Ask someone what blocked a project and you'll hear about misalignment or a missing resource. You rarely hear the real answer: I was afraid, so I stared at the screen and did nothing. Mindy Honcoop thinks fear and shame are the most common blockers at work, and the least discussed. A 25-year HR veteran who came into the field through social work, she now helps leaders name what's really stopping their teams.
In this episode of the Team Check-In, Mindy tells host Emre Ok why shame ("I am bad") does more damage at work than guilt ("I did something wrong"), and how scarcity-minded cultures train people to stop asking questions. She shares how one honest conversation saved a leader everyone had written off as impossible, and where her own relationship with shame first took root. Then she gets practical, walking through tools any team can use, from a "fear audit" at the next offsite to a red, yellow, green check-in at the start of a meeting.
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Emre (00:00.558)
I get it. You can turn it off if you're not like comfortable with it. It's
Mindy Honcoop (00:04.676)
No, I mean, I have some overhead lights that maybe if I like try them really quick, hold on.
Emre (00:08.204)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, sure, sure, whatever you're comfortable with.
Mindy Honcoop (00:24.184)
be upset.
Mindy Honcoop (00:29.55)
And then in my ring light, then I can probably take down.
little bit.
Emre (00:38.126)
Okay, this is real. This is good. Okay, no, this looks very natural. That's Awesome, awesome. Okay, I am very much looking forward to this episode. I told my therapist all about it and she can't wait to see.
Mindy Honcoop (00:40.452)
Okay, it's a little bit better.
Mindy Honcoop (00:45.796)
All right.
Mindy Honcoop (01:00.383)
man, wow, okay.
Emre (01:04.686)
Well,
Mindy Honcoop (01:05.284)
I love that. That's a great way to start. I'm like, okay, now I'm nervous.
Emre (01:08.482)
Hahaha
That's perfect. Now, when I was picking therapists, I made sure that I found someone who came from the, a bit from the corporate world and kind of from the HR world because how else are they going to kind of like, I'm sure therapists who don't have the same experiences as you, they can also relate to your problems in some way. But I just wanted to make sure that,
Mindy Honcoop (01:23.8)
Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (01:34.114)
Yeah, that's so true.
Emre (01:40.01)
I found someone like that and I've been like, I've been stoked talking to her like saying, look, we're recording like an entire episode on kind of trauma and shame and fear in the workplace. she, yeah, she can't wait for the link. I'm very excited.
Emre (01:58.734)
I don't know. I don't know how.
Mindy Honcoop (02:00.836)
It's on a journey. think I'm still learning more about shame. It's such an intense and deep topic. It's so complex.
Emre (02:12.298)
It is, it really is, it really is. another, exactly is. And another problem with having like an HR person as a therapist, she made me come up with my personal company values. She said, Hey, what are your company, what are your personal values? And I said, that's easy. I'll come up with them in a week. My next session is in four days. I have no idea what my values are. I'm freaked out.
Mindy Honcoop (02:15.14)
It's a learning journey.
Emre (02:42.222)
you
Mindy Honcoop (02:42.788)
Well, yeah, I guess if it's like your core values of like who, know, what never changes about you, Emery, like, yeah, that's, I have like, I I have mine up here. Mine are leadership, relationships, mission, exploration, and joy.
Emre (02:50.87)
Yeah
Emre (03:01.378)
That's actually pretty tight. I'm gonna steal those and just edit this bit out.
Mindy Honcoop (03:03.556)
You can't.
There you go.
Emre (03:11.194)
that's perfect. And you know, on that note, I'll start us off by saying hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Team Check-In. I am very excited about this episode. And with me today, I have Mindy Hong-Koop. She's a veteran chief, fractional chief people officer and founder of Agile in HR. And what I'm very excited about is...
That in a world where everyone is talking about the non-human elements of HR, especially now where everyone, we're always, and including me, we're always talking about AI is this, this, this, that tech, this tech, that today we're having a very grounded episode of the team check in talking about things that are, you know, as human as it gets. And we will be talking about understanding fear.
Mindy Honcoop (03:44.772)
Hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (04:03.672)
Hmm. Yeah.
Emre (04:08.138)
and shame in the workplace as well as trauma. Now, Mindy will be sharing personal experiences and stories as well as her expertise. And this was a very long winded intro. So Mindy, hi, welcome to the show.
Mindy Honcoop (04:24.68)
It is so good to be here. I love your energy, Emory. Usually I'm the one that's all over the place with bubbling with energy and joy. And I loved our first conversation. It was so engaging and energizing. So I look forward to this one too.
Emre (04:43.72)
I'm so excited. Yeah, you can just wind me up and watch me go.
Emre (04:52.046)
Awesome! With that said, before we start everything, Mindy, can you tell our listeners a bit about yourself and your background?
Mindy Honcoop (04:52.196)
can't wait where this conversation goes.
