Mobbing and bullying · Civility · Dignity and respect
Gail Pursell
Elliott
The Dignity and Respect LadyThere is a name for what is happening to your people. See it, stop it, prevent it.
Gail co-wrote the first book on workplace mobbing published in the United States. She travels nationally teaching organizations to recognize the ganging-up behavior behind their turnover, absenteeism, and quiet loss of good people, and to build workplaces where dignity and respect are the standard rather than the poster.
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Mobbing: Risk Management Double Whammy
Her signature session on the ganging-up behavior most organizations have never named, and what it costs them.
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- Audience
- HR, risk management, supervisors, and whole-staff groups
- Settings
- Workplaces for profit and not-for-profit, schools, association conferences
- Known for
- Workplace and school mobbing and bullying, and the dignity and respect work around it
- Based in
- Iowa, travels nationally
- Delivers
- Conference keynote, staff training, supervisory training
- Custom
- Designs sessions on request for specific needs and timely issues
Your selections travel into the copied brief, so your committee sees Gail against your event, not a generic listing.
Quick answers
Quick Answers for Event Planners
What topics does Gail Pursell Elliott speak about?
Gail Pursell Elliott speaks on workplace and school mobbing and bullying, which is her signature subject, and on the dignity and respect themes that run through all her work: civility and ethics, building and repairing trust, managing change, reward and recognition, and new supervisor development.
What is workplace mobbing, and how is it different from bullying?
Mobbing is when one or more individuals gang up to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, discrediting, and humiliation, while wrongly portraying the target as being at fault. Bullying typically involves one aggressor. Mobbing involves a group, which is what makes it harder to see and harder to stop. It has been legally described as status-blind harassment, so it puts everyone at risk regardless of protected class.
Who is Gail Pursell Elliott best suited to speak for?
Gail Pursell Elliott is best suited for human resources and risk management teams, supervisors and newly promoted leaders, and whole-staff audiences at organizations dealing with turnover, low morale, or absenteeism. She also works with schools and educators, and speaks at association conferences.
What types of events does Gail Pursell Elliott speak at?
She is a featured speaker at conferences and travels nationally to conduct staff and supervisory training for both profit and not-for-profit organizations. She designs sessions on request to address specific needs and timely issues, so a program can be built around what your organization is actually facing.
Where is Gail Pursell Elliott based, and will she travel?
Gail Pursell Elliott is based in Iowa, where she founded Innovations, Training With a Can-Do Attitude, in 1998. She travels nationally for speaking and training engagements.
What outcomes can Gail Pursell Elliott's audience expect?
Her approach to emotional abuse at work and in schools is see it, stop it, prevent it. Audiences leave able to recognize mobbing behavior they had no name for, understand the cost it carries in turnover, morale, productivity, and compensation claims, and act from the premise that all people have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, no exceptions.
Has Gail Pursell Elliott written a book?
Yes, six. Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, published in 1999 and the first book on the subject to appear in the United States, then School Mobbing and Emotional Abuse in 2003, the Food for Thought Anthology, The Decider, The Trust Book, and Be True to You.
What are Gail Pursell Elliott's program titles?
Her programs include Mobbing: Risk Management Double Whammy, The Power of Dignity and Respect, Civility and Ethics, Respectful Work Environment, Surface and Substance in Times of Change, Reward and Recognition on a Limited Budget, and Supervision: People vs Things. Others include Similarity Training, The Power of Significance, Personal Heroes, Eye of the Hurricane, Mastering Change, and one on one professional development.
What are Gail Pursell Elliott's credentials and media experience?
She is a Penn State graduate with post-graduate education certificate work at the University of South Florida, a Nationally Certified Trainer in Communication and Behavior Management, and a member of American Mensa. She co-authored Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, the first book on the subject published in the United States, and has appeared on MSNBC's Deborah Norville Tonight, ABC World News Now, and Workplace Violence Today.
How do I book Gail Pursell Elliott as a speaker?
