What’s Wrong With People? (Spoiler: Probably Nothing.)

After 30 years in Human Resources, I've seen incredible leadership, breathtaking dysfunction, office feuds over copier paper, and adults behave in ways that make you question everything.

So what is wrong with people?

Maybe the answer isn't what we think.

In the first episode of What's Wrong With People?, I explore why seemingly irrational behavior at work often has surprisingly human roots. We talk about stress, fear, conflict, leadership, and why the people driving us crazy may be carrying more than we realize.

If you've ever left a meeting wondering if everyone attended the same meeting you did, this episode is for you.

🎙️ Real stories.
😂 A little humor.
❤️ A lot of humanity.

Because maybe nothing is wrong with people.

Maybe we're all just trying to navigate a complicated world together.

#WhatsWrongWithPeople #Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #HumanResources #PeopleLeadership #LeadershipDevelopment #WorkplaceHumor #HumanBehavior #Podcast #NickyEspinosa

Transcript

Welcome And Why We’re Here

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to What's Wrong with People. I'm Nikki Espinosa. I am your host. And I am probably not maybe your typical podcast host. I don't know what's a typical host. But I am of an age uh 52 that I uh probably would be listening rather than on the other end. And quite frankly, uh this is a little scary, but there's a reason, okay? I have spent the last 30 years, I laugh, I laugh. I say studying humans in captivity. I've been a human resources executive. You know, my very first C-suite job was at CHRO. I was 26 and it was awesome. I've enjoyed a beautiful career. But it has been kind of crazy to think about all of the people I've encountered over the years. I've worked with literally thousands of employees, hundreds of leaders, enough executive teams to want to pull out all my hair. And I've seen some really amazing things. I've seen incredible leadership. And I've seen breathtaking dysfunction. I've seen coworkers stop speaking to each other over things nobody can even remember anymore. I've seen adults fight over office temperatures and parking spaces and whose turn it was to refill the copy paper. And every time I tell people one of the stories, you know, at my uh dinner parties, because I'm a fabulous dinner party guest. Inevitably, somebody says, Nikki, wow, what is wrong with people? Yeah, I know. I've been in the people business a long time. And here's the thing I'm going to tell you it's a fair question because people can be exhausting. The truth is the world is exhausting. Work can be exhausting, relationships are exhausting. But after 30 years of watching human beings navigate work and life and leadership and stress and change, I've come to a bit of a different conclusion. See, most people aren't trying to be difficult. Oh, they may be very difficult. Many of you are dealing with very difficult people. And I'm still gonna tell you, those people are not trying to be difficult. They're not. They're stressed, they're overwhelmed, they're scared, they're carrying more than we realize. They're probably carrying more than they realize. I mean, if you've ever seen somebody lash out and you're like, ooh, there's a lot of anger there. And that's what we're gonna talk about today is this human

The Human Story Under Stress

SPEAKER_00 2:30

component. Because maybe, maybe nothing is wrong with people. Maybe we're just human. Today I want to talk about what I've learned after 30 years sitting in conference rooms, mediation sessions, executive meetings, performance, you know, conversations, you know, that are really difficult conversations, investigations, town halls, budget crisis meetings, oh Lord, leadership meltdowns. Seen a fair share of those too. Moments also of what I'm gonna call just incredible courage. And surprisingly, all of that lesson had really nothing to do about with work. It all happened at work, but it wasn't really about work, it's about people.

Workplace Absurdity We All Recognize

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Now, people can be pretty absurd if we really think about it. Absurd behavior happens in every single workplace. I mean, we've all seen it, we maybe have partaken in some of it ourselves, okay? No one escapes it. Everyone sees it, nobody thinks it's them. I've seen people schedule meetings to prep for another meeting. I've seen people reply all the 57 people with like thanks, like they're accepting an Oscar. I've seen passive-aggressive emails that could start a small war. Office feuds that have been executed with like seriously military precision. I mean, one time I had this group, I was seriously wondering if you would put half that energy into really you doing your job. Oh, we could harness so much energy. But they were busy with this office feud that they were in the middle of. What about people who treat gossip like an Olympic sport? Right? There's a lot of absurd behaviors that happen at work. Human beings are fascinating because we all think we're rational while behaving completely irrationally. Have you ever left a meeting and thought, did everyone attend the same meeting that I just attended? Like I felt like I was either an alien in the Twilight Zone, you know, something. We've all been there.