Mindy Honcoop (05:03.776)
Yeah. So I been an HR veteran, as you said, for longer than I want to admit for about 25 years. was my 25th anniversary in June. And I started in the world of HR through the door of social work. I went through the lens of working with juvenile offenders and really saw how adults were.
showing up in their lives and coming from workplaces that were less than. And I have a brain that's always been curious and always seeking to find a better way. And I always was thinking about how can I drive greater impact? so I really got curious about workplaces and how we could take what I had learned in social work and apply it in workplaces. Because I felt that healthier workplaces is healthier.
society and communities. And so jumping into HR, it came from a very place of human centered being in social work. You if you just kind of simplify, you're really thinking about how do you help individuals understand where they're at today? What's their current state? What is that future desired state? And how do we walk alongside of them very much in an iterative way to provide them with the right tools and resources as they step
by step go from where they were to where they're seeking to be. And then also from an ecosystem perspective, really understanding the how to create awareness within the ecosystem to be able to help better support these individuals. so, mean, workplaces are individual ecosystems, right? Where we have humans and we're doing life together and we are trying to bring these humans together within these interesting, unique ecosystems.
to be able to come alongside of each other towards a clear mission, hopefully, and articulate that down into very clear objectives and going down to very much around individual expectations, and then throw in that we are messy humans trying to do the best that we can. And then how do we as in workplaces really try to drive greater clarity, greater expectations, greater alignment.
Mindy Honcoop (07:29.42)
in order to drive business outcomes. And so I very much for the past 25 years have been seeking to find better ways in which we can work by aligning people, process, and technology. And so that's why I founded Agile and HR to help come alongside of HR leaders and small, medium businesses to help them also.
through the journey of how do we really think about people in a strategic way? And you can do that in a way that's respectful and caring and that still drives revenue.
Emre (08:09.13)
I mean, yeah, that last bit is kind of you have to say that and it has to be like the yeah, it's still a thing. But I love, know, your approach of workplaces are such weird entities. And we've talked about this on this show before. If you look at it from the outside looking at it, if you were like an alien who had no idea about our culture, you didn't know what, you know, humans were and what we did and what our economy was.
and you just looked at a workplace with zero pre-knowledge, it would look so weird. It's such a complex web of relationships and hierarchy. It's strange.
Mindy Honcoop (08:48.6)
Yep. Emory, did you listen to the podcast where someone, a guest literally asked me that question. A podcast host asked me, how would you explain the workplace to an alien race that came to earth for the first time? It was so, I was like, my goodness. I was not expecting that question and it was the hardest question to answer. I love that you mentioned that.
Emre (09:06.875)
my god!
Emre (09:14.894)
Okay, I had not listened to that. That's beautiful. now I want to listen to that episode and I mean, I don't want to infinge on that person's gimmick and that's a really good question. But now I'm very curious about hearing the answer.
Mindy Honcoop (09:33.72)
You have to check it out. was one of my early on, early on podcast experiences.
Emre (09:41.094)
That's perfect. Yeah, it is really weird. And when you talk, when I'm talking to HR professionals about what they're passionate about these days, what they're the most excited about talking about, the answer is usually, you know, ooh, AI or, you know, this cool new thing. And when I asked you that question, the answer was, I'm very interested in fear and shame these days. so
Mindy Honcoop (09:56.033)
Hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (10:05.387)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Emre (10:08.246)
What drew your attention to this topic in the workplace?
Mindy Honcoop (10:11.448)
I mean, it's such a... mean, I love that you asked that question because I think it stems from where you first were saying, like, obviously AI interests me and everything. But as I work with HR professionals and leaders and talking about these topics and really talking about the transformational change that is going on within our workplaces and where are the biggest blockers
to success, is really around this doubt. Often when they come up and try to articulate and try to find the words, first of all, I would say it's hard for some to even articulate like what is the blocker for them. And it's coming often from an emotional place. And I think it's hard for us often to even sometimes be able to understand our own emotions first.
That's a challenge, right? To even put words to our emotions. And two, when they do, it often starts to around themes of fear and doubt and afraid of failing, afraid or lack of confidence. And it's also often drills down to, I wouldn't say it's a causation, but I often find then the fear and the doubt if you dig in deeper.
are rooted in shame, which once again, if we think about shame is like, am a bad person, right? Versus, I did something wrong, I am wrong. I am not capable of doing this, but coming down to that identity, that kind of core identity, becoming a blocker. And so, so much of the work.
I felt, I was working with fear and doubt and then I got really curious what might be some other things that are going on here, which really started me on my journey to learn more about shame and the unfortunate power of shame and how we often, it's in the dark places and we all have shame and it's in the dark places and it's hard to talk about and it's stigmatized and we often,
Mindy Honcoop (12:30.434)
don't see it even in our own selves and it's hard work to dig through and so I really started to do a lot of more research into shame and how do we create even safe places to talk about and diagnose and reflect on shame without causing harm.
