#NotMe is the Future

Reviews are rolling in for the Up in Flames Podcast and we love hearing from our listeners! Thanks to all of you who take a moment to let me know what you love about the podcast. If you have any other feedback be sure to email me at abby@upinflames.org.

Today we are talking about the #metoo movement and how it doesn't speak to everyone. I have been taking a serious interest instead in the #NotMe discussion and realized it encompasses more of what I stand for and the folks I am trying to help.

Take a listen, download the #notme app, and let me know what you think of this new technology. Check out https://www.not-me.com/ and send your honest feedback to abby@upinflames.org. The masterminds behind the concept are improving it every day and we can have a true impact on how it serves those in need of a safe reporting tool in the workplace.

Go to AbbyBolt.com for more information on this and many other controversial subjects surrounding moral courage in the workplace and what it means to Lead with F.I.R.E.

Email me at abby@upinflames.org if you have an experience you would like to share or are in need of a resource. If I can't help, I will point you in the direction of someone who can.
 
 Do you believe in the mission of Up In Flames? My goal is to continue this podcast organically and have it sponsored by those it serves instead of corporate sponsors. Not to mention you will get early access to episodes and behind-the-scenes info no one else is seeing. Be a part of something great, become a Patron and support the podcast at patreon.com/upinflamespodcast

Visit AbbyBolt.com for the full story and background of UIF

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Implement your own Zero Tolerance standard, check out the #NotMe App.

Be sure to check out my other podcast Her Brotherhood, where we celebrate triumph over tragedy!

