Your Culture Is Either Building Resilience, or It’s Breaking It with Dawn Westmoreland

Tim Van Megham: Welcome back to the Shocking Profit podcast where we uncover the profit, the risk, and the blind spots that we often miss until it's too late. I'm your host, Tim Van Megham, and today's conversation is a little different. It's an important one because not all risk shows up in a model, a dashboard, or a diligence report. Some of the most important issues that we address in our businesses are cultural and behavioral and often invisible until they've done some real damage. I'm so excited to welcome our guest today and my good friend, Dawn Westmoreland. Dawn is a keynote speaker, author, and the resilience Expert with over 30 years experience in HR leadership and workplace dynamics. And a, uh, significant amount of Dawn's, uh, career was spent in the Air Force where she's handled stress, burnout and leadership issues that will curl your toes.

Narrator: Uh, you're listening to the Shocking Profit podcast, a show for business owners and leaders who are interested in finding new ways to claim and create value in their companies. Shocking Profit is a practical and endlessly fascinating study of how to effectively run a company and build wealth. Host Tim Van Megham has decades worth of business battle scars from working in the trenches with business leaders. He is here to share his experience to make your journey a bit less treacherous and a lot more profitable. Shockingly profitable. Now, here's your host, Dawn.

Tim Van Megham: Welcome to the show.

Dawn Westmoreland: Tim. Ah, I'm so delighted to be on your show this week.

Tim Van Megham: I'm delighted to have you. And you know, the way I think about today is maybe to put a title on it. Your culture is either building resilience or it's breaking it. And from our perspective here at Shocking Profit, we spend a lot of time working, uh, focused on building a problem solving culture. It turns out to be the foundation for a learning organization, for a vibrant one. Would love to get your take on, um, the resilience piece. And what, what really does work and what does building resilience look like?

Dawn Westmoreland: Well, if we're speaking about the workplace, I'll come at you as a life Coach and an HR expert with now over 33 years experience. Resilience. If we want to talk about employees, we'll start with employees is providing them with a safe, physical, safe environment and psychological safety. And I can go into that, uh, later. But it's also allowing the employees to have voice, listening to them, being available to them. M. That's some of the examples I would use with that experience I have.

Tim Van Megham: You know, safety isn't there. You know, it's at the start of The Maslov hierarchy for a reason. And when people aren't safe, it's also from our perspective in operations, one of the first things we look for walk through the office, the plant, the facility. We look to see is safety a value, a priority, or ignored. How does it show up when we're talking about it more on a personal level, not just physical safety, but when you talk about safety, what go into a little bit more depth? What does that look like in a company?

Dawn Westmoreland: Well, psychological safety, if we were to go in that subject looks like this, Tim, is that a person might make mistakes in the workplace. I mean, that's just human. We're all human. I make mistakes even as an HR person, is working with that person to help, to mentor them, to be the best version of themselves. Everybody has strengths. And so to be resilient and have psychological safety, is that the person, also the employee can speak up to their supervisor or, you know, if they're not happy with that supervisor's outcome, they can, you know, go up the chain and be able to discuss whatever is on their heart and soul today. And that might be just an idea that they have for the company or the organization, and they're being blown off. Or it could be they're speaking up to him about racism, uh, discrimination, bullying in the workplace, and being received in an open, positive manner.

Tim Van Megham: So I bet you learned a good amount of this with your career in the military. Is that fair?

Dawn Westmoreland: I'd say so, because, you know, I went in the Air Force, I had a little college underneath me, and I went in, and I never went in, Tim. For 20 plus years, I went in for college benefits. I grew up with kind of humble beginnings, and I knew I wanted to travel the world. I'd seen their tv, you know, that there's great places to visit, you know. Yeah, I traveled a lot, but I also wanted to get an education, and that was really important. But I mean, when you join the Air Force, you get thrown into leadership, you get thrown into learning about discipline, and there's super high standards because there's no room for mistake. I mean, uh, you just can't quit. You have to keep going. So let's say if you have a terrible supervisor or you work with terrible co workers, you have to sit down in color, as they say. You have to figure out a way to get the job done, or is an Air Force the mission done? And then you also have to figure out how to work together with somebody that you may not like or may not respect. I learned a lot from the Air Force a lot about resiliency, leadership, discipline, and also empathy because I was acting first sergeant and I, that's the enlisted leadership. And I had to look out for the welfare of the enlisted people. Whether, you know, morale, you know, if there was safety issues, whether there was somebody, family died in a death or something like that. Lot of responsibility in the Air Force.

