At the same time, voluntary quit rates have dropped to around 2%, one of the lowest levels in recent years outside of economic crises.

On the surface, this might sound like good news. After all, organizations have been trying to solve turnover for years. But this shift tells a more complicated story.

The “Great Resignation” didn’t just slow down—it reversed. What replaced it isn’t renewed loyalty or engagement – it’s “job hugging.”

WTH is Job Hugging?

At first glance, job hugging can look positive. People are staying, teams feel stable, and turnover is down.

But this isn’t the same as commitment.

Unlike quiet quitting, where employees disengage and do the bare minimum, job hugging is about staying put out of caution.

Quiet quitting is when employees:

• Do exactly what their job requires… and nothing more
• Stop volunteering for extra work, late nights, or emotional labor
• Set firmer boundaries around time and energy
• “I’m doing my job well… just not sacrificing myself for it anymore.”

It’s all about feeling burned out, disengaged, or wanting to recalibrate after years of “go above and beyond” culture.

Job hugging happens when employees choose to remain in their roles without pursuing growth, change, or new opportunities, regardless of how engaged they feel. It’s clinging to a role like it’s a raft on the choppy sea out of fear, economic uncertainty, and lack of confidence that something else is out there for them.

This is when employees:

• Stay in a job they’re unhappy in
• Avoid risks like switching roles, asking for promotions, or leaving
• Prioritize security over satisfaction
• “I don’t love this, but I’m not letting go.”

This isn’t loyalty but a calculated response to risk.

Why It’s Happening Now

Economic uncertainty is a major driver of job hugging. Concerns about layoffs, inflation, and a cooling job market are making people think twice before making a move. What once felt like a smart risk now feels unnecessary or even dangerous.

We’re also seeing this reflected in workforce data. In a SHRM survey, 74% of Gen Z job seekers said employer stability is important or very important, showing just how strongly even early-career talent is prioritizing security.

However, this trend isn’t driven by economics alone. There’s a psychological layer, too. Many employees are still carrying the impact of recent instability, which shows up as:

• Fear of being “last in, first out”
• Burnout from ongoing disruption and change
• Declining trust in leadership and organizations
• Uncertainty about how AI may impact future roles

Put simply, employees are recalibrating. Right now, stability feels safer than opportunity.

How Employers Should Respond

If job hugging is rooted in uncertainty, the solution is to understand what’s driving it and shift the experience of work. This isn’t a retention problem. It’s about trust, safety, and growth opportunities.

We suggest that you think back to COVID and consider what worked and what didn’t back then. Because we’re back into high-anxiety times right now.

Here are the two most important actions you can take in a “job hugging” environment:

1. Acknowledge what employees are experiencing

Economic anxiety is real. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, it erodes trust.

Think about COVID times, when we were telling employers to be clear and transparent in their communication to help employees feel grounded and informed, especially during uncertain times. We understand you can’t tell them everything, but tell them as much as you can as often as you can to help them understand you’re trying to meet them where they are.

2. Build psychological safety 

Feeling safe to keep your job isn’t the same as feeling safe to be yourself and grow in it.

Employees need to know they can speak up, take risks, and stretch without fear of negative consequences. That means you should talk with managers about finding ways to be vulnerable with their employees so that they’ll be vulnerable with managers.

We don’t mean that managers should be so vulnerable they scare employees with their own fears of layoffs – but they should be building rapport and empathy with some openness. (Hopefully they’ve already been doing that, but if not, now’s a great time to start!)

One super effective way to understand what’s driving behavior is through a workforce survey. Data-driven insights and employee feedback help identify emerging trends, uncover root causes, and inform targeted action plans. When done well, this allows organizations to create strategies that truly resonate across their workforce, not just guess at what employees need. 

And yes, this is exactly the kind of work we support organizations with, tailored to your specific culture and goals.

Job Hugging in a Changing Workforce

As work continues to evolve, especially with rapid technological change, job hugging is likely to grow if left unaddressed. Remote and hybrid environments can deepen this pattern if connection and culture aren’t intentionally built.

At the same time, employees are redefining what matters. Stability is important but so are purpose, growth, and belonging.

That leaves organizations with a choice: You can have a workforce that is stable but stagnant or you can build one where people stay because they’re engaged, supported, and growing.

Ready to move beyond job hugging and re-engage your workforce?

Contact us to start the conversation and download our Building a Respectful, Engaged, and High-Performing Team resource bundle for practical tools you can use right away.

The post “Job Hugging” & 4 Ways to Respond appeared first on Civility Partners.

People mean it as a signal of care, loyalty, and belonging.

But calling your workplace a “family” can actually be a red flag.

Not because connection is bad, but because the kind of connection implied by “family” often creates blurred boundaries, unhealthy expectations, and, in some cases, real harm.

“We’re Like a Family!” is a Culture Red Flag

Here’s why:

1. It Blurs Boundaries in Ways That Hurt Employees

First, families are inherently personal and emotional. Work, on the other hand, is a professional agreement.