#NotMe #HardRightOverEasySilence #LeadWithFire #UpInFlames #HerBrotherhood 

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Transcript

Abby: 0:01

Hello again and welcome back to another episode of Up in Flames. I'm your host, but more importantly, your advocate Abby Bolt. It has been so exciting to see some of the reviews that have been putting in. Thank you so much for everyone who have gone to the podcast, wherever it is that they listen and left a review. It's greatly appreciated and it helps let me know that I'm moving forward in the right direction. On apple podcast Um, I got one that says,"This is an amazing podcast or the relevant issues that many people face in the workplace. Thank you zen times for taking the time to put that on there. Lester Kegster said,"So relevant right now I watch this more and more executive level individuals use the same tactics as family violence offenders and get away with it. Threats and coercion that are a mainstay of the manipulation used to keep employees in line. Fear of losing jobs as real and often there's no support at a fear of being included as a troublemaker. I've already shared this with my tribe and thank you." Thank you so much for taking the time to leave that. Be sure to check out AbbyBolt.com for everything that I'm up to and including the other podcast, Her Brotherhood, and email me at abby@upinflames.org If you're looking for resources or you're in need of some advice, title it"Help" and if I can't help y'all, point you somewhere who can and if you'd like to share your experience with me or what you've done as a bystander, what you've witnessed, I would love to hear that too at Abby@upinflames. org. Then I could talk about it on here a little bit. If it's relevant, don't worry, I'll never share your name, but people need to hear this situational awareness that's key to all this and the transparency in it, so let's stick together and do it. I received an email this morning titled"Help." It was all the way from down in Australia, which I was humbled to find out that it's going even outside of our country and it is making it internationally. That's awesome. The email says I'm a fire control officer in Australia. I just listened to episode six and couldn't believe how much of what you were saying resonated with me. Which episode six by the way, was about how a toxic work environment can kill people. It goes to say, I was curious as to what kind of strategies have been put forward to overcome the toxicity, see some accountability and a real cultural change. Thank you for sharing. I hope to play this episode with my teammates this week. Those are all great questions and concerns and really the mission that I'm on with Up in Flames. So I would like to hear from you guys if you could email me at abby@upinflames.org and what your ideas and solutions that have worked out on the fire ground or out in the field of a high risk job that was really encouraging some sort of toxic environment. Please email me and then I want to talk about that in the next episode. Throughout the Up in Flames journey. We're going to be interviewing professionals in these fields, mental health, corporate, leadership, all kinds of folks that can help us venture out throughout these. These situations that we deal with that really can get someone seriously hurt or killed. In this episode, I wanted to talk about#NotMe. Yeah, that's what I said.#NotMe, not#MeToo. Now#Metoo movement... It was epic and it's what really brought some of my staff to the surface and I appreciate its mission to no end. In fact, what I want to do here really quick is give you the Wikipedia version of the Me Too Movement. With a large variety of local and international alternative names is a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. The movement began to spread virally in October of 2017 hashtag on social media and attempt to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace. It followed sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. Tarana Burke an American social activist and community organizer began using the phrase Me Too, as early as 2006. And the phrase was later popularized by American actress Alyssa Milano on Twitter in 2017. Milano encouraged victims of sexual harassment to tweet about it and give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem, a number of high profile posts and responses from American celebrities Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Lawrence, and Uma Thurman among other soon followed. So I remember when the Me Too thing really started flying on social media. You know, at first I ignored it and then I started reading some of the stories and honestly I remember putting a post out to other women in fire and saying, you know, who else is afraid to put this hashtag on their, on their status because they don't want to be saddled with that identity. Scary to talk about that. Because Me Too was branded by women in Hollywood out against Weinstein. Which every story that I've heard has been extremely valid. There's no doubt about it, but it gave an immediate stigma that seemed to be leaving out some people who actually really needed help. I worked with a lot of folks who were dealing with harassment and discrimination and just a really unfair situation and it wasn't necessarily sexual harassment. And some of the things that tore my life down more than anything weren't the actual sexual assault pieces. It was the other pieces of adult administrative bullying that were really ripping me apart and I didn't really feel like it totally fit into the the Me Too movement. So whenever I would get associated with that, you know, I felt like, yeah, I'm in this Me Too box on this situation, but there are so many more layers to it that I don't think that people are really grasping with me too. I literally started feeling like, me too. That's not me. That's not a lot of people that I work with. Do a lot of our situations fall under the Me Too umbrella? Heck can they do, but in a lot of them, not me. From the beginning, ever since really I became a supervisor wanting to stand up for people that were being done wrong and then wanting to stand up for myself. It's not always sexual and with some of the men and women involved. There are ripples that come out from that and have nothing to do with that. Just sexual assault and I wanted folks to get to where it wasn't just reactionary where they were stepping up and pushing back before it got so bad to where they were stepping up and saying, no, Not Me. You are not going to do this to me before it turned into, yeah, me too. That happened to me too. Now it's not going to happen to me. You are not gonna mess with me, Not Me. I'm going to put a stop to this. In fact, you better realize that I'm going to put a stop to this. Not going to happen to me because you know you can't pull it on me and I'm talking about administrative bullying, the harassing that hazing on little stuff that people get away almost in a mob like mentality that I didn't really understand a lot about until it really started happening to me. And tell them, Me Too. It's not me. It is not going to happen me anymore. I'm not going to tolerate it. I'm not going to tolerate it as a victim. I'm not going to tolerate it as a bystander and everybody knows that. And I want him to know that about a lot of other people too. Men, women, bystanders, victims, complainant's, people that are being wrongfully accused. All of it, Not Me. So what do you want to be? Do you want to be someone that you can say that, yes, that happened to me... Or do you want to get out in front of it and say, No, Not Me. That is not going to happen to me because I'm going to put a stop who right now you can't pull that on me because I am going to report it. I am going to document it and you should be more worried about that then being worried about getting rid of me. She'd be more worried about your behavior and how an employee is going to stand up against you, not how they're gonna react on the backend. But how they going to stand up for themselves ahead of time. How they're going to stand up for their employees ahead of time for their peers, for their friends. Being a strong bystander, not tolerating it. Not me.#NotMe, not this girl, not that guy. My significant other isn't putting up with it. My sister's not putting up with it. People that I work with aren't tolerating it, not me. No. One of the most difficult things when you're actually trying to call this stuff out or tell someone that it's not okay or you're not going to tolerate it or something does happen and you need to report it. There is a lack of trust and integrity in reporting systems in every single employer that I've come across. Every one of them. You know, if it's, they really, some of them really do think they're doing the right thing. They think that the confidentiality is being proper, that their hotline works, that you know all the steps are putting in place to make higher ups feel like they're doing the right thing, whether it's the court system or congress. It's very hard get that kind of trust where employees actually feel comfortable reporting something. I didn't. I didn't feel comfortable and looking back, knowing what I know now, when I did report something, I still know that I shouldn't have reported my assault with the avenues that they had in place for me when it happened. Because they would've botched it. There's no doubt. I tried to use the formal complaint system in my agency for something that was much less than assault and they couldn't even handle that properly. They couldn't handle notes being left anonymously that were threatening properly. How are they going to handle an actual assault? Did you know that even after all the news media came out about me being assaulted? Not once in over a year when that came out in March of 18, no one from the entire federal agency I worked for all the way to the Washington level. No one reached out to me. No one reached out and said,"Wow, Abby, we heard what happened to you while you were out fighting fire on our behalf. Are you okay? Can we hear more about it so that we know what happened or like?" I really thought that someone would come out and be like,"Hey Abby, we need to get a report on this. We just heard that you said this happened, so let's get it straight. Let's get the facts." Even if it was just a callous way of collecting information, I expected something like that at least. Nope. I think they were glad that I hadn't officially reported it to anything but the police department because then they actually would have had to face it, but it showed me right there. They didn't actually care about me as an employee.

: 9:07

Not at all.

