0cb4064d36690080380dedfaef6a419c.m4a<\/p>\n
00:00:00,000 And I can’t tell you how many people in my community after my
\nhusband died would say, “You know, Kim, I wasn’t going to talk about
\nthis, but I saw how you talked about it and how you walk through this and I just decided if you can do it, I can do it.<\/p>\n
00:00:14,220 I wasn’t going to ask for help, but I saw you do it, so I decided, you know, I talked to my friend and we came up with a game plan.” So
\nyou’re setting an example for your community and the question is, what kind of example do you want to set?<\/p>\n
00:00:28,300 So I think it’s really, you know, taking it outside when something happens are vision narrows for sure. But understanding that doesn’t
\nmean there’s not people there, there’s a ton of people there who want
\nto help, it’s just now you have to be able to let them, let honor them by letting them take care, by letting them give to you.<\/p>\n
00:00:48,620 [Music] I and welcome to the Sunday Lunch Project Manager podcast
\n00:01:09,180 for Sunday, the 5th of March 2023. This is your host, Nigel Creese.<\/p>\n
And this week we are talking to Kim Hamer about 100 acts of love and
\nbereavement and illness at work. [Music] So if you, listen to last week, you heard me say that I put a patron page up and running.<\/p>\n
00:01:32,500 Obviously looking at the moment with the podcast, I would like to
\nenhance some of the work and production and things like that. And if
\nany of you have got any spare cash, I would so appreciate it. But in
\nreturn, you won’t just get nothing, you’re going to mention on the show, that’s number one.<\/p>\n
00:01:49,620 But also, there are a few freebies, then the level you come in, Pat. And
\nthen I will start working on a work out one kind of additional patron only
\nitems that I can share with you. At the moment, I haven’t got any great
\nideas on it, but if you guys have got some great ideas, let me know.<\/p>\n
00:02:11,700 Just ping me anything at NigelCreese.com and just say, I’ll type out the
\nideas for the Patreon editions. See if we get to it with just a Q&A or
\nthings like that, whatever you want to do. But if you don’t have a cash moment and say, if you can push out the podcast to your friends and colleagues
\n00:02:34,580 and your social media, really appreciate it. Hopefully, this topic that we’ve got this week is such a powerful topic with Kim Hamer, that I
\nthink it is. It’s something that when Sat talking to her, there are so many things going off in my head that I went out loud.<\/p>\n
00:02:55,780 So just aside from the fact that me getting the benefit of people
\nlistening, it’ll have the benefit of getting things to people who will be
\nable to help them deal with these situations at work. So yeah, that’s great. Those are the ways to help the show.<\/p>\n
00:03:10,980 Or if you’re out there and you’re a corporate organisation, new fancies sponsoring a little podcast on project management, again, give me a shout out sponsors at NigelCreese.com and reach out about what options we’ve got. So brilliant. Thank you very much.<\/p>\n
00:03:26,580 [Music] There is Kenting Day. Yeah.
\n00:03:33,380
\nToday I want to welcome Kim Hamer to the show. Kim was in HR and she left HR, who has been passed away from cancer and then she
\nwent back to HR on a mission. After her husband’s death, she noticed that managers didn’t know what to say or do and what to say or do<\/p>\n
00:03:55,380 and where uncomfortable working with an employee with cancer
\ndealing with loss or depression. She noticed how the lack of knowledge
\nand discomfort negatively affecting morale, which harmed productivity. So she set out to change that and she has a life’s mission that all
\nmanagers need the tools and skills to manage their team through crisis.<\/p>\n
00:04:19,380 Clearly thoughtfully and confidently. These skills help them build trust and empathy in their teams and simultaneously enable managers to remain productive and focused on meeting goals.<\/p>\n
00:04:30,980 Cancer, loss and depression aren’t going anywhere. [Music] Kim, 00:04:37,780 welcome to the show.<\/p>\n
It’s a strong topic that we’ve got today and tell us a little bit before we
\ndive into it, tell us a little bit about you and a little bit of your
\nbackground, where you’re from, I’m sure people will guess the country you’re from as soon as you start speaking.<\/p>\n
00:04:50,580 [Laughter] I certainly hope so. As you can tell, I am American. 00:04:55,380
\nI live in Los Angeles, California right now. We are, you know, where we
\nwere in drought season, but it has been raining almost for 10 days and hard. So we’re under now flood warnings here.
