Unlonely with Dr. Jody Carrington - Is it me… or is this workplace actually toxic? - Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Work isn’t just “work” anymore—it's become the place where burnout brews and bad bosses break us.⁠In this fire-filled episode with Dr. Laura, we unpack the real cost of stress at work, what defines a truly toxic leader, and how to know when it’s not just you—it’s the system you’re stuck in. Spoiler: surviving a toxic boss isn't just possible—it's necessary. ⁠⁠We dive into:⁠What makes a boss toxic vs just difficult⁠Why stress isn't soft—it’s strategy⁠The burnout scale (and where you fall on it)⁠Why rest isn't lazy—it's survival⁠And how to get out of the damn cage⁠⁠Whether you're quietly quitting or just questioning everything, this one’s for you. ⁠Follow Dr. Laura Here:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwhDncPCadKKgWOnTxW72owhttps://www.facebook.com/Dr.Laura.whereworkmeetslifehttps://www.instagram.com/drlaura.live/https://www.tiktok.com/@drlaura.livehttps://x.com/drlauralive Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, everybody, welcome back. Welcome in to another episode of the Unlonelly podcast. Today, uh, we're going to dive into the deep side of the deep dark side of workplace stress. Um, often around here I talk about emotional regulation and leadership and what it takes to sort of, you know, get the best out of people. And when I came across Dr. Laura's work, she is, um, an industrial organizational psychologist based out of Alberta as well and has done phenomenal work globally for many, many years in really sort of the far end of what happens when you end up in a relationship with a toxic boss, a workplace relationship that has just all but destroyed you. And she, you know, she's fascinating. She's an award-winning organizational psychologist,

keynote speaker, author, podcast host. She's got more than 25 years experience helping people in organizations thrive. And she's the host. I'm also on her podcast coming up, called where work meets life. And sort of looking at the human side of the workplace with warmth and depth and insight, she's launched a book that we talk a lot about in this episode called I Wish I'd Quit Sooner, Practical Strategies for Navigating a Toxic Boss, just launched in January of 26. And I find it so interesting. You'll see in this episode, I'm sort of like, whoa, in the beginning we kind of talk a little bit

about like, you know, the sort of far end of the spectrum. And I'm questioning like, whoa, why are we calling people like narcissics and sociopaths? And she does such a great job of like, okay, clinically there's a difference in sort of identifying who you're looking for, what you're looking for when you get into the darkest parts of a job. And, you know, her work is really sort of outlining those things. And I really love this conversation because I think so many of the places, organizations that I get to spend time with these days are really looking for like, what do you do? how do you sort of organize this at the beginning of time? And she's really like, let's take a look at

when we get into the weeds. So I hope you enjoy this. I hope, you know, you take some things from it. Share it with the people who might need it the most in your world. And stay tuned for my episode with her because she's remarkable. Settle in. Oh my goodness. Okay, let's dive right in because I have so many questions about leadership and work. And as an industrial organizational psychologist. We all come, you and I both come from sort of similar backgrounds, but an I. psychologist is so unique to me because the focus of your whole career is on organizational stress and how that impacts this sort of work-life balance that is such bullshit these

days. So can you, like, take me from the beginning. What do you love about this stuff? Give us a bit of a sense about like, why now it is so critically important to understand just how heavy work can. be in the way that we sort of live our lives these days. There's no separating. It is there. Well, thanks for having me, Jody. And I really admire the work that you do. And I feel like we're kindred spirits trying to help people through this challenging life, this challenging but beautiful

life. And I specialized in workplace psychology, industrial organizational, because earlier in my career, I realized people spend a lot of their waking time at work or working. And it's a huge part of people's identity. We always ask, what's your name? What do you do? Second question. What do you do? And I realized that if I could have an impact through the field of psychology on making human lives better at work and helping workplaces be better cultures for humans, I could have a big influence. And that's why I specialized in the field. And it is, yes, about stress and work life wellness. But it's also about how do we have great leaders and how do we avoid toxic ones? And have places where people can thrive and bring their best selves to work.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What are we up against these days more than anything, right? I say this often. You know, I mean, you and I both get this opportunity to speak to leaders and organizations globally now. And I have seen, particularly with the political unrest, the economic unrest, so many organizations going like, what the fuck?

Our leaders are burnt out, which means anybody they're leading is going to struggle significantly. tell me a little bit about why you think or maybe you know that's not what you see so so tell me what you're noticing and and why we're here i don't know what you're talking about everything's so peaceful and relaxing oh my god the global climate is so gentle and kind built on kindness really and inclusion mother so ego three-letter word uh i i speak a lot on on ego and there's a lot of egos at play and a lot of fear at play and the whole geopolitical unrest and stuff. It's about fear. Fear, if you win, I'll lose and fear of not having enough. And so it's creating all kinds of stress and dynamics.

