of life and work-life balance?' So you vote with your feet." Motivated to succeed However, 42 per cent said TPS also made them want to achieve more. ere's often no greater moti- vator than being angry, and us- ing that constructively, said van den Berg — "using it to motivate yourself, to push yourself, to prove yourself that much more. Because we're doing that already, most of the time, as women in a workforce dominated by men… it spurns you on to go further." "It made me want to push harder and do that much better to make sure that no one could find fault with whatever it was I was doing with my work ethic, with my output, with my deliverables." While the bullying could be a blow to self-esteem, said Cor- deiro, she is also someone "who would fight harder to earn that respect." In one situation, for example, where her peers were trying to sabotage her work and take credit for it, she worked hard to get along with those individuals. "I was able to be very straight- for ward, provide feedback , SURVEY < pg. 1 Achievements of tall poppies often downplayed JEALOUSY > pg. 10 "It made me want to push harder and do that much better to make sure that no one could find fault with my work, my output, my deliverables."

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