Anti Bullying | How to Stop a Bully | Bullying | From Bystander to Upstander | Episode 102

Anti Bullying | How to Stop a Bully | Bullying | From Bystander to Upstander | Episode 102 
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Have you ever felt powerless against the invisible monster of workplace bullying? Today, we sit down with Jessica Hickman, founder of Bullyology and author of "The Upstander Leader" and "The Bullyologist: Breaking the Science on Bullying," to confront this monster head-on. Hailing from Orange, New South Wales, Australia, Jessica has turned her three-year battle with workplace bullying into a global mission to encourage leaders to foster a speak-up culture and combat bullying. Her powerful story brings to life the damaging effects of the bystander effect and workplace violence.

Join us as we walk through the labyrinth of workplace bullying, exploring its various forms and the physical and mental health impacts it can have. Jessica emphasizes the importance of self-preservation and education, providing strategies for self-protection in a hostile workplace. She takes us through her insightful five L's strategy, teaching us how to transform from being a silent bystander to a proactive upstander. From discussing proactive conversations in organizations to highlighting the need for sustainable change, this episode is a must-listen for anyone facing adversity in their workplace.

We also journey with Jessica as she shares her experience of discovering her purpose and passion, and turning it into a successful business. She underscores the importance of understanding your worth and setting boundaries to protect yourself from unnecessary suffering. We delve into the long-term process of building a purpose-driven career and navigating change. As we wrap up the episode, we highlight the power of diverse voices in creating meaningful change. Jessica's story is a testament to the strength and resilience of individuals in the face of adversity and a call to action for everyone to speak up and be heard.

#workplacebullying #speakupculture #podcast #upstander #bullyologist #workplaceculture #stopbullying #antibullying #bullying #Japan #Tokyo #Osaka #Singapore #Malaysia #Australia #Sydney #Melbourne #Brisbane #KualaLumpur

Transcript

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 0:01

Welcome to the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. If you can do us a favor, please click like, share, subscribe, pass along this great content to friends, family, your network. We are trying to reach and help 3 billion people and, again, all those things we don't have to pay for. So we just tap the button and we'll be in great shape. So, again, this is the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. We are a 501C3 non-profit charity organization. You can find all the information about our organization, what we do, how we help, by visiting voicesforvoices. org Today, in this episode, we are going to be joined by a guest who resides on the other side of the world.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 0:59

She is from Orange, New South Wales, Australia. She is the founder of Bullyology, a workplace consultant, speaker, an educator, coach and author. There's really nothing in the helping space that she hasn't touched. You've heard me talk about my dream and how those dreams have been made possible through a supportive culture with my mom and my dad at home in an earlier episode. So dreaming and having a vision is important. Our guest, her dream and vision, is that organizations are prioritizing employee well-being, that education and awareness are affordable and accessible both affordable and accessible. People at work are taking ownership of their personal and mental well-being. Workplace bullying is in decline and then, lastly, employers are empowered to be upstanders rather than harmful bystanders.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 2:13

So in our conversation that you're gonna, you're gonna see our guest, Jessica Hickman. The upstander leader is gonna talk about her being a victim of workplace workforce bullying over a three-year period. That happened when she saw firsthand what the bystander effect is and how that was implemented. Unfortunately, in her position. One of her books, the first book, the upstander leader is available to encourage leaders to help speak up and be part of that speak up culture instead of that bystander culture of we might see something happening. We don't want to be involved, we're just gonna continue moving on. So Jessica is gonna touch on all those aspects. You can find out more about our guest, jessica Hickman, at jesshickmancom, j-e-s-s-h-i-c-k-m-a-ncom, and also at bullyologycom. So, like psychology, a bullyology, that ology and that, and that can be spelled B-U-L-L-Y, o-l-o-g-ycom. You'll be able to find her first book, the upstander leader how to develop a speak up culture, and then her second book that's also available on paperback, as well as the, the eversion, that's titled the Bullyologist Breaking the Science on Bullying.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 4:01

So we want to invite you to take a take a seat and watch our conversation with Jessica, who speaks not only on her experience in Australia, but also across the world, where organizations and individuals are seeking out her help and her expertise. So much so that she was able to found the upstander leader Academy. So we'll take you to the conversation. Thank you again for joining this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. On our episode today, we are excited to have our guest joining us from Orange, New South Wales, Australia. Her name is Jessica Hickman, and so she's going to be going through her, her story, her experiences and how she has been called to to help others regarding bullyology, what that is, what that means among how that, how that came about. So thanks for joining us today, Jessica.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 5:15

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 5:18

Yeah, it's awesome to get your perspective, because sometimes people think that a certain workplace or mental health issues only affect people in a certain country, a certain area of the world, and what I'm learning is that's not the case. So can you maybe go into your, your experience, your story and what what you're calling is and how you're helping people?