When leaders describe the workplace as a family, it can unintentionally signal that boundaries don’t matter. Employees may feel pressure to:

• Work longer hours without question
• Say yes to extra responsibilities
• Stay loyal, even when something feels off

In fact, the American Psychological Association highlights that when employees don’t have healthy boundaries, they’re at greater risk of burnout, including emotional exhaustion and mental fatigue.

So while “family” language sounds supportive, it can quietly normalize overwork and emotional overextension.

2. It Can Be Used to Justify Toxic Behavior

We’ve all heard the jokes (and real stories) about the toxic uncle coming to a family gathering, or the rules around discussions of politics and religion at the dinner table when in-laws are in town. 

These jokes are funny and oft made because these are real scenarios real families deal with on the regular. Families are dysfunctional – conflict gets avoided or blown up big time, difficult conversations are brushed under the rug or had right there in front of everyone, and problematic behavior is tolerated for the sake of keeping the peace or some completely cut off others for the sake of their own inner peace.

So if your workplace is like family:

• Feedback may be softened or avoided OR come out like a fire hose without a filter
• Accountability is inconsistent based on favorites
• Harmful behavior is excused (“that’s just how they are”)

According to Gallup research, only 23% of employees are engaged at work, and accountability remains one of leadership’s biggest weaknesses, especially in cultures where relationships are prioritized over responsibility.

3. It Creates Pressure to Stay, Even When You Shouldn’t

Additionally, family language can make leaving feel like betrayal.

In a healthy workplace, employees should feel empowered to make career decisions that are right for them. The employer should be happy to have gotten everything that loyal employee had to give and excited for their next move.

When leaders emphasize loyalty and belonging in “family” terms, however, employees may experience guilt for setting boundaries, speaking up, or looking for new opportunities.

This is especially concerning given that burnout is already widespread. A 2024 Deloitte survey found that nearly 70% of employees report feeling burned out at work at least sometimes.

When people feel both burned out and emotionally obligated to stay, it creates a cycle that’s hard to break.

4. It Undermines Psychological Safety

At first glance, calling a workplace a family might seem like it would increase safety. Healthy teams are built on psychological safety, the ability to speak up, challenge ideas, and raise concerns without fear – just like how it is in a family, right?

Wrong. In “family-style” cultures, disagreement can feel personal. Employees may hesitate to challenge leadership decisions, give honest feedback, or even address conflict directly because, well, this is family.

As a result, issues go unspoken and unresolved.

And we know from Google’s Project Aristotle research that psychological safety is the number one predictor of team effectiveness.

5. It Confuses Care with Control

Finally, there’s a subtle but important distinction: care at work should be rooted in respect, not control.

Families often operate on implicit expectations – loyalty, sacrifice, and emotional closeness. But those expectations don’t belong in a professional environment. 

When organizations adopt “family” language, it can lead to:

• Leaders overstepping into personal boundaries
• Employees feeling obligated to share more than they’re comfortable with
• A culture where professionalism is replaced with emotional pressure
• Cliques of “family members” forming

True workplace care looks different. It’s about fairness, clarity, expectations, and respect, not emotional obligation.

So What Should We Say Instead?

If not “family,” then what?

Instead of calling your team a family, we suggest focusing on creating a culture where:

• Expectations are clear
• Accountability is consistent
• Boundaries are respected
• Feedback is honest and constructive
• People feel valued 
• Loyalty to the company is earned 
• Civility is the norm

Because at the end of the day, work is a shared commitment. And when that commitment is grounded in respect rather than emotional pressure, people can actually do their best work.

Final Thought

Connection at work matters. Belonging matters. Care matters.

So the next time you hear or say “we’re like family here,” pause and ask: Are we building connection… or creating expectations that don’t belong at work?

The answer makes all the difference.

And if you’re not sure where your culture actually stands, don’t guess. Measure it.

You can start by exploring our free Workplace Culture Diagnostics bundle, designed to help you assess culture maturity, measure respect and inclusivity, and uncover what’s really happening inside your organization.

And if you’re ready to go deeper, we also offer customized workforce surveys to help you evaluate whether your culture is grounded in healthy, respectful practices or unintentionally leaning into “family-style” dynamics that create risk. Reply to this email to learn more. 

The post Workplace Red Flag: “We’re Like a Family!” appeared first on Civility Partners.

And yet, ask almost any organization and its leaders, and you’ll hear, “We/I have an open-door policy.” Sometimes there’s an added, “So I don’t know why people don’t feel comfortable.”

The ol’ open door policy signals transparency, accessibility, and trust. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: an open door doesn’t mean much if people don’t feel safe walking through it.

The real question isn’t whether your door is open. It’s what happens when someone actually steps inside.

The Gap Between Policy and Reality

Leaders often assume that simply offering access is enough. After all, the door is open. Employees can come in anytime, right?

However, employees aren’t just evaluating whether they can speak up. They’re evaluating whether it’s worth the risk.

