Policy as a Nervous System

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How Lauren explains that thoughtful, clear policies can regulate an organization’s “nervous system” and build a safer, more supportive workplace.

Lauren shares how policies and procedures act like an organization’s neural pathways, shaping safety, trust, and overall regulation. Punitive or confusing policies create anxiety, while clear and compassionate ones build stability and support.

She explains the difference between stress-driven and safety-driven policies and offers simple steps to make them more regulating. Lauren encourages listeners to reflect on their own policies and take one small step toward a safer, more supportive workplace.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer: We're back for more nervous system talk about how organizations have their own nervous systems and what impacts their nervous system negatively. Okay, if you listened to my last episode, the discussion was how meetings are a pulse for your nervous system's collective culture. And ultimately, we talk a lot about, like, how organizations, their culture, is their nervous system, or their nervous system is their culture. And although we know nervous system is something that we have in our own individual bodies, you can kind of take the concept of a nervous system and regulation and dysregulation of it and apply that to an organization as a whole. So today, we're going to specifically focus on… policies and procedures, because who doesn't love talking about policies and procedures, but…the goal is to help leaders, and even if you're not a leader, this is going to be a beneficial episode for you, especially if you want to move into leadership someday. See how policies and procedures function as the organization's nervous system, or part of the organization's nervous system, or what causes the organizational's… the organization's nervous system to either feel safe, or to feel stressed and how to kind of write, design, and then apply policies and procedures that regulate and don't just control the outcomes. It's almost like… policies are the neural pathways for your organization. So, if you're not familiar with this, like, neuroscience… term, your neural patterning, your neural pathways, they're in your brain, and they're wire… they're, like, firing, and they… they wire together, and they kind of create beliefs and thoughts, and memories, and all of this is wonderful, it's amazing, it's how we learn, it's how we grow, it's all these positive things. But… Your policies… are kind of like the neural pathways. Like, it wires, you set it in place, put it together, people start doing it, and that becomes the continued pattern of your organization, which means that these policies and how they're written or procedures can carry signals about the organization's feelings of safety, trust, belonging. So my question would be, not only do you have policies and procedures in place, policies and procedures in place, but what do they actually communicate to your people?

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, let's talk first about how these things are… a huge factor in your organization's nervous system. So, policies and procedures create predictability, and they create structure. That is the foundation of regulation and our nervous system. When they are inconsistent, when they are confusing, when they are punitive, punitive being, like, one of the most important ones, because I see these written so many times where they are so punitive, they are, like, misfired neural signals, and… and they create, like, an error, or, like, a… a false positive, like, they create a pattern that we don't want. And this pattern, it's like a negative pattern, creates anxiety instead of safety. More than anything, you need to have safety in your organization, like, psychological safety and, of course, physical, but… If people don't feel safe in your organization, and they feel like policies are really punitive, and they're confusing, or not clear, and… they're hurtful, that becomes the essence of your organization, and if you don't have safety as the foundation, people won't work well. Like, they won't be productive, they won't be consistent, they won't want to come back to work, they won't feel like the organizational culture is good. So, you want regulating policies and procedures, because if you do, then what you're sending is a message of clarity, a message of compassion, a message of consistency, which all impact safety. Okay, so when staff… aren't sure what happens if they make a mistake, the body responds with hypervigilance. So policies and procedures… policies… I can't say that too fast. Policies and procedures are incredibly important, because it tells staff what happens if. But, we don't want that to not be in place, or not be clear, or be confusing, or be punitive, because then the body goes into this hypervigilant state, aka nervous system dysregulation. If everybody is feeling that way, then everybody's nervous systems are becoming dysregulated, and if everybody in your organization's nervous system is dysregulated, then the culture is very negatively impacted, which means that you're not ultimately arriving at the goal you need to arrive at, or goals you need to arrive at, or the mission is not being met. Even close to it. Even… this is the case, even if you had a good intent when you wrote the policies and procedures, or whoever was a part of writing them, it doesn't matter what your intent is, it matters what does that message, because that's what a policy and procedure is, it's a message, what does that message communicate?

