Reducing Drama and Negative Energy Inside our Communities

Gossip inside senior living communities is not random. It has roots.

In this episode of Aspire for More with Erin, Erin breaks down the real drivers behind drama and negative energy — and why trying to “shut it down” rarely works.

Instead of policing behavior, leaders must examine the systems that fuel it.

Erin explores:

• Why gossip is a storytelling problem
• How lack of clarity fuels confusion and assumptions
• The critical role of emotional safety
• How power imbalance creates alliance-building
• The impact of unprocessed trauma in caregiving environments
• Why leaders must model the culture they want to see

You’ll learn how to stop absorbing negative energy and start observing its roots so you can change the environment instead of chasing behavior.

Because gossip isn’t always a people problem.
 It’s often a systems problem.

And systems can be rebuilt.

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Transcript

1:06

Hey y'all. Thank you for being here. It's another fantastic episode of The Aspire For More with Erin podcast, where I'm here to tell you my favorite phrase. Don't be a sponge. Stop absorbing the drama and start observing why it's happening. That is the main point of this episode. If you've got drama. Gossip, negative energy that you're trying to get in front of this episode is for you. And if you don't, you're gonna wanna listen to anyways. Because we've all got drama at some point in our executive director, leadership life inside of a community, all of us, we're not gonna be exempt from it. So I. Obviously help leaders inside of the community. Drama keeps coming up and in my weekly email I talked about drama and that actually spurred on quite a conversation. So we're gonna talk about it today. In fact, we're gonna devote an entire episode. To drama, how to reduce gossip without policing people. You're not a sponge, so stop absorbing it and let's start attacking it. so let's get into it. The reason why I like to tell people that you're not a sponge is because, I mean, hello. I myself was absorbing a lot of negative energy. I was housing a lot of blame, a lot of shame as to why my community had this problem with gossip. But isn't it wild that the people creating the negative energy spurring on the gossip are usually not affected by it at all? I mean, think about that. I am not spreading the gossip. I'm not initiating the gossip, but I'm feeling the weight of the gossip and the person creating the gossips during the gossip, talking about it or entertaining it or continuing telling people it are not feeling a thing about it. Ain't that something? I wanna become that person. I wanna become the person that's not affected at all by the gossip, and that is what we're talking about. You know, an important point to understand is that gossip is rarely random. It's intentional, it has roots, and if we can understand the roots, we can reduce it. Without becoming, you know, too harsh, too controlling, um, too affected by it. Do I believe that we can eliminate gossip completely? Probably not, because if it gets high enough up to you, it's probably out of control. Are there people that are going to gossip? Yes. But we want to keep the energy of the community at a positive level, at a controllable level. And one of the ways that we're gonna do that is to understand a simple rule that I learned from Seth Godin's book called Tribes. This changed. My line of thinking like it brought such an awareness to me and Seth wrote, people rarely believe what you tell them. They may believe what others tell them, but they will always believe what they tell themselves. Gossip is just people reinforcing the story that they are telling themselves. Now, here's what I want you to take away from that. If we can change the story that they tell themselves, we can influence the culture, we can influence the reduction of the gossip. Gossip then turns to a storytelling problem, not necessarily a people against people problem. How we get to that point is we try to figure out where the story originated from so we can figure out, is this what people really think? And I think that that's a powerful question. If the gossip comes up to you and it is so out there that you say to somebody, is this what you are really telling yourself? Do you believe this? And then all of a sudden you are gonna think of, what did Erin say on that podcast? Oh, she said, if we can change the story that they're telling themselves, we can influence the culture in a positive way. Gossip is a storytelling problem. Ugh, that's so good. Now, it doesn't even have to be gossip, right? Have we ever been in these situations where there's a, a problem or a challenge, or somebody's really upset about something and they're just overreacting to a very simple, small problem? You can think about this again. They are telling themselves a story and they are believing it is the story, the truth, and how can I help them change the story they're telling themselves? And that will automatically bring the temperature down and they can start by saying, do you believe what you're telling me? Do you believe this? Are you telling yourself this? Do you believe this? Or did somebody else tell you this? And you're questioning whether or not you should believe it. This is the power of questions, the power of the pause, the power of understanding that a lot of these behaviors are storytelling problems. When we can change the story, we can influence the culture, the change. The gossip in a positive way because gossip is an energy and it starts somewhere, and there's some roots that we can talk about. So let's talk about the roots of gossip. Gossip comes from, I believe, uncertainty. A complete and utter lack of clarity, lack of communication, um, you could say, well, I, I know, I know for a fact that in my community. I was sensitive to the energy in the community, and when I was communicating