Emre (12:57.89)
That's amazing. And when people are talking about blockers in the workplace, what's getting in the way of us achieving our goals or certain tasks being completed or whatever our objectives are, people don't get this deep into some very core human emotions and feelings. It's usually, maybe we're not aligned on this. Maybe they don't have
Mindy Honcoop (13:19.737)
Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (13:23.364)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (13:24.396)
this resource, maybe our approach is wrong, this is different, and they may be perfectly right. Maybe there is an alignment issue. I mean, this is such a fundamental and foundational blocker that people experience in their day-to-day work lives.
Mindy Honcoop (13:33.719)
Yeah, right.
Mindy Honcoop (13:46.2)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emre (13:48.564)
Like you said, this is not a very easy conversation to have in the workplace. It's not very easy to admit that, you know, one person is experiencing this. So it's a difficult conversation. And it's also people, something that people are shying away from because in the modern workplace, everyone is very much encouraged to be a winner, you know, just be doing very good. I'm, yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (13:53.444)
Mm-mm.
Mindy Honcoop (14:13.092)
Mm-hmm. Striving, performance, performative. Mm-hmm.
Emre (14:18.252)
Yeah, exactly. You know, being performative about, of course I'm doing great. Of course I'm, you know, I'm going and getting things. So.
Mindy Honcoop (14:22.68)
Right. Right. Yeah. Or it's like, it's never enough, right? There's always needs to be more, always more to do.
Emre (14:33.524)
Exactly. but deep down, think anyone listening right now, they've experienced fear and shame being a blocker. And it's, whether you're just, you know what you have to do, you know the task at hand, but something, this invisible force is actually blocking you from going and doing it because maybe you've
Don't feel confident in your abilities. Maybe you think, I'm going to do this, but what if this happens? So you just stare at your computer screen paralyzed. This is something, you know, this is something that people, you know, have a hard time admitting to their boss when their boss asks, what were the blockers in this? People don't say, I just stared at my computer screen because I was afraid. I was no, they said like, this got in the way of this got in the way. So we're not getting into like the root causes.
Mindy Honcoop (15:06.862)
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (15:16.408)
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (15:24.556)
Yeah, yeah.
Emre (15:27.982)
So I love your very fundamental and foundational approach to blockers in the workplace. I think this is a very powerful conversation to have. So in your experience, as you're looking into this topic, what are some of the most common causes of, what are some of the most common sources of fear and shame in the workplace?
Mindy Honcoop (15:28.046)
That's right.
Mindy Honcoop (15:39.67)
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (15:52.939)
I think, well, first of all, it's often around how are we, how are, how do we, what is the culture around learning? And is this a place where we can, because learning requires failure. Like we have to fail to learn. And so what is even the culture around learning? Is it a culture that has the ability to speak about failure in a way that isn't
condescending that isn't automatically like, my goodness, how could you have failed? Or is it a shift of, are we in an abundance mindset, right? It's also about the what is the mindset of our organization? Are we in a scarcity mindset versus more towards the other side of the continuum of abundance? And abundance is where
We have the possibilities. Possibilities is in the world of abundance. We have the ability to be creative, to innovate, to try things out, to fail, because we're not always gonna get it right, because we're learning and we have to try. Do we have the ability to even try? And so in those cultures, we often will see recognition of people who failed, but they learned something. And what a great learning, because now we get to iterate.
and we get to adapt versus in a scarcity mindset of, my goodness, how could that have happened? We don't have the time to be able to fail. This is such a setback and you see people being treated as black sheep. We have to find who, there's gotta be someone who's at fault here and we're seeing people being let go without any reason. So you just have this sense of fear that just shuts down.
conversation that we're in often these environments may also feel like I don't have the opportunity to even say I don't know. I'm so afraid I can't even ask for help. So this I'm obviously talking about this in such generalizations, Emory, but just trying to get a sense of you know, what are some of the signals or some of the feelings of the nuances of environments and where fear is going to show up more.
Mindy Honcoop (18:11.138)
And it's our body's way of surviving, right? Like we were built to survive. And so these things and essence aren't bad, right? Like these emotions are there for a reason, when it becomes paralyzing or it creates our other survival mechanisms, Fear can bring around survival mechanisms about I wanna flee. I shut down, I get paralyzed, I get frozen.
or fight, right? That may be where we start to see a lot more of passive aggressive behaviors, more toxic behaviors. And so all of these things, if not kind of taking a step back and kind of understanding how is this landing on me? How am I reacting to these things? And how might I then be
because I'm reacting, how might that be impacting others in their response to how I am behaving and showing up? I think that's where that time to have that self-awareness and even as leaders modeling that and being able to have conversations that allows time for employees to self-reflect is so powerful. But I'm gonna stop talking because I feel like I just, we could go in a lot of different ways.