\n00:05:08,180 So it’s unheard of. So hopefully that this whole drought thing will come 00:05:15,780 to an end. I continue to work in HR.<\/p>\n
I’m an HR consultant. I do interim HR consulting, so I come in when
\nthey need a director or chief people officer. But as you know, as you
\nnoted in my profile, my passion and where I’m building my business is<\/p>\n
00:05:31,380 around helping managers understand how to navigate the very tricky,
\nuncomfortable world of, you know, death, loss, cancer and depression in the workforce. Yeah, brilliant.<\/p>\n
00:05:48,180 Welcome to the show. It’s, I mentioned before when we were chatting
\nthat as soon as I saw the topic, it was kind of no brainer. I’ve been
\nthrough, from both sides of the fence of this, from a point of view of not, loss,<\/p>\n
00:06:09,780 not, my parents quite young. Not so much in a way, it pays not as a manager there, but I lost my parents quite young. I knew, and there have been individuals I knew who I know across the road.<\/p>\n
00:06:20,180 And I’ve talked to my brother here, the same sort of thing, where he
\ngifted it. And they didn’t know what to say. That’s why they cross the road.<\/p>\n
00:06:26,980 Yeah, that’s understandable. And I’ve been in this same site on the
\nother side of it where people are going through something that you just, you don’t know what words to say.<\/p>\n
00:06:39,380 You want to say, and I noted on, I’m trying to see it now on the, where it pays up to five things, not to say to people that you have to do something. And you sit there going, do I say something?<\/p>\n
00:06:49,780 Do I say nothing? Yeah. What do I say?
\n00:06:52,580
\nAnd it’s so difficult. And that’s just as a colleague, a friend of a family
\nmember, etc. But then when you’re a manager and you’re trying to help get the best out of the individuals<\/p>\n
00:07:05,780 that you work for, there are always going to be these situations that are,
\nI think as you said, crisis situations for them individually. So I suppose,
\ndo you want, I kind of alluded on that, I suppose, on par with I just want to<\/p>\n
00:07:22,580 touch on the, what kind of triggered that and how it went through and touched that story? Sure. So my husband was diagnosed with stage four cancer as large B cell lymphoma.
\n00:07:34,580 He was a runner, a tall man, six, six, six, which I don’t know what that is
\nin meters, but it’s, it’s tall, a basketball height tall. And he was a runner, you know, we ate organically.<\/p>\n
00:07:49,380 We were sort of living the LA lifestyle. And so his diagnosis was very
\nmuch, it doesn’t really matter what the lifestyle was. Cancer diagnosis is very much shocking.<\/p>\n
00:07:58,180 Yeah. And he, so we were on an HMO at the time. So in the United
\n00:08:07,780 States, we have these different plans that are all tied to our jobs.<\/p>\n
So when we have health insurance or tied to our jobs. And this
\nparticular plan that we were on was very restricted. You could only see certain number of doctors, they were all in this area.<\/p>\n
00:08:18,980 And they usually aren’t known for providing the best care, for providing
\ncare that has been, that they just did studies on. So we were on this plan, but we had been recommended to go see this other doctor who was not on our plan.<\/p>\n
00:08:32,580 And the gentleman in his office who didn’t particularly, wasn’t particularly fond of my husband. They didn’t really get along. They
\nwere, you know, just didn’t really like each other, but they respected each other.<\/p>\n
00:08:42,580 And he fought with the current insurance company that we were on all the way up to the head of that company to get my husband switched over to be able to see this doctor. And why that is so important is because I firmly believe that the doctor that we saw<\/p>\n
00:09:00,580 gave my husband two and a half years of extra life, which allowed my kids to have memories of their father. When my husband was first diagnosed, our kids were four, seven, and nine. They were really young.<\/p>\n
00:09:14,580 And, you know, looking back now, I didn’t really even think about what
\nthat meant, as far as my children and the memories, they were able to form of their father. So that happened then. My husband, you know, gets disentangled from the cancer.<\/p>\n
00:09:32,580 We start to put our lives and our marriage back together. And then he
\ngets cancer again. And within four months of the second diagnosis, he dies.