well and effectively in my standup meetings and in my pep rally meetings, which was an all associate meeting that I had at, after standup, that I could keep the negative energy and the gossip down. But if I wasn't communicating effectively enough, consistently enough, I could feel the energy tense up and the the gossip start happening. And so I began to understand that the human brain hates uncertainty. If I'm not communicating effectively enough, people will fill in the gaps with whatever they believe through whatever lens they look through life with. So if I'm always a victim, I'm gonna find a way to be a victim. If I am always the winner, I'm gonna find a way to be the winner. If I'm always negative and angry, I'm gonna find a way to be negative and angry about it. These are the gaps that are filling in, and this is why communication is so critical inside of the community. And if you are skipping meetings because you think they are ineffective, you are wrong. You're just not doing them effectively, you're not running them effectively because communication. We will give people the clarity and the certainty they need when they don't have it. So what, what could be lacking? What are some of the clarity, um, elements that may be lacking? Maybe we have too many new associates and they don't really know what their role is and how they fit in That's possible. Or we've had a lot of new residents move in, and so we're really unclear of what we're supposed to do. There's been some new, um, policies, some new changes, new leadership, some decisions were being made and they haven't been filtered down into, uh, where everybody understands what's going on. So they're unclear about what decisions to make, what to do. They're unclear about standards. Because one person is doing this over here and saying this, and another person on another shift is over here doing this and saying this. So there's a lot of unclear standards, unclear as to why these decisions were made and are they real decisions. And then there's no explanation behind any of the changes. This is lack of clarity. So if there was a fall, a really bad fall with a really bad, um. Injury and there were changes to somebody's care plan that just was communicated but not written down, and somebody from the next shift comes in and has no idea why the explanations happened. Then they fill in the gaps. It doesn't matter. I'm just third shift. It doesn't matter. We don't matter. We don't matter here because nobody communicates to us what's going on. I don't know what to do, and so therefore I'm gonna do nothing, and I'm gonna talk about every single one of those people who didn't tell me what to do. When clarity is missing and roles, decisions, standards, or any type of explanation of why a change happened, the imagination, the past hurts. The, the lens that I look through life with fills in the gap. the story I tell myself becomes the story that I listen to because it's the most consistent voice I hear. Confusion and the lack of clarity, The lack of clarity equals confusion. So confusion will create a reason for people to talk, Because they're asking questions. They're trying to find a way. it's a lot more fun to talk about people, right? So how we phrase the question to other people. We'll create an energy to respond a certain way, but the more that we create clarity. The less conversation, the less questions has to happen because we're communicating effectively. This is the power of communication. This is the power of clarity. This is the, I think, the biggest root of why gossip begins. People are unclear on their roles, they're unclear on decisions, what they need to do, when and why, and why somebody else made this decision. Unclear standards because there are none consistently anyways, or there's no explanation behind a change. And look, constant leadership changes are going to keep the confusion and the gossip and the conversation high because nobody knows what's going on, or it's gonna appear that nobody knows what's going on when clarity is missing. Other people will fill in the gaps. They'll fill in with the story that they're telling themselves because they believe it. They believe it. And so a powerful question to ask again is, is this the story that you're telling yourself? Do you believe it? Now, sometimes you're gonna have to fix your face when you ask that question I think this is very important when we're talking about gossip and the negative energy or when a big. Opportunity to calm somebody down presents itself. Too many statements are gonna allow things to escalate, but when you ask questions, it allows somebody else's voice and their reasoning to come back to them. And if you keep them talking, they will talk themselves off the cliff and to realize maybe it's not as bad as it seems. Okay. That's route number one, lack of clarity. The second route would be a lack of emotional safety, and I think emotional safety is important, and I think sometimes a lot of people don't understand what emotional safety is, but really it's the, it's feeling like you have a voice. Feeling like I can go to my manager or my director, or my leader. Inside of this community or company and to be able to say, I'm frustrated, I don't agree with, I felt like this is a bit unfair, or I'm feeling very overwhelmed right now. If your people feel like they can't say those words without retaliation, um, or up to the leader. Who do you think they're gonna say them to? And if somebody comes to me and says, I'm frustrated about X, Y, Z, and I am another caregiver, or another cook, or another nurse, and I tried to go to my direct supervisor and I was shut down, then that experience is going to be a mirror to somebody else's experience. And they're gonna say the same thing. And guess what happens? Negative energy spreads What they tell themselves, somebody else is telling themselves as well, and they have found agreement and alignment because they