Episode Transcript
Welcome to Cultures from Hell. I'm Lars and today... Welcome to Cultures from Hell. I'm Lars and in today's episode we are talking...
Welcome to Cultures from Hell. I'm Lars and in today's episode we are taking on a tough but important question. What happens when HR no longer advocates for people but instead protects the politics of the organization?
and Paulina, my wonderful co-host from the Culture Code Foundation, welcome our first ever in life or in the same room recording ever in Copenhagen. Yes. Hi, Lars. And thank you for having me in your apartment slash studio. Yeah. I love that we're doing this in person. We're doing it in person. First ever. And this is going to be the first of two recordings that we actually going to do today. Yes.
Okay, let's do a first warm-up question. Before we dive in, what originally drew you into working with culture and people dynamics? Well, honestly, it was frustration. I kept working with brilliant, kind, high-integrity people and I saw them burn out or check out.
Lars Nielsen (02:54.017)
because their workplace rewarded politics over principles. And when times get tough, like they are doing right at this very moment while we're speaking, most companies do what's easy and not what's right. And
we spend most of our adult lives at work, right? And if we don't get culture right, the way we work together, the collaboration between human beings, then this can feel like torture, spending this much time in a way that's just not...
Lars Nielsen (03:41.293)
Can we put a pin in here please?
Lars Nielsen (03:47.917)
Maybe we shouldn't worry too much about the camera.
Lars Nielsen (03:54.883)
Can I go again? Yeah, just go on. And when times get tough, like they are doing at the very moment, then most companies do things that are easy, not what is right.
And at the same time, we spend most of our adult lives at work, right? So if we don't get culture right, the way we collaborate with each other, the way we work together on an everyday basis, then we are actually complicit in causing harm to mental health, to the way we show up for each other. And we're wasting potential.
And I definitely wanted to be part of fixing that and I still want to be part of that. I'm really passionate about that as you know. I know. And that's why you founded the Culture Code Foundation Yes. With Eric, your co-founder? Yes. Okay. Have you personally ever seen HR step in as a real advocate for people? Yes, I have.
So I had the pleasure of working with a lot of new meters.
Lars Nielsen (05:21.963)
Yes, I have. And that's also why I will never generalize. I have met amazing HR people at work. I've had one colleague who was really, really strong advocate for people. She would always put the team members first. She would really listen. She would really try to do what's best. She was extremely compassionate and pathetic. know, I know you know what, who am I talking about?
And she was just one of the most human centric people I've ever met. And overall, I do know that HR is always in a very, very difficult position because obviously they do need to have the interest of the company in the back of their mind. And it can become really, really difficult to balance that because most HR people that I know really want to be there for their people, but they don't always.
have the skill set or the capacity or the standing within the company to do all of that and to really walk this fine line. And I have met, however, one business, my HR business partner, one of my jobs. He was also an incredibly sparing partner for me. So he was my most trusted.
peer, so to say, and we would discuss all of my people topics together. We would work through them together. We would solve them together. And he was stunning in every way how he acted. He kept the company's benefit in mind, but still was really focused on doing the right things for the people and solving issues in a very people-centric way.
Yeah. So I have met incredibly strong, human centric, compassionate HR people. Absolutely hands down. And let's, let's roll it back a little bit and start with the basics. What does it actually mean to be gaslighted by HR? Well, gaslighting obviously can have a very different,
Lars Nielsen (07:41.124)
show points or can show up in different ways. But generally speaking, would say gaslighting by HR means that they are invalidating your viewpoint or making you feel like your reality isn't true or is valid. Okay. And why does this happen? Why does HR, which are meant to protect employees, right?
end up protecting company image instead? Because I believe they are often incentivized to do so, not necessarily to really gaslight you.
Okay.
Can you start over?
Lars Nielsen (08:33.779)
I believe that oftentimes HR is incentivized to do so, not incentivized per se to really gaslight you, but HR often reports to the CEO or the CFO. And that means their budget comes directly from the top.
and thereby their survival depends on staying in political favor. So if there is difficult political environment within the company, then they are, as I hinted at two before, really torn between doing what is right for the people and doing what is right for.
the company and thereby potentially protecting themselves. So when risk enters the room, so for example, an harassment report or report about a toxic leader, then it can become easier and more important to protect the brand than the people that are actually triggered or attacked.
