The Regulated Organization: What It Means to Be a Regulated Organization

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Lauren kicks off The Regulated Organization series, exploring how stress and regulation shape workplaces and how the Five Ives framework fosters calm,

Lauren launches The Regulated Organization series, exploring how stress and regulation affect entire workplaces, not just individuals. She explains how an organization’s “nervous system” shapes culture, communication, and trust, and how the Five Ives framework helps bring balance and sustainability to teams.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer: All right, y'all, we finished a series where we talked about the Staff Sustainability Program, and we're going to move on to a new series on a topic I'm very excited about. We're calling it The Regulated Organization. So, this first episode is going to be going into what does it mean to be a regulated organization? What does that even mean? So, we'll talk about what it is, how stress shows up in our systems. not just our individuals. We talk about stress as like a, uh, thing an individual feels or nervous system dysregulation as an individual would move through, but it's actually an organizational issue too. So, we'll talk about why organizational regulation is the missing link and so very important to sustainable, thriving, happy, functional workplaces. Okay, so We talk a lot about regulation in our world on this show. We talk a lot about regulated people, workforce employees, staff and our colleagues who need to stay calm. Or we talk about co-regulation and how to keep them calm or how to get back to a neutralized state. We talk about leaders and how they can do the same things and how they can communicate better and influence culture and model composure. But I want to move into a series on discussing the organization itself. What if the system itself has its own nervous system and there's like systems within systems. So, that system or those systems or the systems within the systems can either soothe or stress out everyone inside of it depending on where it falls on the nervous system spectrum, which honestly is why we, we design the whole Five Ives framework and we called the business Five Ives. So, if you have been on our website or you've been here long enough to hear what the Five Ives are, the business name is Five Ives. It stands for five stages that end in Ive. And it directly correlates to nervous system regulation or dysregulation. So, the first is survive, then it's revive, strive, thrive, hive. So, basically people, individuals and organizations move through this continuum based on their regulatory or dysregulated state. So, what we need to start to really shift and think about is not just people that fall into the Five-Ive spectrum, but where does your organization that you work for fall in the Five-Ive spectrum.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so let's talk first about this concept of the nervous system of an organization. Although that's not like an actual scientific room, we actually have a nervous system, human beings, that is a biological scientific thing. I'm talking more in like, not even hypotheticals. What's the words? The point being that your nervous system is like your existence of regulation, your vibrational state, the energy you carry, how you exist in the world. The organization carries the same type of energy. Yes, it may not. We're going to kind of break down here, like, what are the parts that are directly correlated to a nervous system in a human being? So, just like people, organizations have rhythms and they have reflexes and they have signals and there are all kinds of things moving energetically through the organization and the energy that that carries, positive or negative, significantly influences the culture. Okay, so here's your breakdown of like how this connects to, like, the nervous system, regulation, the brain parts, all the things that work together to keep it regulated. So, you've got your organization and it's run by its policies, governed by its policies. At least a lot of organizations that we work with are governed by its policies. Those things are like your prefrontal cortex. If you recall from previous episodes, prefrontal cortex, if you touch your forehead, is your thinking brain. It's the last part of the brain to develop. It's like your problem solver. So, these policies create structure, create reasoning, logical movements, it's a rhythm. But you also have things like communication. What's the communication look like in the organization? And those communication pathways mirror the vagus nerve. If you heard we talk about the vagus nerve, this is the largest nerve system in the body and it has impacts from like your brain down through your entire body. It's actually really fascinating, really cool. But your communication style pathways, energy, it carries signals of safety or threat. Like when I walk into an organization and I observe staff, whether it's staff like immediately upon entry, like office staff that greet me at the front, or it's people in like once I get inside the building and I'm inside the system itself, I can tell within seconds based on how people are showing up, how regulated, dysregulated they are in their communications. If they are feeling psychologically safe and regulated or threatened and dysregulated. You also have when you start an organization, a business, you typically define its values and its mission. If you don't have these things, maybe you could think about adding to, but these things function as something like the heartbeat. They keep life moving through the system by keeping everything aligned at the core. Without it wouldn't work too well, or you can easily get out of alignment and things don't go well and that happens. So, important to have values, important to have a mission, important to make sure they're clear, important to mean that, important to filter everything through those things and keep them at center. They are the heartbeat. When all these pieces are non-existent, disorganized, chaotic, the organizations, quote unquote, nervous system, becomes overloaded. And because decisions are being made out of alignment or communication is more threatening instead of safe, or policies are rapidly changed, that means that the organization is experiencing constant fires. There's a lot of lack of clarity. There are rapid pivots. And those aren't good things. Everyone in the organization feels that. And the