can't go up with this information. Gossip. The negative energy is just displaced frustration if they can't. Go to the person who is supposed to listen to it. They will go somewhere else. And you know, talking to somebody else who is the same as you from a frontline associate, or from a nurse associate, or from an executive director to another executive director. These side conversations feel safer than the direct ones. So if I can get it out to somebody who listens and agrees with me, that feels much safer than getting it out to the person who is above me on the organizational chart. This is emotional safety. This is the backlash of not having emotional safety. This is the backlash of not having the time to create emotional safety. this is why I tell leaders all the time on my webinars in this podcast, in my emails, when you create the time, when you front load all that energy to create emotional safety, to understand, to listen, to train, to equip, to empower, cause it's a lot of energy and effort to do that. I know that you eliminate on the backend. A lot of negative energy distractions like this because your team feels like they can speak upward about frustrations, things they disagree with, things that they feel like maybe you don't have all the information for, and so unfair judgment had, or they're overwhelmed because their workload is high. They have to be able to say that to somebody. And the more emotional safety they feel with you as a leader, as a director, the less they will say it to other people. Now you're gonna have people who's never gonna say that to that director, and that's where the gossip will probably start, because they're not going to feel safe no matter what you do or do not do. And that's when maybe you can make an effort because you see them. You can go up to them and just ask them. Is there anything that you feel frustrated about? Anything that you wanna bring to my attention that maybe you disagree with or that things felt unfair? Or any part of your job that you're feeling overwhelmed in? These are direct questions. They may not answer them, but you ask them and they feel seen and heard, which is huge, and maybe they won't. Displace their frustration to other people around them. Now I also want to say this'cause we're talking about how the lack of clarity gives people a need to gossip. Right. Um, and the emotional safety. I spent a lot of time loving all my caregivers, loving on my hourly associates, feeling like they were a part of the team, making sure they knew what I knew that was relevant to them in regards to move-ins and resident transitions and different changes that were going on inside of the community and the larger company. And still, at times it was never enough. Okay. The goal here is not utopia, because you're never gonna have that. There were certain times where the energy in the community was excellent. I could not have asked for better, and then it went tanked downhill and it came back up and, and, and the, the cycle as we know that it goes. But I want to say something and it is about you. You do the best that you can do. It's not about making everyone feel Happy all the time. Pleased all the time that's never gonna happen. But are you doing consistently what you need to do? To keep frustrations normalized, to allow people to talk, to, allow people to say, I am overwhelmed, to listen, to communicate effectively, to be clear, because I did that and even when people weren't happy and the emotions were high, I could evaluate myself and say, did I communicate to the best of my ability what was happening? Yes, I did. Did I write things down? Did I have them sign it? Were they aware? Yes, they were. Have I kept my door open, talked to people? Yes, I did. Okay. I have to allow this moment to pass. And there are times that I felt like it was never enough, but I was doing all that I could do, and that was all that I could do. Okay. And in the past three years, I've seen groups of my frontline teams two different times. And they would say things to me like, nobody cares about us the way that you did. And they would tell me that same sentiment in two different ways. And I want you to know, they would've never told me that in the moment. I knew that they loved me and respected me, and I knew because they loved me and respected me. They would treat me a certain way because that's, I'm a woman. I, I'm a woman, and women treat women a certain way, and you cannot convince me otherwise. And I came to accept that as long as I met. My standards, did I create emotional safety? Did they know that they were valued? Did they know they could come and talk to me? Did I make sure that my managers were empowered and equipped to have the hard conversations with them, to listen to them? Maybe we can't change anything, but we can listen. And if you can make that same priorities and you can tell yourself. What are the stories that they're telling themselves and do they believe it? How do I change that story? Then you can find that neutral spot that will then shift to a more positive environment for you and reduce gossip as much as possible. But the standard is yours. Am I doing everything that I can do to ensure clarity, emotional safety, and the other items that we're gonna go over? And if you are, then you just have to wait for the moment to pass because not everybody's gonna tell you what they feel about you in a positive way in the moment, but when you're gone, they will see your effort. when they see your effort and they tell you and communicate that they see your effort, you know that you're making a difference. And those people can be your gauge and everybody else you're trying to mitigate the damage, But again, your effort, your consistent effort to clarity, emotional safety, and the next root of gossip, which is the power imbalance and the fear when people feel powerless, What they say doesn't matter. They're underappreciated. They feel like they're