Episode #98: Unveiling Workplace Dynamics: The Hidden Impact of Trauma with guest, Samreen McGregor

How does trauma shape our behavior in the workplace? Join us as we explore this profound question with executive coach and strategic advisor Samreen McGregor. Samreen shares personal stories, including her son's courageous battle with brain cancer, shedding light on how significant life events can leave lasting imprints on our professional lives. We draw from her insightful article in choice Magazine, "The Learned Behaviorist Traumas: Understanding how they show up in the workplace," to uncover how both 'big T' and 'small t' traumas manifest in our daily work environment.

Discover the intricate ways trauma influences workplace dynamics and personal growth. Through real-world examples like dealing with difficult bosses and high-performing teams navigating the pandemic, we emphasize the importance of recognizing and addressing these hidden triggers. Samreen's expertise provides valuable strategies for intentional reflection and growth, empowering you to break harmful patterns and foster a healthier, more supportive professional atmosphere. Don't miss this enlightening conversation that promises to transform your understanding of trauma and its impact on your career.

Watch the full interview by clicking here.

Find the full article here.

Learn more about Samreen McGregor here.

Visit Samreen's website here.

Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/

Transcript

Garry Schleifer : 0:08

Welcome to the choice Magazine podcast, Beyond the Page. choice, the magazine of professional coaching, is your go-to source for expert insights and in-depth features from the world of professional coaching. I'm your host, Gary Schleifer, and I'm thrilled to have you join us today. In each episode, we go, go figure, beyond the page of articles published in choice Magazine and dive deeper into some of the most recent and relevant topics impacting the world of professional coaching. We explore the content and interview the talented minds behind the articles like Samreen here, thank you, and uncovering the stories that make an impact.

Garry Schleifer : 0:47

choice is more than a magazine. For over 21 years, we've built a community of like-minded people who create, use and share coaching tools, tips and techniques to add value to their businesses and, of course, impact their clients. In today's episode, I'm speaking with executive coach and strategic advisor, Samreen McGregor, who's the author of our article in our latest issue. And if you're watching, there's the cover. I don't know, is it Barbie, or is it just me, or is it too much Barbie these days? Pink cover for those of you listening and chuckling with us. The issue is called "Unspeakables Uncomfortable Topics we Avoid that Impact Coaching Outcomes, and the article that Sam Reen has written is called the Learned Behaviorist Traumas - Understanding how they show up in the workplace." So very, very current topic.

Garry Schleifer : 1:45

A little bit about Samreen. She's an executive coach and strategic advisor renowned for her innovative approach that spans across business performance, profound behavioral change and embodied consciousness. She's passionate about working with C-suite leaders and executive teams, given the disproportionate impact they have on the communities they lead. Well said. Her interventions are known for integrating her clients' rational, emotional, intuitive and embodied capacities, fostering changes that are designed to be profound and to last. She's a published author and she'll tell us a little bit about her books, and she's also contributed significantly to thought leadership through publications like choice Magazine, I'm going to put that first, Forbes, CEO Today, Fast Company and HR. com. Her writing offers insights into ethical leadership, women's personal agency in the workplace and strategies for leaders to maintain well-being in challenging times. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Samreen McGregor: 2:46

It's an absolute delight, Garry, but hearing all that, it's suddenly starting to trigger all sorts of expectations inside of me.

Garry Schleifer : 2:54

Oh, get that bar up high, because we have high expectations of you today. No, we're here to really dig a little bit deeper into your article. I think in reading your bio and your background there's a little bit of a hint as to why you wrote this article, but what called you to write it at this time.

Samreen McGregor: 3:21

Well, look, I really love starting with a question like this, because purpose and the why is so important to me and I think there's two sides to this. There's a personal one and a very intimate one, and then there's a professional one which is far more a reflection of a part of my identity, which is my work and it's really core to who I am. But I'll start with a personal one, and you know, I've been through some fairly significant adversities throughout my life, starting with my identity. Born in Venezuela, my father's from India and lived there until I was 14, and then moved to the UK, been educated across three continents and have lived all over the place.

Garry Schleifer : 3:57

Wow, okay, pause and breathe on that.

Samreen McGregor: 4:08

Yeah, yeah, let's do that. And I think the adversity that stems from that is, yeah, just not knowing who I am and where I come from and where I'm grounded. And I think as a child, the experience was very different as an adolescent, as a young adult and then now as a mother, actually, who's married to a British man who has two kids who correct my accent because we've lived in the UK for the last you know well, I've lived here for now quite a few years, 20 odd years, and the kids are, you know, 16 and 14. So they are, although they've got strokes from different cultures.

