How to Build Workplace Culture (with Victoria Mattingly)

[Dana] (00:01)
Welcome friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home, it’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Dr. Victoria Mattingly. Dr. Mattingly is an organizational psychologist with more than 15 years of experience helping organizations build more equitable, human-centered cultures. She blends research-backed insights with powerful lived experiences, including her journey through cancer, alopecia, and mental health recovery. Dr. Mattingly, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Victoria] (00:43)
Thanks for having me.

[Dana] (00:46)
This is wonderful. You have got so much going on. Is there a particular place you would like to start? And if not, I can toss out some questions and kind of get the ball rolling. One of the questions that I had is what drew you to industrial organizational psychology?

[Victoria] (01:08)
So I was a psych major as an undergrad and towards the end, like my junior, senior year, I realized I don’t think I had what it takes to be a therapist, a counseling psychologist. That’s what I always thought I’d be. So I was kind of at a loss. And also it was 2008 during the recession, and getting a job with a psychology undergrad wasn’t really possible. So I was bartending in Portland, Oregon,

[Victoria] (01:38)
and two new I-O psychologists walk into my bar and they tell…

[Dana] (01:42)
that was like the beginning of a joke.

[Victoria] (01:45)
Right? So they walk in my bar, they tell me what they’re in town doing. And I’m like, let me get this straight. Your job is to make the lives of the employees better. And everyone is on board with this. What is this? Sign me up. Because think about how many waking hours as adults we spend at work. So if I can make life at work just a little bit better for a lot of people, I consider that a big win, that’s meaningful work for me.

[Dana] (02:15)
That is fabulous. You have a wonderful point. My training is clinical psychology and I have been in private practice for over 18 years and enjoy it thoroughly. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But if I could have two lives or more, I would like to go back and do industrial organization because I love it for the very reasons that you are talking about. So I’m wondering too,

[Victoria] (02:34)
Oh.

[Dana] (02:43)
because my keynote is also kind of taking boundaries and burnout into the corporate space. And I’m wondering what your experience has been with presenting what’s kind of considered softer skills. Have you, to the C-suite level, have you found receptivity, and just kind of help us understand what your journey has been in presenting and practicing I-O psychology in the corporate space.

[Victoria] (03:14)
Yeah, so you use the term soft skills. I challenge that. I like to call them power skills because there’s this really interesting study that shows to be a good frontline employee, IQ matters a lot: intelligence, how can you be smart to get the job done. But the higher you go up in leadership capabilities, the more you need EQ, emotional intelligence, to motivate and lead and communicate and get a team to accomplish goals. You need that EQ, how to understand yourself, how to understand others. So that’s why I think it’s more power skills than soft skills. And the work that I’ve done in organizations has really been focused around workplace inclusion and allyship. And these are organizations and leaders of organizations that understand the

[Dana] (03:59)
Love that.

[Victoria] (04:11)
importance of getting that inclusion piece right, because they see the benefit to their culture, to their workforce, which then affects the bottom line. They’re already kind of bought into that somewhat; they wouldn’t have been bringing me in in the first place. But just showing them how behaving inclusively, or acting like an ally,

[Dana] (04:22)
Mm-hmm.

[Victoria] (04:40)
is going to help just their team, the morale, retention, attraction, all these good things that are going to benefit the organization.

[Dana] (04:51)
That’s wonderful. Now you talk about allyship quite a bit and you’ve written a couple of books and we’ll have time to kind of get into that. They’re just awesome. I’ve seen them on your LinkedIn and they just look so incredibly interesting and applicable, for the very reasons that you’re describing, because in corporations there are people that are working there. And if anywhere you have people, you’re going to have EQ, you’re going to have the emotional intelligence weaving in and out and all these factors that you’re describing. So take a moment and help my listeners understand your platform of allyship.

[Victoria] (05:32)
Yeah, so the book does such a beautiful visual representation of my core premise and belief about allyship, which is that it’s a two-way partnership, a two-way relationship. So the way I like to talk about it is: imagine you’re in an airport walking by one of those bookstores and you see one shelf of books, and it’s a purpley reddish color and it says “Act Like an Ally.” And then right under it is a second shelf of books, a green and orange cover, and it says “Work With an Ally.” So you think, these are complementary books, same font, different colors, different focus. But then you pick it up and you flip it over and it’s the other book. And the books reference each other. So in the “Work With an Ally” book, I call them the partners; that’s the audience, the recipients of allyship, that other side of allyship. I tell them, I’m telling allies on page A47 to be courageous. So give them something courageous to do. And I want them to flip it over and be like, what is she telling them on page A47? I want them to read both books. Because another reveal at the end is,

[Dana] (06:47)
I love that.