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 5:52

Yeah, great.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 5:53

So look, I didn't start a business because I just woke up one day and thought, oh, I'm gonna start a business called bullyology and specializing anti-bullying solutions. Like many people in the space of mental health, workplace culture, bullying, harassment often it stems from a personal experience or lived experience. So, as you can probably tell by my accent, although I live in Australia, I'm actually from the UK and from Wales, and I came to Australia in 2013. I was just 23 years old, backpacking and came for a three month career break and I was very fortunate to be offered a role to stay in Australia. So, as you can imagine, this was an amazing opportunity for a young girl to carve out her career, start a new life and obviously, as many people around the world know, Australia is beautiful Beaches, scenery, culture, fantastic. So I was offered a job working in the construction industry on a large oil and gas project. So, as you can imagine, this was very male dominated, which wasn't intimidating for me because my background in the UK was I was working as a manager for a construction company, I worked in councils, I did various roles where I worked in male dominated industries and you know my family have got a construction business, so this wasn't foreign to me.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 7:21

But in that role I quickly identified that there was a real issue with mental health in Australia, particularly workers. There's the fly-in, fly-out industries where workers were living away from home for four weeks, six weeks, you know, or even longer, away from friends and family and you know their kids, and that comes with a lot of social issues. People were isolated in camps, experiencing a lot of mental health. There was a lot of stigma around mental health, which often happens in male dominated industries. People feel they can't speak up and ask for help. So I decided to use my experience from in the UK. I work for local council and I'm a use worker, so I trained in anti-bullying, harassment, mental health and realised that I needed to bring the nurturing environment into the current workplace.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 8:18

So, look, I became quite successful, as in I was developing culture programs, people were starting to feel confident and safe to speak up and things were going great. I was winning awards, I was in front of the Northern Territory ministers, northern Territory Young Achiever of the Year. So, look, on paper, things were great and people were trusting me and asking for help and I was able to signpost them to get that mental health support. But things went all hanky-goory behind the scenes.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 8:49

Unfortunately, six months in I had a new manager who was a serial bully and had very different values to myself. So I'm kind, empathetic, I want people to feel safe and natured to speak up and he had a very different let's say I don't know if it's a leadership or just style of human behavior where he was very narcissistic and kind, threatening and believed that anyone experienced whether it was physical, emotional or mental health concerns was a risk to the business. So our values clashed and ultimately he was my boss, my manager. So I then became his target of bullying and harassment and that was really hard to pinpoint and understand at the time and that was really what then started the journey of suffering bullying.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 9:49

Yeah, and I'm glad you went in such a detail, because what you were experiencing and doing a little research prior to us talking your bullying was a little bit more public, more out in the open per se, Whereas sometimes it might not be.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 10:12

And can you maybe just talk about how just that aspect so look like anything, bullying is often really hard to understand and the definition of bullying and there's many across the world. But bullying is repeated, intentional health harm and behavior and the person has intent to humiliate, harm, cause emotional, physical or psychological hurt to another. So if we look at repeated and intentional, that is often really interesting. Because what my bully started to do was attack my character subtly so accused me of not competently doing my work, undermining me in meetings, sniggering and laughing when I spoke in public to even starting rumors that I was having interpersonal relationships with clients or colleagues, and in his mind he didn't understand how a female could be so successful in a man's world. So it was really interesting. There was a lot of harassment-based comments, attacks on my gender, telling me women should be seen and not heard and women are good for one thing. But he would really try to pass this off as banter would laugh after it and this became the social norm.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 11:33

So what happened over time was the bullying actually escalated and to the point where one day he physically threw a folder. It hit me in the face. He would shout and swear and slam doors. The more successful I became, the more I won awards, the more people would come to me, the more it would anger him. And what was interesting in my story was that I actually reported this 32 times. I documented it, which I would advise to anyone experiencing bullying, harassment or racism or toxic behavior to document it Fact, also the feeling, but also any witnesses that were present, also who you reported it to. And what I started to see then was a repeat pattern where it escalated from subtle threats about my job or competency to more attacks on my character, my appearance, and his intent was to break me down, to make me feel incompetent, insecure, which, before a period of time, started to really impact my physical, mental and emotional health.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 12:44