And I agree people in politics and in leadership roles, etc. They're in positions of great stress too. And stress seems to be overtaking people. There's record levels of anxiety as you know. And anxiety is playing out at work, leading to more stress leaves, more politics, more conflict, and more toxic workplace behavior, which is my area of research. Yeah. Can you just dive in for a little bit there real quick? Because I want, let's really clarify what being stressed takes away from you.

Why is this such a critical conversation? You know, you've sort of created your whole life's work around toxic workplace environments, but I want to just slow it down a little bit and really talk about the cost of that because I don't know that leaders or organizations really understand. Stress is still considered sort of a soft skill and like, how do we get leaders to be nicer and shit like that? But give me some of the data around what happens if the vast majority of your employees or your senior leadership team is completely overwhelmed and stressed.

What do you start to lose as a human when we get into those toxicity places? Okay, so to me, stress and toxicity are different, but go hand in hand. Toxicity brings stress and stress can lead to more toxicity. They're kind of two things. I would say that stress causes people not to be able to do their best work. Their brain's not. Their cognitive thinking abilities, they're problem solving, their innovation centers in their brain. Their cerebral cortex, it's not firing as well because they're in that limbic brain,

that fight, freeze or flight, fight, flight or freeze kind of response. And they're just surviving. they're not thriving. They're surviving. They're under attack. Their system is under attack. And they're not bringing their best selves. So, and the world needs a lot of innovation right now because it's a bit of a shit show. So we need innovation. We need creative thought. We need collaboration. And when people are stressed, they're short-fused, they're angry, they're anxious. They're not the best of friends at work. They're not collaborating. They're in conflict. Would you agree with that? From what you see. Yes, like let's double down on that point, right? Because it's like sort of like it's a nice to have when we bring psychologists in to talk about stress and stressful environments. No, no thank you. It is not nice to have anymore. It's actually strategy. It's actually a conversation that happens at senior leadership levels when we start to talk about where are, where's the psychological well-being of our staff, of our employees? Because if we don't focus on that, what we're losing access to is the very things we need to create,

happiness, longevity, connection, why people want to work for you, stay in these professions. And you lose access to things like, as you said, empathy, innovation, creativity, all of those things that when I'm hiring, I don't give a shit if you look fantastic on paper. If you end up overly stressed or in, then subsequently in a toxic work environment, what then happens is you lose access to that entire CV your resume. So it doesn't really matter. You could hire a piece of shit. It wouldn't the same thing matters in the end because the environment.

is much more predictive of success of an organization or longevity of a career than it is specifically what I'm hiring for. Do you agree? I mean, there's got to be some data on that that I'm sure I could reference, but I'm just making that out. Oh, yeah. We have we have loads of data on creating a healthy workplace that leads to more productivity, which leads to better bottom line profits and and all of that. The link between business success and well-being of the people is undeniable that so much is getting in the way of that. So much, which fear is is the main thing. thing and the toxicity is like weeds in a garden. So think about a workplace as a garden, right?

You can have a beautiful garden that's lovely, you know, and fresh air and growth of beautiful plants or you can have a garden infested with weeds. And the weeds can work silently and start destroying the garden. And that's what we have with toxic leadership. Yeah, tell me more. Toxic leadership is a phenomenon that we're seeing more of. And I call them bosses, not leaders, because a true leader brings out the best in their people and helps them grow and isn't threatened by their people.

They actually want their people to outdo them one day. So that's a great leader. There's not enough of them. There's less than 5% of leaders across organizations that I would consider great. Less than 5%. Less than 5%. Holy shit. Great.

Okay. We're like we're setting the bar high. There's a whole number that are good that have room to improve. as an organizational psychologist, we've focused on a lot of them and focused a lot on the average ones. Then there's the difficult ones. So the difficult boss is frustrating. They're not a great communicator.

They can be really disorganized. They have attributes that make them challenging to work with. We see a shitload of them because they get promoted into leadership because they're good at their job. And they're often undersupported. They don't have enough leadership development. they don't have enough support. They learn by the school of trial and error, which is not a great school.