\n00:09:42,580 And he’s 44 years old. Our kids are 12, 9 and 7. And something I
\nnoticed while my kids, while we were going through this and after he died,<\/p>\n
00:09:52,580 was there were people who seemed to just know what to do and how to
\nshow up and knew exactly what to say to bring comfort. But there were
\na lot more people who didn’t know what to do or what to say or how to help. And after he died, I got angry.<\/p>\n
00:10:10,580 You know, I think you alluded to people crossing the street, you know,
\nto avoid your brother and yourself after that loss. I was pissed. I was so mad because I was thinking, oh my gosh, like my husband died. And you can’t find the courage to even say something.<\/p>\n
00:10:28,580 And then I got to remember that I was that person. Before my husband
\nhad cancer, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. It felt really awkward for me.<\/p>\n
00:10:39,580 So I often avoided the situations. I cannot tell you how many people I
\nducked out on because I just was so embarrassed and mortified that I would say the wrong thing.<\/p>\n
00:10:50,580 So I sat down and wrote a book and it’s called a hundred acts of love. I
\nhave it right here. It’s called 100 acts of love, a girlfriend’s guide loving
\nyour friend through cancer or loss. And I didn’t write it for the person with cancer.<\/p>\n
00:11:02,580 I wrote it for the rest of us who have to support and who want to support
\nhelp love the person who’s going through this cancer or loss. I initially
\nhad it for women because those tend to be the people who shut up the
\nmost in our lives, but this could have easily been a human’s guide to helping your friend through cancer or loss.<\/p>\n
00:11:23,580 Then I go back to the HR world. And my very first job in HR was
\nworking for a president whose wife had cancer and then she died. And I watched the organization do some — I thought my husband’s organization was very helpful to us.<\/p>\n
00:11:41,580 But this organization would be very helpful to this president. And they
\nweren’t. And it wasn’t because they didn’t want to be. It’s because they didn’t know.
\n00:11:48,580 And I remember the day that we received the news that his wife had
\ndied. One of the employees said, “Let’s bring over cold cuts, you know,
\na meat platter.” And I thought, “Oh my God, do not do that because it was just him and his son.”<\/p>\n
00:12:02,580 And I knew that everyone else in the block was going to be bringing
\nover food and that their refrigerator was going to be full and that he’s
\ngoing to be pushing food off on people. So as I’m going through, as I’m
\nprogressing in my career, I’m noticing it again and again and again.<\/p>\n
00:12:17,580 And I realized, you know, I searched the web. I talked to my HR
\ncolleagues. I talked to my mentors. I talked to — I talked to the AMA to understand American Management Association to understand, “Do you have any trainings for managers?”<\/p>\n
00:12:32,580 Because the managers are the ones who are left in the middle. They’re
\nstuck. They have a — you know, this person on their team is dealing with this thing. They want to be empathetic and caring.<\/p>\n
00:12:45,580 And they panic because this person is now not going to be able to do
\nthis thing for this project that has to be delivered. And the project isn’t going to wait because this person has cancer because this employee
\ndied. So they’re really stuck. And what often happens is managers take on a huge amount of guilt because they want to be empathetic.<\/p>\n
00:13:07,580 So they’re telling the employee, “Take as much time as you need. It’s
\nokay.” Where that’s actually not a great thing to say. And then — and oftentimes one of the most common responses managers have when
\nan employee is dealing with something horrible is in their head, they think, “Well, crap.<\/p>\n
00:13:25,580 What am I going to do about this project?” And that’s their first thought.
\nAnd then they feel guilty that that’s their first thought. So they try to overcompensate with the person who doesn’t even know that that was
\ntheir first thought. They try to overcompensate with the person and feel
\nlike they’re over empathetic and, you know, want to overly be helpful.<\/p>\n
00:13:45,580 And it hurts the team. It hurts them. It hurts their projects. It hurts everybody. So I set out to change that. And so much I recognize as
\nwell. I recognize in me, I recognize in others that I’ve dealt with.