You can reach Gail Pursell Elliott by phone at 515-231-8828, or through her website at innovations-training.com. Her profile is listed in the Charli Jane Speakers Directory.
Keynotes and training
Take care of the substance and the surface takes care of itself.
Soft skills and human relations, all of it running back to one premise: all people want and have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, no exceptions. Every program can be tailored to your organization.
Mobbing: Risk Management Double Whammy
Signature program · See it, stop it, prevent it
Mobbing: Risk Management Double Whammy
Signature program · See it, stop it, prevent itThe term may be new to you, but you will recognize the behavior immediately. One or more individuals gang up to force someone out through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, discrediting, and humiliation, and portray the target as the one at fault. Mobbing damages people, destroys teamwork and trust, contributes to violence, and leaves organizations open to costly compensation claims. It is status-blind, which means it puts everyone at risk. Awareness is the key to prevention.
- Put a name to behavior your organization has been absorbing without one.
- Recognize the five categories of observable mobbing behavior.
- Understand the risk management and compensation exposure it creates.
The Power of Dignity and Respect
Keynote · Insight, awareness, personal power
The Power of Dignity and Respect
Keynote · Insight, awareness, personal powerMost people agree they want to be treated with dignity and respect. Ask them to define the terms and the answers scatter. Gail's argument is that it is a process starting inside each person, in how we speak to ourselves, label ourselves, and see ourselves. That becomes our reality, and our reality becomes the basis of how we treat everyone else. We have the power to make a day joyous or miserable, for ourselves and for others.
- Build self esteem and personal dignity as the foundation, not the afterthought.
- See why how you treat yourself sets the ceiling for how you treat others.
- Understand the concrete benefit of respect rather than the slogan version.
Civility and Ethics
Workplace program
Civility and Ethics
Workplace programCivility and ethical expectations sit close together, and each is an indicator of the other. Not addressing incivility and disrespectful behavior at work is risky business. Creating a safe environment here is like every other safety issue: it takes organizational commitment, structural and procedural assessment, and real safeguards in the form of education, monitoring, and intervention.
- Treat incivility as a risk to be assessed, not a mood to be tolerated.
- Connect conduct standards to your existing ethical expectations.
- Identify where education, monitoring, and intervention need to sit.
Respectful Work Environment: Establishing Trust
Employee relations program
Respectful Work Environment: Establishing Trust
Employee relations programTrust is like a fine crystal goblet. If it is damaged and you try to repair it, it will be weak and the cracks will show. You have to start over. Whether you are rebuilding trust or establishing it in a new situation, there are guidelines that do exactly that. Where trust exists, the doors open to effective communication and people have the inner freedom to motivate themselves and keep growing.
- Stop patching damaged trust and learn what rebuilding actually requires.
- Set the conditions for communication people will use honestly.
- Link trust directly to self motivation and retention.
Surface and Substance in Times of Change
Employee relations program
Surface and Substance in Times of Change
Employee relations programChange treated as a concept to be learned and mastered, rather than a disruption to be endured, changes what a transition costs a workforce. As Gail puts it, we cannot change anything but our own perspective and response, and yet in that changing we change the world around us by becoming an instrument of insight and awareness.
- Reframe change as a skill the team builds rather than weather it survives.
- Separate the surface noise of a transition from what actually matters.
- Give people back a sense of choice inside a situation they did not pick.
Reward and Recognition on a Limited Budget
Professional development · Surface vs substance
Reward and Recognition on a Limited Budget
Professional development · Surface vs substanceHow can handing someone a banana be more meaningful than a trip to the islands? Company T-shirts, mugs, picnics, bonus trips, and even raises are a temporary distraction if people are treating each other like dirt daily or thwarting each other's work to grab this month's brass ring. This session identifies what is de-motivating your staff and gives simple strategies for recognition that is ongoing and actually means something.
- Identify the elements of your environment quietly de-motivating people.
- Get more from the incentive program you already pay for.