Emre (19:33.634)
Exactly, you can go on about this forever. Just I'm just warning you that the more you're going on, the more I feel the urge to like grab a cup of whiskey and just pour that into my coffee.
Mindy Honcoop (19:38.187)
I could.
Emre (19:47.65)
you
Mindy Honcoop (19:48.484)
It's really important, I is going back to, right, that's why I like the book, I think it's Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown. And just we have such, first of all, minimum language around emotions. So many of us are so disconnected and so, and the more, and actually shame Emory in my research, and by the way, I'm no expert, please, if anyone's listening to this, I am not in any ways a shame expert. don't.
I don't, I am learning, I am in learning mode. But the little that I've learned that shame also creates disconnection of our own brains. it disintegrates, it disintegrates our brains and our ability to even find language. then the, Brene Brown is always so famous for saying, we're the, we can only connect with others the amount that we're connected with ourselves.
Wow, wow. And that level of disconnection, that level of disconnection impacts our ability to communicate, but also in workplaces, how are we supposed to get work done if we're not even able to connect and communicate, Emory?
Emre (20:49.07)
That's poignant.
Emre (21:04.058)
is incredibly powerful and that is very true. And I think this one line from what you said that really sticks out is people being afraid to say, I don't know, people feeling ashamed to say, I don't know, can you show me this? And I know that you've approached this from a more general standpoint because that I don't know how to do this, can you help me with this?
Mindy Honcoop (21:17.475)
Yeah.
Emre (21:31.81)
This comes in so many different shapes and sizes. This can be, look, we are setting your goals for this quarter. These are the goals we have set for you. Do you have any problems with them? Do you think are these achievable? Now, an employee who might say like, no, there's no way these are achievable. They are very unreasonable. And that argument might have some merit to it because they know their job. They know...
Mindy Honcoop (21:35.128)
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (21:45.719)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (21:59.33)
the amount of effort it's going to take. They know the conditions better than sometimes the people setting those goals. But they might be ashamed and afraid of saying, no, these aren't achievable. So they will say, yeah, these are good. These are doable. And this will, in turn, lead to goals not being achieved. And this is just one of many different scenarios where this, basically this shame of saying, no, I can't, can't.
Mindy Honcoop (22:19.011)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Emre (22:28.46)
manifest and You mentioned these two mindsets this abundance mindset and the scarcity mindset. Can you elaborate a bit on those?
Mindy Honcoop (22:30.03)
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (22:34.85)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in a place of scarcity, you often find leaders that are in scarcity that are, know, they are scarcity, meaning like, it's just you're locked in fear there. You are more likely to command control. You're more likely dictating how things should be done because there's a loss of trust.
Their trust doesn't, trust is suffocated in a scarcity mindset because there's no possibility. There is no hope. So isolating and it's almost impossible in this space to have healthy conversation, to have healthy debate, to have healthy conflict. And it's, you get to a point where people are just waiting for their leaders to tell them what to do.
the more transactional in nature. There's not the ability to question because the questioning to the leader feels like why aren't, it feels like why are they questioning what I'm telling them? Why don't they just trust me? Why aren't they just following? This is subordinate behavior. Because it's coming from a less than place. And there's so much that really locks us in.
in scarcity because we aren't trusting. And how work gets done in scarcity is so limited. And it's really stagnant, stagnant.
Cause we don't have the opera. Yeah.
Emre (24:19.404)
That is very true. Yeah, exactly. And now I kind of want to ask this question where we always keep saying that, the world of HR is always changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. How have you seen in your experience, you know, the conversation around fear and shame in the workplace evolving throughout your career?
Mindy Honcoop (24:43.587)
Hmm
Mindy Honcoop (24:48.644)
How have I, so I think with, know, back even before COVID, as we started to see kind of mental health and wellness, I think, you know, I really started to see more people talk about this like in 2016, 2017, we had Brené Brown like come and really start to talk about shame and it became part of the kind of popular conversation and.
and then really being able to think about, okay, so emotions in the workplace, like this has an impact. We should be thinking about human centered design, right? And a lot of this also is around the conversations of, if we're...
We need to have diversity of viewpoints and in order to have diverse conversations, we need to have trust, right? And we need to have wellbeing because our customers are diverse and for us to be able to think about our customers and user-centered design, then we as employees need to have the space to and the foundation to have these conversations. And so I think that once we started to hear some of these things and we adopted some of these within
workplaces, we started to see, you know, HR start to, you know, think more about belonging, right, have more conversations around what does that look like within our workplace? How are we creating trusted and safe spaces? And especially in COVID, then all of a sudden you saw for a moment where HR was in a strategic seat to really think through that. But then after COVID, we very quickly started to with AI and with the technology.
and with burnout and overwhelm and just the pressure on HR to try to have the transactional, because unfortunately, while they were also in a strategic seat, they were being pulled into the weeds of the activities of people. We didn't really evolve the transactional pay and benefits, which should be strategic, right? Every pay and benefit should be strategic, but...