Wow, it's just incredible the lengths that some people go to. I deciphered comes a master of Hong Kong academic. I know how some of the workplace numbers go as far as. Oh well, you'll be anonymous if you report this, and so sometimes culture is big on. Yeah, we're doing something about it. We have this number out here. You can call text, email, whatever it may be, but then at the end of the day nothing's done about it and I think that could be a problem Were you encountering that Sounds like it was escalating almost each time that you were.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 13:27

Absolutely. And look, I probably give a lot of different advice. And I stayed with my organization and workplace three years too long. I should have left after it happened for a couple of months and gone one minute. This isn't okay.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 13:42

After I reported it a few times, got told to toughen up. It was the industry oh, it will stop, we'll move you seat. They even had to move him to another state which was four hours on a flight, and he still managed to hack my emails, micromanage and then start to slowly come back into the office, which it took me, collapsing at work and ending up in a hospital bed from burnout, stress, fatigue and overwhelm for me to actually understand the weight of a toxic culture. So I, like I mentioned, I documented it and diuried what was happening and I had some mental health symptoms early on, sleepless nights, vomiting before work, later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and I would put on a brave face every day, come to work. But my body was heightened, I was stressed, it was that fight, flight or even freeze, and at different periods of time I had all of those symptoms and what I would do is come home from work physically and mentally and emotionally burned out that I would have to sleep all weekend, or sometimes I would drink a bottle of wine just to numb the pain. So there's all these symptoms and signs that not a lot of people spoke about, and I reported it time and time again and actually begged for help, and I was actually on a visa, so it wasn't as easy for me to simply walk away and tell the company to stick it. I was. I loved the job I was doing, I was helping people and also just started a new life, was in a new relationship, living in a beautiful home, and I in my mind was like I will not let you push me out of a company for doing a good job, let alone a country. But the psychological, emotional and physical issues stacked up until I burned out in class.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 15:37

So, to answer your question, Justin, I often say to people if the company doesn't value, you, try to walk away. Because I see time and time again People stay in jobs with false promises and they end up being so damaged whether it's post-traumatic stress disorder or physically burnt out, confidence shattered that they then are unable to return to work again. So if I could go back and tell my younger self I would say run, but I'm so proud of myself for sustaining that and doing the work I do, and it's a bit crazy. But I also say would I change anything? Probably not, because that allowed me to have a deeper perspective.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 16:25

And it was laying in that hospital bed that I thought right, I'm gonna use this experience as a gift because it was the only option to learn about bullying and harassment and see how I can actually create sustainable change by educating people at the root or proactive conversations so people don't have to end up in the reactive in a hospital bed like myself. Or the other side of the coin is business leaders not understanding what to do about bullying, ending up hurting people unintentionally or damaging reputation or business success. And I realized that a lot of people my colleagues who turned a blind eye looked the other way. They're not bad people. We just didn't have the skills, tools, competence, the competency and training to know how to get help, and for me that was outside of the organization that was leaving, learning and getting psychological help to overcome it. And sometimes it could be going like in Australia, the Fair Work Commission or WorkSafe and looking in your local area and sometimes it's free legal advice, which I also got To understand.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 17:37

What are my options and how can I leave and protect myself if they're not valuing me? Because I think what we forget in this day and age is employment is an equal game, right? So if people aren't valuing you, you actually have the opportunity to leave, but I know that's not as easy as just going. Yeah, leave, because people have families and livelihoods and like in the economy we're in now. It's really hard just to say leave, but slowly start to think about options and for change if it, because ultimately, if you're so damaged, you can never return to work. That's actually counterproductive as well. So it's really hard. There's not a one solution, which is why bullying and harassment is so prevalent and such an issue across the world, because it's so difficult to identify and know what to do.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 18:29

Often yeah, and there's so many forms of it too. If you imagine it's more complex, it's not something that is easily to identify. I think in the general public they might think it is like oh okay, I know what bullying is, but until I think they've gone through it, they may find that there are different ways of being bullied and it's not always the one size fits all. And I think that's what's important for you, as you're sharing, is to talk about all those different areas. It wasn't just the words, it was physically throwing something, it was basically virtual.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 19:19