So that is unfortunately still especially then true if the person in regard is junior, female or neurodivergent or some in any other form or way non mainstream or non powerful, non powerful maybe is the better word. Yeah. And I think this this is the scenario that we see the most, right? Where HR is in this conflict between
protecting the employee, which I think at its core that's what HR is supposed to do and then protecting the company's interest at the same time, right? I think it's interesting that you put it this way because
Lars Nielsen (10:23.587)
I would say that most CEOs would always say HR's main function is to protect the company, not the people. So I think there is also a mismatch in understanding. And I would definitely say that most HR people that I've met believe themselves to be there for the people and they want to be there for the people. But I've also seen the different side. I've seen HR persons who were not interested in the people.
at all they would pretend to be to gain their confidence and then turn around and step them in the back. So they were just about protecting the company or themselves. So, but that doesn't necessarily have to do with the function itself. For me, that has to do with if you're being an asshole or if you're not an asshole. To put it more diplomatic, you people centric person that is very values driven and that you can't
it is important for you to stand to you with your values even in difficult situations or if you are not that. So that is for me a bit of the misconception at the beginning. Did I miss anything? No.
Okay, and can you share a story where this played out? Oh, yes, in the negative in the negative way in the negative way. So the HR person that I refer to as a very, very non
people-centric person was actually the head of HR in the company. I've told the story before where I was asked to bully one of my employees out of his job. So make his life living hell so that they would quit on their own. And that same head of HR.
Lars Nielsen (12:25.587)
helped the department head of a different department to really gaslight one of their employees. So she was a junior employee and she had gotten into conflict with her manager and her manager just kept telling her really openly that her
perspective and her reality was simply not true. They had a conversation, they discussed A and one day later he said, no, we didn't discuss A, we discussed B. Even if she had it in writing, right? So he would actively tell her over weeks and weeks and weeks that her reality was wrong.
And she was, she was not my peer. was, she was a junior colleague, different department, but we had a confidence situation going on mentoring situation. So she confided in me. She told me that I actually told her to start documenting all of those conversations so that she had, she had it in writing. And I actually made the mistake of sending her to HR with this documentation.
And I'm saying mistake because that head of HR that I hadn't really understood. I believed her to be a good person. Unfortunately, she then assisted the other department head to enforce the scape sliding.
she would also, she would sit in the same meetings with those two people and tell this junior colleague, your reality is just not true. This didn't happen. You discussed this, this, you didn't talk about this. Even though she had it documented in writing, obviously there was before AI, so they didn't have.
Lars Nielsen (14:13.531)
meeting protocols or whatnot, right? she said it was just a memory protocol and they both just kept telling her over weeks, that's not true, it's simply not true, that didn't happen. And there was so hard, I mean you're laughing about it because it's so absurd, right? But for her,
It was really horrific and she ended up, I mean, obviously she left the company pretty soon, but she spent years in therapy because she really doubted her, she started really doubting her own reality. She really started doubting her own judgment.
And it took her, I think she was in therapy for over three years to get back to this self-confidence that my lived and experienced reality is real. I'm not, she actually thought that she was mentally ill. She thought that she had hallucinations, that she was just...
seeing things and hearing things that they were there. So there was a really stark, insane incident where people gambled with someone's mental health for the better of the company. obviously all of those discussions were around salary raises. It was about money. It was about something existential.
was, and the company didn't want to give her a salary raise. And then they chose this road that drove her to serious mental health issues. I'm tearing up over this because it makes me so angry how you can treat people like this in a situation where they are so vulnerable, where they can't really defend themselves. And when people really
Lars Nielsen (16:11.255)
Gang off. And then now you talked about what happened in this one situation with this one person. What happens emotionally to people that get gaslighted by HR? I guess that's the same. It doesn't matter if you're getting gaslighted by HR or somebody else, because gaslighting always is psychological warfare.
because just as in the incident that I just shared, you start questioning your memory or doubting your memory, you start wondering what's wrong with me, why am I the problem? And then you stop speaking up.
because you don't trust your own opinions anymore or your own reality. You isolate and a lot of people start to perform even harder because they want to earn back respect or whatever from, from their, from the managers or their, because HR usually gets involved at a point where the manager doesn't know how to handle a situation themselves, right? They don't usually get involved at the beginning.
And so overall gaslighting always, always, always kills self-confidence and self-trust. And that will leak into other corners of your life. For sure. And if I as an employee no longer feels that HR is my advocate, what should I do?