\n00:14:10,580 The one that I think resonates the most is the — takes as much time as
\nyou need. Yes. I can’t paint the number of times I’ve said that in varying
\ndifferent situations. And it’s interesting that that’s not an ideal thing to say.<\/p>\n
00:14:32,580 I can — and I know — kind of — let’s think — before I step onto the next bit, let’s talk about why. Because I imagine 90% of people use that
\nphrase or something similar to that. In all of these situations, what about people who’ve had close members pass away?<\/p>\n
00:14:56,580 Or if they’re real? Or — I’m not being guilty with some people who have
\nnot been very well, not seriously, but just ill. To tell what if they’re working. But I do recognize that some people use their work as a
\ndiversion from what’s going on as well. So it’s kind of a balance of that. But let’s talk about that first one. Take as much time as you need.<\/p>\n
00:15:16,580 Why is that not a good thing to say? Why is that not a good mindset
\ntype? Because you don’t mean it. And although you think you mean it in the moment, you don’t mean it. In your head as a manager, you have an idea of how much time is the appropriate amount of time.<\/p>\n
00:15:36,580 We have these — and so what I often say, I’m a mentor of mine, I love him because he reminds me, expectations are resentment under
\nconstruction. What that means is you have an expectation of when this person should show up back to work. And you have an expectation of
\nwhat they should be able to do when they show up back at work. And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve had the experience or not. And when they — let’s say you take as much time as you need.<\/p>\n
00:16:05,580 And in your head, you really mean two weeks. And that person is
\nthinking six weeks. Well, you’re at week three and you want to call them
\nand ask them where they’re being. And they say, “Well, you told me to
\ntake as much time as I need.” And so I’m trying to take this time. I’m
\ntrying to do all these things. Then you feel guilty because you have this — and then you start to build resentment.<\/p>\n
00:16:25,580 You’re like, “That’s not what I meant.” But now you can’t say that to that
\nperson, to your employee. So it’s a — it’s a knee-jerk reaction because
\nit’s — because we want them — we want — we want them to be better. So we want them to take as much time as they need. That’s our goal. We want them — we feel for what is going on in their lives. 00:16:45,580 But we do have to say — set some boundaries as a manager. That’s
\npart of your job. And so one of the things I tell managers to say is why
\nnot just simply say, “Take a week and let’s check back in next Monday
\nor next Tuesday.” Right? So you’re giving them the time. You’re giving them the opportunity to do what they need to do.<\/p>\n
00:17:06,580 And a week, you and your team can hold stuff together. But then you sit down and you have a very structured conversation with the employee
\nwho’s in crisis about, you know, if they did lose a child or a partner, you
\nthen are able to have a more structured conversation about when you — what — what — what — what — what — needs to get done when they need to come back. And this is — and these conversations don’t
\nhappen. You’re not going to sit down for an hour and solve the problem of when they get back to work. But you start to have those
\nconversations. And the first part of that conversation is something we can talk about later.<\/p>\n
00:17:39,580 So that’s why, you know, there’s that phrase and there’s another
\nphrase, which is, “If you need anything, let me know.” Common phrase,
\nleast helpful thing you can say to anybody. And there are really four
\nspecific reasons which we can go into after your next question. That was — that — that’s the perfect one to go into to be quite honest
\nbecause that is, again, looking on — my — my preparation for the call.<\/p>\n
00:18:08,580 I saw that, and I helped — I’ve said that — I don’t know many times as
\nwell. Yeah, well, in my personal life, in my work life, and then just, yeah,
\ngive me a shout out. I’m here for you. I can help you because — Yeah,
\nso it feels like — but it is un-prenendid, it’s not very specific, I suppose,
\nand I think — I’m pretty guessing that it’s going to be something all the lines of — people aren’t going to ask for something.<\/p>\n
00:18:36,580 Yes, I know. Because people don’t ask. Yes, you are absolutely right.
\nSo there are four specific reasons. It’s not helpful. One is, we all want to be witnessed. And we all want people to acknowledge what is
\nhappening in our lives. And I often say, you know, imagine that you’re going to out-to-lunch with six people that you know. 00:18:56,580 And something fantastic has happened. You’ve got married, you’ve become a grandchild, you know, become a grandparent, you’ve gotten — you bought a new house, you went in this fantastic vacation. You know that everyone at this lunch knows that this great thing has happened. And you sit there for an hour and a half, and no one says
\nanything to you. Our reaction is we feel hurt, we feel like, like, I want to
\nshare this news, I want to, you know, tell everyone I want to talk about
\nit, and you feel un-ignolage, and you’re probably not going to go out with those six people ever again. You’re going to be mad.<\/p>\n
00:19:28,580 Well, the same thing occurs when something bad happens in our lives.
\nWe want people to go, oh crap, like I can’t believe this is happening to you. We want that acknowledgement. So when you say, if you need anything, let me know, you’re jumping right into action, you’re not
\nacknowledging the — the — the hardness of the thing that’s happening in their life. The second reason it’s not helpful is, “Nangial, what’s anything?” Like, what’s anything? You know, when my husband was first diagnosed, I had a four-year-old.<\/p>\n
00:19:57,580 Did that meant that you were going to take your really nice BMW
\nlight-land rover, what — at Range Rover, up to the school to pick up my
\nvomiting toddler? Is that what you meant by anything? Or did you mean
\nthat you’d be happy to drop off a bottle of wine? So anything is too big a word, so you’re absolutely right, it’s not specific.<\/p>\n
00:20:17,580 The third reason — Is your gym and go, “Can I have a lear jet?” Yeah! It 00:20:22,580 was kind of — yeah.
\n00:20:27,580
\nExactly. And — I’ve really been with a lear jet of this point in time, and I’ll make — Exactly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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