Tim Van Megham: Absolutely. And this whole topic, uh, and starting with safety, and I want to stick with that because it seems so fundamental and without it, people are afraid, they're reticent to speak up and I can't imagine if you don't feel safe, you're not going to jump in and confront real issues. And you brought up some like safety, racism. I would add a couple too, like quality getting, you know, finishing, uh, uh, uh, getting orders or filling demand on a timely basis or addressing a customer issue. That without safety, how do you have the hard conversations?

Dawn Westmoreland: Right. I totally agree with you. I mean you've been at this for decades like myself, and you understand the importance of culture in the workplace and how shocking profits begin with psychological safety as one of the key factors.

Tim Van Megham: It's so true. In fact, uh, we've got our next kind of uh, article, uh, that's coming out is shocking. Profit is actually a leadership system in disguise. That it at the end of the day, helping a company develop a problem solving culture is the real prize, even over and above profit performance in the short term because it is how you consistently drive and improve performance and profits in the future. How when you work with uh, a business owner, when you work as a coach, uh, what are you doing? What are some of the things you bring up with them to help start to develop those muscles within their organization for people to have real conversations and to have the resilience, uh, to see through a tough issue and raise the um, you know, talk about the elephant in the room perhaps.

Dawn Westmoreland: Yeah, you know what, When I work with employers as a consultant doing HR consulting, you know, one of the first things that I like to ask my client is what's keeping you up late at night? What's making you sick to go back to work, you know, on Sunday night? And then they start telling me, oh, uh, you know, I'll use one story without names or organization. You know, we had somebody who had a very advanced degree and they just thought they were above and beyond everyone and they were the biggest bully and harassed everybody because they thought, because they had, you know, advanced degree, very advanced, that they should be in charge and not follow instructions. So in that sense, I had to come in and help with documentation, because that's a real big thing Tim is documenting. Because if you don't document it, document it properly, it's going to be a he said, she said, you know, may have an employee later, you know, suing you. And that can happen anytime. Anybody can sue. But. But the thing is, is that you have to have your ducks in a row. And so I find out what are the problems. I ask all the tough questions. And once I find it out, you know, I did mediation with the person who was causing all the problems and with another person. And because I'm trained as a community, uh, mediator here in Asheville, North Carolina, and I kind of find out, I mean, not even two minutes into mediation, I knew it wasn't going to work because the, uh, lady who had the advanced degree kept cutting me off, trying to take charge of everything. And, you know, I kept going, and I finally got back with the company owner, and I said, your problem is this person. I said, I've made multiple attempts. They're rude. Um, you know, I gave him the facts, and I said, the next best step is to remove her. And so we did it properly because there. That's another thing about psychological safety. You just don't, boom, fire somebody. What we did was I documented it up, you know, as an HR person, because I, you know, work with this person as needed. And so I wrote up all the documentation, told him how to, you know, rewrote, you know, the document of the emails, how does, you know, tell the person they're fired, and, you know, about. Do not, uh, discuss further. You know, we involved an employee employment attorney, too. And I mean, I'm an HR person. I do my own legal. But that's one thing we can't do as HR people is, you know, legal work for other people. But I wrote everything up as an HR person and I said, this is the route I would go. And it worked out. They end up firing the person. And we regrouped and let everybody know that, you know, the person had left the arena, basically, and morale improves so much better.

Tim Van Megham: I so hear you, Dawn. And a couple things you said, I want to really call out because it's so. It really works. And it. And I, um. What I love about it is how it translates into our world talking about standard work, standard documentation we see so often when we go into a company that there are people who perform at a high level, and we'll ask, you know, hey, it. Do things happen different on first shift or second shift? Or does the. How well you serve the customer, depend on who's there that day, who took the phone call, who's handling the, the order or the, the patient or the, the production. Uh, and when there's variation, when there is a difference based on who's there, it screams at you that they aren't stable. And what I mean by stable is stability requires that you can predict a good outcome. And if it depends on who's working, whether we're going to have a good outcome or how good it will be, that's not predictable, it's not stable. Uh, so that's standard. Developing your standards. And I imagine in the HR world that shows up in like things like an employee handbook. When you talk about documentation from this perspective. Don, what are the key things that for a CEO or business owners who's listening, that if they don't have this, they need to pause and take some steps.

