Start with the self first
A powerful technique for transforming toxic company (and societal) cultures
When I sat down with Katie McLaughlin, founder of the McLaughlin Method, I imagined I would recount a typical story of struggle, perseverance, and ultimate conquest in achieving her start-up dreams. What unfolded, however, was an introspective journey with insights into creating a more just world, inspired by a highly capable guide.
When you meet Katie, you might be struck, as I was, by her energy. She embodies that warm glow of someone with nothing to prove, the light that only comes from someone who feels a native passion for a topic. In my experience, it’s a quality that can’t really be bought, coached, or created. It is, to borrow RuPaul’s word, ‘The Realness.’ Katie carries an insightful gaze, framed during our conversation, by sky blue glasses. In our video conference, her background displays the bric-a-brac of a contemporary home office/library/gym, which many of us inhabit several hours a day. Though we know each other from a previous employer, the energy that day was decidedly that of new beginnings, an eagerness to get going, move forward and race to an urgent topic. Picture a sprinter at the starting block, poised, prepared, ready to roll.
‘We start with the self first.’ That’s Katie’s clear response when I ask how she coaches people. ‘We have to better understand our own lens, the things we value, and the cultural/societal messages we’re all buying into.’ Katie has built a practice, The McLaughlin Method, to help leaders and executives transform themselves and their team cultures. Her work begins by developing clients’ awareness of their own actions and how others perceive them — in other words, to see themselves as their employees do. From there, Katie guides leaders to develop new skills and habits, actions that more effectively connect with and empower their teams. In the business realm, Katie acts like the mirror in the Rumi poem, Childhood Friends, leading her clients to see and heal their ‘wounds’ and the ‘self-protective feelings’ that serve as blocks.
As we talk, I ask Katie how her method helps; what does it accomplish for teams and organizations? She highlights that when we understand ourselves, we’re in a better position to understand and empathize with others. This certainly rings true for me and, I suspect, for most people who have engaged in meditation practice or insight therapy. Something happens to our relationships with others — co-workers, lovers, family members, or friends. We see them as real, full people — vulnerable, flawed, gifted, and fundamentally human. With characteristic generosity, Katie offers that same affirmation to those responsible for creating a toxic culture:
I always go into these conversations with a big dose of patience and respect for the fact … I anticipate that the people who create toxic workplaces have no idea that they’re doing it and have zero intention of creating a toxic workplace […] People who are in positions of power, they may not have the experience of having someone help them see how they’re behaving.
We hypothesize that bringing more of this understanding and awareness into our work environment builds stronger, more resilient teams. In this new environment, people feel safe and less like they’re constantly performing. When they feel safe, they take care of customers. Everybody wins.
Giving voice to the skeptic in my head, I wonder whether research backs up this idea, that a culture of belonging is rewarded with increased performance. Katie seems to anticipate this pushback, not surprising given her work in hard-charging cultures in enterprise software and private equity. Katie points to Amy Edmonson’s book, ‘The Fearless Organization.’ Amy, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, ‘examines psychological safety and cross-boundary teaming within and between organizations.’ Her book details copious research supporting the idea that a culture of psychological safety delivers high performance and results. She offers a cogent description of this type of culture, “Psychological safety describes a climate where people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks by speaking up, sharing questions, concerns, or ideas.”
I recall a conversation with another researcher, also of Harvard, which struck a chord. In October 2020, Frances Frei spoke to a collection of C-suite leaders from dozens of software companies. In that conversation she described her experience, along with Anne Morriss, guiding Uber through their successful cultural 180. She highlighted the need for leaders to garner trust, built on a foundation of empathy, logic, and authenticity. As Frances said two years prior in a TED Talk:
So here’s my advice. Wear whatever makes you feel fabulous. Pay less attention to what you think people want to hear from you and far more attention to what your authentic, awesome self needs to say. And to the leaders in the room, it is your obligation to set the conditions that not only make it safe for us to be authentic but make it welcome, make it celebrated, cherish it for exactly what it is, which is the key for us achieving greater excellence than we have ever known is possible.
As she spoke about authenticity, something welled up inside me. I began crying as she called out the need for creating work environments where people can be their whole selves. As a gay man, I’ve often battled this in the workplace. Feeling unsafe, different, or not fully seen I can retreat inside, hiding this important aspect of myself from co-workers, clients, and leaders. In a pernicious turnabout, I, and others who are at times on the margins, blame my anxiety on myself. There must be something wrong with me, if I don’t feel well. Our lack of safety reinforces our shame. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to Katie and others working in this space — they are helping to change that.
I ask Katie about her own connection to this topic — why is so dedicated to helping others create a culture of belonging? She points to a surprising source — the theater. A theater major in undergrad, Katie was exposed to the ideas of Augusto Boal and his revolutionary theater of the oppressed. Developed by Boal in the mid-twentieth century, the theater of the oppressed deploys a range of techniques that dismantle the wall between audience and actor. These interactive tactics invite dialogue. One of these, image theater, Katie uses frequently in her work with teams. As she describes it, everyday scenes common to most organizations, such as a team meeting, are recreated in tableau. After people assume their typical roles, they then switch, to play another role. In that way, clients develop empathy and compassion, in a deeply somatic way, for the experience of others on their team. Augusto Boal, and other practitioners of theater of the oppressed, used techniques like this to promote social and political change. For his work, Boal was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008, shortly before his death. There’s a wonderful irony in Katie using tactics from the theater to transform cultures of constant performance, into cultures of authenticity.
Today, as organizations seek not only to transform their own cultures, but also grapple with the legacy of systemic racism and gender inequality, work like Katie’s becomes deeply meaningful. I can’t help but imagine what might happen as more organizations work to create compassion and empathy across our hazy divides. If we understand one another more deeply, including the powerlessness so many people experience, certainly we could transform the workplace. If more organizations engaged in work like this, how would it impact not just their companies, but our broader culture? Is it too dreamy to imagine a broad, global culture of belonging? Count me with the dreamers.