It's a tough school. So I feel for the difficult bosses, but a toxic boss is not the same as a difficult boss. A difficult boss can improve. If you put them into coaching and training, they have the ability to get better. Will they ever be great? Probably not, but they'll get better. A toxic boss will not get better. They'll get worse over time.

their behaviors either overtly or covertly damage people's engagement, productivity, and well-being over time. Their behaviors may be overt. So bullying, harassment, the behaviors that you can see, or they may be covert, manipulation, silent, sneaky, the gaslighter. So I have the eight personas of a toxic boss in my new book. I wish I'd quit sooner. The gaslighter is one of them, the dishonest manipulators, another.

the unethical corruptors another. They're very silent and sneaky, but they're causing great damage to human beings. Okay, beautiful. And all of these eight, I mean, and again, I was just going to get to that, but I love this. Your new book is doing so incredibly well, and I'm so excited to read it. It just came out in January. And I think, you know, what's so critical about this is that we just, we have to really solidify what it looks like.

What are we looking for? Because so many of us doubt this. Like, is it me? Am I overwhelmed? Should I have more space for people? Why do I not like my job? Is it the leader? Is it me? And we often question that, particularly when we get in really sort of trauma-inducing situations. And I don't use that word lately. But when you are surrounded every day in this world of, you know, people who are not well, whatever that is for whatever reason, and usually, you know, there's lots of reasons for that. And I can, you know, we can have empathy for why that particular leader got in that position. But it's like you can't address what you don't acknowledge.

And so what I love so much about your book is it's really slowing down what we're looking for to answer some of those questions. Is it me? Is it them? Is it us in this dynamic relationship? Because in any organization, there is that dynamic relationship or it should be healthy, you know, between the boss and the leader. Or more importantly, the leader and the employee. And we're always not going to get along, right? This isn't about everybody getting along. Talk to me a little bit about conflict. And conflict sort of being a part of healthy relationship. and because what I hear the most in that toxic leadership sort of eight piece that, you know, that you outlined so beautifully is like there's a lot of difficulty in handling conflict. So I instead I gaslight or I, you know, sort of corrupt. I get manipulative. Like, you know, talk to me a little bit about conflict, how you define it and what you do

with that, you know, in workplaces. conflict is different opinions different ways of seeing things misunderstandings it's usually i like to refer to it as a healthy debate or a learning conversation we're trying to get to the bottom of you know what we're both seeing both of our perspectives and come to a common ground and if you let your ego step out of the way that's that's not that hard right it's emotional at times conflicts can be emotional because because we build them up in our brain to be more than they are. And we make it about the person, you're hurting me by bringing up this conflict versus it's an issue.

Right. Here's an issue. We had a misunderstanding. Let's look at the issue and examine it and figure out a way to work better together. That's what it is. Oh, I love that. And, you know, you talk a lot, as you said, you know, ego and fear. How did those two things really fuel when somebody struggles with an ability to, you know,

to sort of have a conflict skill. How does ego get in the way? How does fear get in the way? Ego is, I'm only seeing my perspective. I don't even, I'm not even open to yours. I'm right. You're wrong. And that's what a toxic boss is.

They don't say, hey, Dr. Laura, am I a toxic boss? Could I be a toxic boss? A toxic boss would never ask me that because it's always everyone. Never self-relection. They would never see that. They don't have that insight. Narcissism runs frequently and heavily through toxic bosses, as you would expect. Okay.

Okay. An extreme narcissism. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about that because I feel like sometimes we throw that term around so readily, you know, as a clinician, I hear this so often, you know, this guy's narcissistic and this one's narcissistic and, you know, this, my ex, all the exes in the world can't be narcissistic.

I'm just going to tell you that for free. But everybody says that to be true. So I want to be very clear on your definition of narcissism because I think it's, it's often a defense mechanism that sets into play when, you know, people just can't be wrong or are, feel very vulnerable when they're in a position of leadership and get questioned, right? So the vulnerability kicks in that sense of defensiveness. And we sometimes call it narcissism. So how do you define that?

Yeah, I mean, we know that there's the official DSM definition of a narcissist is a clinical diagnosis that meets a whole bunch of criteria. And that's not what. And I agree with you, Jody. I think the term is thrown around too much. And I think the term toxic is thrown around too much. And that's why I'm really differentiating toxic from difficult in all my conversations. Because I don't want people throwing around that word because that's serious.