Dawn Westmoreland: So Tim, let me make sure I understand. If they're having a problem within one of their employees, what should they do?

Tim Van Megham: Actually, my first question is this. You talked about the importance of having standard, ah, good documentation, your processes, the approach, uh, that specifically, regardless of whether they have a symptom today or not, a problem or pain today. Ah, what, what is the, that documentation? Is that an employee handbook? Is it, uh, what kind of procedures or doc or processes are you really thinking about when you talk about standard documentation?

Dawn Westmoreland: Well, when I talk about, you know, just documentation, we're talking about, you know, whether it's email trails or, you know, somebody signing a counseling form. What I like to do with companies is make sure that they do have a handbook. And of course every state is going to have different rules. Like California rules are different than, you know, here I'm in western North Carolina, so it's real important for me to work with employment attorneys when it comes to legal aspects. But I like to have, you know, a really well documented. When I say document, well written out handbooks that describes what bullying is, that's not acceptable. Gives short examples of different racial discrimination. I mean different discriminations, including racism, you know, pregnancy, religion, there's so many age, disability and such. And then annual training document, document, document. That way the CEO, the employer has proof that the person, you know, whoever gets in trouble later on, maybe they're bullying somebody or discriminated against them, that they have their ducks in a row and that they can show that they've done the training. Because if they have to go to court or litigation, that's going to be, that's uh, guaranteed, that's going to Come up. It's just common sense, you know, what have you done? Do these people know about discrimination? And then counseling? If you have a, you know, a person out there that is doing things that they just need maybe a slap on the hand is, you know, having documentation, you know, very brief to the point, you know, these are the standards. Here's what you did, you know, and it will not be accepted. And then, but you know, wrap it up in a positive note. If we have belief in you, you know, to do better. And then sign it, have that person sign it, give them a copy, keep a copy on file. I've seen, Tim, I have seen so many people just bring somebody in the office, give them a butt chewing and then kick them out and not document it. And then the next thing is they done something a whole lot worse. And then, oh my gosh, you know, there's. You're not keeping that continual documentation. It's just part of being a supervisor or you know, above a supervisor. It is just absolutely needed in today's world.

Tim Van Megham: You know, it makes me think, uh, Don, that when we think about our uh, colleagues in legal profession, that you don't negotiate agreements and document agreements for things that are working well. It's in case something goes wrong or there's a surprise or something happens. And you're describing some real blocking and tackling. If the employee handbook, if you don't have a process to document things from, you know, some of the extreme things you brought up about behavioral issues or absenteeism is one we run into all the time when we'll go into companies and they wonder why they have a hard time getting people to show up for their shifts. And we ask them about absenteeism and they're like, they'll give us uh, the answer that gives us, tells us they're not tracking it and they don't have a consistent process for addressing it, there's no accountability, no consequence. These are blocking and tackling things. And for anyone listening, if these aren't things that you see in your company, the consistent approach to basic things like absenteeism, behavior performance and handbooks, uh, it's an important thing to do. Not, you know, even though it's not going to, it's a, it's addressing a risk. That's really what it's a big part of. It's addressing a risk and it's also setting the stage on the positive side. And John, when you've worked with uh, a business in a coaching or consulting role, when they have addressed these issues and taken out some of the toxic, or like the, uh, example you brought where they had somebody in a role who just was the wrong person for that organization, didn't fit, uh, culturally, didn't have the right values. What happens? What do you see happens? How does it show up in the business when they actually take action?

Dawn Westmoreland: Okay. When the company takes action against the person? Well, it just all depends on the nature and the personality. I mean, one of the last people I worked with, um, was the person I was mentioning earlier, the one that had the advanced degree. And they went out kicking and screaming and threatening. And I kind of saw that maybe it's intuition. I mean, we all have a little bit of gut feeling. And I remember telling the Ployer, you know, I have a feeling that, you know, she's going to go out with a lot of drama and the best thing to do is have, you know, have her sign. She cannot talk about, you know, being fired. And he was this, Tim, this is so rare. And this is somebody who's not American, but they work, you know, here in America, uh, and their values are really family oriented. And he actually gave her money, um, just to, you know, to soften the edge of her being fired. Because you. Yeah, you are. Yeah. But she didn't earn it, you know.