Yeah, and look what we're seeing now work from home post pandemic world is the fact that there's those micromanaging via email, publicly humiliating people via Zoom, excluding people from team meetings, publicly berating people and sometimes they can feel really subtle, but if they are ongoing and repeated it can be perceived as bullying. And then we look at sexual harassment Me Too and even Black Lives Matter the racism and injustice and what I realized throughout my work was we have a lot of complexities around issues and rather than me just accept that that was the status quo in my new book, I decided to establish a way forward, and that was often identifying some of the issues but actually being proactive to create change, to have the hard conversations, to bring these up before they become reactive and ultimately create what I call the ups and the movement. And that starts with education, not just awareness, but ultimately showing people a roadmap how to be proactive rather than reactive.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 20:37

And I think that's so important that you're finding and you've found strategies and ways to be proactive, to put yourself first, to make sure that you know being healthy, because if you go to work and you're not healthy yourself, then that's and that self is not not healthy.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 21:00

But then the lifespan then starts to come, a question of okay, as enough of these unfortunate negative bullying circumstances experiences come up over time. They they take aware and honestly, it's not just the mental side, it's physically as well, and I I I understand in a way, earlier in my career I had gone through what now, as we're talking, what I guess I would now classify form of bullying, and I would come home and I would sleep, go to sleep early and I would wake up just a mess and then, like said, on the weekends, sometimes it was just trying to regroup and feel like I had enough energy and I couldn't get on top of it and to know that being proactive, of saying okay, being with the job market being how it is at any given time, but there are things to start putting yourself first. Can you talk, maybe, about maybe a couple of the highlights that we haven't talked about yet, that in in your book and in your academy that people could.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 22:14

Yeah, sure.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 22:15

Yeah, sure.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 22:17

Look, this is quite you know to go quite deep. I just want to establish what you've mentioned there, because bullying impacts not just your happiness at work but your relationships, your your self, worth your self, love, how you have, you know, relationships with your kids or your partner or your family, because you know you're really suffering. And I, I would say I was going to say I like to make the connection to domestic violence, but that's the wrong word. I need to make the connection to domestic violence because ultimately, justin, if someone comes to you and shares I'm experiencing domestic or family violence at home, we ultimately as a society tend to go right. We call the police, we go to support services, we refer the person onto psychological support, emotional support, family support, but ultimately, at the core, we understand that that is a long journey to recovery. But when we think about workplace violence, bullying, harassment, racism, discrimination, and you know the list goes on we tell the person to move seat, toughen up, miss the industry or just get another job, you know, suck it up or just ignore them, but ultimately we spend as a match time, if not more of our lives at home than we do at home. So to tell people just to get on with. It is actually counterproductive and doesn't work. So what I'm trying to do is really highlight the fact that workplace violence is so detrimental that it can actually damage people long term.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 23:53

The scars are invisible and they take a long time to heal if they ever do heal. So when I share a keynote or a workshop, the common question I always always get asked is when will I heal? You look great. How do I get from A to B? And the answer to that is it's still a journey for me. Sometimes when I share a keynote, I can break out in a rash on my neck because the body remembers the trauma and you know the scars are invisible and sometimes you can have dreams at night or you know people have a lot of different symptoms, or they hear the person's name and they go into a hyper state, feel aroused, you know mentally, physically or faint or pass out. So it's interesting that we actually need to identify that so we know what the problem is.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 24:42

But what I couldn't understand or work out or first, okay, what is the solution? And I looked at my colleagues at work place and would feel really upset and angered and different emotions around. How could they allow me to be publicly berated. How could other managers just turn a blind eye to when he was sniggering under his breath or calling me names or, you know, belittling me or attacking my competency or appearance? And I realized there's this issue globally with something called the bystander effect, and it actually came about from a young lady called Kitty Genovese that got brutally attacked in New York City. So I'll encourage anyone listening to this to look into Kitty's story because we don't have time to go into the detail.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 25:26

But really, from that, scientists realized that people actually stand by and come bystanders and witness something or hear something quite horrific when this woman was attacked and murdered and they wanted to understand why and what they really established from the bystander effect theory was, as human beings, our natural instinct and you know, desire is when things are tough or challenging, we tend to go, diffuse responsibility or, you know, go not my issue, not my problem, particularly in organizations when we look at the highest paid person in the room. So if the CEO is the bully, that's the culture we keep or if a colleague makes a sexual remark or a racist remark, we tend to look at the highest paid person. What happens if they laugh at the joke or they pretend they don't hear it or say things like minded, are you to just stop moving on and just dismiss the weight of that comment or the hurt or pain. That's a cultural norm. So I realized the bystander effect was actually, you know, the pandemic or the issue within my organization and good people became bystanders because they didn't know what to do, or it became the cultural norm.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 26:46