Right. And then we can have toxic employees too, right? And then we can have difficult employees. And it's everyone. Like everyone in the mix has the, you know, if we have toxicity at any level, it causes major problems. So narcissists, in terms of the personas of a toxic boss, what I'm trying to get at is if you're seeing these sorts of behaviors on a regular basis, that could indicate narcissistic behavior. Are they a clinically diagnosed narcissist? That's not your problem. Your problem is,

how are these behaviors impacting your work and your well-being? That's what I want to leave people with. And if your boss has a grandiosity about them, they have this grandiose view of of themselves. They lack empathy. They do not care about you. And they are all about seeking approval and status. They're all about themselves. They're arrogant and entitled. They can be incredibly charming and intelligent and manipulative. They often go through a honeymoon phase where they really want you to work for them. They're the best, right? Their team's the best. I would love to have you in this role, Jody. You're going to love it. So you get sucked in. They stroke your ego. And then they seem to lack guilt and remorse about things. And so it's, it's, yeah, those are some of the things to look

out for. I talk about narcissists and sociopathic bosses in the personas. Okay, got it. And so, so my question then is sort of, you know, when you find yourself or you start to wonder, am I in this type of relationship? Walk us through, you know, what do we do? How do we get back to the best of these humans? Is that our responsibility? What are some of the tricks to kind of navigate those relationships because I think one of the mistakes we make sometimes is that this is senior leadership's job. If you get in that position, you have to figure that out. But there really is, I think, some responsibility in creating a relationship there. And, you know, we will always be with difficult people. We will, not always, but we may come up against difficult people. There may be,

you know, I'll tell you, I'm a great boss when everything in my world, or a great leader, I've got to be careful about that term. Let's hope. You know, when everything in my life is, going well. But when I'm struggling in my marriage, when my babies are struggling, when I feel like people aren't stepping up to the plate, I probably become more difficult. I probably become more shorter, more, you know, expectation. So help me understand a little bit about like in the book, what do we start to do when we find ourselves in those situations? And when do we know, you know, when it's time to leave or when it's time to just dig in harder and try to sort of navigate that relationship dynamic? That's a really, really good point.

And thank you for your authenticity there. I mean, I think I've had patches of being a difficult leader myself. You know, and it's when I'm under stress. It's when the business is suffering. And I think I, yeah, I move too fast. And people are assholes right now. And I'm not sleeping very much. I got three teens, right?

So like Marty gets a kick-ass leader some days. Jeff gets a kick-ass leader some days. And then there's other days where like Marty was in my bathroom this morning, as we're setting up for this podcast. And she's like, oh, okay, you're spinning. You're spinning out of control because I was like, hey, we should do this for this. We had this for, why didn't we think about that? Why didn't we?

And she's like, okay, there you go. And I'm like, no, no, I'm not. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just, I'm not, I'm fine. But she's right. And so it's like, you know, I think I'm interested in your perspective on this because I think this is so true. All of us will probably at some point become difficult.

And I love the differentiation between them being toxic. because that gets into that, you know, a little bit of a scary zone. If you have sort of, I would be looking for patterns then. You know, are we moving this person around a lot in the organization? Are we trying to cover for them? Is this a unionized position where we're like, we can't fucking get rid of him? And he goes everywhere. Like, you know, what is that look like?

But, you know, again, I think it's interesting. What are some of those conversations about, okay, what do we do if we find ourselves in those moments of difficult interactions? Yes. So my book's all about the person. experiencing it. And the person could be a vice president reporting to a toxic CEO. And I have clients like that, by the way. But you can be at any level new in your career, far long in your career, five years from retirement. And you have a toxic boss. And you're, oh, crap, right? I have pension.

I have stocks. If I leave now, I'm leaving a lot of money on the table. So you feel trapped. That's why I have a cage on the front of my book because you feel you are stuck. And there's no way. Thank you. And there's no way out, but the cage is actually not locked. And I really want people to understand that you have options. So first of all, the book really gets out, what are you dealing with? Are you dealing with a toxic boss or a difficult boss? If you're dealing with a toxic boss, what are the behaviors that you're experiencing and how are they impacting your health, your well-being, and your productivity at work? And I have all these checklists and things. Like really, it's about coaching moments and checklists to really help you dive into what am I dealing with? Okay, I can see a pattern here. Now, what are my options? There's six options to leave is just one of six options. There's the medical leave. There's reporting it to HR. There's going the legal route. There is sticking it out and setting boundaries, which may or may not work with a toxic boss. But I get into all of that, how you can navigate it, how you can create a winning exit plan, which is about, I'm going to set a good ridden state after which I will

not be here and I'm going to put the things into place to get myself into another role in the organization or externally. So there's six options to get out of that cage and I walk people through all those options and then the recovery because there's often trauma from a toxic boss that you need to recover from. Yeah. I would imagine. Yeah. And so do you see this increasing in the workplace? Like when we look at some of the data over even the last five years, the increase in burnout across industry, across organization. You know, it's loosely defined, but we would see that, you know, in like World Health Organization or some of the more global places where we sort of capture that data of workplace health and