Tim Van Megham: Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

Dawn Westmoreland: He said, you know, by signing, you know, I'm going to give you this much money. I think it was like $10,000. This will help you, you know, for insurance and all that, till you get back on your feet again. Kept it very positive. You know, we, we know that you're going to do well, but you're not a good fit for this company. And I knew, I knew she was going to go out there putting stuff on social media. We caught it and I said, okay, here you go. I found it, brought it back to him. I'm not an attorney. I, uh, certainly am not. And so I said, this time you have all this go to an attorney, go to a professional. I would go to an employment attorney because that's who usually handles those kind of things. And he did. And they send a cease to, you know, communicate with the company because she was backlashing with other employees still after she left. And, um, they showed her, you know, the documentation. The attorney showed her where she's out there, social media, after she signed the actual letter documentation. You're receiving $10,000, you know, severance.

Tim Van Megham: Yes.

Dawn Westmoreland: However, with the caveat that you cannot go out there and talk bad about the company or put, you know, it was very tight. I wrote it up myself. But I, you know, again, I remind you, I'm not attorney. So I said to the employer, this is what I would send. I highly suggest you run it through an employment attorney. And uh, yeah, after one time we had to remind this uh, lady to knock it off. And she finally did. She finally knocked it off. It took a couple weeks and.

Tim Van Megham: Yeah, well, I, uh, think a few things happened there. Uh, one is she certainly demonstrated that you made the right choice in exiting her from the company. And second, it's gotta be, I, I, whenever I see something like this happen, it's been in our company and in companies we work with. When the, when the leadership accepts, uh, behavior that's against your core values. He sounds like a good family man, good core values. And then there's someone in the business that he's tolerating, that bullies people. When he does take action, that's got to send a message. And really I would think energizes the rest of the employees.

Dawn Westmoreland: Well, it certainly did because we called out bullying, we called out, you know, really wasn't any discrimination, but we, we called out toxic work environment. And so going forward, you know, this guy, this leader or uh, employer, he had it in his handbook. And then he knew how, by the different samples, you know, that I gave him. Um, he had all kind of documentation that if he had future problems in the workplace because of incivility or discrimination, he knew how to handle it. Because I don't want people to be tied to me, Tim. And I don't know how you feel about it, but I mean, it's nice making money, but I don't want people be tied to me. I want to teach them, you know, how to deal with toxic work environments and then let them go. Because.

Tim Van Megham: Yep.

Dawn Westmoreland: I think more people keep them, um, tied to my, you know.

Tim Van Megham: Yeah, we operate the same way. We uh, we, we help to uh, make a change happen. Um, and what's really critical is leaving the leadership team with the skills to replicate and continuously improve it. Otherwise, one, you're going to be constantly addressing the same issues and not actually helping your clients make a fundamental shift in performance.

Dawn Westmoreland: It was not only this case, not only morale wise, um, negatively affecting all the other employees and employers. It was, it was hurting business, it was hurting this man's business. And, and nobody deserves that.

Tim Van Megham: Yeah. And, and it, he uh, many times people get used to problems. He may or may not have seen how she was, but he got used to it. Is that fair? And you, you just helped bring some clarity. And, and then he saw the results and how it impacted his team when he took that hard step of taking the person who doesn't fit out of the equation.

Dawn Westmoreland: Right. And he did it with psychological safety. As I said earlier, he was very honorable about it. He laid everything out. Everything was transparent. You know, we're letting you go. You don't belong here. I mean, he didn't put it in those words and neither did I. But in a polite way, you know, you're not a good fit for the company. Why? And then end it with a positive note and then boom, if it happens again, you have a good example, you know, you don't need me unless something new comes up or you just need, um, to go over something again.

Tim Van Megham: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, the first layer, kind of, uh, dawn, that I've heard you talk about, and it just resonates so well for resilience is safety. Let's say we address that. We've got a nice, safe environment, people feel free to bring up what's on their mind, they can be genuine. What's the next layer? What helps to build resiliency and maybe protect the company from a toxic culture, toxic issues in the future?

