Elizabeth “Beth” Gramigna has spent three decades helping organizations understand what is happening beneath the surface of workplace conflict. After years conducting investigations and practicing labor and employment law, she founded Tribu Partners in 2018. This year, Tribu joined Oppenheimer Investigations Group, expanding OIG’s workplace investigations practice on the East Coast.

Over the course of her career, Beth has conducted hundreds of investigations involving organizations and people at nearly every level across almost every industry imaginable in the private and public sectors, including board members, CEOs, college professors, administrators, politicians, and police. She is also an experienced mediator, arbitrator, trainer, coach, and expert witness, and has served several times on the faculty of the Association of Workplace Investigators. She was the first AWI board member from the east coast.

Ask Beth about what makes her effective as an investigator, she replies that she has compassion and is a good listener. She understands that people typically do not like to be involved in investigations; the topics can elicit emotion for all parties involved. It can be triggering for a complainant or emotional for the subject to be falsely accused or misunderstood. Third-party witnesses do not want to be involved, as humans innately dislike being a “snitch.” People are fearful of retaliation. Acknowledging these very human realities and communicating with transparency allows her to gain the trust required to get to the heart of the matter.

That distinction gets at the heart of how Beth approaches the work.

She believes trust begins with hearing people and giving them room to show up as they are, rather than entering an interview with a predetermined idea of what their story will be. “Usually without a script of specific questions, and definitely without a preconceived notion of how I think that their story will play out,” she says. The story should come from the parties and not from the investigator. This takes humility, time, and flexibility.

Her interest in investigations is rooted in an interest in human behavior. Beth moved around a lot growing up; she moved several times in grade school, middle school, and high school. She grew up in the midwest, the west coast, and the east coast. Her family lived in 10 homes by the time she was 17. She knew at a very young age that although people have unique physical appearances, customs, and jargon, they similarly share values rooted in community, safety, trust, and respect. A person’s action may look obvious from the outside but may be interpreted differently by a peer. Interactions are considerably more complicated once individual histories, experiences, and perceptions enter the picture.

For Beth, a good investigation helps make that complexity understandable. It is about getting down to the behaviors, the actions, and beyond the labels, judgment, and characterizations.

That philosophy also explains something Beth is emphatic about: she does not see the purpose of an investigation as assigning blame or shame. Accountability, she says, is different. People should be held accountable for their actions. The investigation should focus on actions and behaviors and not on self worth.

Her approach extends to clients and colleagues. The value that shapes how she works with people is “the importance of showing up in a way that adds vale.” And when someone leaves a conversation with her, she hopes they remember something more fundamental than the advice exchanged or problem solved: “That we connected. That I understood.” Beth’s clients benefit form her holistic approach and ability to see the bigger picture. “Investigations are an important part of understanding root cause, and only from there can real change happen,” she says. “Once we understand the behaviors and the reasons for them, we are able to move beyond it.” Sometimes an investigation is an effective tool to raise awareness of systemic vulnerabilities.

There is a similar curiosity and openness in what she has been reading lately. Beth recently finished Anne Tyler’s Three Days in June and Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, and is listening to Kathryn Stockett’s The Calamity Club. She is also reading The Yogi Code by Yogi Cameron.

Tyler and Strout are particular favorites because of the way they portray flawed, complicated people with honesty and kindness rather than judgment. Their characters can be selfish and imperfect, Beth says, but remain deeply human and kind.

“They understand that behaviors are complicated.” For that reason, there should be some compassion in the work that we do.

It is hard to miss the connection to her investigative work.

And after a career spent examining some of those complications, one piece of advice has stayed with Beth: “Enjoy the slow times.” When she was a brand new lawyer, she hit a slow patch and asked the managing partner for more work out of concern for her billable hours; he told her always remember to “enjoy the slow times” because just around the corner will be a busy productive patch. And sure enough there was. This advice has stayed with her for over 35 years. To enjoy the slow moment she is in and to have confidence in what is to come. She trusts that she is where she is meant to be.

It is a deceptively simple reminder from someone whose work often begins when things have become anything but slow.