 Hey, Aloha and welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii studios. I'm your guest host, Andrew, the security guy. This is going to be another very interesting episode of Security Matters Hawaii. We have one of North America's, I think, foremost leaders in workplace violence with us today. Felix Nader, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much, Andrew. I love the introduction. Yeah, we had, we really tried to bring Felix to you live. We had a little bit of a technical thing with our video this morning. So you're going to see his smiling face during the episode and hopefully more of that than you're going to see mine. So we'll go ahead and get into this a little bit. Felix, most of the audience that will see this, I think probably knows you and your work. But for those folks in Hawaii who may not know of you, want to give us just a little bit of your background and sort of the passion that drives you to work in this part of our industry? Fantastic, yes. Let me do it very briefly. So I'm going to retire the United States Coastal Inspector that worked in criminal safety, security, administrative areas during my 26 years. The last eight years were spent specializing in what I do now in workplace violence prevention from the senior members of the organization right on down to the workforce. I retired February of 2001 with no aspirations of doing anything other than just my honeydew list for my drive. Yeah, September 11 came around and I started receiving some phone calls from the Postal Service asking me to please consider submitting a proposal to do some security assessments on Long Island in light of the anthrax scare and the assessment and evaluation of their facilities. And that was now about 17 years ago. I only intended to be around for just that one project and the word got out that I was involved in this stuff again as a consultant. And here I am. So my passion on this is I found out earlier on that it's all about leadership. It's all about dismantling the communication problems associated with effectively implementing what I call comprehensive, not complicated comprehensive approach that involves the little guy on the bottom and the senior member of the organization on top of communicating. And I turn my process I see three L.E. Integration, collaboration, coordination, communication, leadership, and then how we collectively execute. So that's my consulting model. How's that Andrew? That's beautiful. I'm interested to know what the initial response was from the community. You know when you brought in a holistic purpose, I remember 9-11 well and the world thought, wow, government should fix this for us. And everyone should fix this for us. And it took a while for us to realize this is going to be a holistic top to bottom sort of effort. And we're going to have to have everyone involved, every stakeholder in our ecosystem in order to really secure ourselves better to get a more secure posture. So tell me a little bit about the early I guess introduction to folks about you know what you were trying to share. Yeah, so by accident because I never do anything intentional always by accident the postal service you know back in mid-80s and up until 1997 was caught up in a series of issues involving the homicidal threat and it was a decision that came down from Congress. You know either the postal service does something or we're going to give the whole entity of safety and security to the FBI. The chief inspector decided that we as an organization from the post-pastry general to the chief inspector's office, we needed to take wrap-or-arms around this and take the assessments that were rendered by the Congress and and look at how we best could tackle it from a senior level manager perspective right on down to the field. So they identified field inspectors and I was one of them in the 39 divisions that would be trained specifically in all the aspects of violence and behavioral stuff that were associated with our ability to assess and determine the best mitigation recommendations we could make consistent with the need not to be aggressive in the law enforcement approach but influential in the employee and manager relationship aspect to get buy-in that went along with the need to consistently go to schools to learn the fate of the art of what was going on in the area of psychology, psychiatry, behavior, all like this sort of thing went along with it. So I transitioned into my current work it was easy for me to communicate with senior members of an organization because I learned not to talk at them but talk to them dismantling the law enforcement lingo and effectively communicating on their terms that's that's where I'm at now and I'm enjoying it I really am. That's amazing yeah the I think the need for I guess an understanding of people in distress you know let's just let's start there you know it businesses and organizations have a mission to fulfill you know they're perhaps profit driven although we've seen I see a few hundred CEOs sign something saying they weren't so interested in stakeholder profit anymore recently which we'll see where that goes but you know the to get the organization off of its business bent and say wow this is an organization of its people we need to take care of our people first. How did you go about bringing that message to to this organization at first and then how is that how's that grown for you communicating that the you know the needs of these these people who are are struggling you know with something in their life that's causing them some disgruntlement or some you know they're they're maybe on that escalating path that we talk about sometimes towards violence how was that received I mean it sounds like quite an expense to me you know if I'm a business owner right like wow I've got to now take care of the needs of everyone all of a sudden yes yes that's a very interesting question because it is true most of the time it's difficult to interpret what it is that I'm saying that they need to do so the interested ideal client that calls me and says we want to know more about how the best implement what you're talking about what do you suggest and I start from the top helping them understand that a policy is really a piece of paper that's meaningless unless senior management from the c-suite down to the directors really understand that it's about walking in someone's shoes and understanding where they're coming from wow and so the policy yeah so the policy needs to look at the employees potential