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, let's talk a little bit about, like, stress-driven policies and procedures versus safety-driven. So, stress-driven means that they are reactionary, that they're super rigid, that they're fear-based. Usually these are written after, like, a crisis, or, like, a major mishap. And they're written in response to something bad happening. Versus safety-driven policies and procedures, they are proactively written. They are super transparent. They're really predictable. They communicate compassion and grace, and we are gonna problem-solve and keep, like, solve this together. The goal is that these policies and procedures communicate, hey, y'all, we've really thought about this, and we want you to know you're supported. Instead of, do not mess this up again. But how many times are you in an organization where the message is, whether consciously or subconscious, do not mess this up again. Don't do that again. You want to be in a place where people have grace and compassion for you, and yes, we can't have, like, too much grace and compassion for you, because we also have to grow, but you can have grace and growth. Jessica and I talk about this a lot in our Staff Sustainability Program, and we work with leaders and frontline staff, of, like, how do you have compassion and grace for people, because you need that first, or people don't feel safe, but how do you hold that and also move them into growth? Big red flag, If your policies are more punitive in language than they are empowering, you're headed for straight-up dysregulation, and… serious lack of safety in your organization, if it's not already there.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, let's talk a little bit about the dynamics of policy and power. Your nervous system, and the organizational whole's nervous system, it is constantly scanning for power dynamics. All the time. Because that tells you a lot of information, like, Who's… Trusted, and who can be trusted? Who's being controlled? Who's trying to be controlled? Am I controlled? Like, all these things that are psychological impacts of how well we perform, and how much we enjoy the work we do, and how much we enjoy coming to work, how much we like our jobs, and how much we, like, all the things. All the things are from a lot of subconscious scanning. And if you feel like there's a serious power dynamic of control and distrust coming from your policies and procedures, or whoever designed them, or your leadership. That's going to be a very big problem for your organization. It's… it's fairness, it's transparency, it's accountability, all of those things are cues to the nervous system that they're safe and we're all a collective here. Like, that's what we want. We don't want people to keep messing up, of course. So, we can put policies and procedures in place that have grades for them, but also move them into growth. So… Do your policies show that you have belief in your people's competence? Or… Are they based on fear of their mistakes? Question to ponder.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so let's talk about, if you do have more power-driven or control-driven policies and procedures, how do we move more towards regulation or co-regulation of them? One, invite staff to give some feedback on the policies and procedures, or if you haven't designed them yet, include them in the design of them. Shared ownership… Shared ownership reduces threat significantly. When people feel like they are a part of, they feel like they are in control. When they feel like they're in control, they feel safer. When they're safer, they work better. Also, if they're not a part of the… conversation or creation, even if they are, make the why really clear. Like, why is this policy and procedure in place, and why is it written this way? That is really big for a lot of us. Again, it goes back to feeling like we're in control. Also, significantly, significantly, simplify the language. Language leads to a lot of cognitive overload. Like, words on a page, too much wording, too long. Like, all of it leads to… your brain can't process it all, your brain can't remember it all. And then there becomes a lack of clarity. If there's a lack of clarity, people are more likely to break the policy or procedure because they aren't clear, because they've been cognitively overloaded. I think about, like, a really good example of this, which isn't policies and procedures, but it's closely related to it. I had an organization I worked for a couple years ago, and they wanted to add, like, core values to the organizational whole, and it was a pretty big organization, so… I got kind of excited when they were like, oh, we're gonna add core values, until they released the core values, because one, they didn't include anybody's… at least not…