For example:

• Will I be taken seriously?
• Will they listen?
• Will I be labeled as difficult?
• Will anything actually change?
• Will this come back to hurt me later?

If the answers to those questions feel uncertain, the open door might as well be closed. Even more importantly, employees are paying attention to how leaders respond when someone does speak up.

Let’s say an employee walks in and raises a concern. Now what?

Do you get defensive? Do you interrupt or explain it away? Do you minimize the issue? Or worse, do you thank them in the moment and then ignore it afterward?

Take the president of a client we once had, for example, who was literally the most defensive person I’ve ever come across. Her door was indeed open, but her ability to listen was non-existent.

Because here’s the thing: one negative experience doesn’t just impact that one employee. It sends a message to everyone else who’s watching.

Over time, people learn. And what they learn is this: “Just because the door is open doesn’t mean it’s safe to walk through.”

Try This Instead: An “Open Ears” Policy

So let’s stop calling it an “open door policy” and switch it to an “open ears policy” – now it’s less about availability and more about behavior.

It looks like:

• Listening without interrupting or jumping to conclusions
• Responding with curiosity instead of defensiveness
• Acknowledging impact, even if intent was different
• Following up, so people know they weren’t ignored
• Taking visible action when patterns emerge

In other words, it’s not about inviting people in. It’s about what you do once they arrive. Ultimately, employees don’t measure openness by policies. They measure it by patterns.

Final Thought

Keep your door open. That part is easy.

But if you really want a culture where people speak up, challenge ideas, and raise concerns early, focus less on the door and more on your response.

Because openness isn’t about access. It’s about what people experience when they use it.

If you’re serious about moving beyond symbolic policies and actually creating a culture where people speak up, you have to build the skill, not just state the expectation.

Start by equipping your employees with practical tools to intervene and support one another. Our Intervening and Allyship Resource Bundle gives your team clear, actionable ways to speak up, support others, and respond effectively. Get it for free here.

And if you’re ready to go further, let’s do the real work. Contact us to design a customized training experience for your organization so speaking up isn’t rare, it’s how your culture operates every day.

The post Unpopular Opinion: “Open Door Policies” are Just for Show appeared first on Civility Partners.

While we had an overall great experience and tons of wonderful conversations, we noticed something bad happening: People said things like, “Please don’t send me an email-my boss might see it,” or “I can’t take the book because I might get in trouble at work.” 

Unfortunately, this fear isn’t unusual. According to Gallup, only about 3 in 10 employees strongly agree that their opinions count at work, a key indicator of psychological safety.

Millions of employees are navigating workplaces where speaking up or even learning about healthier cultures can feel risky. In this case, even being associated with terms like “toxic culture” or being caught with a book on solving it felt unsafe. (So, sad!)

And that’s a problem. People protect themselves rather than engage, avoid conversations about culture, stop raising concerns and simply disengage or leave.

The hidden cost of silence

When employees feel they must hide their interest in workplace civility, the organization pays a price.

First, silence prevents early problem-solving. Issues that could have been addressed through conversation often grow into larger conflicts or turnover.

Second, fear erodes trust. Employees quickly learn that certain topics like bullying, incivility, or toxic behavior are unsafe to discuss.

Finally, disengagement spreads. When people believe nothing will change, they stop trying.

And yet, many leaders never realize this dynamic is happening. After all, if employees are afraid to speak up, leaders may mistakenly assume everything is fine.

So what should organizations do?

If employees feel uncomfortable even learning about workplace civility, it’s a signal that psychological safety needs attention. Fortunately, leaders can take concrete steps to change this dynamic.

1. Normalize conversations about culture

First, leaders must make discussions about culture visible and routine. When executives openly talk about respect, civility, and psychological safety, it sends a clear message: these topics are not threats. They are priorities.

For example, leaders can regularly ask teams:

• “What helps you feel respected at work?”
• “What behaviors make collaboration easier or harder?”
• “What would make this team even more supportive?”

Over time, these conversations shift culture from silence to openness.

2. Examine what behavior is actually rewarded

Most organizations say they value respect and collaboration. However, sometimes there is an overlap between what was said and the definition of what gets rewarded.

If high performers are allowed to behave poorly, employees learn that results matter more than respect.

If people who raise concerns are labeled “difficult,” employees learn that honesty has consequences.

Culture follows incentives. Until behavior expectations apply to everyone, including top performers, employees will remain cautious.

3. Close the gap between stated values and lived experience

Most organizations have core values like respect, integrity, and collaboration posted somewhere on their website or office walls

Employees are paying attention to something else: whether those values show up in daily behavior.

If leaders tolerate incivility, ignore bullying, or avoid addressing toxic behavior, the values quickly lose credibility.

And once credibility is lost, employees stop trusting the system to protect them.

4. Make learning about culture visible and encouraged

Finally, organizations should actively promote resources that help employees understand healthy workplace dynamics.