[Victoria] (06:56)
even though you came into this wanting to be the ally, or wanting to be the partner and work with the ally, there’s so many instances where we could be the opposite: we could need an ally, we could ourselves become an ally in a different context. So we need to know both sides of the coin. And I truly believe the best allyship is done in partnership. So that’s really the core premise of my approach to allyship. There’s a number of books out there already about how to be a good ally, and I would be amiss if I didn’t include that side of the story, but there’s plenty of “how to be an ally” books out there. There’s nothing for “how to be the recipient of allyship,” “how to be a partner in allyship.” There’s nothing out there like that. So that’s really a unique contribution of the book.

[Dana] (07:50)
That makes a lot of sense. If I have some listeners that know what the word ally means, but they’re trying to understand, okay, if they’re at work, what is an experience of being an ally or being the recipient of allyship at their job? What would that feel like? What does that look like? How does that change their experience at work?

[Victoria] (08:17)
So a very important requirement, I would say, of allyship is that it needs to be across some sort of difference. So we couldn’t be allies to each other as women. We could be friends and sponsors and mentors and all these other things, we’re not allies, we’re both women. And so it’s a male ally to women, a straight ally to LGBTQ, a neurotypical ally to someone with neurodivergence. And I think that’s an important distinction to make, because someone’s going out of their way to help someone with something that does not affect them. Like a man helping a woman with something sexist, a white person helping a Black person with something that’s racist. A white person doesn’t benefit from that aside from just helping that Black person, a man just helping the woman. And I think at the end of the day, we want to help people. It’s why people volunteer. It’s why people do good deeds. And if we can leverage our identity to help someone who has a marginalized identity, that’s really what allyship’s all about. So in a work setting, here’s an example. I was the first female grad student in my PhD program to have a child while in the program. So there were no policies in place, no parental leave, no maternal leave. Luckily, my advisor was my ally, because he was older, he wasn’t having any kids, he wasn’t a woman. There was no benefit to him to get this parental leave policy. But after my experience, he leveraged his power, he was chair of the department, and they passed a policy for grad students. Grad students are of childbearing age, should have already been considered, maybe it’s because most grad students used to be male or something, I don’t know, but he was my ally, leveraging his position of power to do something that’s going to benefit me and others like me, and it’s not going to benefit him.

[Dana] (10:36)
I really, really like that a lot. And it’s making me think about the research on bystander syndrome, and thinking about how often are we at work? Listeners, let’s be honest, how many times have we been in a work scenario where someone who has been marginalized in some kind of way, there’s like a joke told or there’s something happening right in front of you that is dismissive of someone, that marginalizes someone, that demeans someone, and we get kind of stuck, like deer in headlights. It seems like you have the bystander, and you can talk about the bystander research if you would like, and then also the ally. What do you find that is encouraging people? And if you have someone that’s listening thinking, oh my gosh, I’ve been that bystander, I stood there and listened to an off-color joke about someone, I stood there while my coworker was being demeaned and I didn’t say anything, I just stood there. How do they recognize that and how do they take the next step to overcoming that, to not doing that next time?

[Victoria] (11:53)
Yeah, there’s so much in that. So being an ally, you’re never going to get it all right. You’re going to mess up. That’s just inevitable. I think a lot of people freeze and become bystanders because they’re worried they’re going to do something wrong and make it worse. But in actuality, by taking action, they’re going to help make it better. And I also want to share those examples you have, those are kind of extreme, that happens for sure, don’t get me wrong. But there’s also missed opportunity for allyship in just everyday interactions. So for example, I was at a brewery here in Pittsburgh. And Pittsburgh, I think it’s 25% of our population in the city of Pittsburgh is Black. I know that’s significant. But any brewery you go to is all white people, like it should be 25% Black, where’s the representation. And so there was live music and it was an outside courtyard, and this Black man walked by, I kind of made eye contact with him. He came in and he sat down and he looked around, and I was so glad that he was there and he felt confident enough to come and sit down. But then he left, he just left. And looking back on that,

[Dana] (12:48)
Yeah.