Mindy Honcoop (27:00.216)
the conversations within the workplace were still very much transactional and activity focused and how we measured those things were very much around transactional waves of speaking. But yet HR was also starting to during, know, before COVID enduring start to have these like belonging conversations, trying to start talking about people in a strategic way, yet getting pulled into the weeds with this transactional.
way of thinking, which was very much like on this continuum. But then we also saw budget cuts and teams of HR being put down to one person or the most senior HR person was being let go with the more junior staff that was doing more of this, the transactional day to day. And the person who was in the strategic conversations was, was let go. And so it became really
And I'm generalizing there's so much complexity here, Emory. But I found now that because of all these things and each organization's different, that HR got kind of like stuck on this island. And mean, they were on an island before and I felt like we were starting to before COVID and after bridging it back to the business. But it feels like that construction work was stopped.
And you know, you go to these cities or you go to other countries or they're building buildings and they stopped and you just see kind of like all these empty buildings and it feels like HR was starting to make its way and then it got stopped. It got truncated. And now it's just like, how do we get through each day? You know, back to where we were. Like, how do we just get through each day? I don't even have and learning.
about AI and trying to keep up and my leaders telling me to do AI and what is doing AI even look like? And like, what outcomes do we want from that? like, we don't even have good processes and workflows right now. I'm just trying to build foundational principles and now we wanna put AI onto nothing and really grappling with some really difficult questions but feeling very much like they've been silenced again.
Mindy Honcoop (29:15.704)
that the voice was taken away. And in all of this, it's very quick to get to a point of questioning of, well, maybe I never was able to do this. Maybe I actually can't do this. Maybe this is because I am bad and I'm actually not good at my job. And this just starts to become even more, more of a self-fulfilling prophecy then, because if we don't think we can do it,
it limits our capabilities to actually, it limits the ability to then fully drive impact and voice to be heard. I am so generalizing, Emory, it's so hard to, these are really complex questions and yeah, and it's like, why, so I'm so passionate about coming alongside our HR professionals because there's so many that are leaving the function and yet they're so needed.
Emre (29:59.407)
the
Of course.
Emre (30:14.644)
Exactly. the, I think the switch you have pointed out from, you know, the more administrative HR to strategic and then now the trend going backwards, it is very apparent and it is a difficult and sad trend. And I love how you talked about, you know, this overall shame saying like, maybe I am bad at my job. Maybe this is not working out. Maybe I can't really do this. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You said you're encouraging those things, you're reinforcing horrible ideas and values, and eventually those things, like we discussed, turn into blockers and they actually stop you from functioning and doing your job properly. And you say, see, I was right. See, I was right. I am bad at this job. So I want to take this more in the direction of now the how. The how we can, you know,
Mindy Honcoop (30:57.316)
Bright. Bright.
Emre (31:09.186)
battle with this, how we can, maybe battle is not the word, not the best term, but how we can work through it. So are there some personal experiences that you've had with shame in the workplace and how did you work through them?
Mindy Honcoop (31:14.862)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (31:24.644)
Yes, I So I think it also comes I mean shame is kind of brought with us throughout and if we're not like looking at it or aware of it it builds and it gets larger and for me shame started when I was really young and when my dad so my mom and dad divorced when I was five and my dad when he was leaving he and he unfortunately was someone
that was in a less than space and shame people, shame people. And he was in a state where he, but he unfortunately told a five year old Mindy, when I was like, daddy, daddy, don't leave, I love you. He said, that's your problem. And so that then in a five year old turns into survival behaviors that then get carried throughout. And it is something that if you don't, know, is, know, if you're not aware of it becomes
the fact of then striving for perfection, seeking people's approval so that you feel that you're worthy through external methods. But in the workplace, that then looks like Mindy staying until 10 o'clock at night at a young age. Mindy feeling like she has to give more than everyone else. So the workplace doesn't leave her. And so
this is something that really caused a lot of burnout and got to a point where it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Of as hard as you try to make something work, Emory, in an environment that doesn't value your values. And this is why it's also so important to even understand what are my core values in order to even find the workplaces that align with those values. Because if there's not an alignment,
you're gonna be beating yourself and hitting yourself against a wall to make something work that the organization doesn't value and it will never work there. But for someone who is always like a perfectionist and getting things done, there comes to a point where your body breaks down and that's what was happening. It got to a point where my body shut off and then two surgeries later, I was laying in bed saying, my goodness, like I...
Mindy Honcoop (33:50.018)
I maybe I can't do this. And so it was a journey of healing. It was a journey of reconnection with myself. Cause at that point I didn't, I had gone through counseling, Emory. I had been through like a series of, you I thought I had dealt with the daddy issues, but there was underlying complexity that had carried over. And it came to this moment. And I sure hope that's why I'm so passionate about the work that I do. Cause I don't.