That means making conversations about culture visible, normal, and encouraged. Share articles. Host conversations. Offer training. Highlight stories of teams that have improved collaboration or addressed difficult behaviors constructively.

The more visible these efforts are, the less risky they feel. Over time, the message becomes clear: learning about workplace civility isn’t dangerous, it’s expected.

In that spirit, we’re also sharing the resources I offered to attendees at the Ohio Safety Conference, so you have a starting point for conversations within your own organization:

• How To Measure And Increase Psychological Safety On Your Team
• Toxic Workplace Risk Management Plan
• Building a Civil Workplace: An Operational Readiness Check
• How To Measure And Increase Psychological Safety On Your Team
• Abrasive Leader Assessment
• Core Competency Matrix

Get them here.

Turning awareness into action

Creating a workplace where employees feel safe to speak up doesn’t happen by accident, it takes intention, leadership, and the right tools.

If you’d like to bring this training to your workforce or explore how to strengthen civility and psychological safety in your organization, connect with us at Civility Partners. We’re here to support you every step of the way.

I was honored to be a guest on the Work for Humans podcast with Dart Lindsley, who leads Global Process Excellence for People Operations at Google. His podcast features incredible guests, including Adam Grant.

Dart was one of the most thoughtful and challenging hosts I’ve had the chance to talk with. He asked deeper questions about things like employer abandonment and how organizations can help broker empathy. Check it out!

The post Employees Afraid to Discuss Work Toxicity? appeared first on Civility Partners.

In many organizations, HR makes up only about 2% of the workforce. Yet they’re responsible for the business’ most valuable asset – PEOPLE. That means culture and employee experience, hiring, retention, growth and development, managing performance and workforce planning—all while keeping risk at a minimum with mandatory training, compliance with employment laws, payroll, and benefits.

To make things harder and even more confusing, how HR’s success is measured is rarely clarified for an HR team. Fewer than half of HR professionals say they have strong performance metrics for their HR function. Perhaps because the executive team has little knowledge of everything HR is capable of accomplishing outside of hiring, firing and compliance. 

So HR – the people in charge of ensuring the organization’s most important asset is properly  functioning and productive – have little clarity, structure, or support. Neat.

And at the center of this pressure is one big tension: compliance versus people strategy.

The Two Sides of HR: Compliance versus People

After 17 years we’ve worked with hundreds of HR professionals and their surrounding support teams as either their employer’s consultant, a brainstorming partner, a webinar attendee, or in conversations at events and conferences. And we’ve noticed there are essentially two types of HR professionals – rarely does one professional embody both.

1. Compliance (The “Left-Brain” Side)

This side of HR focuses on rules, policies, and risk management. As you likely already know, this is “left-brain”—it requires analytical thinking, attention to detail, logic, and consistency.

Compliance HR ensures the organization follows labor laws, anti-discrimination rules, wage and hour laws, health and safety standards, and data privacy requirements. It protects the organization and the people in it.

Non-compliance can lead to lawsuits, fines, damaged reputation, and low morale. For example, in one fiscal year alone, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed 110 lawsuits challenging unlawful employment discrimination.

Compliance is serious business. Without it, organizations are exposed.

2. People Strategy or Culture (The “Right-Brain” Side)

The other side of HR focuses on people and culture. This is “right-brain” HR because it relies on emotional intelligence, creativity, big-picture thinking, and the ability to understand human behavior.

This includes shaping employee experience, building leadership capability, improving engagement, strengthening culture, and aligning talent with long-term business goals.

Today’s HR leaders are increasingly expected to think strategically, beyond managing paperwork and policies. Smart organizations are asking their HR team to help the business grow and evolve.

This is the side of HR that transforms organizations. Without it, organizations can stay stagnant. 

Why This Matters

Problems arise when one side dominates the other. If HR focuses too much on compliance, it can become reactive and bureaucratic. Policies may be technically correct, but employees may feel unsupported. Leaders may struggle with development and engagement. HR becomes the “policy police.”

On the other hand, if HR focuses only on culture and strategy without strong compliance foundations, the organization risks legal exposure, inconsistent practices, and serious liability.

Neither extreme works. HR teams that are strong in both compliance and people strategy will have:

• Higher employee engagement
• Lower turnover
• Better alignment with business goals

Like anything in life, balance is a good thing.

Can HR Professionals Do Both Equally Well?

I can do math, but it’s not a strong talent of mine and I don’t like doing it. 

I can, however, fairly easily whip up a new plan to build long-lasting and sustainable culture change after a series of listening sessions with employees. 

That makes me “right-brained” and on the people strategy side of things. If I were an internal HR professional, I would absolutely need someone else to help with the compliance side of things.

So whether you as an HR professional need to come in a pair depends on whether you are left- and right-brained or heavily lean towards one side, what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at, and what you want to grow into. 

Certainly it’s important to have both “sides” and continuity between them. 

What This Means for Organizations

In today’s workplace, talent is one of your greatest strategic assets. HR should not be forced to choose between protecting the organization and growing it.

