Judging people on moral grounds when you don't live a particularly moral life

[QuestionsorComments]

This is a situation that's causing a ridiculous amount of upset in a small team of senior professionals. Yes, they really should all grow up, but in the absence of that, I and the only other member to have remained mostly neutral have been discussing "what is to be done".

We work in a very high stress environment working with vulnerable young people and all carry a certain amount of emotional baggage. In front of service users and other staff we are all highly professional. However, in our weekly leadership meetings there is a certain amount of offloading and some inappropriate jokes, banter, gossip. Very much in the room, everyone understands it's our safe space.

One member of the team cannot accept this though and is offended by every off colour joke or non PC term used. And she's right really, but we do all understand the correct way to behave when appropriate.

Anyway, broadly I support her position, but a couple of the other team members find it very hard to accept her lecturing them on moral issues when she's very open that she's been in a relationship with a married man for 10 years+.

They obviously need to behave professionally in a professional situation, but take exception to being told how to behave by someone who behaves badly, even though the situations are not connected. One man in particular finds it very hard because he has been the wronged party in that situation.

It's not really about who's right or wrong, but how we get this team to work together, whilst respecting her right not to be offended and everyone else's need to let off steam.

Any ideas at all?

@FabriqueBelgique

No one should have to feel uncomfortable like that in a work situation. Why can’t you lot “offload” down the pub?

Because its unprofessional to be talking negatively about work stuff in a public environment, especially if it involves service users.

OP, everyone needs to vent to enable them to get their gripes off their shoulders to then allow them to be clear headed when heading back to their jobs. It's a way of offloading stressors. People should be able to say what they want, if it helps them to de-stress and do their jobs better when they go back to the coalface. Personally, I wouldn't be able to take moral lecturing from someone who was having an affair with a married man and would be telling her so in no uncertain terms.

Fwiw when I have supervision, I will use words such as mad, shit etc... sometimes to describe the situation of the person etc...
Because the whole point is for me to be able to debrief how I feel and pussy footing around words isn't helping me nor the patient/service user.
It would be the same with counselling really.

It doesnt mean I hate the person or I am ableist or whatever. This would be the case if I was acting and talking like this in front of the person. It just means I am struggling to deal with the strong feelings coming from supporting people who are not always easy to support. And it's much better to do that in supervision than leaving it festering in my head.

FabriqueBelgique

No one should have to feel uncomfortable like that in a work situation. Why can’t you lot “offload” down the pub?

Now that would be gpoing against all possible guidelines!! lol.
Worst idea ever,

The whole situation sounds unprofessional. Shouldn't you have private supervision? I think it might be ok to use that language in a one to one supervision that's totally confidential, but not in a group meeting. I imagine it's creating a very unprofessional environment. I assume the out dated terms you are talking about are offensive terms for disabilities? That's clearly not acceptable.

@QuestionsorComments what are the guidelines in your organisation re lanague used in a meeting like that? Or in sueprvision?

Surely, yu and the team should be able to go back to those and than agree

• yes those words are OK and Unhappy woman is over the top.
• No its not and unhappy women is rigth and we need to buckle up.

Thne this leaves unhappy woman to report to HR/Manager if she thinks that the situation is not OK but guidlines are saying it is.

@HotPenguin, supervision can be done on a 1 to 1 basis or in a group.
If done in a group, all members should feel comfortable with each other and the way it's conducted though

I think fundamentally her manager needs to have a conversation with her about:

• The way she brings up criticism to others and how she needs to do it in a constructive way

• Oversharing personal life details that aren't appropriate at work (affairs)

Then facilitate a team discussion about what is, and isn't, appropriate in the context of the type of discussion you're having so that a shared view is reached.

This is the line manager's role in this scenario.

You can suggest/recommend an approach to your (presumably) shared line manager but otherwise I'd stay well out of it.

@Jellycatspyjamas

I’m not sure how describing someone as a “nightmare” or describing a child as “sneaky” is sharing any insight whatsoever, it tells you nothing of their behaviour and everything about the judgement made about the individual.