overwhelm. It seems that, you know, some of the data would suggest at least one and two, 50 percent of people would talk about feeling burnt out. And do you, would you say you sort of seen an increase in that? And what do you attribute that to? I would say that, well, burnout is. is an extreme state where you can no longer function. So if you're truly burnt out, you're not, I do a lot of speaking on this. You're not able to function at work and in life or you're a total

robot. Chances are you'll be sick from it when it gets to true burnout. So I'm all about the signs and symptoms of being on the road to burn out. And that's what we need to catch. We need to catch when you're on edge, when you're not sleeping, when your sleep starts to go, when you're starting to feel cynical when you're either gaining weight rapidly or losing weight or you're using all those tools for your self-care that backfire on you, you know, like too much alcohol or recreational drugs or whatever you're doing. And it's like, yeah, I feel good in the moment. And then I feel like garbage tomorrow. So yeah, burnout is a scale. And I say that the number of people who are further along on that scale and actually burning out is higher than it's been in all the years

since the pandemic and it's actually worse than it was. Yeah, I'm seeing a trend and I'm following the data too because every time I speak on it, I'm looking at what's the data, what's the data in that industry that we're speaking with and then, oh, yeah, it's getting worse over time. People are really struggling and burnout is a workplace phenomenon. It's the conditions of the workplace that are contributing to burnout. Burnout is not. I'm burnt out because my marriage is bad. burnout is to do with work. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Okay. And what do you attribute that to? What, why now? Why, since the pandemic, is this getting notably worse? Economic conditions, geopolitical uncertainty. And when we have a soft economy, people have more fear-based behaviors. There's more toxic behaviors. There's more power and politics.

And workloads have continued to increase. We're going to cut costs. We're going to save money. We'll just put more on your shoulders. Everyone, just more and more. Oh, yeah, we have this AI and stuff that'll make our lives easier. But then we don't have to hire more people. We can just put more and more.

And then people just start to deplete because we're rechargeable batteries. We're not computers you leave plugged in. We need to recharge. And there's no time to freaking recharge. And it's killing people. It literally is killing people. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm most interested in, I think, the lack of ability to recharge because I think, as I understand it, it's like, you know, the workload, the caseload, the, you know, what you have on your plate is not nearly as important as your ability to rest or lack thereof. And we come from a generation where rest or taking a break is asinine because our parents sort of told us, we're the first generation of leaders who have access to social media.

We're the first generation of leaders that, you know, when we wake up in the morning, we have access to our employees. We put a watch on. They can get us 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I often talk about the fact that, you know, I buried my dad, one of the best leaders I ever had the privilege to sort of have a front row seat watching. Amazing. Yeah, he's a dream.

I'm sorry, but yes. Yeah. And listen, he loved people right up until the end. And it occurred to me that at 50 years old, I want a throat punch most people. I don't like people anymore. And I was like, how come? What happened? And it's interesting because.

even in one generation, when he would come home from work, nobody could get him. And he had to make hey while the sun shone because there was only eight hours where you could, you had to get up and go to work and go flat out because that's when you could get the calls in or that's when people would be at their desk or that's when, you know, you could have this meeting. Now, for us, some of my work happens at 10 o'clock at night after I put my babies to bed. I don't put it down because my phone is charging by my bed. So my nervous system is dysregulated before I even pee. And for sure, our parents had thoughts about like, oh, I got to say, I got to say this today. I got to do this today. But there was far less access to our nervous system. So if I think about this from a

neurophysiological perspective, you know, and a psychologist, I think this is like really a major contribution right now that, you know, we have so much more access to data. So all of the operating systems designed to keep workplace and geopolitical, economical, systems in place have just exploded. And the human operating system has not. We are the exact same that our fathers were and our grandmothers were. And the data that we now have to process in the run of a day is so beautifully accessible and wildly informative.

But to take that much in is proving to be impossible. And there's no exit ramp for that, hey? You said it beautifully. I love the way you described that. We could go on for hours, I think. There's so many ways to look at this, but you're right. Nervous system regulation, huge issue and huge contributor to burnout over time when it's not regulated properly. For sure. And I think about like, you know, if I look at those toxic, you know, boss contributors, I'm so interested in like, I would love to do a deep dive around, you know, when you have the most severely toxic boss. What's wrong with them is the question we ask. I always want to know what

happened to them. Deep rooted, deep rooted psychological trauma from childhood that was never healed, hands down. Probably, right? And so like that doesn't excuse the behavior, it doesn't condone the behavior, it doesn't whatever, right? But as a leader of that leader, as a, you know, somebody who's maybe the CEO of an organization, I'm like, I love those conversations that we can have nowadays about not nowadays, I bet, I guess, but like I think about some of the big corporations. I'm watching lots of mergers happen in like the mutual fund space, for example. And there's like lots of, you know, in the agriculture space, I spend a lot of time there where they're like, you know, there's no longer a lot of family farms or baby family farms.