Samreen McGregor: 4:41

They're definitely very, very sort of centered in their UK citizenship and so yeah, so that's one. And there's a second one which is quite important and and probably you know you talked about unsayables and discomfort but my son, when he was nine, sadly was diagnosed with brain cancer, and this was seven years ago almost and of course our family was on a track in our life and we were derailed and thankfully I'll start by saying that my son is 16. He's very healthy, physically, in really good shape. The post-traumatic stress that comes from that and the post-traumatic effects continue to unravel in lots of different ways and he's going through adolescence. So it's quite hormonal times and so, yes, that was quite an eye-opener about the adversities that we don't expect in life and then growing from that and learning who you are, and for me that has meant picking myself back up again after that journey and I say after the acute part of the journey and learning to, yeah, to navigate life, you know, throughout and after that. So that would be the personal piece and actually that happened only two or three years before the pandemic hit. So, at a collective level, I then experienced what it was like to be a part of a much larger population who were all experiencing trauma and we didn't know we were. I mean, I maybe I was a little bit more cognizant of it just because of the work I do and because of the experience I'd had. But yeah, that was a real impetus. So that's the personal anecdote.

Samreen McGregor: 6:28

There is a bit of a trend that I started to notice over these last five years, and the trend is that mental health, depression, anxiety has become staple characteristics in what we've become more conscious about exist in the workplace. So whereas I've done executive coaching over the years and worked with all those topics, probably in peppered ways, there's now far more of a clear presence for them. And you know some of the statistics are pretty troubling. It's something like you know, six trillion, well, I think businesses are losing six trillion dollars worth of productivity due to some of you know the absenteeism, presenteeism that happens in workplace environments as a result of anxiety and depression and perhaps post-traumatic effects, which I've added that and it's one trillion now and it's projected to become six trillion by 2030. Which, if we continue to go into that projection, there are significant effects from that, if we just reflect on where we are today as a society.

Samreen McGregor: 7:48

So, yeah, so I think you know, on a professional level, I feel, having gone through the process and experiences I've gone through, I've got a bit of a mission and it's making people aware that this exists and actually holding their hand, because we all have really clever adaptations that, as human beings we got unlike many others in the animal kingdom, which are those defense mechanisms. Dissociating from something that feels too painful, not wanting to re-traumatize ourselves and live through uncomfortable experience, and those are great, and there is a limitation to us carrying energy, emotions, pent up effects from situations that perhaps were unwanted and allowing them to be forces that are hidden and in the workplace, I see them everywhere.

Garry Schleifer : 8:48

Well then, you're the perfect person to have written this article. Let me tell you. I'm glad to hear that your son is well and your family is healing. I guess it's a journey, right from what you're saying it is.

Samreen McGregor: 9:00

That's a lovely way of putting it, and we we certainly are.

Garry Schleifer : 9:06

Wow, and you took the time to write for us. I really appreciate it. You've given us some examples. How would you define trauma?

Samreen McGregor: 9:13

So, again, trauma is a word that and I remember trying to decide on the title of my book. You mentioned my book and there were so many versions. Should I use the word trauma? For the reasons I've just described, I think there's a bit of a natural reaction to the word trauma.

Samreen McGregor: 9:34

But actually, when you look at it clinically, trauma is when you get an injury. It's what happens within your body.

Samreen McGregor: 9:42

You might have a scar or a wound which tends to then scar, but the process in between is the scar tissue hardens and helps the wound to heal. And actually, I think maybe classically that would be the typical definition of the word trauma. And today I'm seeing trauma as a really helpful metaphor, certainly that more physiological version of the definition of the word trauma as a really helpful metaphor, because actually trauma is what happens within us as a result of an event, and again I'm gonna sort of separate a few things here, because many of us associate traumatic incidents with catastrophes. The world that we live in today presents us with all of these. I've named one in particular in my life, my son's cancer. And you know, goodness, aren't we aware of the wars that are happening in the Middle East and the pandemic in itself?

Samreen McGregor: 11:03

These are traumatic events and they can be catastrophic.

Garry Schleifer : 11:05

No, we're good, we're good.

Samreen McGregor: 11:08

My audio is good, okay, cool. And so these catastrophic events are very much relevant when we define the word trauma, because they are situations that can be, quite significant, quite imprinting. But there's also traumatic incidents that come from moments where something unwanted or unexpected has happened, where there's also an imprint, and one of my greatest inspirations is Gavramate.