No one should have to be having two surgeries. And so that's what I like try to do is come alongside to help create those moments of self-awareness and being able to kind of take a step back. so I did a lot of somatic experience. just even learning like what are, what is my body telling me? Our bodies are so smart. And then being able to give language to that and understanding and naming my emotions and being able to find my voice to connect with who I am.
in order to find that new sense of purpose. And that journey was true healing, because it wasn't just, it was a full body, soul, mind, heart healing.
Emre (34:59.342)
That's beautiful. And Mindy, thank you so much for sharing such a personal and good story. Thank you so, so much for that. That was very special. And I think one thing we can take away from this story, one thing people can see in this conversation is that initially when people are talking about shame in the workplace,
your mind first goes to, shame over things that happened in the workplace. And now you're, you know, feeling ashamed of it. Now you're holding things back. No, this is something we bring with us into the jobs thing. These might be, these might be things that are, you know, this is our baggage and we all have them. And we were just talking about workplaces being, you know, these complex network of weird humans. And no matter how hard you try, no matter what kind of a
Mindy Honcoop (35:39.341)
Yes, exactly.
Mindy Honcoop (35:44.375)
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (35:50.264)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Emre (35:56.377)
detailed screening and recruitment process you might have, these things, these packages and this, know, shame and fear and all the other packages we bring to the workplace, they are not on our resumes. They cannot, and like, we don't, you know, this doesn't come up in the job interview. Maybe you have amazing recruiters who can look through people's eyes and stare into their soul and pick out their traumas. I have not met one yet.
Mindy Honcoop (36:10.02)
Right.
Emre (36:25.23)
because it's impossible. But these things do manifest in these different ways in the workplace. And the idea is, how do we embrace them as, how do we embrace them in others and how do we support our colleagues to go through them? So I think you shared your personal journey of understanding it and coming to terms with it.
Mindy Honcoop (36:39.576)
Hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (36:46.532)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (36:55.95)
How does the HR department identify this in their employees? How does the HR department identify fear and shame in their employees who are going through these things and address them?
Mindy Honcoop (37:02.244)
you
Mindy Honcoop (37:09.88)
Yeah, and always wanna be careful too, right? Because some of these things are definitely, wanna point them towards people that have the qualifications. I'm not asking HR to be a counselor, right? But it's about seeing signals, I think, and flags, and how are we creating space within the workplace for self-reflection, and not jumping to assumptions, and holding space for conversation, and being able to provide training to our managers around
even for them to be self-reflected of their own selves and holding space so that when something comes up, they are able to point their employees to the right resources and for people who can help them and make sure that, know, in how we are communicating, are we shutting down conversation? Are we creating a space of trust where employees can say, hey, I actually need help. I am not okay.
and it's okay to not be okay. And I think that's where also like understanding is this a scarcity or are we in abundance? Where on that continuum are we? How might we think about where we're at in that space? How am I as an HR leader aware of how are we communicating? Are we communicating in a safe way? Do I understand the employees in my organization? How might I use personas
Am I just communicating things in a very vanilla, generic way? But instead, how might I think about tailoring different communication to meet people where they're at? How might I be understanding what are those moments that truly matter to be able to come alongside of them so people feel value seen and heard? I just, I think there's so much that.
It doesn't have to take a lot of time or a lot of money, but it is really just rethinking why are we doing the things that we're doing today and what are the outcomes of what we're doing in HR? Is it very transactional or are we creating human centered moments and how we do work? Are we able to come as humans to work?
Emre (39:31.754)
I love that. is that is such a strong question. And I think one thing I want to ask is, are there any stories and examples in your career where you've noticed fear and shame manifesting in the workplace and you you addressed it in some form of some form of fashion?
Mindy Honcoop (39:50.251)
Mm-hmm.
So I often with a lot of work with leaders and so one of the for me I'm always curious like I always want to I don't want to assume I think we assume a lot about people and emotions can get mixed in as facts and So there was an individual a leader I'll just give one example that everyone was like Mindy this person's impossible to work with this person
doesn't respect anybody. This person thinks they're the best. It never takes into consideration anyone else's viewpoint. I don't even feel like I can talk to them anymore. And I was like, okay, well, we need to work with them. We need to collaborate. This person does great work. Has anyone had a chance to talk with them? Have you shared that feedback with them? They're like, no, like the fear.
was shutting down conversation. They were too afraid to give feedback to this individual about how this person was being perceived and showing up in meetings. I couldn't find anyone that had had a conversation with this individual about what they were feeling and that they were afraid. And so when I went to the individual,
and I happened to be in a natural way and I spoke to them in a project. I said, hey, know, in that meeting, can you help me understand kind of what was going on for you in that meeting? It felt like there is a lot of silence after you spoke. And this individual was like, man, like, yeah, I don't feel like anyone ever shares anything after I present. I don't understand why no one comes to me with questions. And I just don't feel like anyone likes me here.