It's like taking over and how does this organization? And this is not the way we did it. And so we're missing sort of this generation of being able to just slow down and regulate nervous systems because we're not good at that. We used to be in the same physical space as each other. which really contributed to that. So even being in the proximity, having an online meeting or an email, I can be much more saucy than if you and I are sitting in the same room.

So if we look at the explosion of working from home, which is so lovely, if we look at the explosion of global companies, because there's been such technological advances, beautiful things, it takes away the human component and that human operating system has not advanced. And so we're running into these like massive conflicts and no understanding of each other's perspectives because we don't have to. We're like, fuck you. No, fuck you. I'm going to block you. You know?

And so we get into that place. And so what I love the most about your book is really like, okay, when we get there, here's what I want you to look for. Because I think we try to, I'm earlier in the state. Many of the things I talk about is like, okay, how do we sort of regulate in this moment, you know, up to that place? And you're sort of saying, yes, uh-huh. And then when we get there, look at. all of these things. This is what you're looking for. This is how to know you've arrived. Yeah. Knowing the symptoms and science and getting yourself out of the situation because it's not

sustainable and it's not worth it. It's not worth it to suffer that way. And the fear gets in the way. I'll never get a job that pays this much or, you know, I'll never land. But I can tell you by running Canada career counseling for 16 years, people always land. And when they're let go too, because there's a whole chapter I have on when the toxic boss lets you go, which happens fairly often because once they have a target on you, they want you gone. So it happens. But a year later, when people are let go, they always say, thank God that happened because I'm in a better place. They start off in tears. They're just a mess. Their confidence is destroyed. But we help get them back into seating position so that they can put themselves out there and follow their passions, find purpose,

find fulfillment and find a better workplace. And better workplaces are out there. And as organizational psychologists, we're trying to create more. It's an endless marathon, though. You know what's so funny when you say that, Dr. Lurre? I was like, this mimics marriage. This mimics any relationship, right?

Like, you know, when you see somebody who gets divorced or somebody who sort of leaves their toxic husband or their, you know, we can't reach our wife or my spouse anymore, it's like, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. there is hope. We have opportunities. There is positive relationships out there. Let's figure out, you know, our respective roles in that, how our trauma plays into it,

how we respond to direction and connection and leadership and all of those kind of ways. It's so parallel. And I often talk about this, which I try so hard not to. But like for me, in organizations, I always think about leadership and parenting in the exact same vein. And it's, it, it is, the intention is never to diminish the role of a leader, you know, saying, you know, you're leading children. But it really is the emotional regulation,

um, responsibility of supervisors, particularly middle managers, where you are actually just there walking so many people back to the best parts of them. Coming on back to the best parts. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. This guy was an asshole. Yes. This happened. Yes. Okay. Are we went over budget or we don't have the money.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. And there's so much of that emotional regulation piece that I don't think we talk a lot about, right? No. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

Go ahead. No, you go ahead. It's about me being more conscious as a parent, being more conscious as a leader, realizing that we're all flawed and realizing when our nervous system is going crazy. I have a 15-year-old daughter. Girls, age 14 to 17, it's hard. You know way more about this than I do, Dr. Jody. No, not with my own children.

But I'm going through it and it's hard. I hate it. I'm not a fan. I said to Aaron the other day, my husband, I was like, I don't think we should have kids. I think we should announce to the children that we've decided to be child-free parents. So I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm just out. Like I've never, the twins turn 13 this month and our oldest is 15 and a half. And I'm just like, if I thought leading a company, if I thought creating a legacy in any capacity was hard,

has nothing, nothing on this whole concept of parenting. And so I really try to think about that when I'm speaking with leaders about like, okay, there is such worry and investment in your staff. There is often such commitment to really good leaders, great leaders, to do well by the people they're leading, to understand that this is sort of, you can't tell them how to be great, you've got to show them. And I really love, just like I often talk to parents about is like you don't lead with your words or your strategy, you lead with your nervous system.

Calm is contagious. I love that. Calm is contagious. That's awesome. Right? Like I'd like to talk to Donnie Trump about that. Like the idea is like you can tell anybody how to do it. And a strict behavioral model like really works.