at risk environment whether it's in the building at the warehouse at your office on the street or in some patient environment they need to look at it from their point of view and then create a pull mechanism that says here's the linear contact that you have to me that whenever you have an issue no matter how dumb it may sound we want to hear about it that's the only way this is going to work Andrew yeah it's interesting I I talk about this with our team and you know that that there's fear of sharing that you know hey I'm having a problem you know I'm struggling and and I think in a lot of workforce environments and family environments for you know for that matter like the people that are sort of closest to you that you spend a lot of time with are probably some of the first ones that recognize that you know you're off and can say hey is everything okay and then and then actually wait for you to answer you know and then be willing to engage with you and in a discussion about you know what's going on and then maybe you know it's not like I don't think telling on someone as much as it is guiding them to get some help um and I don't know was that um you know you've been you've been at this for many years was that easier then than it is now is it is it always been a piece of the of the puzzle that we have to negotiate and teach um on for our team we've had to do a lot of training around that type of communication you know that vulnerability making it okay yes yes you're right so for myself I went through what I call a paradigm shift I had to bottomize myself I you know I was comfortable in telling people what to do I was comfortable in directing operations I was comfortable in putting myself in at risk situations you know working on the cover leading you know serious kinds of arrest situations I was comfortable doing that but then when I transitioned over to this thing workplace violence as a postal inspector I had to be emphasized the me and focus on the them you know how does the supervisor deal with this situation how does the employee trust or have the lack of confidence in how do we overcome that lack of confidence and the pulses in the organization's ability to provide for their safety and then dismantling the ineffective communication links that still exist whether it's horizontally or vertically where the security guys are always directing and telling and the HR guys are building up the wall saying stop we need to work together yeah yeah we need to understand how this all works so what is easy to talk about the what all the time what's more difficult and that's to your point Andrew what's more difficult is the how and the why you know why does someone let things rise to this level why do lay people do not understand how to connect with that's because they don't know what's moving forward without having experience it's a common sense response that I give why does management not you know do more well it's probably because the people who are out there connecting with managers initially are talking about the what and not the why or the how and why and the how is intrinsically tied to how they they're perceiving their needs and how we're going to integrate with the perception of their needs so we can work as a team so most of my introduction with ongoing client work takes months before I actually go into the field because I spend my time working within the organization changing the culture improving the philosophy and creating a mindset amazing yeah that's um and and I like that that's a month-long process do you do you primarily work in enterprise and have you worked with small businesses and do you find that your process is still the same maybe quicker when they're smaller but but basically you've got a you still got to get that buy-in at the top and that broad acceptance before you can get anything that people trust at the bottom yes so my process is applicable across them you know across the the the workplace whether it's a school a hospital the process is the same it's just to narrow it down specifically to address their unique concern so for example so I'm working with a client of 11 years initially they had a training problem and then they asked me to continually assess and evaluate their needs to the point where we're actually developing training programs on an annual basis that fix problems from their incidents and experiences the prior year okay so it all depends on what their needs might be sometimes a company may just want a training program you have to at least I have to assess and evaluate what is it that they want to change what do they want to improve and why do they need this training program if what's I understand that that I sit down with them and I say to them the root cause of our discussion really isn't the training program I think it might be the ineffective integration and collaboration of your management team in knowing how to handle these situations and building that trust and confidence I can do the training as long as you're committed to developing approaches and changing the mindset that creates a communication dialogue how often do you find that the sort of primary communication channel is broken or untrusted is that like just more often than not or what's your what's your feeling about that so you you read a lot about my unintentional consequences and what I mean by that is is that sometimes we think we're talking to people but my acronym is ace we make assumptions based upon what we know what we're saying and we expect people to interpret and know what we're saying and then execute you know and then there's you know the and then there's a compromise you know factors okay so now he tells me to do something he doesn't give me the resource and then I'm supposed to go out and get this thing done and I don't really understand what it is he or she wants me to you know to complete and so the expediency in the realm of safety and and I applied to secure to security says okay so now this dummy who doesn't communicate me to me he makes assumptions and he doesn't give me the resources and he tells me to get the job done okay so I'm going to go out here and get the job done the best way I know cuts corners because there's expedience in the cut corners in order for him to be effective and before you know it they're placing themselves at a safety risk in the workplace or they might be cutting corners in their environments dealing with the public I'll give you an example so they have a perfectly good operating air conditioning