Samreen McGregor: 11:37

There's quite a few actually, but I do often quote him because he's very eloquently helped us to sort of characterize, you know, those two different examples of trauma one with the big T those catastrophic events and then one with a smaller t, a little t, which are those events that actually often happen in our childhood, where a child doesn't have the amount of recognition or unconditional presence that a child needs during their formative period and although they're tiny events that might not have a huge damaging effect in the moment, over time it creates a bit of signature for that individual and it then, you know, leads to triggers later on in life.

Samreen McGregor: 12:24

Those are the sort of traumatic events that I actually see quite a lot of people within the workplace become very influenced by, and often at a very unconscious level. So that wound that happens within us, whether it's from a large, more significant catastrophic event, or whether it's from a more insidious, far more chronic, small but repetitive series of situations, are both relevant examples of trauma, and in a workplace environment, it's probably the latter that I'm finding myself work as a coach with leaders, with executives, with teams, where they are bringing the baggage that they're holding and carrying from a lifetime of experience both in and out of the workplace.

Garry Schleifer : 13:16

You give a great example about that team, an executive team that you coached, where individually they were great, but brought they were were a disaster and caused all kinds of ripples in the organization. I want to get into examples, but I want to stick with trauma first, right? So, um, I've also heard that you don't go through life without some sort of trauma. The majority of people have something that has happened. Like you said, something significant, like to your son, something with a small T that might have happened to me as a child, but I'm not aware of a trauma, but I'm sure that I have one as well. I've had other traumas, but not from from childhood. I think, more than anything about the definition is how do we get past it? Or do we get past trauma, or did it merely become a tool in our toolbox that we've learned from and we don't forget?

Samreen McGregor: 14:22

Or avoid. Or avoid, good point. Yes, yeah, absolutely, and I think forgetting is really important, because I don't know whether it is simply forgetting or is, um, we become habituated and we normalize certain things and we're not able to distinguish whether it's something that's stemming from an event or a series of interactions or situations where the assumptions that we're making or even the sensations in our body. I'll give you a very, very current example. My son has had quite a few injuries and, he's a swimmer, and he had to go in for a shoulder MRI on Monday. First time he's ever had an MRI other than for his head, because he had a brain tumor and he was told three weeks ago that they were going to have to inject him with a contrast into his shoulder. This was Monday, by the way, that's why I'm using the example and of course, he spent three weeks worrying about this injection. He's quite triggered by it and essentially, he went in, by the way, it went really well and this thing was I'm not going to name it because it was, it was not a very nice sized injection. I watched it, and he was brilliant and he was fantastic. He didn't see it, but he knows how to control his sort of conditions, so that he can be sort of feel in a sense of control. And actually what was interesting about the situation is the triggers in that three week period were so significant he couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, but actually on the day it was fine. Now that's quite an extreme example, right, because he's had lots of very unhelpful situations and certainly, you know, during treatment, he went through significant treatment chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and he had lots of operations.

Samreen McGregor: 16:18

In the workplace, I just want to contrast it but in the workplace there are situations where, for example, we have interactions with people, someone in a position of authority or someone who we respect highly, yeah, who might say something or not give us the endorsement that we want and expect from them. Now, there's probably a part of history that I want to talk about, and then there's a part of the present and the future that I want to talk about. The historical context is a little bit like my son in that sort of looking forward to the scan and the experience. You know there is an expectation that might be subconscious about whether this person gets endorsement or whether this person gets the recognition and the appreciation that they wanted.

Samreen McGregor: 17:13

That may stem and be rooted in them not getting sufficient recognition as a child, or the polar opposite getting a lot of recognition and a lot of affection as a child. And when you take the, and I'm slightly controversial using this as an example, but I do think it's one that we all recognize. If you take some of the narcissistic characteristics that we all explore a little bit more, that word is thrown around a lot. It's both sides. It's the person who didn't get the affection, the presence, the love that they perhaps needed, or they were so muddy coddled. Both effects are almost identical in their adult professional context.

Samreen McGregor: 17:59

Wanting the recognition and seeking it and when they don't get it, having a number of sort of knock-on effects with those around them. Yeah, and I think that for me is important, because I think the question you're asking is how do we avoid? Well, how to prevent ourselves from avoiding or forgetting? Yeah, and the answer, the very simple answer, is having the time to stop and reflect and notice whether some of the situations that we're in in the present are stimulating or provoking us to have disproportionate reactions. And when we're reacting in a disproportionate way and we're not able to respond with some thought and consideration, there's something else at play. It's a hidden saboteur that stems from potentially an unmet need in the past. I don't know if that's making a bit of sense.