shockwave of that just ripples through layers of the organization and eventually becomes something that kind of deteriorates and chases people away. People leave their jobs, people stop showing up for work, people stop working hard, people stop caring. So, think about this example. If you are working in hospital, that hospital might have some of the best, most brilliant, most compassionate, empathetic staff members. But because depending on what type of environment, like what type of subsector of the hospital you're working in, things can be really chaotic. People are feeling really stressed. That stress might lead to poor communication, but communication becomes very chaotic. And if there's not stability at the upper level through the policies and the systems, and leaders aren't regulating and co-regulating, and they're just constantly reacting. The system itself finds itself , like, the nervous system fight or flight, maybe even freeze-fawn state, and that's survival state. Even if the individuals themselves are trying really hard to stay calm and regulated, there are greater influences at play that cause the whole system to be dysregulated. So, it's important to think about, this is why we created the Staff Sustainability System is because it's not a program that works with just frontline staff, which is what we used to do. And it's not a program that works with just leadership, which we also used to do. It's a program that works with frontline and leadership and all staff. Because all the pieces have to be moving and working together and everybody has to be clear and on the same page in order for things to rhythmically work in a positive way and to completely influence and change the culture.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so let's talk about what are some signs that an organization is dysregulated? So, what are some red flags that the organization is under chronic stress? Like little micro things I look for when I'm working with organizations. One, overreaction to small problems. I talk about this with my child all the time. We'll say something is a big deal or a little deal. Like if your milk spills on the floor, we're like, okay, that's a little deal. We can just get the rag and clean that up. You threw something at the window and it cracked. That's a bigger deal. That's a big deal. We have to do a little more work to get that fixed. The reality is the problem is still there. It's not really worth getting too upset because it happened. Fix it. Talking about what's a big deal, what's a little deal, and responding to bigger and little deals in ways that are appropriate. What happens is we are overreacting to little deals. So, it's not always constant all hands on deck emergency state. Yet if we are dysregulated as an organizational whole, everything does feel that way. You'll see people start to do kind of two things in the like freeze state of the nervous system side of things. One, they're avoiding tasks. They're avoiding people, they're avoiding tasks, they're avoiding work. Or they're just freezing. Like, they're so overwhelmed and so overloaded they're like, I don't know what to do next. So, in this type of environment or like signs that were in this type of environment or people were like, one of the biggest signs for me is no one's talking in meetings. Like, we will have meetings that we hop on with staff for an hour. It's usually like 10, 15 minutes of information. We then talk about application. We move into some coaching and Q and A. And if during the coaching Q and A part, it's dead silent, I know that everyone in that meeting is probably exhausted, overwhelmed, and all on the verge of burn out. Because if you're not and you have the headspace to participate and you care about the organization and care about your mission and care about your work, you will engage and you will participate, even if it's like silently or anonymously through like a chat feature or something, but you will be involved and you will be invested. Inconsistent follow through. I think there's like good intentions here. I think what happens is you have a touch point, you set up a next step and you don't have a good system for following through. Like, I have done it myself. If I don't put a reminder in my calendar or mark an email to like come back and revisit or follow up later, I'm not going to do it. I need like a to-do list or a calendar or checklist or something. I'll forget it. I have too much going on in my life to remember it. So, finding ways to make more consistent follow through and not kind of rapidly changing things midway or like never closing a loop. Like, open loops are never really good. So, if you open the loop and you provide some feedback and you provide some next steps, close the loop by following back up. Don’t leave the loop open. There's also emotional contagion. I love this one. If I could talk about co-regulation all day and like the contagion of emotions. I love this. I love it in education, especially with young children, how teachers influence people's children's emotional states to how emotional states of children influence adults, but also in any other factor of person to person, whether it's child to adult, adult to child, adult to adult, supervisor to subordinate, it could be any level of interaction, but the emotional states of people are contagious. Thank you, mirror neurons. Kind of love them and also hate them because they work for us for co-regulation, they really work against us when people are dysregulated. basically, if people are coming in and they are anxious and they are overly anxious and they're stuck in that state and they do not know how to get out of that state, their anxiety influences the direct people that they are around. If they are extremely anxious, the people around them start to become micro levels of anxious. And then it's just like, just, it just grows. And those people become more anxious and then they influence people that they're around. And it just sucks up and takes over the entire organization. Same with irritability, same with exhaustion, same with negative mindset. All these things are like forms of emotional contagion where we have to teach people to recognize the dysregulation and stop it before they passively or aggressively influence those around them in a very negative way. And that can, again, work in a positive way too. Also, just competing priorities. Leadership, constantly shifting focus. Staff feeling like whiplash. I mean, I feel like I've dealt with this with a couple organizations that we have served where we've worked with them and then competing priorities come into play and we kind of get brushed to the side and like, we're here to solve the major problem that makes those things work better. So, if you brush this work to the side, that work won't be effective. So, just getting clear on what the priorities are and sticking to them.