system in their vehicles in the summertime but because they like to drive around with their windows they invite the robber to jump on the running board or to put the gun to the window and hold them up that's expediency sure that's making an assumption you know and so it's all about understanding what other people are going through and do what we did in the army you tell someone what you want done you ask them do they understand you rephrase what you tell them and you ask them again do they understand so that when they go out there they have self confidence in knowing what the tasks are and what their execution requirements are wow yeah I love the idea of building some self-confidence around you know the issues of dealing with workplace violence in an organization hey we're talking with Felix Nader we're going to take about a one-minute break and take uh go pay some bills and uh we'll be right back stay with us thanks to our think tech underwriters and grand tours the atherton family foundation carol mong Lee and the friends of think tech the center for microbial oceanography research and education collateral analytics the cook foundation dwayne curisu the hawaii community foundation the hawaii council of associations of apartment owners hawaii energy the hawaii energy policy forum hawaii an electric company integrated security technologies gail and ho of bae systems kamehameha schools mw group the shidler family foundation the sydney stern memorial trust holo foundation yuriko j suki mura thanks so much to you all hey aloha and welcome back to security matters hawaii we're having a great discussion today with felix nader from nader associates limited um this workplace violence issue is is sprawling out into the media you see it you see active shooter incidents you see workplace shooter incidents and and and we we read about violence in the home violence in our schools um this is a major problem and and we we touched on the fact that organizations have have um recognized it and they're beginning to push down on their management team to figure out ways to deal with it and oftentimes that's a long term process so if you're doing that in your organization get some professional help don't just expect that the the person or persons that you have a task with dealing with this can help have these conversations with folks inside your organization that are truly in need and in the second half i want to focus on that a little bit more um with felix and the things that he's seeing out there the the problems that people bring to the workplace felix um how how often would you say they're truly caused by the workplace oh my goodness gracious um one in seven employee feels unsafe in the workplace okay one in seven employee feels unsafe in the workplace and that's directly correlated to assumptions made by those responsible for the workplace that everything is okay um but but what buffers but what buffers that inability to rectify those situations are assumptions that are age-old age-old and one being zero tolerance so management thinks that zero tolerance is an effective tool it is that a legal construct that holds the organization within certain requirements i i get that but here's here's how the employee sees zero tolerance so felix has a ongoing problem at home with his spouse and their and co-workers are very very close to one another know that this is going on and felix gets to a point where his spouse says honey if you don't you know straighten up i'm going to leave your butt and the escalation of emotions and one of the female co-workers of mine discovers from my wife that um i threatened her and this wife co-worker comes to me and says i don't know what to do with this but i want to give you some advice so that it doesn't interfere with the workplace because i'm not going to drop a dime on you because if i do management is going to go after you aggressively and then you're going to be disciplined so you see the negativity of this of this tolerance zero tolerance policy it actually pushes down the reporting of what employees should want to convey out of fear that if they report it and something goes awry and felix becomes angry who's going to protect me now i'm going to be the victim of retaliation and the brunt of felix's anger so it's really nice to say and it's important to have it when you get down the road of of that disgruntled person who is failing to repair their behavior i get that but you've got to come up with a better approach of communicating effectively that induces employees to want to be a contributing member of their workplace safety and their workplace security yeah it's it's interesting you know i see you know lots of different wellness programs and and typically they they're focused around like fitness or health or food and a lot of times some that i've seen and we expanded on ours years ago to sort of include um things like church and meditation and social interaction you know how many so we reward people for joining new clubs and you know meeting new people things like that so i'm i'm interested in your uh your opinion of the the the workforces i guess i don't didn't think this through but the the breadth with which they're willing to support an employee's wellness you know health and wellness you know it's there's a lot of opportunities for people to find help and i i feel like sometimes uh maybe the organizations don't don't support it or don't put enough um what would you call a real emphasis behind that support um but it's a it's a it's a two-way uh combination okay communication the employee the employee has to want to honestly drop his problems honestly on her lap sure so that the supervisor manager can then assess and evaluate the breadth of scope of what the person is going through to understand why they they are no longer coming to work as much coming in late Boston the production and the efficiency has dropped them around is dropped so when once the honesty is conveyed and there's dialogue it's it's easy for that supervisor to do one of two things with a productive or formally productive employee what can i do for you and will you participate in the things that we need to get done to make you better that is the the the recommended approach to creating that that roadway where an employee says i know i'm not getting along with my wife but i know if i go to supervisor andrew he is empathetic he's going to understand because his the company supports everything that i am going to convey and they're going to have opportunities for