Mindy Honcoop (41:36.76)
And I was like, wow, that's a really interesting observation. And I said, what might you think that, what might that be? like, well, maybe Mindy, I'm just not good at my job. And I was like, well, what else might that look like? What would success look like for you? He's like, man, I would love to collaborate. I would love for people to, I'm really passionate about this work. I'm passionate about what we're doing. And I would love to get other people's opinions and feedback. Like, well, how might we create a space for that?
And why might people not be doing that? And kind of like walking through and shifting how he might create a space for that. And then also being able, I shared some of my own feedback in working with him and how I felt, well, I actually wasn't aware that you were seeking any questions because it felt like you were very adamant about what you were stating and it didn't feel like there was a permission.
to enter into a conversation. He was like, my goodness, like, no, I'm just super passionate. And so we were able to identify some different behaviors for him to try on. And man, he immediately showed up differently in meetings and trying this out. And it became this collaborative conversation. People were like, my goodness, this person is so, so different now. We love working with this person. But how crazy that both sides had fear.
that were keeping them from having a conversation and all this assumption had built up that was just perception that wasn't really the truly intent and it had just disintegrated people's ability to truly connect.
Emre (43:22.25)
And where do you think that situation would have led had you not, you know, facilitated that conversation?
Mindy Honcoop (43:28.216)
I think we would have lost an incredible leader. I think they would have either resigned and found another opportunity or they would have been pipped and let go.
Emre (43:39.808)
Exactly. during our initial conversation, you mentioned conducting fear audits. Now, what on earth is a fear audit?
Mindy Honcoop (43:48.856)
Yeah.
Thanks for reminding me, Emory. Yeah, so especially with leaders and being able to ask the question of, you know, let's like really understand how might fear be showing up for us. And this is a really great exercise to do, especially at leadership off sites. And it can be done.
in a way that's safe and where everyone feels that they have a voice and you can create some an amenity to it. You really have to understand when you're doing this where your people are because I just, everything in this, when we all have shame and bringing people together, if you don't have the right foundation for bringing people together, if there's no trust, you have to be careful in how you do these things because you can actually create more harm. So first of all, just want to like create that level of
context, but in a safe place where there is trust and if it's done in the right way, facilitated a fear audit is able to really reflect on and be able to talk about as a group. know, now that we've talked about our goals and our objectives for this next quarter, let's imagine where might we be concerned? Where might we be afraid that we as a group, could even say, and you can do like a self reflection and start with just for them to journal. Where are you afraid?
but then maybe speak about it as a group of like, where are some shared concerns? Where do we sense that we're uncertain, like tying back to the fear that they've done personally to understand. Now we can talk about it as a group and so that no one is being singled out in order to get to think about, yeah, there is some level of uncertainty. We are concerned.
Mindy Honcoop (45:33.046)
and then be able to speak through that and creating the space. Otherwise we assume we're all on board, right? And everything's good, but the fear and uncertainty can actually really showcase some blind spots. And then we can triage, right? Then we can actually solution proactively in advance where these objectives, can you imagine if you didn't do this fear audit and that you come out on the other side, well, why didn't anyone bring this up? Did anyone not?
have some inkling or concern or fear that we might fail. Another way to do it in some groups is just to, you're at the end of the project and you just say, hey, we're in advance, let's pretend, let's pretend that we failed. Let's pretend we didn't hit this. What are all the ways that we failed? And then you use that conversation. So it's another way to do a fear audit.
Emre (46:29.474)
Yeah, and I think this is where HR gets, you know, this is as strategic as human resources gets, right? Because I think two very false outlooks on human resources is either, they're the people who hire people, fire people and do the payroll versus, they're like the party planning committee in the office where they, like, they're the pizza parties and all that, like the employee fund engagement stuff, huh? No, and...
Mindy Honcoop (46:36.024)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (46:51.991)
Yeah, right, yeah.
Emre (46:59.246)
Or, you know, a third one where you, think also mentioned is, oh, they're the counselor. and oddly enough, strategic HR is all of the above and then some more. here, I think this is a practice where when people initially hear about it, oh, this is a great way to keep people engaged and, not burnt out. But the more you talk about it, the more you understand, no, this is strategy.
This is how we achieve strategic objectives. This is a great tool in our company achieving its goals and identifying blockers. And it all ties into the beginning, in the beginning of the conversation where we said all of this while driving profits and growth and like that.
Mindy Honcoop (47:29.56)
Yes.
Mindy Honcoop (47:41.209)
Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (47:52.234)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, if there isn't a, you know, if you're in an organization that is, you know, where the trust is uncertain, and if you just want to start doing one thing, with leaders I opt in that want to change, they have to Mindy, well, what can I do? And I was like, okay, well, what is in our realm of control? What would it look like if we just even entered a team meeting and asked people, it may scare them to say, how are you feeling? Because they may not have language for that, right?
