The Elephant in the Org
The "Elephant in the Org" podcast is a daring dive into the unspoken challenges and opportunities in organizational development, particularly in the realm of employee experience. Hosted by the team at The Fearless PX, we tackle the "elephants" in the room—those taboo or ignored topics—that are critical for creating psychologically safe and highly effective workplaces.
The Elephant in the Org
When Well-being Becomes a Number: The Psych-Safety Debate
Are you ready to dive deep into the heart of psychological safety within organizations? Our latest podcast episode, "When Well-being Becomes a Number: The Psych-Safety Debate," is now live, featuring an enlightening conversation with special guest Neil Pretty, the co-founder and Managing Partner at Aristotle Performance.
In this episode, our hosts Marion, Danny, and Cacha explore the critical importance of psychological safety in creating innovative, high-performing teams and learning organizations. Neil Pretty shares his vast experience and insights from working with global organizations, emphasizing the intricate balance between achieving business results and maintaining the human side of business.
Key Highlights:
- Discover the global impact of Aristotle Performance and their specialized approach to enhancing psychological safety.
- Learn about the Fearless Organization Certification program and the collaboration with Amy Edmondson.
- Understand the debate surrounding the measurement of psychological safety as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
- Gain insights into the practical challenges and strategies for implementing psychological safety initiatives.
- Explore the impact of psychological safety on innovation, leadership development, and organizational performance.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in fostering a supportive and innovative workplace environment. Whether you're a leader looking to develop your team or an individual passionate about organizational culture, you'll find valuable takeaways to apply in your professional life.
Tune in now to join the conversation on psychological safety and discover how to balance well-being with achieving business results. Available on all major podcast platforms. Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful discussions on leadership, psychological safety, and enhancing organizational culture.
You can connect with Neil on Linkedin.
You can learn more about Aristotle Performance here.
Link to the full show notes.
Connect with Us:
- Follow The Fearless PX on Linkedin at The Fearless PX
- Visit our website for more content and updates: https://www.thefearlesspx.com/
- Reach out to Marion, Cacha, and Danny at elephant@thefearlessp.com
- You can find all episodes of The Elephant in the Org here.
We encourage you to subscribe and leave a review if you found this episode enlightening!
From April 2024, all new episodes of The Elephant In the Org will be posted bi-weekly.
Music Credits:
Opening and closing theme by The Toros.
Production Credits:
Produced by The Fearless PX, Edited by Marion Anderson.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the hosts and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations’ official policy or position.
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Danny Gluch: And today we have as our special guest, Neil Pretty, from the Aristotle. What? What is Aristotle, Neil, and also introduce yourself
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Danny Gluch: so that we have an idea of of who you are and why you are the expert or one of the experts on psychological safety.
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Neil Pretty: Yeah. So Aristotle, performance is a management training and consulting firm. We work globally. But we're specialization, we're specialists in psychological safety and creating learning organizations. So I'm one of the co-founders and and managing managing directors. And you know, we've worked with massive organizations all over the world.
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Neil Pretty: across cultures, across time zones. It's not uncommon for us to wake up in the morning talking about how to create more effective working environments
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Neil Pretty: in, you know, Eastern Europe, and then go to bed at night. My team was working with some people in Singapore last night, you know. So getting text messages on updates on how that was going at 9 pm. Pacific time. So you know, we work. We really do work globally with global companies and global teams. And and I think what that's done over the last.
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Neil Pretty: You know, several years since before the pandemic, where W. When we were as individuals who are working for the company now, when we started working, really as experts in psychological safety.
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Neil Pretty: You know, we we have become the one of the very few companies in the world that specialize in this field of expertise.
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Neil Pretty: And you're associated with Amy Edmondson from Harvard, who is the the lead voice and real pioneer of psychological safety. Correct? Certainly. Yeah. We've collaborated with Amy for several years to create the fearless organization certification. We help deliver that training for many years. We have some workshops and things like that. That help promote her work. But specifically, but also
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Neil Pretty: more. And I would say more than anything have, you know, invested time and energy to really understand her work and and be stewards of her research and put it into action and start creating those feedback loops back to her. This is what we're seeing
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Neil Pretty: in the research. This is what we're putting into action from the research. And this is how it's turning out in organizations. This is how it's turning out in individual settings in team settings. And at an organization wide implementation. Because, you know, when you're working with something that had for a long time effectively only had academic research behind it. You, you have to
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Neil Pretty: start from a place of I don't know and be comfortable with that, and you have to have the kind of trust and equity with organizations, and build into your contracts, you know, at a very basic level, build into your contracts the ability to capture feedback and adjust
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Neil Pretty: what you're doing on the fly. So it really has been a a process of not just applying the old models of and ways of doing things, but figuring it out and figuring out how to do it even better as we go.