I’ve worked in very challenging settings, sometimes humour can be very dark indeed but judgement laden language is unprofessional in a professional meeting. Peer supervision should have clear boundaries, and should be such that people can freely take part which isn’t happening if someone is struggling with the tone of the discussion. Rather than “x went nuts” I’d think that talking about the actual behaviour and it’s impact on the individual would help debrief whatever has happened. A regular peer supervision as part of a formal meeting isn’t a “hot” debrief or part of a critical incident response where people speak from instinct and are adrenaline driven - in those situations you take it as it comes - I’d expect once the dust has settled people to be more measured and reflective. Otherwise it just sounds like talking about people in a pretty unpleasant way.

I also absolutely agree with this.

Perhaps they aren't being given the opportunity for a hot debrief?

If not, then this should be happening and it would lower the level of emotion during peer supervision where more appropriate language can be used.

I think also it's unprofessional to use ableist terms like 'mad' because at least one of you, if not more, is likely to have a MH diagnosis yourselves and it's not okay to have to face terms like this about people with the same diagnosis frankly.

At. No point has the op said racist , sexist or homophobic words are used at no point whatsoever

To focus on the question, rather than the rights and wrongs of individuals- how about making the 'no judgement 30mins' protocol more explicit?

If it's a 'no judgement' space, then she can't raise the 'that language is inappropriate' in that context. She can raise it later, in her own supervision or via the usual process. Not in that space, though.

Ditto if she feels she isn't taken seriously then someone could point out to her that she's undermined her own position by being frank about a personal life which reflects badly on her integrity.

I once went for a job at a fire station and they warmed me that i might here comments or things said about situations that might seem off , but that sometimes its how some deal with it and some of the scenes they see are shocking etc and its a coping mechanism for some
Its too easy to say you wouldn't do xyz if you have never had this type of job etc

@wheresmymojo why i have had mh issues and the way i described to the dr wAs it felt like i was going mad .loosing the plot etc
So if the dr repeated that would that be wrong
I bet we all uses the she went mad phrase all the time , customer services people of someone screams at you , you might come of the phone and say she went crazy when i said we couldn't do this , what are you supposed to say
People are just looking on how to be offended and context of how you use a word is never taken into account these days

@WhatScratch so if a child is being sneaky what word would you use

@WhatScratch sorry wrong person

@wheresmymojo what word would you use instead of sneaky
Sometimes pussyfooting around issues really doesn't often resolve them eithed

I'm confused about the purpose of these meetings. They started out as 'leadership' meetings. OP has also said that this group of people need to agree on strategy. But these meetings are also described as 'group supervision' and as necessary offloading time. What is clear is that they are trying to be multiple things they can't be simultaneously. I've been in this sort of session where it can become a kind of free for all when all issues get swept in for discussion and it takes a good manager who is motivated and on form to keep things on track.

I think the approach to covering all these bases needs to be a lot more compartmentalised. Strategy discussions can't also be the hot debrief time. None of it should be personal staff issues discussion time.

Last thing: this colleague sounds highly annoying, but I've worked with people like that too and perhaps the most irritating part is that sometimes, even though you don't want them to be, they are right for once. Don't dismiss this person's concerns because they're, let's say, hugely flawed themselves in other ways.

If you had a new member of staff or student join you for one of these meetings would people still use the same inappropriate language or would people modify their behaviour.
The person who is calling out the behaviour is right to do so. This is a workplace and her private life is irrelevant.

The woman's affair is nothing to do with it.
I do think people need to be able to offload and your workplace has recognised that as a legitimate need. If you try and police everyone's language to the extreme, it means your colleagues will not really get that opportunity and staff morale will suffer. People should be able to have a bit of a laugh at work whatever they do for a job
Perhaps someone should speak to the woman and explain this to her. If she is still uncomfortable, perhaps she doesn't need to come to that part of the meeting, but gets an opportunity to offload in a different way if she wants.