[Victoria] (13:12)
a beer costs six dollars. You know what I mean? I could have, as an ally, as someone who wants to be an ally: I always say don’t call yourself an ally, because let someone else call you their ally. That’s how you’re doing it right. But for somebody who wants to be an ally, looking back, that was a missed opportunity for allyship. I could have spent the six bucks on a beer, told someone, “hey, I see you, I’m glad you’re here, here’s a beer, enjoy yourself, welcome to this space.” That was a missed opportunity. And so now

[Victoria] (13:42)
I’ve learned from that. And if and when I get another opportunity to do something like that, I’ll do it, versus waiting and then feeling like, oh, I missed out on this opportunity. Next time I’m going to take it. That’s the best we can do. We can’t get it perfect, but we can learn from our mistakes and change moving forward.

[Dana] (14:06)
I love that. And I’m also wondering too, you’ve mentioned in your bio, how you listed it out, that you’ve dealt with things like cancer, alopecia, mental health recovery. If you wouldn’t mind taking some space and helping my listeners understand what going through those experiences, how that’s helped you form your stance on allyship, but also your experience as a person, being in these different scenarios on these different dynamics, how do you feel like it’s kind of helped shape your character into this wonderful person that you are today?

[Victoria] (14:45)
Yeah, so I’ve dealt with mental health issues since my early 20s. And looking back, I think the end of high school too, I just didn’t have the knowledge or the language for it yet. And it’s truly shaped who I am. And someone pointed out the amount of empathy one can cultivate from dealing with things like depression and the heaviness, you feel things more, and not necessarily in a bad way, you relate to people more and understand the world with a different, maybe sharper view. So I’m grateful for that. With the cancer, that was a really small blip. It was a short, very intense time period, but it was relatively short, whereas I’ve

[Victoria] (15:41)
struggled with mental illness half of my life. And I had to get surgery and there was a week between the surgery and finding out did they get all the cancer and did it spread or not; those were the two answers I was going to get out of the surgery. And that was just terrifying. And I wasn’t going to be public about it, because as I said, it wasn’t like a big public deal, but I just needed community at that time. So I just posted on Facebook, mostly friends and family, whereas my LinkedIn’s my professional network. I posted just on Facebook, just, “I’ve been dealing with cancer, and if you have any stories or anecdotes, please reach out and DM me. I’m feeling like it’s very lonely.” And so many people just poured into my DMs, and called and texted, and it was just such an outpouring of my people. But what’s interesting is, yes, it was scary for those seven days or whatever, and yes, my recovery was not easy, it was a rough recovery process. But at the end of the day, that has had a smaller impact, a lesser impact on me than my mental health. Where were all these people and champions and supporters and friends during my mental health crises? And then even when I did get the results back, they were good results. The very first thing I did is went and saw my husband, he was at work, he came down and met me, and I told him everything’s all clear, the cancer didn’t spread, this is over. And then the very next thing I said was, why can’t they just cut the mental illness out of my brain? If they can do this with cancer, why can’t they do it with mental health? Cancer could have killed me, but so could untreated mental health. So why can’t we just cut that out? And I know it’s not that simple, but I hope maybe someday with medicine and

[Dana] (17:42)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

[Victoria] (18:04)
technological advancements, maybe we can get more precise with how we treat mental illness. Because right now it’s just kind of throwing a bunch of things at it and seeing what works for each person, which is risky business.

[Dana] (18:19)
Listening to you talk and giving the examples that you have given, it reminds me of the quote, “be the change you want to see in the world.” And as I’m listening to you say that, talk about your examples, it’s like we are so much more comfortable talking to other people about our

[Victoria] (18:30)
Yeah.

[Dana] (18:43)
medical issues and our physical issues than we are, because look at all the outpouring you got whenever you went on social media saying “I’m feeling alone, I need some support right now about the cancer, waiting for the cancer diagnosis.” You didn’t know what was going to happen. But we in general don’t feel as comfortable reaching out and saying, “hey, I’m really

[Victoria] (18:59)
Yeah.

