Change in workplace takes time

The woman in the line at the post office asked me what I was studying in school.

"Workforce education leadership."

"What's that?" she asked with a puzzled look on her face.

"Well, I'm studying why some leaders are effective and others aren't. I'm also studying workplace cancers like bullying, favoritism, entitlement, special privileges, and other uncivil and toxic behaviors."

She gasped. Then, her watery eyes lit up, "Really?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said shaking my arm as she spoke.

She then proceeded to tell me about — yes, we were still waiting in line at the post office — about different cancerous behaviors she had encountered over the course of her 30-year work history at several different organizations.

"What will you do with your degree?" she asked.

"Maybe be a professor, do some consulting, conduct some research and definitely publish books on treating people right."

At this point, she opened her purse and took out a piece of paper and pen. "Please keep in touch with me. I need to read those books."

It's funny, the more I'm asked what I'm studying, the more I'm told about workplace cancers that people have experienced. And like cancers that can metastasize (spread from one location to another) in the human body, behavioral cancers can metastasize in an individual, from one person to another and even throughout a culture or climate of an organization.

But unlike physical cancers, workplace cancers aren't cured with surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy; instead, they're cured through change agents.

"If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree," said American author Jim Rohn.

I recently spoke to one leader who's a change agent. He took over a cancerous organization that he was warned would be difficult to change. However, two years later he's shifted the climate and only every once in a blue moon does a cancerous behavior surface. Change can happen; it just may not happen overnight, yet be patient and persistent.

And if you're exhibiting cancerous behavior, you may want to follow American theologian Reinhold Neibuhr's advice from his version of the Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me."

Especially since, said Chinese philosopher Confucius, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Cynthia Kimball is a professional speaker and trainer. She writes a column for weeklies' in southern Utah and is a southern Utah correspondent for Deseret News. She can be reached at kimball@every1counts.net. Her column, "Every1Counts," appears on deseretnews.com bi-monthly.