@QuestionsorComments

Go on then, tell me a joke that isn't in some way derogatory or at the expense of someone else.

If you seriously believe all jokes are derogatory or made at the expense of other people then that's just plain weird!

You are still back tracking and changing your story. It's not ok to make inappropriate or off-colour jokes at work (especially if someone has told you they object). It's childish and unprofessional.

You haven't expanded about what type of banter goes on but banter can get out of hand easily.

You imply that you and your colleague need to do these things as you feel stressed by your work. I work with vulnerable service users and it can get really stressful but me and my colleagues distress in normal healthy ways like chatting and having a cup of tea 😅 We laugh but never at anyone, that would be really nasty.

This sounds like a mental health setting - are you a CMHT, or a group of ward managers at an inpatient unit, or similar?

I think it's natural to occasionally slip up and refer to someone "going mad" or similar, but your OP made it sound like rather more offensive terms were being thrown around. If you have a culture of being persistently and significantly disrespectful about patients, like it or not, it will affect how you see your patients and how you treat them.

Some of my colleagues would banter with each other at work in a way I thought could be misconstrued (at lunch, not in formal meetings) and actually I did end up saying that I wasn't comfortable and thought we all needed to be a bit more professional. They did dial it down after that (around me, at least).

I disagree that the sort of language you've used is abelist. It's not, it's more like colloquial language. There's a tendency for some people to be convinced that unless people use the most clinical language in every context they are being disrespectful, but I think that's clearly not supported by the evidence.

There is a real difference between rather plain colloquial language and really stigmatizing terms or descriptions.

Ffor that matter, some of the most extreme examples I've met of dark humour and letting off steam with language is people dealing with ongoing serious mental health issues.

As someone who has suffered with mental health problems my whole life, thankfully never sectioned but I have been in hospital settings following attempts, counselling, therapy, CBT, psychiatrists etc I'd be broken if I knew people who were meant to care for me had been speaking about me in such a way. Granted I've not spat, hit or thrown chairs at those people but certainly I've broken down, acted unstable and my behaviour at times could be deemed unusual - but if a professional dealing with me referred to me as mad/nuts/crazy/mental or similar it would be hard for me to get help from anyone again not just the ones involved.

Many people, myself included, struggle to ask for help when we need it most, often because at the time we need the help is when we feel shittest about ourselves and like a burden to everyone. Posts like this, and people justifying your behaviour, could just mean one less person asks for help next time less they be judged and spoken in a derogatory manner behind their backs by the very people meant to support them.

So basically it's ok for someone to physically, verbally and mentally abuse someone else because they have problems

but it's not ok for the someone else who has just been verbally , mentally and physically abused to have anywhere safe to let off steam in whatever form needed to protect their own mental health ?

They should just have tea and a biscuit to help them cope?

You expect the professional to be super human ? That they can't also suffer mentally-as a result of work stress as it were

@ElEmEnOhPee the people who treated/are treating you are human too.
Some of them will have MH issues themselves (not related to their job).
Some will struggle and have MH issues due to their job. Think stress, depression, anxiety, burn out, imposter syndrome etc etc

They are allowed a safe space to work through their own MH issues too.

Just like you. Just like you have when you’ve had counselling yourself (and you were asked to NOT put a filter on what you said).

That’s why counsellors/psychotherapists etc… all have counselling. They’ve supported people to the best of their abilities but then need the safe place to work through it because some situations will have been tricky for them. And then it might happen that their own supervisors will have supervision to work through the feelings brought up by what their supervisées told them!!

And the whole point of the process is that those practitioners are then BETTER able to support you/other patients because they will have been reviewing their reactions/feelings/attitudes. It’s making them BETTER profesionals.

That’s why supervision isn’t mandatory for counsellors for example. It’s there to protect patients and ensure they are getting the best support possible. And yes some times people might blow up, like any other human being. But having done that in a close, safe, supervised setting will also means it’s dealt with well and allow that practitioner to move on , providing best care.