[Dana] (19:13)
super depressed right now, I feel like I’m in a hole I can’t crawl out of, I feel like I’m walking around in a storm that I don’t know where the sun is or if I’m ever going to see it again.” We don’t feel as comfortable. And I think being the change we want to see in the world, if we could be an example and do that, maybe people could start being more honest about that and give other people permission to do that as well.

[Victoria] (19:45)
I’ve been dabbling in that. So I went back and forth with my editor for the allyship book as to how much of my mental health story to include in it. So each chapter begins with a personal story of a time that either I was trying to be an ally or a time I worked with an ally. And I do talk about mental illness, mental health, but I don’t get into diagnosis or specific examples or behaviors or anything like that. But in my keynotes, I go there a little more. I really do, I name it, I give specific examples, I almost lost my marriage, I talk a little bit about that. I want to make it real, and being personal is a way to make it real, but I didn’t want to give it all up in the book, I want it to be my story told when I want to tell it, on my terms. And so, but a big part of that, because the most vulnerable I’ve been in a keynote was one for Mental Health Awareness Month. And I talked about, in the book you need to know what to do as an ally, but also as someone who could be experiencing a mental health crisis. Because one out of five adults is having some sort of mental health issue at any given time. That’s 20% of any room you’re in. That’s wild. And so we need to know what to do for ourselves and for others. And I shared about myself; a big part of it was to try to normalize it some more, and what you said, how can we make it more normal to talk about mental health the same way we can about physical ailments.

[Dana] (21:35)
Yeah, I like that a lot. And as I’m listening to you talk…

[Dana] (22:11)
So what I’m also interested in, you went into industrial organizational psychology, and then when was it and why did you start going down this path of allyship? Because that’s an interesting area. What happened that really got you interested in that so much that you’ve written books about it, you have your keynotes about it, you have such a passion about it. When did that begin and why?

[Victoria] (22:52)
Yeah, so initially when I started my PhD program, I was primarily focused on training and learning and development, and particularly on those power skills that we were talking about before. My biggest publication was on the trainability of emotional intelligence, and you can train people to become more emotionally intelligent was the big takeaway from that research. And then I had an internship at Amazon, and I noticed that there were just so few women at the top. And I had the chance to be in the same room as the CHRO, she was the only woman on the entire C-suite, and in most corporations they consider HR outside of the business, which I think is ridiculous, because without people you don’t have a business, but whatever. And I wasn’t allowed in that room,

[Dana] (23:39)
Hmm.

[Victoria] (23:47)
even though they were going to talk about my project, one of the bullet points. And I was like, I don’t have to say anything, I can just be there to answer questions, I just want to see what someone of that level, as a woman, is like, because I’ve never seen that before. And I wasn’t allowed in the room, that just left such a bad taste in my mouth. And then I went to another internship, another job, and the CEO was a woman, and she was just starting up this women-and-leadership practice. It was a leadership development company, and they were going to build out a women-and-leadership practice to help women be leaders in the workplace, close the gender gap. And I was like, sign me up for this, get me involved. I went right up to her, told her I was new, I was an intern, but however I could get involved. I think I told her the Amazon story, and how cool it was that she’s a woman CEO doing this onboarding stuff with us; it was really nice. So I worked with her, and I got to work with other C-suite executives, and I built out, using my training, my learning and development expertise, a male executive training program to help them be better allies to women in the workplace. And then we trained, we had a treatment and control group, it was my dissertation research.

[Dana] (25:01)
Nice.

[Victoria] (25:08)
male executives be better allies and engage in more allied behaviors. That was a big takeaway from that research. And that’s how I got into the allyship space and the workplace inclusion space. And I eventually started my own company doing workplace inclusion consulting for organizations, served over a hundred companies, given dozens and dozens of talks, and I’m really happy that even after nine years, I’ve been able to continue on with it.

[Dana] (25:40)
That is fantastic. You’ve done, I’m so glad you’re in this space doing this. I’m kind of wondering too, if you’ve noticed a change in the DEI dynamics with the changing political climate, or not so much.