Garry Schleifer : 19:12

It makes a lot of sense and thank for the background, the historical context of not having attention or having too much attention, still leaves you with an expectation of a certain level of acknowledgement and recognition that they're not getting. So that comes up, and in your article you did speak about how to work with that and to notice, and I think step number one, though, is to recognize it. So that's a key to that. Any other examples you have that you can give us of a workplace trauma, kind of like that team one, or is there anything else that comes to mind?

Samreen McGregor: 19:47

There are. So there's a couple. Maybe I'll give you two. One is more of an individual one and it was interesting.

Samreen McGregor: 19:53

Someone who I've been working with recently, a coachee, has expressed in quite sort of an uncomfortable and painful way some unhelpful dynamics with a new boss that she is working with, actually. There's a dotted line to this particular power relationship she's got, but also a direct line to somebody who sits in between. So there's some power differentials there that are quite political as well. This new person that's come in is a chief C-suite professional and has come in with enormous expectations by the firm, by the organization, for her impact and she's quite a savvy player and tends to speak a lot about her own experience and want to show and almost seek recognition through projecting who she is. This individual that I'm working with is finding it really difficult to work with this person. She is finding it quite overbearing, noticing that sort of remarks or name dropping is appearing at very strange times and this person's also feeling very undermined even though she's got very, very clear and high sort of respected relationships with fee earners within the organization, so key stakeholders, and this is happening now. Interestingly.

Samreen McGregor: 21:35

Interestingly, we've been exploring a number of contexts for her and she realized that there is a power play that's going on here and she started to notice some of the behaviors that this new person, who's in a very high, powerful position, is actually demonstrating some fairly abusive behaviors. And I don't think, actually, as we explore it, there's an intention in these abusive behaviors. But the behaviors, when you try to take them and almost sort of see them separately, they could be very, very clearly construed as abusive. And this then led to a conversation, which it was three or four coaching sessions in, about my client having had an abusive relationship with a previous actual relationship and she started to draw some parallels between how she's responding in this power play and some of the similarities between how she tends to respond to a persecutory type of dynamic.

Samreen McGregor: 22:45

Now it sounds quite complex, but the parallel was extremely clear for her. It was like a coin drop and she notices before her eyes. So this is a pattern of we then then explored the pattern.

Samreen McGregor: 23:00

And that you know, again, without the space and the time to sit back to see the picture and understand, and actually the implication of that was some of the things she might have been doing that was attracting this kind of behavior in both situations. One was in the past but one was in the present. The implications were for how she managed her credibility and her legitimacy and authority in the current context with this new individual who's come in.

Garry Schleifer : 23:39

Wow, a great use of coaching, obviously. What would she have done if she didn't have that to rely on?

Samreen McGregor: 23:45

Yeah, well, and I think one of the things that she has expressed is, I feel re-empowered to make some choices about a how I react in the situation and break the pattern and not allow this this sort of parent-child dynamic or actually quite abusive critical dynamic that was starting to appear. And then the other example that I would love to give is an example that actually it features in my book, and it was an example of a really wonderful team. They were incredibly high performing and, in fact, the leader of the team said to me I think we're already a great team, but I want to go from great to simply brilliant.

Garry Schleifer : 24:32

Yeah, what's beyond great?

Samreen McGregor: 24:35

Yeah, and how do you? And actually it was a team that played a very important role during the pandemic. This is back in the pandemic time and early in the pandemic telecoms organization business and you know they were out in the field. They were the ones who were, you know, imagine how much we depended on connectivity, didn't we? So they one of the few key workers. They were out there in the field working with families trying to get their technology working, and there were four regions and there were four leaders within this team and plus a couple of others, and I was running this sort of intervention with them. The only thing I asked them to do at the very start, there were two core parts of the intervention.

Samreen McGregor: 25:22

The first one was I did a bit of an inquiry, I did some 360 just because that was part of their internal HR process, but I helped to set it up as a really appreciative process to help them to understand each other a bit more. And the first thing I did is we're going to get together for a day and I'm just going to ask each of you to do the same thing. I want you to just tell some stories about yourself, answering three guiding questions. One is what is your life story? What are three core elements that happened in your life that were influential? The second is who are three key figures that really influenced and inspired you, or in a good or less positive way?

Samreen McGregor: 26:07

And then the third one is what three key choices have you made that's brought you to being a leader in this team right now? That's all. That's all they did, and at the end of this session, eight, all eight well, one of them out of the eight and then they all agreed, but um said this is the first time in 12 years of having worked together, 12 years they've worked together that I truly know who my colleagues are.