like, lower level staff, I didn't even ask for input, which is fine, okay, whatever. But the bigger issue was they developed 9, 9 values, y'all. I couldn't even tell you what 1 value is. You know why? Because there were 9. Because I couldn't remember 9. There should have been 3, 4, 5 at most. Absolute most 5. I could probably hold about 5 in my brain. Anything more than that, definitely not. So, be really specific and really… simple with your language. Don't add too many words. The more words you add, especially if you're just trying to sound smart or sophisticated, it's going to confuse people. For every word, for every letter that's on that page, or on that document, or wherever it's held or stored, the brain has to process that. It causes cognitive ability, or it requires cognitive ability. It causes… mental energy to be used. The more you have, if you have too many, or the more loaded they are with language, it's harder for people to, to understand them, and remember them. Also… If there's anything that… is outdated, that feels outdated, that people bring up that's outdated? Like, go back and do… maybe not… frequent, but, like, regular reviews. Like, what's outdated? What Do we have a place that's reactive? Does this still serve who we are today? Not who we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, a year ago? Who knows? Things can change pretty regularly. So, how frequently are you revisiting those policies and procedures and updating them, especially after this episode? The biggest thing here through all of this is, like, simplify, be clearer, don't be punitive, like, those are your big takeaways, hopefully, from today.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, what I'm gonna ask you to do is, if you have any influence on any of this, or even if you're someone who can, like, provide back input. Like, if you don't… you aren't someone who has control of the policy, but you can give some feedback on the policy, or you would like to give some feedback on the policy, think about your policies, look at your policies, choose one policy, any of them, and ask yourself, does this create safety, or does it create control? And if your answer is control, can you adapt or rewrite that policy? Or just even one line of the policy. Or remove lines of the policy. Maybe that's all it is, is just removing some of the language, but make it cleaner, make it clearer, make it kinder, make it more empowering. That's the goal. And I'm gonna ask you to kind of just pause and think about… what is your policy as a whole? Or, like, the language or tone of your policies say about how you view your people? When people are onboarding, and they have exposure to those policies and procedures, that's one of the first things they see about the organization. If they're all super punitive and reactionary, that is not a good first feeling when you enter an organization, so you're already starting off on the wrong foot. So, what's one small shift? That could communicate more safety and trust instead of dysregulation. Okay? If you're like, cool, this is awesome, I want to learn more about this, I've never even heard something like this before, this all makes sense to me, like, biologically, nervous system-wise, but where the heck do I start? Or, like, I don't even know what to do next. Cool, awesome, we got you. At Five Ives, we developed a program called Staff Sustainability System and it worked with leadership and frontline staff, kind of all staff too, and the collective holistic whole, to address things like this, to address your meetings, to address your policies, to address your leadership, to address your frontline staff, and to get everyone into a place where they are feeling safe and more regulated, so that they can be more productive and they can actually move the mission forward. If you want to learn more about any of this, go to FiveIves.com, F-I-V-E-I-V-E-S, and go to our services page. The Staff Sustainability Program is the first option on our services page. But also, if you are someone who… works with children, or works with students, or works in the field of education, we have some stuff for you, too. And the Staff Sustainability Program definitely applies to you, but we have some specific stuff for you around regulation and burnout prevention and all things related to the Staff Sustainability program that's more for people who want, like, a self-paced option. We have a program called Behavior Breakthrough, which is a course in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania where you can earn graduate-level credit from University of Pennsylvania by moving through this course with us. We run the course every fall. Every… spring, and every summer. So, we are wrapping up our fall cohort year in exactly a month, and we will move into our spring cohort in January. If you want to get more information or join that cohort, you can definitely email me, Lauren at Five Ives, F-I-V-E-I-V-E-S dot com, or you can pop onto our website. On the Services tab, if you scroll down a bit, you have, like, Resources on Demand. When you get to the Resources on Demand page, you will see our Behavior Breakthrough program in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. Okay, if… you haven't paused to really reflect, I would encourage you to do so. Or, share this episode with someone, and then reflect together, or plan together, or… whatever it is, go somewhere with the information and move it into action. Take one little step from today and implement it to make change happen, because information is awesome, but if we do nothing with it, then nothing changes. So the whole point is to take you from information to action. So, what is your action today? And until next episode, I'm Lauren Spigelmyer, and thank you for joining us. Well… me.


Categories: : Emotional Regulation

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