Instead:

• Leaders must recognize that HR requires dual expertise, and most likely that means two different people (i.e., sides of the brain) running the two different sides of HR.
• HR professionals should be allowed to specialize without losing sight of the bigger picture. While this often happens in large organizations where a large HR team is needed, smaller organizations could find ways to allow their HR manager to specialize and grow or use fractional HR services.
• Organizations should measure HR success beyond whether or not there was a lawsuit and focus on measures like turnover, employee engagement scores, and number of people promoted from within (of course, only if HR has influence and control over these areas).

When both sides of the brain are strong, HR becomes both trusted and transformational. It protects the organization and it moves it forward.

If this conversation resonates with you, it may be time to strengthen both sides of your HR function.

If you’re stuck in compliance and need a partner on the people strategy and culture side, schedule a discovery call to explore how we can help you build an HR function that protects your organization and empowers your people.

You might also explore our Strategic HR Influence Resource Bundle to help you expand your impact, increase credibility, and influence leaders and the workforce with confidence.

The post Should HR Come as a Pair? Compliance vs. Strategic HR appeared first on Civility Partners.

You struggle because you don’t have the time.

Between performance issues, leadership coaching, hiring, compliance, and “one more urgent fire,” culture work often gets pushed aside, even though it’s the very thing preventing those fires in the first place.

And now AI is everywhere.

Used carelessly, it creates distance. Used intentionally, it can strengthen connection.

That’s why we created:

✨ The AI Prompt Playbook for Busy HR Professionals & Leaders Building Civil Work Cultures ✨

Download the Playbook

A practical, ready-to-use collection of 40+ prompts designed to help you reinforce civility, inclusion, and accountability in everyday leadership moments.

No fluff. Just tools you can copy, customize, and paste into your favorite AI tool.

The playbook will make it easier and much less time-consuming for you to:

✔ Draft core value-based meeting openers in minutes

✔ Build scripts to address microaggressions or uncivil behavior with confidence

✔ Create onboarding agendas that actually build inclusion and belonging

✔ Run inclusive listening sessions and pulse surveys

✔ Send recognition messages tied directly to core values

✔ Reset the team dynamics after conflict, and repair trust effectively

AI efficiency + Human conversation

Think of this as your shortcut to reinforcing the behaviors that make workplaces respectful, productive, and psychologically safe without adding more to your workload.

You don’t have to think up all the ways you can influence culture and then build a plan. The playbook and your AI tool do that for you.

This playbook gives you structure, language, and momentum.

If you’d like help applying these tools inside your organization, let’s talk. Our team specializes in turning around toxic workplace cultures and strengthening leadership behaviors that drive real change.

Schedule a Discovery Call with Our Team

PS: My book, Navigating a Toxic Workplace For Dummies, is 30% off at Barnes & Noble, Inc. all month long as part of Dummies Month! If you’ve been meaning to pick it up, now’s a great time. Get it here.

The post AI Prompts for Busy HR and Leaders Building Civil Cultures appeared first on Civility Partners.

It’s kind of annoying, if you ask me. 

Not because you shouldn’t appreciate your people, but because leaders are fairly willing to put a budget towards these nice but not-useful-to-productivity items while denying your request for some budget to address poor behavior or workplace culture problems. 

Leaders can see smiles when they put on a lunch for the staff, so it may feel like immediate results for them. But your suggestion for a culture overhaul is met with a hard “no” because it’s hard to prove a solid return on that investment, it’s a big undertaking, and, “we’re so busy we don’t have the bandwidth to address culture right now.” 

Yet if your employees are in a toxic work environment, they’d much rather skip lunch and put that budget towards addressing the root causes of their Sunday Scaries. 

How can you convince your leadership team to see that?

We suggest a new open-ended question to ask on your workforce surveys: Does the way you’re treated at work help or hinder your productivity?

We think that, if your workforce is honest, they’ll help you prove that inclusion and psychological safety actually improve productivity. (If you’re worried they won’t be honest, you need a new survey vendor to help you build trust that answers will remain anonymous. Call us for that.)

Why this workforce survey question works

This question is different because it’s experiential.

To answer it, people have to think about their real, everyday interactions — meetings, emails, feedback, tone, decision-making – and how they feel about them. You gain real information about your company culture.

Responses might sound something like this:

• “Our meetings would be more productive if our manager were better at soliciting feedback. He gets focused on his own ideas and so we aren’t really able to contribute. We’re missing out on some great ideas.”
• “There’s a general feeling among the underrepresented groups that we’ll get passed over for promotions because that is the pattern we see. Review who’s in the higher ranks and you can see they don’t include many of us. Several of us have literally had conversations about just giving our minimum effort because what’s the point of working hard? It won’t make a difference.”
• “You already know our VP is a complete you-know-what. Of course it hinders our productivity. We spend most of our time trying to avoid her, finding ways to go around her, and venting to each other about her. She’s a complete time-suck and creates a lot of unnecessary stress.”
• “The managers need to manage more consistently. You can get in trouble from one manager for something another manager doesn’t care about. It’s hard to know what a ‘good employee’ means because the definition changes with each manager.”