Lars Nielsen (18:01.847)
Well that is really really difficult because if HR is not your advocate, the first thing you should always do in those kinds of situations is document everything.
And other than in the story that I shared, we now have AI note takers. and if you, I say, would advise you to take those meetings virtually so that you have a transcript of that meeting. And because those are more reliable than if you do like a memory protocol and then you have, you actually can do a recording. can ask.
if it's to record the meeting so that the voices are also on there so that you have some undeniable proof.
And you can also do timestamp notes. can do screenshots of emails or messages, Slack messages, for example. Right. But it's important to document every conversation and not just the ones that you feel are important because then you need the paper trail of showing the evolution of things.
And the second point that I would definitely advise is to build alliances with peers, with a mentor, ideally somebody also who's well connected in the company who can then be in the room if you're not there and thereby potentially support your case.
Lars Nielsen (19:40.26)
potentially somebody outside of the organization who can sanity check you who can just Yeah, give you The confidence that your reality is is still true. This can be therapist can be a good friend can be Can be a lawyer? right, especially if you have the documentation and this can be a really good way to just get a second opinion to an outside opinion or an inside opinion to really because
Obviously, everyone has the potential to misinterpret situations. So you don't necessarily, not necessarily every time when there are different opinions in the room about a situation is a gaslighting situation. Right? Because I mean, we've had the saying at Solvemate, right? There's three parts of the truth. Your perspective, my perspective, and what actually happened. exactly.
So I want to be very very clear here that I don't believe that every difference in opinion is a gaslighting situation. Gaslighting is only the case if somebody continuously tells you that your reality is just nonsense. BS. And how do you do all of this that you talked about without becoming...
cynical because for me it sounds like again like you're not trusting anybody which is in your own rights to not trust God of the situation but I would just feel that I'm becoming very cynical when I start doing all of this that you're mentioning. Well honestly that is a decision that you have to make for yourself that you're not gonna let
the way people treat you define your standards. So it is something that has to come from inside of you. That sounds way easier than it is in reality. I'm aware of that, but it is so important to protect your empathy and your values without ignoring your own boundaries. And I would say you can say to yourself,
Lars Nielsen (21:56.162)
that the situation is broken but not me. And that can help you distance yourself a bit from from all of that.
Because cynicism can feel smart or can also be a coping mechanism. But in the long run, I personally made the experience that cynicism is really hurting yourself and not really helping you in any form, way or shape. Maybe in the short run, right? To get over a short situation, but definitely not in long run.
And it definitely kills change because even if in any kind of situation there is growth potential in there there is something that you can take out of it out of the situation to to grow out to grow from it and It can mean learning how learning a different way to communicate with peers or leaders or whatnot It can mean that you become more cautious
and that you
Lars Nielsen (23:12.403)
look more deeply into what kind of culture or company you're getting yourself into before you even start there. So all of those angles can be angles of growth, can also help you stand up for yourself, it can help you learn to fight for yourself. So there's a lot of things that can be really, really positive, but you will not be able to
grasp any of that if you're just stuck in cynicism or victim mode. Have you seen any strategies work for people in this situation?
Lars Nielsen (23:53.355)
Yeah, but I...
I mean I've seen this documentation work, I've definitely seen it helps if you use the language of...
the your counterpart. So speaking the language of the person you're talking to, so in this case, HR, and framing your situation in in a way that they can understand it, or that they can relate to. So frame them as risks more than than so it's more about this situation is
painful for the company because it sets the precedent of ABC instead of
I'm being heard by this or this is creating my feelings. Right. So especially with HR, because they have to protect the company, if you can turn it around and talk about the risks to the company, that can be super helpful. That can actually help you make progress in those kinds of conversations. Then again, we talked about the documentation. So definitely ask for written followups because then you have another
Lars Nielsen (25:09.541)
point case and for your documentation and you can also use group channels when possible so that it's not just one perspective or one person that is looking into it but multiple recipients. Recivious? Recivious! I love those moments when English leaves my brain.
and then find allies in unexpected places. So you can go to legal, maybe you can find an alliance in compliance. Maybe you even have workers council that is a more expected ally probably than an unexpected ally.