underpaid and they're afraid of losing control. That is fear, and that is where conversations start happening amongst themselves and not necessarily up. It is how can I gain control? All of a sudden gossip is happening because they're trying to build alliances, they're trying to regain control, and they're trying to see where everybody stands on the spectrum. are you on our side or are you on their side? Because when somebody feels powerless, a loss of control, Underappreciated, underpaid gossip. Becomes influence, and that is an important thing to understand. So this is where clarity and emotional safety really come together to help with the fear and the loss of control and the power imbalance. Now it's easy to talk about the power imbalance from a frontline associate to a key director to an executive director to. A corporate office, but let's talk about a power imbalance of a frontline associate who's been here for five years, has a certain way they like doing things, and that has been the standard. And all of a sudden we have somebody new coming into the mix who has a higher standard than this person, and now they're coming in guns a blazing, making all kinds of changes. We've got a power imbalance here because influence is coming from somebody who's new, The standard of somebody who's been here a long time is now being affected by somebody new who has a higher standard. So now it's not a power imbalance of the different layers up. It's a power imbalance of people on the same level, It's that old mentality versus new mentality. It's, I've been here for five years, you've been here for five minutes. Let me tell you what's gonna happen here. So another root of gossip is the power imbalance. And so when we understand the dynamics going on, we can step in and try. To keep everything neutral. Again, we regain control. We go back to that line that says what they tell themselves they believe 100% of the time. So as a leader, if we're in that power imbalance section, we wanna figure out what is this person telling themselves? What are they believing to be true so we can affect change? That comes with asking some questions. Not just policing them and telling them to stop talking or stop doing this because that's not gonna change anything except for maybe in the moment But if we can figure out the root cause of the power imbalance, we can regain control and have influence, good, positive influence. In that situation, so remember, power imbalance is, is a new person coming in, in the same department, changing things up, or a key director or executive director or somebody higher up or a power imbalance can be. When people feel underpaid, underappreciated, or afraid of losing control, they don't feel seen. They don't feel valued. And that happens a lot inside senior living because it's a hard job. The ask of an individual working inside of a community is great. And so the more that we can appreciate, the more that we can communicate, the more that we can tie impact and value to their tasks and and win with encouragement, the better the momentum that we're building and the less gossip. Because truly to squash negative energy, you wanna go in with a lot of positive energy and no, maybe we can't control the amount people get paid, but we can control, they understand their value. If we can get more revenue coming into our community, have a higher occupancy, then maybe we can affect some change in a positive way. That can bring a balance back and make the expectations a a little more even, because some people may believe that you have a little bit more control over that than you actually do. Again, that comes back down to clarity, which is very important, and asking the appropriate questions to get very clear on what the root of the problem is. Number four, another. Another root of gossip and drama inside of a community is unprocessed Emotion. Caregiving is a highly stressful job, whether you're a cook or a server, a nurse, a frontline caregiver, a housekeeper, an executive director, a maintenance director or a tech. We are walking around in a community where at any given time we're dealing with grief because we lost somebody. Somebody's in the hospital, somebody just went out and an ambulance. Somebody's having, um, a life threatening medical incident. We're having emotional issues because not a lot of people talk about the triggers, the trauma triggers that are inside of our communities. I mean, I don't know about you, but I have had residents, male residents, say some very inappropriate things, touch female associates inappropriately, and ask them to do things that were inappropriate to them. Okay. When we talk about unprocessed emotions. This is high stress, high stakes situations inside of our community. Not to mention we're tired because maybe we're working 12 hour shifts, maybe we're working two jobs, maybe I'm asking them to work. Lots of shifts. The drama, the reactions, the gossip, the. The anger, the discharge of pain, needing to get it off of my chest, right? That is where gossip can start. It's an emotional relief without the responsibility, and so therefore, I've just been triggered. This is a real story, folks. Literally, I am pregnant, eight months pregnant. Well, I mean, pregnant, I don't, I mean, I obviously was pregnant for nine months, right? At every day there was a man inside of our memory care who was telling me that he wished that he put that baby inside of me every day. Every day I saw him. How much grief is that? I had emotional fatigue just hearing it because of the way he said it, his face, if I was down that hallway for longer than five minutes, I had to hear it, Every minute I was there. And the truth about it is, is that I. Do not have any triggers in a sexual way. I was not abused. I do not have any type of trauma triggers in that area. But what if I had, right? What if I had, that would've been really hard to work in? So being aware of these unprocessed