Dawn Westmoreland: Mhm. Well, a person employee should be able to go, you know, as you say, we talked about them going to the supervisor, their chain of supervision and, you know, not being retaliated against or looked down upon is the next step is that employer, the supervisor, then he hears, she hears, hey, there's a problem with somebody being mistreated. And it's really important to understand this, Tim. And this is where, you know, I differentiate in hr because I work really around toxic work environments. I niche in that. And resiliency is, you have to understand what is bullying, which in the United States there's no laws right now and there's a lot of people trying to get a law. There's no law out there that says, uh, it's illegal to bully. But then if you go kidding. Um, there is none. But if you go to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's webpage and that's EE O C as in charlie.gov and just put in discrimination, you'll get all the different categories. Um, you know, where there has to be so many employees working for that company for them to file, you know, with the EEOC for discrimination, and it tells you how to do it. You could do it online, in person, uh, make an appointment and do that. That's the last thing that any employer needs is somebody taking them through the eeoc, whether it's legit or not legit. Um, I've been through it myself and it can take years because it's triaged off of severity. So if there's a lot of charges of retaliation after a person files a credible, credible as a credible, credible complaint alleges and he, she gets retaliated against, there's a lot of retaliation. Well you, you know, like if I was going to the EEOC and I had a lot of charges and allegation, um, that also had to be legit, you know, I would get a formal hearing, that's what it's called with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission judge and a lot of people don't know is the administrative judge actually travels to your city.

Tim Van Megham: Oh really?

Dawn Westmoreland: Uh huh.

Tim Van Megham: Okay.

Dawn Westmoreland: Yep.

Tim Van Megham: They, they, they like to get on site to learn what's really happening.

Dawn Westmoreland: They do. They come to you.

Tim Van Megham: That's great. I uh, Rob, uh, Don, you make me think of a story from a good friend of mine, Robin Rooks, who uh, we were, we were at a client a few weeks ago and he shared a story when he, he worked in automotive for many years uh, here in the United States. Then he got a chance to do some work uh, at Toyota and actually got to go to Japan and observe uh, their plant. And he was new to it and he was very used to what I'll say is more of a, less of a problem solving. He was not used to a problem solving culture and he was used to like if you raised issues, if you stopped the line, if you caused a problem, uh, there was a cost to that in the company. You could get, you could get uh, confronted by colleagues or leadership uh, for doing that. Uh, uh. So he's in Japan watching the plant run and it stops, the line is stopped. He's like what's going on? And he was shocked when his uh, uh, host said well it looks like one of the operators stopped uh, the line. There's a problem with the part, it's not working right. He stopped the line. He's like really an operator stopped the line? Yeah, he's like this is going to be interesting. So he watches him and for the, they take like it was like 15 minutes. They weren't able to get it started again. So the, their process in this plant was the next level leadership would come. So the supervisors and operators working the, the like plant manager came uh, after 15 minutes and worked with them and they all worked on that problem for about an hour. Didn't, did not get it resolved. Then the chief engineer for the company comes to address the issue and they finally get it addressed. And the host tells Robin, uh, the chief engineer is going to come talk to the employee, stop the line. And he's like, finally, this is going to be really interesting. He's going to read him the riot act, like he's going to come and just dress him down. The guy, the chief engineer walks up to the operator and bows to him deeply. Bows and says, I'm sorry that I set up a system that failed you and thank you for pointing out the problem so we could fix it. That is nirvana for me. Right? The problem solving nirvana. True resilience was demonstrated there.

Dawn Westmoreland: That is huge because most employers have not been trained or, or may not choose to act like leaders. You know, they may not have had the mentoring. I mean, you see it all the time. People are in supervisory, uh, roles. And I'm telling you what you already know, Tim. There's a difference between a manager and a leader.

Tim Van Megham: Oh, yes.

Dawn Westmoreland: You know, and I remember a few time embarrassing times where I made a quick judgment decision and it wasn't anything horrible, but I probably could have done a better job. And I had to go back. Well, I said I had to. That's me. That's the way I'm wired. I'm sorry. I believe I was out of, out of turn by saying this. You know, after thinking about it, you know, you know, we, we can do this. You know, I made a rash decision. That's what leadership's about is being human, admitting when you make a mistake because it doesn't make you less of a leader, as you know, it just makes you psychological safety out there. So everybody says amen. He. She values my input.

Tim Van Megham: Absolutely. I love that. Don, before I go into, uh, the next topic, um, how if a business. I've got to think. Every business owner listening has. If you've got people, you've got hr. HR issues. Somebody wanted to get a hold of you and explore your coaching, your speaking, uh, your books. What's the best way for them to connect with you?