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, what's the impact of like, and this is not all encompassing list, this is just a handful of like more noticeable, easy to notice, more frequently commonly showing up things. things commonly showing up in organizations that are dysregulated, but what's the impact of all of this? One, if your organization is dysregulated and the brain, like, how your brain works when it's dysregulated emotionally is your amygdala takes over, takes over your prefrontal cortex, takes over your thinking brain. When that happens, you lose access to some of your memory system. You lose access to problem solving, creativity, productivity, focus, attention, engagement, motivation, goal setting, all those things. So you could see how that might be a problem if your organization's amygdala is taking over and people are no longer attentive and creative and innovative and productive. Also, a lot of these things erode trust because what we need and desire on a subconscious and conscious level is like this sense of safety and a sense of belonging. And the existence in our organization really impacts our sense of safety and trust. So, if you don't feel safe or say feels inconsistent, like sometimes you're supportive, sometimes you're not, that erodes trust. And that is a big, big, big problem for staff retention. Also, staff burnout really accelerates quite fast because the system itself is a place where you just feel more and more and more and more dysregulated and it doesn't feel good to be there. So, you want to be there less and less and less and less.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, what about... how do we get to regulation? How do we create regulation? So, we've talked about like what the impact of this and what it is and what it looks like and what are some of the things that we can notice about like this regulation of an organization. Okay, so what does the opposite look like? What does regulation look like at this level? It really means designing environments that naturally, effortlessly, habitually cue safety, cue stability, they're predictable, they're positive. They're rhythmic in a positive way and there's a lot of trust and positive relationships, connection, belonging built. So, you that all sounds great and that's all I think we're ultimately achieving and aiming for. But if there's a lack of self-awareness around some of these things, or you're not really queuing into them and paying attention to them, you might miss that your entire organization is in complete dysfunction. Okay, so let's talk about like some core elements that we work on through the Staff Sustainability Program. One, creating predictability. Routines are rhythmic. Rhythm is regulating. We need rhythms. We need routines. We need predictability. Even knowing what to expect from leadership and hopefully like knowing what to expect in a positive way, like transparent communication, being honest and open. And sometimes that feels vulnerable or it feels like failure or it feels like not being successful in your leadership role. Well, people value vulnerability and courage to be honest more so than just pretending everything is okay. Consistent follow through, predictability, rhythms, routine, regulation, closing the loop. Also, clarity we do a whole session on like trauma informed accountability and we do this like Holding grace for people but also helping them to grow as one of my favorite sessions we've we've ever done and It's, it's this grace and growth mentality. So we take these situations and we provide people with clarity by like saying like I'm holding grace for you in a situation when you've done this thing and also I'm going to encourage you to grow through doing it. The last little bit about clarity is just making sure roles are clear, are defined, expectations are known, expectations are clear. And there are processes to help reduce some of the workload or the mental load or both. really getting creative and thinking about and putting resolutions in place and not just talk or what's the lip service that you'll do something and you don't follow through. Attuned leadership is another one. So, leaders doing the work to really learn like emotional regulation on like a whole nother tier and in doing so, they will be able to co-regulate. They'll be able to model presence and compassion and empathy and respond with clarity and steadiness and respect and maturity and also want to repair missteps because missteps are going to happen. It's totally going to happen. I mean, as a leader of my home, all of these things happen with my child. I'm like, I have to go back and apologize, I have to repair, have to ask for forgiveness. And though he doesn't fully get it yet because he's so young, it's still the same sequence. And that means I'm really attuned to him and hopefully, likely, it will raise a good human being. And just rhythms and rituals. So, I think a lot about meetings. Gosh, I just feel like so many organizations over meet. Like if a meeting can be an email, and even now I'm, like, I'm seeing a lot of people do like videos instead of meetings, which is better, because when you're live, you do like meet, long time, it can be a waste of time. Now people are sending videos. that are pre-recorded, possibly if you're gonna keep it to like a minute or two, I would say an audio message is honestly better than both. But again, keep it short only because an audio message doesn't have that like stimulation of a video. A video can be cognitively heavy to lift and to hold and to watch and to view, because it's like moving parts and moving pieces. If you're just sharing information, it probably can be an audio message even better if it's an email. We've actually kinda got away from just sending things in emails and reading text and the mindful presence of having to pay attention to what you're reading versus a video you can be multitasking, an email you have to look at the screen and read the letters, it's actually much more effective to send an email than to have a meeting. So, think about check-ins, think about transitions, and does everything follow a consistent, clear, calm cadence? That's what we are looking for. Rhythms, rituals, even recurrent meanings at the same time, but also... not having meetings and just having emails, check-ins. Again, the check-ins not be so maybe in person, maybe not, maybe live, maybe not, maybe audio, video, maybe not, maybe just an email. Okay, again, this is an all-encompassing list. There are plenty of things that one could do and it's often based on kind of the audit we do of an organization of like, are the best practices for this organization to regulate at a more systemic level? It depends on the organization and a lot of other factors, but those are just some are larger things, maybe more broad things that apply to most organizations.