Abby: 9:08

They just looked at me like a liability and we're happy that they were going to have to deal with me. So people reach out to me on a daily basis. You know about things like that. They're not really sure how to call out the situations that are happening. They want to be able to report something or get something down on paper that will be official or even just soft documentations. They've got it for themselves later, but they're afraid. They don't trust the system. They don't trust the internal reporting systems that are there. So something came to my attention not long ago that felt like a clearing in the sky opened up and showed me an option to those feelings that I really wish would have been there for me years ago when I just wanted to reach out and report it, collect information, and then see what my options were without going official to my agency and starting up a whole storm. I felt like I got swept up in the whole Me Too movement with all the media and that. Then there was no looking back. It's just what I became identified with. When really I was standing for that but so much more. So many more people and the#NotMe really started to resonate with me. So it became totally clear though when I discovered an app titled#NotMe. An App. Yeah there's an App for that, believe it or not. And I pulled up the App right now I'm checking it out. Its tagline is making workplaces safe and they're all about reporting in entire reporting App. That's helps guide you through collecting the information and the information goes through and then not mean team looks at it and it gets back to you to let you know what your situation looks like and what your options are. No matter who you work for, they're there to help you. So it says on here the#NotMe is the first app to offer a truly transparent, safe and simple way to report workplace misconduct.#NotMe is empowering employees and management to stand together to end harassment, discrimination and bullying for good. Then how it works is you take action, you report. So you download the App and you start collecting your information in there. It helps you know what kind of information to collect, what is going to be to needed to collect, to really see if you do have a true issue or not. At least you have it collected there and you can see like what are my valid concerns. You fill out your report by answering the Not Me questions- what, where, when and who. You're in control. Use push submit on the report. When you're ready, you can collect all the information. You don't have to submit it. You can keep track of your answers in the Not Me journal and report it whenever you're ready. And then once your report is received, there are team members there who will be in touch with you. Did you know that 75% of individuals or three out of four who experienced harassment never actually reported? And that comes from the EOC. 70% of the victims who do report experienced some sort of retaliation from their employers. That also comes from the EOC 70%. Here's the solution this App is offering and I have been testing out the App because I won't talk about anything that I don't believe in. Not a chance. I've been testing it out to see if it's something that I can trust to pass on and the people reaching out to me looking for options. The solutions they offer, Not Me, begins a new era for company culture. Not Me as the first technology in it's class to encourage both management and employees to be fully accountable. Not Me makes having a difficult conversation easier. Not me bridges the gap between management and employees. Ending workplace harassment bias and bullying and transforming company culture for the better. Own your voice without fear of retaliation. Harassment training alone does not solve the problem of workplace misconduct.#NotMe and the App that helps you out. Does. It does have the possibility of helping us towards that. Not me service can be customized to suit to help any employee out there. So now my challenge to you is this. I want you to check out the Not Me App. Just find it in our show notes or put it in your search bar and not-me.com download the APP and if you've got something to report as a victim or a bystander, give it a spin. Draw a report in there. You can even do it anonymously. Yes, you can do the report anonymously that we've got the information. If you ever need to pull from it for any official reason, it will be there for you. But I love it. Even if you don't do the report, check out the App. See if it's something you might want to pass on to someone else because I really want some feedback from this to see if this is a great tool. I need to know from you guys how you feel about it. Is this a great tool? What are some holes in it? Then we need to talk about it and if someone is going to be pushing this as something that can help people. Let's make sure that they're doing it right. Let's do it together. Put in, Not Me App and download it and see what you think. I want... I want your ideas and your thoughts because I am curious because I have a lot of questions too and I've actually been talking about the people behind it to, you know, I'm asking them the hard questions like what about confidentiality? Well, who's going to have control of this? Well, what about a company that does use your technology? Not just so right now it's just like an individualized outside technology. Like the App is there to collect information and then there's a team to help you figure out what your options are. But we're also skeptical, right? All of us. I'm like the biggest skeptic out there, but then I also do get all excited about a situation and someone that says they're going to help me and, and I jump on that train because it feels like someone's out there to do good. Which this App is. The developers are the people behind it really are. I've really been digging into it and seeing if they're in the right place. But now I want you to as well because I need your feedback. So if you guys can please check out the App, check out the information on it, email me at abbyupinflames.org. Title it, Not Me. So that I know that's what you're talking about. Hit me with all your questions about that. I want to talk about them. Let's figure it out. Is this maybe an outside compromise to reporting that we can look at? Um, but yeah, hit me with all your questions and you're skeptical questions. I want to hear the hard questions. Because maybe I've already gotten the answer because I've been, I've been really nailing down hard to find out from these people like, okay, are you really there to make things better or are you really there to help the employees? Because if you know me, I uh, I call it like it is because not me,#NotMe. This is not, this crap is not going to happen to me again. I'm not going to tolerate it now. I feel the strength. I have the ability and the knowhow and this, the courage to stand up and stick up for myself and stick up for anybody else that I possibly can. So do that for me. Please go check out the Not Me app. Take a look, email me back. Let me know what you think, AbbyUpinFlames.org. I want to talk about it more and that's all I got for today. Thank you so much for being a part of this. It's really been an honor. It has been this time with you. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you can hear any future episodes and it would mean so much to me if you left a review and let us know what you really think about it. Don't forget to email me at Abby@UpInFlames.org if you have any questions or you need assistance. And remember, only to choose the hard right over easy silence.