Dawn Westmoreland: Well, I sent them right now to my speakers page is dawn marie westmoreland.com. it does sound long. But some lovely lady in Oklahoma is a beautician and she has donwestmoreland.com and I'm, I'm on LinkedIn under Dawn Murray Westmoreland. I'm there and you can just Google me and I'll come up in all different kinds of radio and podcasting from years back and coaching.

Tim Van Megham: You'll find me very good, very good. And I, I'm excited to say that, uh, I Think very highly of one of your recent guests.

Dawn Westmoreland: Is it you? You are weird. Uh, your show is pre recorded and gonna at 10am standard time zone and be uploaded on YouTube shortly after it airs. So. You know, Tim, I was an Air Force recruiter in South Dakota. Mind you, I'm a native Floridian, but I learned a lot about marketing. And no matter how good you are, people don't know who you are. Your services, well, you kind of stay low and slow as I. That's just something I made up.

Tim Van Megham: Yeah, Yeah, I like that. I like that. And, uh, we can have fun and enjoy the conversations, uh, just as much. It's always helpful. Um, this is such a deep topic, and since knowing you, I know there's a lot that's gone into it. Would you mind sharing a little bit about how did you come to focusing on resiliency? Why is it race that level is so important?

Dawn Westmoreland: Oh, my God. I'll. I'll give you the Reader's digest version. We'll be. We'll need several shows. You know, I've always been an introvert and very shy just because of my past and, you know, traumatic events I don't have to go into. You know, when I was in the Air Force, I spoke up against an illegal E9 Chief Master Sergeant. Know some of the horrible things he did, and I got retaliation. It took a year and a bunch of investigation, and they ended up busting him. That's what we call it, busting and grade. It had to go through Congress to bust, you know, take a stripe from, uh, E9A chief master sergeant. And I went through death threats. I lost £40. I mean, I mean, it was scary. And then, you know what? A few years later, a good friend of mine, we worked in the Pentagon in our early 20s while I was in the Air Force. She said, are you sitting down? She called me one night. She goes, I'm in Colorado. I'm at the senior NCO Academy, and it's ethics week. And they're talking about this girl, you know, standing up to this Chief Master sergeant. And she screamed out, that's my friend Donwick. Oh, my God. They're teaching ethics about my. And then probably back in 2012, I stood up to the second largest federal agency, um, out there. You can look it up, everyone. And, uh, it was. I noticed that there were about 500 white folks in the department that I worked at. It was the finance version. I was. One time, I stepped out of HR for a break, and then I noticed there was only five black Employees. Well, after talking to management and they knew I was HR before, they didn't do anything, they started retaliating. It had to go to litigation. And they actually did go to eeoch, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because of, uh, I put in a disability discrimination because I could work from home. It was a computer job, but yet other people did. And it's a real messy, messy middle. I mean I lost my home, 80% of my possessions. My phone was tapped. I later got to verify that.

Tim Van Megham: Oh my.

Dawn Westmoreland: And I, I end up in the hospital a few days. You know, it, it did harm me. Talk about psychological safety. I didn't feel safe and I could go on and on. I did everything by documentation. And while I was in the hospital, I looked in this metal mirror and I'm going to tell you, I wasn't just in any hospital department. I was in the mental health. I checked myself in because I did not feel safe and I was exhausted. This had been going on almost 20 months. I was there three days. And um, third day, looked myself in the metal mirror because they're not going to have glass mirrors, Tim.

Tim Van Megham: Not in the middle, I get it.

Dawn Westmoreland: Or shoestrings or any of that. And I mean I voluntarily went there to feel safe. And there was only four beds for female veterans at the Charles George VA here in Asheville, North Carolina. But the third day when I got my shower, I had a hay fest in the mirror and I was like, you're so weak, you know, And I thought about it and then I heard this voice. You're going to help a lot of people. And I'm looking around, I'm like, what? Who's talking to me? You're going to help a lot of people. It's meant for you to go through this experience basically. And I had the interdisciplinary meeting with all the counselors and psychiatrists and they're like, she really isn't a victim. I mean she really is good to go. And I walked out, took charge, ah, continued documenting. And then two days before the settlement, I'm one of the very few people out there you're going to ever hear about settled without signing a non disclosure agreement. And that led me to meeting people like Erin Brockovich, who had children in the county, meeting, uh, a man named Tom, who is a creator of Homeland Security. One of who wanted to meet me is like, who stands up to the second largest federal agency. So that's, you know. Then I became a life coach after that, wrote my books, how to Stand up to Workplace Blind Discrimination, the Power Whistleblower. Become a podcaster, then a radio talk show. And then now I decided I don't want to just talk about workplace. I want to talk about resilience. Because that's what everybody needs and I needed it too. And I built my resiliency muscles from my experience.