A Meltdown That Changed The Read

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Conflict can look like one thing, but is actually something else. I once had an executive scream at me so loudly, like it was I would she was triggered and it was just snap. It went, we went escalated real fast. Okay. She screamed so loud, it could be heard like six doors down. Somebody actually kind of knocked in the door, like checking in on us. But this this woman, she she really blew up about her team. I was giving her some feedback about her team. And the thing is, if all you looked at was that behavior, one, it wasn't acceptable. I'm gonna say that it wasn't. But if all I saw was this woman just screaming at me, I could easily be triggered myself. I could kind of be put back on my heels. I might not respond in the way that I'm gonna be proud of if I have a lot of emotion in that moment. And so I have to step back from that. And that's what a lot of of my work is about is helping people be objective in those really difficult leadership situations about this person in this situation. Let's just call her Cassie. Okay, so Cassie had had a really bad experience with a prior HR leader. I was aware of that. She was also very protective of her team. She had done their job. This was a very hard manual job in healthcare. It mattered. All of our jobs matter, but this job impacted people's livelihood on a daily basis. And it was hard work and it didn't pay well. So she was very protective of her team. She was also a fairly new manager. She'd been in the role about a year and a half and pretty overwhelmed. Okay, pretty over her skis at this point. You know, it was one of the first big, the big promotion jobs that she had where she thought, I'm finally gonna, I finally made it. I'm finally gonna make it to this level of success. And for those of us that have actually stepped onto that ladder, we realize that, well, it doesn't feel like that when you're there though, right? It's a lot of work, it's more work, it's more hours, it's more stress, it's more responsibility. And it's very common to think about what did I get myself into? So, in short, she's stressed out and losing her shit, right? I saw that, I can see that. And when you see that, then the response can be maybe I don't know if it's more appropriate or less appropriate, but more effective, definitely more effective, because I'm having an executive who is melting down in front of me. That's what's happening. That meltdown is caused by stress, right? And there can be a lot of examples of this: a difficult employee who's just scared, right? A resistant leader who felt threatened by something and they're just barking orders at you, but really underneath it, they're just they're threatened. And so if you can understand that, you can approach the problem in a different way, right?

Behavior As Data For Leaders

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Behavior is information, and most people reveal what's happening internally through how they behave externally, right? And

Why Everyone Feels Guarded

SPEAKER_00 7:50

I'm gonna be honest with you, people are not nice to each other these days. It it's the reason I'm I'm even compelled as much as I am to really do this work, is because people are so divided and so disconnected. And it's it's coming out in how we interact with each other, even in the freaking grocery store. Okay. And and I'm just, you know, I'm I'm missing those days when I think that people have their guard down a little bit more. We felt less protective of our time. And here's the deal the world is a crazy place. It's completely reasonable that we feel our guard up and we feel like we have some protection, right? But let's be real. What's happening underneath that protection for all of us is something that's kind of scary, right? We could be afraid of something. I could be a the controlling person could feel out of control, right? The perfectionist might be terrified of failure, the gossiper feels disconnected, the bully feels powerless. That doesn't excuse any of this behavior. It does not, but behavior is information and it helps explain it, and it helps leaders address it honestly and clearly without emotion of their own. Because guess what? We're human too. I know, shocker, right? I get to be a human too. And I happen to be a highly sensitive leader, which I'm sure we'll talk about in another episode, but it is very challenging to be a highly sensitive and do this work without trying to shut that off and kind of hardening your heart to it. And I chose consciously not to do that, but that means I have to work on it all the time because this isn't easy work because people can be a little crazy sometimes, right? But the truth is what's wrong with people, what's actually wrong with people? Maybe nothing. That's the truth. Maybe nothing, at least not what we think,

What’s Really Driving The Chaos

SPEAKER_00 9:47

right? What's wrong is we're stressed, we're exhausted, we're lonely, we're disconnected, we're overwhelmed by information, we're carrying wounds, we're carrying fear, we're carrying expectations. And most of us never learned how to talk about any

Nobody Taught Us To Be Human

SPEAKER_00 10:03

of it. Nobody trained us how to be human. I actually think that our younger generations are doing a better job at talking about emotions, feelings, things that maybe you just don't understand yet. And that's okay. We're trying to understand things, not so rooted in certainty. And I love it. But for me, my generation, and for many, many, many of us, nobody taught us really how to have conflict, how to hold boundaries, what emotional regulation actually looks like. What is a difficult conversation? It's okay to have them. Like it's okay. That's healthy. Trust. What does healthy trust look like? The truth is we are all just making this shit up. Okay. We're all improvising, we're all, you know, pretending we've got the script and but we don't, right? None of us have the script. Every single one of us, every single day is just winging it. So just remember that because there's a lesson in here. There's a lesson in here for all of us, but especially for leaders, about understanding people. Great leaders become students of human behavior. They learn what motivates people, what scares people, what creates trust, what destroys it, what brings people together. Because every organization is simply a group of humans trying to accomplish something together. That's it. Leadership is human work. Here's what I hope you'll remember. Next time somebody frustrates you, next time a coworker drives you crazy, the next time you're sitting in a meeting wondering what planet everyone else came from. Pause for a second. Just get curious. What might be happening underneath this behavior? Ask yourself, what might be happening underneath this behavior? Because the answer is usually more human than we think. And maybe that's the point. Maybe nothing is wrong with people. Maybe we're all just trying our best to navigate a complicated world together. Thank you for joining me for episode one of What's Wrong with People. Next week, we're talking about one of my favorite subjects. Everybody thinks they're the reasonable one. And trust me, that's where things get really interesting. Until then, people are complicated, leadership is hard, but understanding each other is still worth the effort. Please stay curious. You've got this, and we'll see you next week.