- Take away the basic steps for building a new program or evaluating the current one.
Supervision: People vs Things
A primer for the newly promoted
Supervision: People vs Things
A primer for the newly promotedOkay, now what do I do? People are generally promoted into leadership because they showed superior skills in their field. Supervision requires different skills entirely from the ones that earned the promotion. Inexperienced supervisors tend to swing between trying to be one of the guys and going dictatorial. This session gives them insight and a way to build trust, covering the basics of dignity and respect leadership, motivation, and trust principles.
- Stop the swing between being everyone's friend and being the boss.
- Learn the skills the promotion did not come with.
- Build trust with a team that used to be your peers.
- Similarity TrainingDiversity work through the front door. We gather to celebrate what we have in common, and once that connection exists, real interest in difference follows on its own.
- The Power of SignificanceFive subconscious needs drive our choices: fun, freedom, power, belonging, and survival. One motivator can override all of them, and that is significance.
- Personal HeroesNaming the people we count as heroes reveals what we value most. The definition that matters is not the standard one, it is yours.
- Eye of the HurricaneThe dignity and respect approach to stress. At the center of every hurricane is a calm eye where the sun shines and you can see clearly. The session is about finding yours.
- Mastering ChangeLock and load, in its original sense of readiness for something imminent. Change prepared for as a skill rather than absorbed as a disruption.
- One on One Professional DevelopmentCoaching and advising for a single leader rather than a room.
Sessions are also designed on request to address specific needs and timely issues.
Why Gail
She helped give the problem its name.
When mobbing had no vocabulary in the United States, Gail co-wrote the book that introduced it. She is still the person organizations call once they recognize the behavior on the page.
It is very possible that a teacher who utilizes this material may save a child from both physical as well as psychological abuse and may ultimately save a child's life. This material is that powerful and that important.
Books and media
Six books and a weekly note read worldwide.
Gail writes and designs all of her own training, motivation, and inspirational materials, including mobbing awareness posters for schools and workplaces.
- Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, 1999
- School Mobbing and Emotional Abuse, 2003
- Food for Thought Anthology
- The Decider
- The Trust Book
- Be True to You
Food for Thought, her weekly column, has been distributed internationally by email since 2000. Her articles have appeared in print and on sites including the Iowa Business Network, TopAchievement.com, Motivating Moments, and LivingLifeFully.com.
Meet Gail
No exceptions.
"All people want and have the right to be treated with dignity and respect. No exceptions."
Gail Pursell Elliott founded Innovations, Training With a Can-Do Attitude, in Iowa in 1998, and has spent the years since travelling nationally to conduct staff and supervisory training for both profit and not-for-profit organizations.
She is a graduate of Penn State University, did post-graduate education certificate work at the University of South Florida, and is a member of American Mensa. Her professional background covers decades in administration, recruitment, training, and motivation, including health and human services work in acute care, long term care, hospice, and MH, MR and DD settings, along with national recruiting and personnel consulting.
Her teaching and management experience in education included special needs populations, at-risk students, alternative education, and adult education. That combination is why her approach to emotional abuse works in a school and a workplace with the same vocabulary: see it, stop it, prevent it.
In 1999 she co-authored Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, the first book on the subject to appear in the United States, followed in 2003 by School Mobbing and Emotional Abuse. She has been a guest on MSNBC's Deborah Norville Tonight, ABC World News Now, and the Workplace Violence Today radio program, and is a sought-after media expert on workplace and school violence.
She writes and designs all of her own training and inspirational materials, has created mobbing awareness posters for schools and workplaces, and has sent out Food for Thought, her weekly note, to readers around the world since 2000.
Could Gail be right for your room?
Start with what you are seeing.
Tell her your event date, who is coming, and what is actually going on in the organization. She designs sessions on request, so the more specific you are, the closer the program lands. Her own site is a second place to get to know her, not a detour.
Phone: 515-231-8828
Website: innovations-training.com
Innovations, Training With a Can-Do Attitude