So in my work I like to shift the pendulum and I thought about the concept of the theory and I call it the upstander effect. What happens if we're proactive and train people about what to do at the source of these comments, how to challenge them, how to report them, how to let people know they're not okay, how does the upstander effect shift culture? So I created a methodology which is in my book and I realized that, okay, in a movement era of you know, me Too Black Lives Matter in Australia we've got something called the March for Justice and you know racism, sexism and all of the things that people are experiencing what about if we train people to be upstanders, how can we create sustainable change? And I came up with what I call my five L's, which are my five L's to being an upstander, which are look, listen, learn, lead and love, which is a whole other one about how we can train people to be proactive and create change. And ultimately, you know, I've worked across the world in organizations and industries from prisons and really male dominated industries and started to create space for people to stop, pause and think. And one of the common things you know just in that really resonates with a lot of people is you know, I said recently at a workshop in a prison so have you got any family, daughters, wives, and yep, I got three daughters and a wife.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 28:20

I said, okay, cool, and you just give me that example of what is actually banter. But how would you feel if someone said that to your daughter? So you can imagine the emotional response. It was fist clenched down in the table and he goes well, no, I would. You know.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 28:35

I'm not going to repeat what he said and I said well, what makes that acceptable for you to say to your colleague as a female in the workplace? And then he stopped and you can just see the light coming on. But no one has stopped to have these proactive conversations in many organizations and industries which ultimately cause sustainable damage to lives and livelihoods. So look, there's so much I could unpack, but in a nutshell, I'm trying to train people to go from bystander to upstander, because not everyone is a bully, even though the statistics globally say you know, a lot of people would experience bullying.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 29:12

In Australia in particular, almost half of our population will experience bullying at least once in their working lives or lives. So you know that's every second person. So if it's not you experiencing it, it's your son, your daughter, your wife. You know you and someone you can love about your neighbor. And we don't tend to have these conversations until someone's suffering and we just don't know what to do. So I'm trying to be proactive and create space so people have the full toolkit, so they know what to do. Just like domestic violence, we have a structure in place to save lives Wow.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 29:52

So how does it make you feel now with what the work that you're doing, versus if you're taking the bullying part out of your previous employment? That might have been I know for myself earlier in my career titles and how much I was being paid. That mattered more to me, versus now tapping into more that empathetic and emotional side of. Okay it might take a while for money for certain areas to come in and it might be a lot of work up front, but it makes me feel really good and I'm actually happier now than when I was before, and that's crazy. I'm wondering if you can make that before and after. Yeah, look.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 30:39

So my mission statement is to build a generation of upstanders. One person, one voice and one action at a time. And ultimately, at my core, I want to end unnecessary human and workplace suffering. So when I wake up every day and I step out of bed and I've just had a little baby and people are saying, oh, you're still busy, you're doing this and that, and I say, if you find a passion or a purpose, you've never worked a day in your life. So to me it doesn't feel like I'm going to work and writing my books and running workshops and talks, because my purpose and passion is bigger than myself.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 31:21

And again, a great question, because I'm six years into my business now my brand is booming, business is booming, I'm earning great money but, more important to that, I never go and say that was the reason why. Because, like anything when you build a business and first three years of business I think globally the stats are like people fail and I never set out on this path to create a business. I fell into business by sharing my message and again still learning every day about how to navigate that change. But, like you mentioned that, the first couple of years of business was building my message, building my brand and doing a lot of charity stuff, which I still do for free, and going into schools and community groups.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 32:10

But ultimately there comes a time when I think it's important to know your work as well, where people want you because you've created something extraordinary and you have something to give to them.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 32:23

And I always say to people you don't have to do it for free, because what you're giving is value to them. It's not going to be to an organization or a community, so value yourself equally. And I think that that was a turning point in my success, because people will pay for what you have to say and your methodology or ideas, because ultimately it costs or it saves them in compensation claims or business downturn or people psychologically, emotionally or physically harmed and reputation being damaged. So I'm quite confident to say now this is my cost and if you want me in your organization, I'm happy to do so. And it's really interesting just in that people said that wanted something for free a few years ago. Now I've found the money because they know the success to get you back in. So I always say it's never a no, it's a not right now. It's not the person that they need right now, but if it's right it'll come back.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 33:30