And this is a good thing. Now you’ve got proof people are not as productive as they could be. 

Don’t forget to ask for positive feedback, too. Consider, for example, “What or who helps you do your best work here? ” An open-ended question like that will help you understand organizational strengths and organizational champions you can lean on to effect positive change.

What to do with the answers to your survey question

For starters, don’t get defensive.

Know the information you receive from these questions provides a lot of action items. Put them in a plan and start making positive changes. 

Employee Appreciation Day can be a meaningful moment, but appreciation loses its power when it’s limited to a single day on the calendar. What truly drives performance is consistent, everyday treatment that shows respect, fairness, and care in how work actually gets done.

A feeling that leadership cares about them is what moves the workforce to move mountains. Team get-togethers are a little helpful but won’t get you very far.

Prove that to your leadership team with our suggested one question. Get your workforce to help you make the point that your culture could be hurting productivity and ultimately business success.

Of course, if you want a broader, more accurate view of your workplace experience, a customized workforce survey can uncover what’s truly happening and, more importantly, help turn those insights into actionable plans for improvement.

The post An Important Survey Question You’re Not Asking appeared first on Civility Partners.

Dr. Toni Herndon and Dr. Bob Berk have facilitated this program to hundreds of learners across many industries and inside organizations facing real resistance, real hesitation, and real cultural challenges.

They’ve watched rooms shift. They’ve seen defensiveness turn into accountability. They’ve witnessed employees move from silence to action.

We’re sharing what the future holds for you as a facilitator of our upstander training, and more importantly, what happens for learners and why their response leads to lasting culture change.

If you’ve already downloaded the Upstander Training Toolkit, you’ll be inspired to learn about the successes you’ll have with your workforce or clients’ workforces.

If you haven’t yet, what are you waiting for?

When Do You Know the Upstander Training Is Actually Working?

Watch the 3-minute video here

We know the training is working when the conversation shifts from intent to impact.

Instead of saying, “That’s not what I meant” in their daily interactions, participants begin asking instead, “How did that land?” They start listening differently. They become more aware of how their words and behaviors affect others even when harm wasn’t intentional.

Another powerful sign is the pause. Someone starts to say something… stops mid-sentence… and recalibrates. Defensiveness gives way to accountability. “I didn’t mean it that way” turns into, “I can see how that impacted you.”

What Real Results Have You Witnessed Post-Training?

Hear from Toni in this 3-minute clip

Some moments in this training stay with us long after the session ends.

• Individual Change: A woman of color in a male-dominated field shared that ongoing microaggressions had been so exhausting she’d taken weeks off to recover in the past. After the training program she noticed that a colleague known for inappropriate comments paused mid-sentence and corrected himself. Others showed more awareness, engaged in real-time conversations, and focused on impact instead of saying, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
• Departmental Change: One campus department initially focused on protecting staff from disrespectful outside customers. As the workshop progressed, they realized incivility was also happening internally across campus departments, behavior they had previously normalized. That awareness sparked a new goal: raising the standard of respect campus-wide.

View Bob’s 2-minute response

• Overcoming Resistance: Leaders feared pushback from the mid-level managers attending a day-long retreat with our facilitator – leaders wondered if the managers would rebel against the request to build a functional culture in addition to engaging in the technical skills of their jobs. Sure enough, a manager questioned the purpose of the training. Bob shared that his pre-retreat interviews revealed that over a third of their team had experienced bullying, harassment, or disrespect. The room went quiet and the tone shifted. Managers fully engaged for the remaining six hours.

Watch the 1-minute video

• Sustaining the Learning: Within a university department, a frontline employee ensured the work didn’t stop after our upstander training was over. With leadership’s support, she launched monthly “safe space” lunches where colleagues practiced real scenarios and coached one another in solutions. She even created certificates attendees could display to signal, “I’m a safe space.”

These aren’t scripted outcomes. They’re what happens when people feel equipped, supported, and not alone in speaking up.

How Does Upstander Training Build Community?

Watch the 3-minute video here 

One of the most powerful moments in training is when participants realize, “I’m not the only one who feels this way.”

When people openly talk about their hesitation to speak up, the isolation disappears.

After training, we see:

• Peer coaching
• Shared language
• Ongoing “safe space” conversations
• Employees supporting each other

Community replaces silence and culture shifts because people no longer feel alone.

What Facilitators Should Keep in Mind When Delivering the Upstander Training

Watch the 3-minute video here

When delivering this training, remember to:

• Expect and empathize with resistance
• Lean into the hard questions and demonstrate curiosity
• Balance empathy with accountability
• Don’t rush through discomfort – that’s where learning happens

The toolkit gives you structure but your presence brings it to life.

What If the Organization Doesn’t Support Speaking Up?