And if you have good connections to the finance department, for example, that could also be a good, a good case. depending on the issues of this, obviously that you're having. yeah. So there, there are multiple, multiple things that you can, that you can do and, we're talking about this a lot. Also know your exit signals.
know when the time has come for you to give up and leave the ship. Pick your fights. You've picked your fights, you've tried everything, you've tried all the different strategies, you don't see progress, or you feel that you're really on your single footing and there's no support to be found anywhere. None of those strategies have worked. It's time for you to go.
and pick a better place the next time round. So kind of to sum everything up because we still have some things to discuss but HR, is it broken or is it just quotation marks just misunderstood? I think it's a bit of both as I said before
Lars Nielsen (27:17.505)
I think there is a misconception among employees that HR is simply there for the people, while the C-level function will definitely see HR as a business protection function. actually too many companies treat HR as an administrative function only, not a strategic function. And I love this picture.
of the, because that is like using your immune system to count calories. So it's just not what it's meant to be. Um, so HR definitely should be a conscious co-architect, um, and not as a janitor, would say. And what, let's say what, what cultural shifts is needed when we're talking about HR.
Lars Nielsen (28:18.561)
I wouldn't necessarily say it's culture shifts. I think it's strategic shifts that need to happen because what I've seen a lot is under budgeted or underfunded HR departments. they don't have, are under resourced, underpaid, overworked. get
put on another, yet another task and people think that HR is HR, right? So, but the differences between a payroll HR colleague and a business partner HR colleague and TA is so broad and they are also all just seen as HR and everyone's expected to be able to do everything. And those are actually different, completely different skill sets that you need, right? So the street number one.
strategic shift fund HR properly. Right. Give them enough money to be an actual strategic function. Yeah. So that they, and that is the second part actually elevate them to a strategy level. I'm seeing more and more that companies don't have any chief people officer anymore or chief HR officer.
not even necessarily a senior vice president of HR, right? So they have the CFO or the CEO and then they have like a head of HR maybe. And then it already shows that it's not a strategic level function within those businesses. And my clear advice is have them on, elevate them to a strategy level.
because it's not just people operations, but it's by, from my perspective, even with HR on the forefront of everything, your people are still your baseline for financial economic success. So it is the most strategic resource that you have. So fucking treated as one. did you just win our podcast? Yes, again. No, again.
Lars Nielsen (30:32.195)
And last but not least, you need to create psychological safety for each other's self so that they feel safe enough to challenge leaders, even the CEO potentially, and not feel forced into obedience.
And I think that comes with the fact if you actually turn it into a strategic level function and you fund them well enough to train them well, so that they can upskill, that they can be on top of their game, that they can also hire really strong HR people that can stand their ground, that can push back, which takes...
skills in negotiation. It takes skills in communication. So you need to you need to upskill your team on those things. And then they can challenge leaders, they can challenge CEOs in order to do what's best for both people and company, because that's my constant proof rate, right? It's not one or the other.
Ideally in really strong cultures and really strong companies, company and people or business results and people and thriving people should be interconnected. Okay
I'm just going to put a pin in that one. When was that? that Alexa? No, it was Siri. They're going to activate it somehow. Okay, we're just going to cut that one. Okay, so Paulina, just to kind of wrap up this episode here. Let's leave everybody with one concrete advice as an employee.
Lars Nielsen (32:31.939)
If you're getting gaslighted by HR, what should you do? If you can only give one advice? Document. Document. Document every interaction as well as you can.
And like you're saying right now that in this time and age where we're living in, like you're saying, there's a lot of like AI note takers and you can record everything. You can screen dub everything. So just document everything. Document everything and involve somebody else. That can be a different HR person. It can be...
a manager from a different department can be a lawyer. But documentation is the key. Pauline, thank you very much for showing up in Copenhagen for...
a recording in real life, which I'm saying we have done like think 26, 27 episodes now. I think this is number 27. This is number 27. So thank you very much for coming to Copenhagen and doing this recording with me. Thank you Lars and thank you for the amazing coffee. Thank you very much and as always if people want to connect with you and talk to you more about company culture and how should they...
Yeah handle, tackling, everyday life both as a manager or as an employee where can they find you? You can always find me on LinkedIn.
Lars Nielsen (33:58.721)
You can also tell me on Instagram. We will put all the handles, social media handles in the show notes. And if you just want to stay on top of the ideas and tips and tricks that we're handing out here for free, subscribe to our podcast. Yes. Thank you very much and have a great day. I will because I'll it with you. There we go. Thank you.