Oh my gosh, that is so amazing how you summed that up. I mean the voices for voices in the first 12 months of being established and all those types of things. On the legal side. I was doing things up until that as well, but I wasn't with the brand and when I would go out to events and when I go I wouldn't. I just wasn't all together. I was just doing bits and pieces. But in the last year, when I started to really hone in and focus and really the show that we're on today I say like is by a happen stance.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 34:16

I was being interviewed at the station for another program and the conversation, another program and the conversation came up about you know what else, what else gets, you know that gets filmed and produced here, and if it wasn't, if I wasn't in that position at that time, I wouldn't have found out about the opportunity. And but I know exactly you're talking about of you start, you do things and you start building the name, building the brand, and then it comes to the point where it's like okay, here's my body of work. You know the first, when I first started, I didn't have much. I had a lot of ideas and things I could talk about, but now it's okay. Well, here's some things that we've done and we're continuing to do and, like you mentioned, it's interesting how money tends to come out at times where, in the past, I think it's just a shame that it takes that, because I guess everybody would be doing it.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 35:16

Absolutely. And look when your purpose, a purpose is a long game. And you know I'm not doing this, the work I do, which is often you know I can walk away from an organization and I'm sure you do as well where you know you hear people's lived experience day in, day out, day in, day out. So you know I never got into this, you know, for money, opportunity, but obviously you need to live and you need to live a beautiful life. And yeah, it's about setting boundaries and that goes for people in the organizations, bullies. You know it's boundaries and worth and understanding your worth and your purpose.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 35:52

And so, yeah, if anyone is listening and looking, you know for me it's playing the long game and I know that I'll be doing this work, you know, until I probably pass over at the end of time. But yeah, I feel like it's my sole work and purpose and sometimes it's unfortunate that we have to face adversity to change direction, but it's about having that perspective and looking back at you know what at the time felt extremely painful and I could not see light at the end of the tunnel. But understanding, like light is always at the end of the tunnel, and building your toolkit and leaning on resources, getting mental health, psychological support, leaning on your support network and, ultimately, understanding that the light will always come, even though it feels really dark at times.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 36:43

Oh, that's lovely To close out. We're about out of time. How can people learn more about you? Find out about your book, your academy?

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 36:54

Yeah, great, thank you. So, look, if anyone listening to this wants to get in touch or follow my work, you can search. My website is jesshickman. com, and also bullyolog. com. My new book this side is called the Stand the Leader how to Develop a Speakup Culture. So, look, you can buy that on Amazon any good bookstore you know in the US or around the world and ultimately search my name, Jessica Hickman or Upstander, and you'll be able to find me and from there then, if anyone's interested in taking my online course, which I've recently launched, to learn how to be an Upstander in your workplace or community, is Upstander Academy, or you can go buy at my jesshickman. com website. And, yeah, this is my second book. The first book is called the Bullyologist Breaking the Silence on Bullying, which tells my story in more detail and talks about school bullying and all of the things. And then my second book then is how to Be an Upstander and Create Change.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 37:56

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, the great work that you have done and the fact that it's a calling. There's much more to come for you and wish you continued success. Yes.

Jessica Hickman, The Upstander: 38:10

Watch this space. There's way more to come. Thanks, Justin.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 38:14

You're welcome.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 38:16

I hope you found that conversation to be helpful, eye-opening, empowering, inspiring, feeling all those emotions as you watched or listened to it.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 38:30

And so that's one of the things that we aim to do is bring guests, not only on a local basis, but, if we're able to secure guests for our TV show and podcast across the world.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 38:44

We want to bring those perspectives to you because we feel that their voices are just as important as ours and we want to help as many people as possible. So if we're closed-minded and only thinking about one certain area, that we might not be doing the best that we can. So by bringing guests like Jessica to you on the television through your iPads, your MacBooks, through your earbuds, on the subway or the train or on your commute to and from work or on a family vacation. So we hope you enjoyed this episode, the Voices for Voices TV Show and podcast. Again, you can find out more about Voices for Voices at VoicesforVoices. org and please like, share, reshare our show and podcast so we can reach as many people out there that could benefit from this. So until next time again, I'm Justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, and we hope sincerely that you have a great day and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.