View the 4-minute video here

Sometimes we hear from a learner: “This was helpful… but I won’t use it here.”

Instead of dismissing that concern, explore it. If people don’t feel safe speaking up, that’s not a training failure but a leadership signal. It gives you, the facilitator, the opportunity to talk with leaders about that feedback and coach them on communicating their support for speaking up. 

No manager or leader wants to spend their days putting out fires caused by conflict or abrasive personalities. This program allows people to manage themselves and free up managers and leaders to do the things they’d much rather focus on.

How to Acknowledge Fear of Speaking Up

See it in action in this 3-minute video  

In our research of other Upstander training programs out there, we notice a pattern: they provide a lot of information about why to speak up and maybe a few tools to do so, but never address the real and often deep fear that comes with actually speaking up.

We don’t. We acknowledge that speaking up is scary, risky, and emotional. We validate fear instead of dismissing it to help people lean into and overcome their fears instead of shutting down.

Because courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s having the tools, language, and support to move forward in spite of it.

Get Your Upstander Training Toolkit Now

The Upstander Training Toolkit isn’t just a collection of slides. It’s a structure and program we’ve been delivering for about 17 years – it’s designed to create experiential learning, honest dialogue, and practical application.

If you’re preparing to deliver the Upstander training, know this: the content will guide you. But your presence, your intentionality, and your willingness to hold space for real dialogue are what make it transformative.

Get the Upstander Training Toolkit and give your organization the structure it needs to turn good intentions into real, measurable change.

The post Hear From the Experts: What Really Happens in Upstander Training appeared first on Civility Partners.

Meanwhile, almost every HR or people leader has heard some version of these conversations when it comes to people who deliver results, close deals, and hit targets while quietly draining the energy, confidence, and engagement of everyone around them:

“It’s just how they are. They deliver, and people just need to grow up and deal with it.”

“They’ve been here forever. We can’t survive without their organizational knowledge.”

“If we confront them, they’ll leave and we can’t afford that right now.”

“As unstable as their behavior is, putting my foot down and holding them accountable could create a lot more instability and we can’t afford that right now.”

“Yes some people have quit over their behavior, but still, this individual is more important.”

We call the subject of these comments toxic rockstars.

Toxic rockstars don’t just come into your company breathing fire. They start with subtle eye-rolls in meetings, side conversations after calls, and teams tiptoeing around one person’s mood so the day doesn’t implode.

Over time, the behavior becomes normalized and eventually lands in HR’s lap, not as a single complaint but as a pattern everyone has learned to live with. The silence from everyone around the toxic rockstar has given them permission to be precisely what everyone despises. 

The Real Cost of Keeping Toxic Rockstars

Research continues to show a strong link between toxic leadership and turnover intention, meaning employees are more likely to want to leave an organization when subjected to incivility or abusive supervision.

A 2025 study in the Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal found toxic leadership directly increased intentions to quit and counterproductive work behavior.

The harder-to-measure cost is the ripple effect. When one person is allowed to behave badly:

• People stop speaking up
• Collaboration drops
• Trust erodes
• Psychological safety disappears
• Employees lose sleep and can’t perform
• Time is wasted gossiping about bad behavior instead of working

Meanwhile, Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety is the strongest predictor of team effectiveness. Toxic behavior destroys it almost immediately. So while leaders may think they’re preserving results, they’re often quietly dismantling the conditions that make strong performance possible.

Most organizations already know what respectful behavior looks like. What they lack is a consistent, organization-wide system to interrupt harmful behavior, reinforce expectations, and support people who want to do the right thing but don’t feel safe doing it alone.

A Resource to Help Your Organization

That’s exactly the gap our Upstander Train-the-Trainer Toolkit is designed to close.

It will empower your workforce to protect themselves – to speak up – before a leader evolves into a full-blown toxic rockstar.

Close the gap between asking for respect and holding people accountable. Give your workforce the resources they need to speak up when the subtle eye-rolls and side conversations happen. Instead of teams tiptoeing around one person’s mood so the day doesn’t implode, help them address insidious behavior before it’s too late.

This toolkit equips internal facilitators and HR departments to build a culture where speaking up is expected, supported, and reinforced. Instead of relying on HR to clean up messes after damage is done, you can build internal capability so employees know how to:

• Interrupt toxic behavior in real time
• Support colleagues without escalating conflict
• Reinforce shared standards consistently
• Shift norms so harmful behavior loses its protection

Stellar performance should never require harm. With the right systems in place, organizations don’t have to choose between results and respect – they get both.

Right now, the Upstander Train-the-Trainer Toolkit is available for $99 but the price increases to $249 at the end of February.

(And if you already have a toxic rockstar on your hands, let’s discuss coaching them. Our specialized coaching program is designed specifically to help toxic rockstars make positive change.)

Get the toolkit before the price increases and start building a culture where performance and respect go hand in hand.

The post Why Organizations Create Toxic Rockstars (And How to Stop Them) appeared first on Civility Partners.