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Marion: This is where this is where the Phd research it and make it all academic. I funnel th there shouldn't see this. There's not bunch of academics that II guess II get Fang Garley about. And the reason being is that when I did my master's program, psychological safety was one of the things that blew my mind when I studied it and was like.
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Marion: Wow.
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Marion: that makes so much sense. And it was when you can connect the the you know, the academia to the to, the reality, and you get it. It's so impactful. Where does I think when you try to explain it just in a purely academic way to someone
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Marion: that isn't experiencing it. It can be really tough to to to help them understand it and to cause. It's really a feeling, right? It's really
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Marion: something that you're feeling and experiencing. And and it's it's it's deep. So that say, yeah, it's a really special one.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, having just having the academic understanding of psychological safety doesn't mean you're gonna be able to put it into practice, or that when the rub rubber meets the road that it's gonna go as you expect. And that's why II love what you're doing, Neil, and why we wanted to have you on so much to really talk about that, and specifically something that you you came to us because you're working on a an article for is.
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Danny Gluch: should we measure. And how do we even measure if we should psychological safety as a Kpi as a one? I mean, where do we start? Do we start with? Should or do. We start with how? Because I they're they're both up for debate. What do you think, Neil? I mean, I think there's the the How question is both easy and hard. There's sort of a short answer and a long answer.
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Neil Pretty: and then the Kpi part, you know, there's
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Neil Pretty: there's in my head, I think one of the most effective ways to learn is to try things. And the first version of that is a thought experiment. So this this started out as kind of a thought experiment for myself, like, okay, what if? What if we just
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Neil Pretty: ignored what everyone in the community generally agrees, which is psychological safety should not be a Kpi, and asked ourselves.
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Neil Pretty: what if we did make it, Kpi? Would the costs outweigh the benefits? And I think
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Neil Pretty: one of the things that we've done effectively is trained leaders to start having these kinds of thought experiments with their team. So this requires a lot of foundation setting, a lot of trust building a lot of inquiry skills and listening skills by the leader. And you know, offering those skills to their team. So it it to have that level of conversation. Yeah, in a team is actually, you know, quite skill based. But
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Neil Pretty: that is the greatest pathway to innovation, because thought experiments reveal all these other ways of doing things. So
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Neil Pretty: the short answer on how to measure it. Amy Edmondson's 7 Question Survey is the gold standard. There's actual research that compares different ways of measuring psychological safety. And it has a high crown back. Alpha. So it means it's repeatable and and tests well, and that it actually measures what it says, it measures, which is psychological safety.
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Neil Pretty: So that's the short answer. Yes, we can measure it. It's real easy.
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Neil Pretty: The other answer is, can you game that test?
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Neil Pretty: Yes, I'm pretty sure you can game that test. It's it's 7 questions. It's a, you know, license scale those kinds of tests. You can also game them. So
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Neil Pretty: it's also possible for it to not work out the way you want it to work out.
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Neil Pretty: And people have different perspectives. People also, struggle to I if they don't have an awareness of what psychological safety is.
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Neil Pretty: it's not necessarily gonna give you the answers you want. So there's, you know, lots of problems with measuring anything. That's how surveys work, you know. And then you have to get all the people to say yes, to doing the survey. So there's and then you have to set context. So there is.
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Neil Pretty: It's certainly easy. And there's elements that are challenging, and we certainly know how to navigate those challenges. Question is, is that the measurement you want as your Kpi.
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Marion: I mean for me, it's probably
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Marion: before I even get to the measurement piece. I'm I think it. It's the wrapping my head around how I feel about it. And II remember my reaction when you first said it to me. My reaction was really strong. So I was like.
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Marion: and it was that kind of
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Marion: almost gatekeeper. The fear of you know, people in the workplace taking the concept of psychological safety, not understanding it properly and applying it in ways that just
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Cacha Dora: aren't true, right? I was my initial gut reaction as you were talking, Marion was exactly. That is just like the the misconception misinterpretation which then gets rolled out right like. And and now you've got like psychological safety version, like 7 B, which isn't even tied to what it actually is. But this
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Cacha Dora: specific organization interprets it one way and another way. It's like, how many ways can you make a Bolognese? There's actually a lot of ways. And someone's gonna tell you what the right way is. That was my very, very first reaction.
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Marion: Neil, is that most people and kind of practitioners, reactions that understand it. Or what do you experience?
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Neil Pretty: I think, for the most part nobody's talking about it in this way. So I think that's what that's where the thought experiment started for me was that I don't hear anybody saying.