Samreen McGregor: 26:36

Actually they grew their connection by understanding some of the adversities that they had lived through in their own lives, and the second part of the intervention, which actually was really important to build on

Samreen McGregor: 27:03

But there were often a region that didn't perform in line with the others, and, instead of the others supporting that region, they would just blame them and point fingers, and so the work I did was to help them uncover some of those adversities that they had experienced as individuals, bring down the guard, help them feel more vulnerable and then shift into a mindset of, of course, competition is good, but from competition to support.

Garry Schleifer : 27:35

Right Collaboration and yeah.

Samreen McGregor: 27:37

And a large part of that was to change the measurements from being individually success driven to collectively success driven. But I couldn't have done that more meaningfully without them sharing some of the intimacy of the adversities that they had lived through in their lives.

Garry Schleifer : 27:56

Wow, wow, amazing, amazing impact. I can't help think about when you told your own story about how connected I got to, how you got Venezuela, India, parents, child, all those sort of things have me more connected to knowing you. It's brilliant, brilliant. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that. I'm sure you've got tons of stories. What's the name of the book? I don't think we mentioned it.

Samreen McGregor: 28:27

So the book is called Leader Awaken. I'll do the same thing as you.

Garry Schleifer : 28:33

Shameless self-promotion yes.

Samreen McGregor: 28:38

So it is called Leader Awaken ~ Why accepting adversity drives power and freedom. It's on all sort of major retailers but it's on Amazon and it's all over the place actually. I will make sure that we include the details in the notes. A little bit like the article, it goes into the science of trauma, the science and the sort of existence acknowledgement of trauma in organizations.

Samreen McGregor: 29:14

But most of all, it does two really important things. It brings lots more stories and a lot more detail, by the way, and they're not long but they're more sort of colorful, if that makes sense. And these are stories from clients who've been hugely generous and very open about sharing their stories to inspire others to do exactly what you asked earlier. Not to forget that we do live through some of these things and we can grow and actually adversity and trauma is a catalyst for that growth. And then the second thing, and it is quite revealing, I do tell a lot of my own story and I explain through facts but also through quite emotional shares, some of the adversities I've lived through and the learning that's come from that and how I've grown as a result.

Garry Schleifer : 30:04

Yeah, no kidding. Thank you so much for your vulnerability. Great modeling. Yeah, other than buying the book, what would you like our audience to do as a result of the article in our conversation today?

Samreen McGregor: 30:18

Well, it's a really lovely question to ask me, because actually I almost want to encourage people to do less. It's quite paradoxical. That doesn't mean you're not sort of thinking or feeling or noticing how you might be sensing things differently and perhaps framing things differently, but doing less. We are in a task driven society and corporate and organizational life is infused with high expectations and we tend to find it difficult to question why we do what we do. And that's where that sort of challenge comes from.

Samreen McGregor: 31:03

And you know, my encouragement to leaders, to HR professionals, to employees within organizations is to make space to take that walk at some point during your day. You know, bring some movement into your day and allow yourself the art of contemplation, without an agenda, without a specific task that you have to complete, and just notice what's going on for you. If you've had a conversation with someone earlier in the week or earlier in the day and thought, oh, that was really frustrating, question is there a reason why I'm having a disproportionate reaction in that interaction? Is it something and can I feel something? Is it tightness in my chest or, you know, discomfort in my stomach? Our bodies, by the way, have huge amounts of insight.

Samreen McGregor: 32:03

I'm writing quite a lot about this. So, if people want to follow me on LinkedIn and go to our website, I'm really getting into this whole embodied source of insight that, as leaders and as people generally, we could really rely on. But in order to do that, we need space, you know, and if we're not allowing ourself this time and this space and I know that's it slightly paradoxically with achievement success.

Garry Schleifer : 32:43

Well, a good friend of mine, Janet Harvey, says a pause gives more than it takes. So, yes, it's about being sometimes, and not always doing so great, great.

Samreen McGregor: 32:50

And I love that because, in fact, again in a recent piece that I wrote, you know, we're called human beings, we're not called human doings.

Garry Schleifer : 32:58

I say that all the time. Pause people. Yes, thank you. Yyou alluded to a few ways to reach you. Linkedin: Samarine McGregor. What's the website? The website's turmericgroup. com got it and we'll put that in the notes, thank you. Thank you so much, Samreen. This is awesome and giving us a little more in depth into who you are, thank you, and what you're up to. And and trauma and uh, do less, I think, is a great way to close today.

Samreen McGregor: 33:33

Absolute pleasure and thank you for your interest and curiosity.

Garry Schleifer : 33:36

It's been such a nice conversation that's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via the podcast app that got you here. If you're not a subscriber, you can sign up for your free digital issue of choice Magazine by going to choice-online. com and clicking the Sign Up Now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery. Thanks again,