Like if you have a big enough stick, you can get anybody to comply. But then the question is what does it leave you with? Right. And so for so long, I think people who lead in sort of a toxic way or even become difficult. I mean, this was the name of the game in leadership 20 years ago. And when I was starting my company, I would, even say to my dad who was wildly successful. Like, what do I do about this employee? Be like, publicly fire her, you know, make an example. And I was like, okay, dad, I'm not so sure that that's the

way it goes. But he said, you know, it's interesting because that would be one of the things that he learned to do to be able to set an example with a particular team. But what we didn't talk a lot about. And so then he and I in the later years talked a lot about this was how talented he was at one-on-ones, how great he was at building in relationship. Because it's actually not about being kind all the time. You do have to take those moments of not tolerating bullshit so that everybody else feels safe in your team. And so he wasn't wrong.

It's the balance of this capacity to really see people right now where I think the massive gap is. People have never been this lonely, which includes our employees, which includes our senior leadership teams. We're doing so much of this work in isolation, even in human services professions. and when we don't feel seen, I'm getting difficult.

I'm going to get difficult. And so if I back that up a little bit, it's like, okay, so it's actually quite easy for us to be successful right now because if I just tell you the vast majority of your staff is lonely. What? They need me to be a bit more present and a bit more acknowledging genuinely, yes? Well, I can do that. When I tell you that they're burnt out and they have anxiety and depression and they're suicidal, people are like, I don't know, I don't know what to do that.

I'm not a clinician. I didn't, I'm not a social. worker. I don't need a fucking social worker. I need somebody who's going to be present to regulate another person's nervous system. Can you do that? Can you make teachers laugh? Can you get eye contact? Could you understand what everybody, what's everybody's favorite chocolate bar on your team? What? What, you know, like, what are their kids names? And I, and I have to get back to this and you'll appreciate this so much. Like one of my favorite hockey quotes is this, you should see how fast I can get a kid to skate when I know the name of their dog. Oh, wow. Great. Isn't that good? That is great. Not good.

I'm such a hockey fan, so it resonates so much. And I mean, but I love for me or for you, I mean, this conversation is so good because I try to always fix way too fast. And I'm so grateful that there's this book that talks about, okay, when it gets bad, when it gets really bad, know that you have a roadmap to get home, to get out of it, to identify, to know some, that there's some steps in those processes that can guide you to HR, that can guide you down the legal route. Because I think we're going to see more and more people feeling like they're going to get to this place. Right. And how do we do that in a way that

doesn't destroy them? Exactly. Because 87% of people say they've had a toxic boss at some point in their careers. And 30% have had more than one. And about 43% percent. And about 43% percent of people say they're reporting for the worst boss they've ever had, reporting to the worst boss they've ever had. And that's not good. We need to get better at that, whether they're difficult or toxic. All of this is harmful, okay? And we need to just get, and I just really want to leave people with hope. And there's a whole chapter on thriving in your career post-toxic boss. Building trust in your next leader is hard after a toxic boss. Getting back into the driver's seat of you, Inc., which is your own career.

We're all the CEOs of our own career. Whether we're in an organization or not, you need to be the CEO of your career. You need to advocate for your career. You need to be asking for the things you need to develop and you need to make conscious decisions about when to leave and when to stay. And that's, I mean, I've dedicated my career to that,

helping people with their career, purpose, fulfillment, etc. I love that. And it's like, so, and I just want to reiterate, because I know there's to be this question. You can survive a toxic boss. Hey, you can jump back in even better if we really sort of pay attention to how this affects your confidence, your competence. You can survive it, yes, but I don't recommend staying there for long.

It's not going to be a five-year plan to get out. If you have a truly toxic boss, we're looking at, I want you to seriously look at your options and I want to get that fear out of your mind. I want to set a good ridden state, you know, three, six, nine months. something like that. A year under a toxic boss feels like tan. Okay. So it's like a dog's life, right? One year of a dog, seven years of a human. It's like that with a toxic boss. Okay. So we just need to people to realize what happens is they say, I'll just tough it out and I'll try to impress my toxic boss. I'll try to, you know, make them realize how good I am. I'll double

down. I'll work harder. So I see people doubling down working evenings, weekends. It's never enough. and then what happens is their energy is sapped and their confidence goes down. Then they don't have their best selves to actually search for something else. They have no energy. So it's a vicious cycle. It's a horrible cage to be in. Yes, yes. I love that.

And I, again, I just keep likening it to, you know, even violent relationships. You know, when we get into an unhealthy dynamic, you know, I often, if I pull apart the two people and sit with them individually, there's so much reason and understanding. about, you know, how we got here, why we got here, who you two remind each other of, how we got into this dynamic, like all of those kind of things, which doesn't excuse or condone the behavior or suggest that we should just tough it out. It really is sort of understanding that piece so that, you know, you can integrate that much more and not take that massive confidence hit that, like, there was nothing I could do or it was all me. Because that's never the case.