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Neil Pretty: what could be gained from measuring psychological safety as a Kpi. Now there's broad agreement that measuring psychological safety is good.
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Neil Pretty: What do we know about measuring anything that if you don't use the measurement, it's useless, effectively philosophical stuff as opposed to your empirical. And then you've got a very tip scale, right? And of course, people are often surveyed, and often
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Neil Pretty: the results are not used for anything. So you know, there is such a.
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Neil Pretty: you know, and I think that's actually, one of the problems here is that it goes measured and and nothing gets done about. I am familiar with one organization that measures psychological safety of all their teams on a quarterly basis.
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Neil Pretty: and the leaders that I know of in that organization
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Neil Pretty: are not aware of
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Neil Pretty: the measurement, what value it has.
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Neil Pretty: what it even means
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Neil Pretty: until it goes below a certain point. And they get a phone call from their Hr business partner. That says you're not leading effectively.
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Neil Pretty: And they get a slap on the wrist, and they get a remedial session. And they get all this other stuff. So it's like, in that case, it's used as a whip.
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Marion: saying that
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Marion: people are beaten up over. You know I have this this. This thing about engagement surveys, you know. so many years of being in organizations where the engagement service came out and the leader has had it whipped into them. You must get a minimum of 95% participation. So they are literally
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Marion: forcing people time. Go sit down, fill it out. And and and I'm like.
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Marion: the point is is that if they'd engage, still fill out, and if they're not engaged they won't like. And you, you know. So almost like, you know, they're scared to have that low participation, because then it shows that they are not doing a good job. So I get.
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Marion: III genuinely get concerned about other things kind of adjacent to that that could be measurable in Kpis, because it does become more important about the measurement and the participation rate, or whatever, rather than what it's actually tailing, is more actually doing with it?
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Marion: Yeah.
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Neil Pretty: So so they're comes and Re raises kind of this question, would you rather a world where there was no engagement surveys?
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Marion: I'd rather a world where
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Marion: people are willed to do them from their own free will, as opposed to having a gun to their head.
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Neil Pretty: So so your answer effectively is, yes, I want a world where there is engagement surveys.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah.
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Neil Pretty: And and the reason why, as I would assume, is to some degree they've had a some positive
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Danny Gluch: use. Cadet. Yes, yeah, use. And II think it's the. It's what you take from the data, right? And it's what you do from that and saying like, if people are saying this, we can take action to either fix it or to improve upon it, or to give you something that we are lacking. Right? It's like it's taking that start. Stop, continue mentality from the results. It again. But it all comes down to if it's used properly.
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Danny Gluch: Well, what if we view right? Knowing that we would love for engagement surveys to not be necessary?
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Danny Gluch: But they actually have a a use. What about a psychological set safety survey like, well, here's where here's where I'm gonna really flip things on your head. You need engagement survey, and you don't need psychological safety surveys. AI can examine all your interactions
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Neil Pretty: and actually predict psychological safety and engagement. at least the same accuracy as surveys.
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Neil Pretty: Oh, probably more, though right without you, and without that that's all. Anybody in the AI industry will claim to right now is that it's as good they're working on making it better.
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Cacha Dora: My my instinct is like. But where? What are they looking at? How much data are they getting? Where's it coming from but a minute ago? But hold on a minute ago. There's broad agreement that you'd rather
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Neil Pretty: it was done at free. Well, so people are contributing their
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Neil Pretty: you know, things free Will, as long as you say, yeah, here you go. Sign on the dotted line. You don't need to have surveys. Then you can do something positive with it.
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Marion: I like II like that. II there's also a little bit. No, I'd be. I'd be interested to run an experiment right where you take the AI Date genetic data. And you take the human genetic data. And you see if the the words in the music match right? What's interesting about it
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Neil Pretty: is, you know, when we talk about this when we talk about engagement surveys. What we hear is the human being's natural desire to seek the negative
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Neil Pretty: interesting? What are all? What are all the things that we can do wrong go wrong, and who are all the nefarious people that can do wrong and do ill to us?
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Cacha Dora: Yeah, cause the thing that I was thinking about Neil, when when you kind of highlighted right, the difference in response from one answer to the other is the psychological impact on being asked to participate in an engagement survey. Right? Like you have. Like, you're a group of people who are like, Oh, my God, I gotta do this thing again. Jesus, right? You've got that group. And then you've got people who are like, Oh, they're actually taking my, input I feel valued and appreciated.
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Cacha Dora: not not necessarily knowing how that data is going to go or what it's going to be action on. But there are people who really want to have
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Cacha Dora: a voice, and I think that would be really interesting to measure in contrast with an AI report on what that looks like. Right like. What is the value difference change when it's you're not being asked versus when you are being asked so similarly to to that. And I think this draws parallel with psychological safety, is there? There's a realization engagement surveys of when they're done.