[Victoria] (25:58)
It’s completely different. Everyone was doing it back in 2021, ’22, after 2020 and everything that happened, all major corporations, nonprofits, education, all the sectors, government, everyone was doing DEI. And then once Trump got elected, that’s when I really started seeing things shifting. When the legality of DEI started getting questioned, a lot of organizations that were doing DEI because everyone else was doing it, because you had to do it essentially, they all just dropped it like a hot potato. And that was really telling, to see who was really into this and getting value from it, and who wasn’t. And so that was really telling. Then you have the stories like Target, where they rolled back their DEI and then they lost all this business because of it. So you hear stories like that as well,

[Victoria] (27:03)
where there still are negative ramifications. And what I’m loving right now are all these stakeholder votes for “should we eliminate DEI, this company,” and these stakeholders are saying, absolutely not. And I think that’s really cool that we’re seeing resistance there. But when it comes to even the organizations that are doing DEI work still, they’re not even calling it DEI anymore. They’re calling it engagement and inclusion, or culture and people, words like that, so it’s not as inflammatory. But the work is still getting done, it’s just getting done more quietly and under a different name. And unfortunately for myself and my peers, they’re not bringing in external consultants anymore. So the entire landscape has changed, which is a shame, but as I said, I’m really proud of the work that me and my company has accomplished, and when it was the right time for it, we were there and a big part of it. Our first book, Inclusalytics, did really well and really helped so many organizations take a more data-driven approach to their DEI efforts. And we’re in a different time now, which is completely different, and it happens so quickly. It happens so quickly.

[Dana] (28:36)
I appreciate you taking some time to answer that, because I was wondering that when I was going through your information. So before I let you go, and before we tell the listeners how to get more of you and your wonderful information, my question that I ask all my guests is: how have you experienced along your journey the impact of boundaries?

[Victoria] (28:39)
Hello.

[Dana] (29:00)
Have you seen it where you’ve had to apply it in relationships or situations, whether it’s personal or at the workplace, anything where you felt like you were aware of a boundary, and it was either the lack of a boundary caused a problem, or being able to place a boundary was able to help you accomplish more or have a better relationship, anything like that along the way for you.

[Victoria] (29:24)
So I only get a few hours a day with my son, because he’s in school, or in the summertime he’s at camp. And so I’ve always promised, ever since I’ve been working as a mother, that I would have a hard stop at five o’clock every day, hard stop. And I remember one time I was at this networking event, it was a really fun event, this was during COVID time, so it was all Zoom, but it was a really fun Zoom event, and we’re connecting on LinkedIn, and I wanted to stay. I didn’t technically have anything to do at five-oh-one, I could have stayed, but I was like, no, I’m closing up, said bye to everyone in the chat, and I exited, because I need to set that precedent, not just for everyone else, which is still an important part of boundaries, but for myself. I need to stay true to that. So that’s one thing. And then the other thing, I don’t want to get too into it because it’s just too much, but I’ve been serving as a caretaker for a parent lately, and having my own boundaries for how many times I’ll answer the phone, and how many times I’ll go over there, and what I’m willing and not willing to do, and what to delegate to my brother, it’s all trying to play those boundaries. And those are a little bit more fluid, because they have to be, because sometimes it’s more of an emergency than other times, and we’re still figuring it all out. So it’s like, how do I stay true to boundaries that are even a little fluid? Because they need to be flexible right now.

[Dana] (30:57)
Sure. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that. So what I have down here is the website mattinglysolutions.com. Is that where you want my listeners to go?

[Victoria] (31:21)
Yes, absolutely. That’s all the info you need. There’s a way to contact me or book an appointment directly. So come and check me out, and reach out if I can help with anything, especially around keynotes, because that’s really my specialty now.

[Dana] (31:36)
Fabulous. Dr. Mattingly, thank you so much for sharing your precious time and your wisdom and your experience with myself and my listeners today. Thank you.

[Victoria] (31:46)
Thanks again for having me.

[Dana] (31:48)
Now guys, I know you have heard so many things today that Dr. Mattingly has shared and you’re thinking, I have a best friend, I have a coworker, I have so many people that I can think of that need to hear what Dr. Mattingly has to say. Take this podcast episode, copy and paste the link, send it through text, send it through email, post it on your favorite social media sites so that we can reach out and grow our Phoenix in Flame community, reaching out and letting people know you are not alone. I hope your day has been great. I hope the rest of it is fantastic. I’m Dana on Phoenix in Flame.