That's never the case. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. I want to talk one more time just real quick because I think you're just like so frigging cool. Also, thank you, Jody. Same thing, Dr. Jody. I think you're a superstar. I am not the author of two psychological thrillers losing cadence and finding Sophie, which was adapted into television series. Can we talk about this? Basically heated rivalry. It's being pitched for a TV series. Oh, okay. Sorry, I didn't get that way. It has actually been a marathon. It's not an easy thing to do. And I have a producing, I have a producing part. I met a number of years ago.

One of her films was called Trafficked with Ashley Judd and Patrick Duffy. And it's all about the $150 billion industry of sex trafficking of girls and women. And it really touched me. So I started doing advocacy work around that topic. And we became producing partners on, let's get my books into a series or a film because it's all about possession of an obsession of a woman. It's about extreme mental illness. It has twists.

and turns. And so one of our comparables is the housemaid, which is in theaters right now. It's like that topic is a hot topic. So we have it mapped out for a TV series. But we're also looking at feature film, kind of exploring, pitching, meeting with studios and producers, et cetera, in Hollywood, in Alberta, in Toronto. And just it's a marathon. That's so exciting.

It's everyone's like, is it happening? Is it? Well, I mean, like in 12 miles into. my marathon. Like, it's not over yet. Oh, but how cool is that? And I mean, we just know how successful Canadian authors can be right now. So I, I am just, I'm so excited for you for that. And thank you for this. I think it's such an important conversation to have as we sort of, I think, no doubt are only, I say this all the time to the, you know, the people I get the honor to stand in front of. It's only going to get more difficult, which doesn't mean I want you

to get more defensive. I want you to know that the work in the place of leading and, and, And, you know, our contributions to a workplace setting is only going to become not only life-changing, but life-saving in these moments. And so our work is whatever industry you're in can be so critically important to your mental health, but there's a mental health that you, you know, and the people you show up with. And who you go home to is who you work for. And so if we can look after you at work, then it's not a place that drains you. It's a place that fuels you to be even better.

So I think your work is exceptional in this regard. I'm going to obviously tag all of the places to get your book. So thank you. Thank you, Laura, for being here today. We're local Alberta girls and, you know, I think it's so great. We didn't even know of each other until recently, but I'm just so proud of what you're doing and I can't wait to, I can't wait to watch where it goes. And same with you. Thanks for raising a light on all the issues that you do, including loneliness. And we'll have a great conversation about that going forward. So I know on your podcast. Yeah. Coming right over. Come and right over. So find that episode. So soon, everybody. Oh my goodness. Okay, well, thank you.

And everybody, listen, I want you to lean in, lean on to each other. Hang on to each other. We were never meant to do any of this alone, as you know. And even when we are struggling at work, which I will tell you, as we heard today, the vast majority of us are, no, you're not alone in this process. So until next time, I'll meet you right back here. You know, the more we do this, people ask, why do you have to do the acknowledgement in every episode? I got to tell you, I've never been more grateful for

being able to raise my babies on a land where so much sacrifice was made. And I think what's really critical in this process is that the ask is just that we don't forget. So the importance of saying these words at the beginning of every episode will always be of utmost importance to me and this team. So everything that we created here today for you happened on Treaty 7 land, which is now known as the center part of the province of Alberta. It is home of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which is made up of the Siksika, the Kainai, the Pekina, the Titina First Nation, the Stony Dakota First Nation, and the Métis Nation Region 3. Our job, our job as humans, is to simply acknowledge each other. That's how we do better, be better, and stay connected to the good. The Unlonely Podcast is produced by three incredible humans.

Brian Siever, Taylor McGilvery, and Jeremy Saunders, all of SnackLab Productions. Our executive producer, my favorite human on this planet, is Marty Pillar. Soundtracks were created by Donovan Morgan, Unloney Branded Artwork, created by Elliot Cuss, our big PR shooters, our Desvino and Barry Cohen. Our digital marketing manager is the amazing, Shana Haddon, our AAWR. 7 secret agent from the Talent Bureau is Jeff Lowness. And emotional support is provided by Asher Grant, Evan Grant, and Olivia Grant. Go live!

I am a registered clinical psychologist in Alberta, Canada. The content created and produced in this show is not intended as specific therapeutic advice. The intention of this podcast is to provide information, resources, education, and the one thing I think we all need the most. a safe place to land in this lonely world. We're all so glad you're here.