In the United States alone, organizations invested $102.8 billion in training in 2025, up from $98 billion in 2024, yet research consistently shows that only 10–20% of training leads to sustained behavior change.

This disconnect rarely happens because training is a bad idea. It happens because training is launched before the right questions are asked and answered. So before you roll out your next program, pause. A few intentional questions can mean the difference between a check-the-box initiative and a transformation that actually sticks.

Launching a Training Program Questions

Question One: What specific problem are we trying to solve?

When something seems broken, many turn to training as the solution – yet training is rarely the right fix. If the real issue is unclear expectations, misaligned incentives, broken processes, or leadership behavior, no amount of training will fix it.

Basic management principles say to ask, “Are they willing and able to do it?” That question begs more questions like, “What has the organization done to inspire or harm willingness?” and, “In what ways does the organization facilitate or hinder ability?” Those answers will help you define whether the issue is a people or process problem. 

If it’s a process problem, training is performative. 

Question Two: Is training the right solution or just the easiest one?

Closely related to the first question, this requires honest reflection. Training is often chosen because it feels proactive and visible. However, many workplace challenges require structural or leadership changes instead.

For example, if managers are not holding employees accountable, a training on accountability may sound logical. Yet if leaders themselves avoid difficult conversations, the issue may be cultural rather than educational.

Training is meant to support change, not create change.

Question Three: Who truly needs this training, and why?

One of the most common mistakes organizations make is training everyone the same way. While this may seem efficient, it often leads to disengagement. Employees quickly tune out when content feels irrelevant to their role, level, or influence.

Instead, consider who has the greatest ability to impact the issue you are addressing and what they need to know to have that impact. Is it frontline employees or people managers? A specific department or the entire workforce? 

With training topics like communication skills or giving and receiving feedback, we like to deliver the interpersonal skills version to the entire workforce and then give managers a part two focused on managing those interpersonal skills within their team. 

When training is targeted and intentional, participation shifts from obligation to ownership.

Question Four: How should people behave after the training is over?

Training goals are often framed around knowledge, such as understanding policies or learning concepts. But that’s not training, that’s an announcement.

Training is really about behavior change, so be sure to clearly articulate what participants should do differently afterward. How should they speak, lead, respond, or intervene?

When behavioral outcomes are defined upfront, the training can be designed to support real-world application rather than abstract learning.

Question Five: How will leaders reinforce this behavior change after the session ends?

Training is a blip in time. No one changes their behavior after two hours.

Employees take their cues from leaders, not slide decks. If leaders are not prepared to model, reinforce, and reward the behaviors taught in training, the message fades quickly. That means you should be setting expectations around behavior change in advance of the training and defining the ways learners will be supported as they implement what they learned.

Without reinforcement, training is a one-time and easily forgotten event rather than a sustained shift.

Question Six: How will we measure the success of the training?

In other words, how will we know people are making the behavior changes we seek?

Post-training surveys often ask whether participants enjoyed the session. While satisfaction matters, it does not equal impact. A successful training program should be measured by what changes on the job. Consequently, think beyond completion rates. What metrics will indicate progress? This could include observable changes in behavior, reductions in complaints, improved engagement scores, or stronger retention.

When success is clearly defined, training becomes an investment with accountability rather than an expense justified by participation alone.

Question Seven: Who will carry this work forward?

Finally, consider sustainability. External facilitators can ignite awareness, but lasting change requires internal champions. Without internal capability, organizations often find themselves retraining the same topics year after year with little progress to show for it.

This is where internal trainers, leaders, and culture champions become essential. When organizations build internal capacity to teach, reinforce, and adapt content, training evolves with the organization rather than becoming outdated.

Turning Questions Into Capability

If you’d like to empower employees and managers to speak up for themselves and others when an interaction goes awry – so that issues don’t fester until they become an HR fire you have to put out – we invite you to purchase and download our Upstander Train-The-Trainer program.

Most companies have asked employees to speak up in sticky situations but haven’t provided the tools and resources to help them do so. Yet people will be more willing and able if you’ve told them they’ll be supported and given them tactics to implement.

One measurement of success will be that you’re receiving fewer complaints about conflict or personality clashes. Perhaps survey scores related to management capabilities to resolve team issues and effectiveness of team collaboration will improve as well.

To reinforce the learning, be sure to find ways to acknowledge people who do step in as a respectful bystander. 

Who will carry the work forward? Why, you will, of course. This program comes complete with slides, a facilitator guide, and additional materials to help you make the training program a success.

Download the program now.

Our clients invest thousands of dollars to bring this program in-house. It is our most requested training program.

You can access the program for just $99 through the end of February. After that, pricing will increase. If you are serious about making training stick by having the ability to deliver this program whenever you want, this program is for you.

P.S. Whether you’re an internal manager or HR professional, or an external consultant who wants to add an upstander program to your service offerings, this Upstander Train-the-Trainer program is for you.

The post 7 Questions to Answer Before Launching a Training Program appeared first on Civility Partners.