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, last thing to think about is really just this move from, yes, people need to learn to individually regulate and needs to be a part of our organizational culture, but also how do we move to collective organization? We talk a lot about nervous system regulation, emotional regulation in our work and with individuals. but we also talk about how to do that in more collective sense. So, the issue with a lot of workplace wellness efforts is they all focus on individual wellness. They all focus on individual resilience. Think of all of the self-care things. Think of all the like the EPA things. Think of all the mental health, yoga, mindfulness, insert, whatever, It's all individually based. If you don't have systemic wellness and systemic regulation, those efforts are likely just putting a bandage on a wound that's going to keep reopening. Yes, it helps to have some things that people can use to regulate, but we need to move to a larger, more systemic type of regulation. So, we need to simultaneously help people to regulate, teach people to co-regulate, work with leaders to regulate and to co-regulate, and continue to do, uh, check-ins with the system itself and how it feels and what's going on and gather feedback and close the loop. Because sustainable change only happens when both the people and the organizational structure regulates together. The people can be regulated, but if the structure is dysregulated, the people are going to eventually become dysregulated. And if the people are dysregulated, it's going to cause the structure to become dysregulated. So, both need to work together. Again, which is why our staff sustainability model was so transformative, is so transformative. Because it's working from all angles. It's no longer working with just frontline, just with leadership, just with upper leadership, just with material leadership. It's everyone. I mean, all staffs, everybody that's a part of the organization comes and hears bits and pieces and parts. Is everyone involved in every bit and piece of part? No, no. We're meeting with different people at different times, or different frequencies talking about different things, but it's all interconnected. All relates to the systemic wellness of the organization as a whole. When one person regulates, they can influence an entire room. Someone's energetic existence in a space can take a room down or can lift it up. When an organization does the same, when it learns how to regulate itself or it is guided into regulation, it transforms the entire culture of an organization. Some serious positive contagion. So, pause and think about your organization. Where is it overreacting? Where is it shutting down? Where are the holes in the boat? And use that as your starting point to identify where the system stress patterns are living. It might even be good to really think about what signals does your organization send about safety and trust, good or bad, intentionally or unintentionally. Think about those two things, safety, trust. What does that feel like in my organization? From myself, from my leadership, from my colleagues, my coworkers, systemic levels, from policy levels, from federal levels, national levels, government levels, global levels. What rhythms? policies, or maybe even patterns, reinforce stress instead of stabilize things.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, just think about those things and think about how you are influencing that and how people are influencing you and how all the systems work together. And that's all I have for today. So, if you want to learn more about our Staff Sustainability Program, it's on fiveives.com. So, F-I-V-E-I-V-E-S. There's a whole web page devoted to this movement and we are excited to continue to share with more and more and more people. It's such a powerful program, honestly. A little humble brag, but we are also still doing work at the educational level or we are running our Behavior Breakthrough Program in partnership with University of Pennsylvania. So, if you're interested in learning more about more of the individual wellness side of things and behavior specifically and how to deal with behavior in a role that works directly with behaviors of individuals, students maybe even, we have our behavior breakthrough that is in partnership with University of Pennsylvania. You can get 4.5 credits of graduate level, uh, credits and we run that every semester so it's going to run again in January and we'll run it again this summer and you can find information for that on our website or you can email me lauren at five ives spelled out f i v e i v e s dot com and i'll send you the link to learn more about it. Or if you know someone who could benefit from that the people that have taken this course honestly it's very emotional to like read their feedback because many of them have said it's been a life-altering course and they wish they would have had the beginning of the career and they've taken 60 plus credits in last 30 years and it's the best course they've ever taken and we were so intentional about its design. So, I'm so glad that it's doing exactly what it was meant to do. And if you're looking for more information about any of these things, it's pretty much all on our website, but you can also email me too. Don't forget to log in what you learned by really sitting with some of these questions. Making one or taking one actionable step forward, whether it's like having a conversation with a leader or mapping some things out or taking like a regulatory action to influence your systemic wellness, but something that moves you from information that you learned today into action. Until next episode, I'm Lauren Spigelmyer and thanks for joining me.


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