You have to know where your team is, but what would it look like just even to say, how are we entering this meeting? Red, yellow, green. And this is a great place to start. Because then people are gonna say, I'm really yellow. I'm coming into this meeting, help me understand why yellow. Or why red? Because if someone's in red, they're not, and they're at a meeting to discuss something highly collaborative or highly strategic. If they're red, they're thinking about whatever is red for them.
and they're less able to then engage in your meeting. So that's another great way, and that red thing might be more important than what that meeting's about, but at least you give a moment, just a couple minutes, to quickly be able to triage that as a leader.
Emre (49:07.796)
Exactly. I think the last question I would ask would be, if you could give at the end of all of this, if an HR leader could leave this conversation with a single piece of advice, what would the advice you'd give to an HR leader struggling with a fear driven culture in the workplace be?
Mindy Honcoop (49:20.58)
Mm-hmm.
Mindy Honcoop (49:34.692)
The first thing I always ask is, because we are the worst when we are on the front lines dealing with people, we're first of all the worst at taking care of ourselves. My question always is, where's fear showing up for you?
It's the first place to start. How are you feeling? Where are you getting stuck? How are you feeling about this? Because if you're feeling that way, I can guarantee you other people are as well. And you are only as capable of being able to step forward as you feel the capability to do that. So I would say a self-check.
Emre (50:15.062)
That's beautiful. That's amazing. Mindy, this has been a great episode. Thank you so much for coming on the show and where can people find you? How can they reach you?
Mindy Honcoop (50:26.126)
Yeah, people can find me at AgilentHR.com or they can find me on LinkedIn and direct message me. I think that my hope is that in people hearing this realize we can't do this alone and that we need to ask for help. And if we don't have anyone in our community or a network that we feel we can ask that of, I think one of the first things to is just saying, I need help.
Emre (50:54.506)
Exactly. And if you're listening to us on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you found podcasts, leave us a like, subscribe. It really helps the show out. And if you want to try the highest rated performance management solution in the Microsoft ecosystem, Team Flex for absolutely free. You can always click the link in the description. This has been the Team Check-In and we just want to say, how are you feeling? Bye-bye everyone. All right. That's an episode. This was really good.
Mindy Honcoop (51:11.534)
Mmm.
Mindy Honcoop (51:15.78)
Bye.
Wow, Emery, that was really powerful. I was like, dang, I felt like it was all over the place. Did you feel good about it?
Emre (51:27.104)
Yeah, I had a great time! This was a beautiful episode!
Mindy Honcoop (51:29.58)
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for giving me the space to talk about it. I think it's so needed and it's so hard. It's hard for me to talk about it because I do think you have to be vulnerable to be able to have these type of conversations, but it is a thing I think that most people are feeling right now.
Emre (51:33.244)
Yeah, how the how-
Emre (51:49.684)
Exactly, that is very true and how was it for you? Do you have any feedback or like did you have a good time?
Mindy Honcoop (51:54.86)
Emory, you're so lovely. You are so upbeat and taking a difficult conversation and just helping guide it and not getting lost. Because it's easy in that to get lost in certain spaces, so keeping it practical. Thank you so much for people hearing this, but they're like, what do I do? What's one thing I do? So thanks for bringing us back to reality and interweaving.
and making sure that we didn't forget also what we talked about before about the fear audit. I had totally forgotten about that. So I really appreciate you. Thank you for doing that. I think this will be a really helpful conversation for people.
Emre (52:28.83)
Awesome. have. Yeah, exactly. And look, I, my notes might be messy, but I have them.
Mindy Honcoop (52:36.708)
Aww. But Emery, think you have a value of joy. I really do. You just have so much joy and we need more of that. I just really appreciate your joy in your heart. So thank you so much.
Emre (52:44.28)
Thank you so much.
Emre (52:50.798)
thank you so much. And I just have to say, like, I think this has been like, I've had like a lot of these conversations and I think this is one of them where I say like, okay, I'm leaving with something to from this. So, thank you so much.
Mindy Honcoop (53:03.108)
I hope your counselor appreciates it. I'm so nervous. I was like, I was just nervous.
Emre (53:07.551)
Yeah, I'm very curious about- I'm very curious about what she thinks about this. This is so good.
Mindy Honcoop (53:13.873)
it made me nervous.
Emre (53:15.585)
Yeah, when I'm editing this, what I'm going to do is I'm going to like crop the bit in the initial part where I say like, this is an episode where I'm going to like that I'm going to like show my counseling. She's curious about it. And then I'm to put like a record scratch and then it's just going to go to like the actual beginning of it. That's going to be really fun.
Mindy Honcoop (53:19.426)
Yeah, you go ahead.
Yes.
Mindy Honcoop (53:31.962)
I love that. That's a great idea, Emery. I think that's brilliant.
Yeah, I love
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