me to go to eap opportunities for me to be a coach to be coach and counsel and so i feel good about this company because they feel good about me the problem arises when there is an assumption made made on work performance and work performance alone that that employee has turned disgruntled and is no longer interested in being part of the organization's focus that is a bad assumption without asking what can we do for you is there's something going on beyond the workplace that we need to know holy issue of mental health right you think these are mental health it is sad to blame mental health when you know the statistics you know that less than one percent actually commit violent crime and you take a look at the number of people who are actually involved base against the number of incidents that are reported who don't ever rise to a level of physical violence let alone homosexual violence but in the workplace our failure to probably train supervisors in the recognition of suicide recognition signs and mental health recognition signs we go after the unproductive employee who is who is predisposed to worry about those issues and label that person a problem child causing that person to internalize their feelings and then they become management's aggressive focus yeah even more isolated within the organization more more isolated within the organization which is why when I initially get brought into consult with these high with these organizations I always emphasize the importance of having somebody in charge that has oversight responsibility I don't mean a security director and I don't mean an HR director I mean someone within the organization and it could be either of both that has a commitment and investment to doing what you and I do and do and that is listening before accusing listening before we draw conclusions and then listening to why an employee who has a a good a good route delivering newspapers for argument sake why is he having problems out there could it be we don't know this person once they leave your organization and they're out dealing with the public we've got to create these these avenues and opportunities to engage one another in a more efficient and effective way that dismantles the communication barriers let's um I agree 100 percent let's just touch on quickly since we're you know sort of security based um you know I think there's a also a lack of reporting when you're having a problem perhaps with a spouse and we've had instances where that spouse or a significant other or maybe some other person from another contracting organization or something comes to an organization basically targeting one person but then ends up exacting some violence on people along the way people in the path perhaps that that you know blocked the door or or just unfortunately in the way um and I don't know is there um is there um you do you come across organizations that understand that need to collect this information because the threat may not really be the employee it could be the employee's family or a family member something like that is there a lot of emphasis put on that as well I think reporting is a huge challenge and it's a huge challenge from the standpoint of privacy and confidentiality and I see whistleblower and title seven so I challenge the HR director to be creative and innovative in managing all those those requirements that call for you to protect people's privacy and confidentiality so as to do what we did as postal inspectors in the postal service you know we were surrounded by non-security non-law enforcement types and we deputize them but we learned from them in terms of what their problems were and we were able to share confidential information in that environment that allowed us to build a bridge of miscommunication to effectively bring them on board so that they wouldn't be afraid of telling you things that they learned that might be sensitive I see right now the the gap in our ability to effectively be ahead of these issues long before they become a disgruntled transition over to an active shooter is our inability to track these incidents sufficiently without the fear of violating some of privacy or confidentiality that's the biggest concern yeah I guess that becomes sort of like personal health care information at that point if they've been counseled and I know we've been seeing that more in the media where you know you talked about the sort of the lack of of correspondence between mental illness and someone actually becoming violent but I think there is that that we're waiting through the protecting of that information you know inside of an organization you know we've got about a minute we've got about a minute or a minute and a half left so I'd like to maybe just take some time to give your your final thoughts on what you know from your expertise what you think the community could do what business leaders should be doing and you know what are the things you think that are you know some of the best advice that we cannot take forward to make our community safer two things very quickly if you're going to conduct active shooter training you know make that actually shooter training the skills they acquire transferable to any setting whether you're in a movie theater a public space a mall so that the content they receive in that active shooter training program in the workplace is sufficiently presented so that the employee understands what he or she could do when they're in an outside environment and number two recognize this that when you use that word termination rather than separation you already conveyed to that employee that's being terminated that they're a bad apple and so the you effectively convince that individual that whatever they do now becomes management's responsibility because they labeled me as a bad apple and know this along with that the nonsense of being able to recognize a warning signs and and behaviors are good up until if you want to marry it to the five stages up until stage three in the active shooter mindset after that they become as my good friend john bern says they internalize their intention so that nobody can identify either the day the hour or the moment when they're going to strike yeah very very true prevention program up front is important yeah so folks that said this is um this is um a topic where we all need to take time to be our brother's keeper please take some of the advice that uh Felix shared with us today with you and um be safe out there Felix thanks again hello hi everybody take care