emotions. Will actually make us more aware of not just gossip and drama, but why people leave work in the middle of a shift or don't come back or make decisions that seem so out there because it's not just gossip. That is an emotional relief without the responsibility. It's the decisions that we make because we're tired and we have not processed emotions. I, I talk about the study of care KARE, the workforce trauma study inside of our communities. And I want you to know that 34% of just the care force, just frontline caregivers and nurses, 34% have an ACEs score of four or more, which is an adverse childhood experience, four or more, it's double the percentage of any other industry double. And four or more puts all of our caregivers, any human being at a exponentially higher rate for mental health issues, um, emotional capacity issues, um, physical health issues. And 34% of just are caregivers has an ACEs score of four or more. What if we put culinary in there? What if we put, you know, activities in there? What if we put ourselves in there, unprocessed emotions and a high stress, high grieving, high fatigue, emotionally driven industry. You're going to have drama. If you're not prepared for it, if you're not communicating enough, if you're not creating an environment where every, everybody feels valued and they can come to you and they can say, I just had a moment with a resident that made me feel very uncomfortable, and you know that you have to stop what you're doing to listen and create that environment that will listen. Because you'd rather them come to you than to 10 other people. And this is where you take control, right? When you model the culture, because you would want those people to come to you as. The executive director or maybe the director of nursing, or if it's not you, who do they go to? Are we communicating and very clear about who their person is, who they can go to? Because when you model the culture that you are to build, and you use language that mirrors the culture and the actions that you're wanting to build. The team will copy what they see This is where I wanna challenge you to model a culture that you're trying to build, When you can make simple shifts by making sure that you speak the same language and act the same way in every room because it's aligned with who you are. When you can understand that you are getting tired or that you've been triggered in a way that's causing you to react in a certain way, that you can find your space to gain your composure, these subtle shifts are seen and over time, if you're consistent with them, they will be copied. People will do what they see. So model the culture that you're trying to build. I want to reemphasize this gossip usually comes from one of three unmet needs. The need to feel heard, the need to feel safe, and the need to feel significant. You cannot reduce gossip by demanding the gossip to stop. That doesn't happen. You can reduce the gossip by meeting one of those three unmet needs, which is to feel heard, to feel safe. And to feel significant, which to me is to understand, get, gain clarity in the roles, understand the impact that my role has on the success of the team, and to know how important I am on this team and to feel safe to bring things. I disagree with, things I feel uncomfortable with. Workload conversations, un feeling underappreciated to bring. The negative things as well as the positive things to someone who is my supervisor. Gossip is not always a people problem, although it can be, but it can be a symptom of a systems problem, which communication is the number one system to fix drama and gossip problems When you see a pattern. Identify the pattern, get to the root, and start filling in all the gaps of communication with factual information that helps people feel, seen, and heard safe and significant. I wanna bring it back to my favorite saying that I told you at the beginning, you are not a sponge, okay? Don't absorb all the negative energy. I want you to observe it, and I want you to figure out how can I change the environment? Because when I change the environment the behavior will change. I want you to start thinking of yourself as an architect. And building the capacity of you and your team. And it starts with understanding that if I change the story they're telling themselves and change the system they're operating in, then the gossip loses the oxygen to survive inside of my community. So it's not about the people. It's probably about the story, the story they're telling themselves and the story that they're telling other people. So the more clear I am in their roles, the more direct I am in the communication, the more clear the boundaries are. This is what's allowed here. This is what's not. This is what we say here. This is not how we say things here. The predictable the consequences are the consistent. My actions are. And The safe ways that people can communicate and with who they can communicate with. You change that environment and then the behavior will change slowly but surely after that. I hope this helps. I do a lot of this work inside of my coaching programs, the 100% leader, the one-on-ones, because I feel as if everything starts with the leader with our own self-awareness. When we grow and we have our internal influence affect our external influence, and we can start seeing things for what they are and start looking at what we can control. Because what we can control will actually change environments and behaviors of our teams. That all starts with you. You're the momentum shifter, the culture changer, and when you invest in yourself, your entire team will rise. Investing in yourself. Listening to this episode was the first step. Thank you for that. You can find out more information about the a hundred percent leader, my one-on-one coaching programs in the show notes. But as always, thank you for being here and um, aspire for more for you, knowing you're already enough.