Tim Van Megham: Well, God bless you. And because you hit one thing on the head and it's amazing to think about, but I know things that have been tough in my own life. I thank God for them now because it did help to uh, prepare me to be the person I am, such as I am. And you know what, you're able to connect with other people. Uh, this is probably the real deep issue that every employer, every leader who's listening, there's somebody in your company that has been through very difficult things. And what I hear you saying, Don, and what you've been able to turn that difficult experience into is a way to help companies. Not. It's not about avoiding the negative as much as it is. Let's build the positive. Let's don't, don't, don't just try to tighten up your documentation to avoid risk. It's more along, more about actually building resiliency, allowing people to have the safety to, you know, duke it out, to rumble, to, to have the conversations that will truly continue to transform and improve. And, and I'll say that it's a good way to live.

Dawn Westmoreland: Yeah, it is a good way to live. I mean then you can look yourself in the mirror and like the person you know for being the best version of themselves. It's a different mirror. It's a different mirror than the mental health victim mirror I saw.

Tim Van Megham: Yes, yes, the end. Absolutely. Amen to that. Amen to that. Well, thank you. Uh, do you, I would like, if you think of maybe one, ah, last thought, tidbit, question, something to, for the business owners, the leaders listening, uh, for them to consider try out. If you had somebody, if you met a business leader in the elevator, what would you talk to them about?

Dawn Westmoreland: You met him in the elevator? I would ask them, how is your day going? You know, I, I tend to look at all people as equals, whether it's the janitor or the top person, you know, how's your day going? And just ask open ended questions about, you know, um, how is your, um, if I know them well enough, you know, how is your project going on? Um, I would ask different open ended questions to get them communicating. You know, sometimes I might even say right out of the blue, how'd you sleep last night? And they're like, and it's like I. I hit a nerve, you know, because, you know, I. I know you've been at it a long time, and I have, too, but I could walk into any organization, any business, and I'm watching the people, and if I see them acting like scared rabbits employees, I'm like, oh, we got issues here. You know, if I see this stressed out supervisors, CEO, yeah, we got issues here. And it's getting to the core, necessary, you know, probably because I've been HR for a long time and doing radio interviews for a long time, I have a way of getting to the nitty gritty to the root problem, and I let people know that the only way we can tackle the problem is to know what the root problem is. And I can get there pretty quick and build the trust.

Tim Van Megham: I love that. Don, thank you so much. And, you know, it's a powerful way to wrap up, uh, the episode. It's all. I feel almost like something that comes up over and over again is, you know, as the leader, be curious, go where your work is being done, and watch. Just like Don said, go watch. Look for signs of stress. Are people, uh, uh, relaxed. Uh-huh. As they work, or are they, uh, if you walk through, are they nervous or anxious? It's a. It's such a big sign. And, and digging in will allow you to, uh, not only transform the company, but also the lives of your employees.

Dawn Westmoreland: Yeah.

Tim Van Megham: So, dawn, thank you. What a power. What's that?

Dawn Westmoreland: We spent a lot of hours at work, right, Tim?

Tim Van Megham: Yes, we do. Might as well enjoy it. It might as well be good. And. And I always say one of the biggest signs that a company has hidden profit is if their people are harried, if they're stressed in their work, uh, that is a sign that, uh, your profit and performance are leaking out of the system.

Dawn Westmoreland: Absolutely.

Tim Van Megham: Yeah. Thank you, Dawn. This has been such a pleasure and such a deep and moving conversation. Thank you for what you do, and, uh, I'm grateful that you took such a hard experience and turned it into such a positive way, uh, to help, uh, and everyone. If you go to the show notes@shockingprofit.com you will see the, uh, information to connect with dawn and be sure to listen in. Tune in for our next Shocking Prophet podcast. And in the meantime, please tell your friends about us. And if you have a question, a challenge, or a life hack, reach out to us@elwoodshockingprofit.com and remember, focus on what matters to shock your profit. See you next time.