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Danny Gluch: If people are honest, but then they don't see actions from leadership.
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Danny Gluch: it it actually drives engagement. And I could see something similar with psychological safety. If you're just being brutally honest about these, all this is what it's like psychologically, to exist in this workplace on this team.
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Danny Gluch: and then nothing changes. Now, now, all of a sudden, you have less ability to be honest, you you you've, you know, degraded that
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Danny Gluch: little trust that still existed.
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Neil Pretty: This is this is where one of the challenges of psychological safety comes up. So engagement is effectively, you know, over the last 6 months.
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Neil Pretty: How did you feel about your willingness to contribute your efforts to work?
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Neil Pretty: Well, you know, I'm a 6 out of 10. Okay, that's that's fine, whatever that is
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Neil Pretty: that psychological safety.
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Neil Pretty: This is something we've started calling crouching tigers, right? Because we have this quote that we use all the time
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Neil Pretty: nobody comes up with a good idea while being chased by a tiger. Okay.
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Cacha Dora: we don't. I don't think I'd be thinking about good ideas at that point. Yeah. But what's interesting is that it's actually more stressful to be in an uncertain social environment than being chased by a physical threat like a tiger.
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Neil Pretty: because you have a clear response to one, and you have an unclear response to the other one. You respond and then gauge. If your response was correct, and if you don't get the right signals that your response was correct, it increases cortisol in the brain, and all these sort of things happen. So we start navigating our social environment at the age of 3,
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Neil Pretty: 3 or 4 years old. We're like, how do I fit in this group? And then, as we get older, we start managing our impression. We use our behavior to control our environment.
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Neil Pretty: Right? That's when kids start learning about things like white lies. Because if we don't learn that we're actually really difficult to work with.
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so we have to do these things to a degree.
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Neil Pretty: What we call crouching tigers are statements and situations where it's uncertain exactly how secure and safe our environment is.
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Danny Gluch: Yes, the gray zone.
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Neil Pretty: right? We walk through a field of gray zone at work.
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Neil Pretty: Often a lot of teams exist in that gray zone.
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Neil Pretty: You know, people prefer toxicity. And II actually laugh quite often.
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Neil Pretty: because true toxic behavior is not super common.
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Neil Pretty: and it is very obvious
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Neil Pretty: you can point it out. You can write it down, you know, you know what's going on.
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Neil Pretty: and it's not always caused by the nefarious actions of someone who is who has negative intent.
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Neil Pretty: So what about everybody else? What about all the other times?
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Neil Pretty: Because the biggest problem with measuring psychological safety as a Kpi
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Neil Pretty: is that it's not something that happens on an annual basis.
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Neil Pretty: It's something that changed for all 3 of you 2 min ago.
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Neil Pretty: 5 min ago, 10 min ago. Change for me 2 min ago, 5 min ago, 10 min ago, because even in this conversation we're navigating it because we're social creatures that are highly attuned and sensitive to what is going on in our social environment.
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Neil Pretty: So we're navigating it all the time. And there are these little subtle differences in tone, subtle differences in language, in our interpretation
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Neil Pretty: that shifts our perspective
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Neil Pretty: so that makes it very hard to measure and track
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Danny Gluch: as a kpi that you would measure once or twice, or for even 4 times a year. And that's where, you know I wrote an article actually about this on on Linkedin last year. Maybe it's supposed I don't know
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Danny Gluch: but it was II would actually trust more. You know what once an AI was trained really well to identify the languages, identify like gaps and pauses and delays of responses and languages in certain responses and things like that more so than
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Danny Gluch: a regular employees ability to self report on those feelings, because those are very complex feelings and and something I've I've talked about with with friends and colleagues is, I think, a part of psychological safety in navigating those grey zones
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Danny Gluch: comes with age
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Danny Gluch: and not just not just age, right like that's that's that's a bad measurement. But experience. And I think people from 22 to 28 right now are
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Danny Gluch: are less experienced in wait. What are the range of outcomes. A lot of their early professional career was during the pandemic, and there there was the gray zones like intensified a lot, and they haven't settled into to where the range of those grey zone experiences and outcomes has become sort of
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Danny Gluch: predictable for them and and easier to navigate. And I think a lot of that takes just time and experience.
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Neil Pretty: Yeah, I mean, I think there's also a you know, we III so want to get
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Neil Pretty: dive down the generational rabbit hole right now. But I'm gonna really try not to. I mean it. It is. But I think in in our work what a lot of people don't understand is that sort of the the other side of the psychological safety coin is courage. Yeah.
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Cacha Dora: yeah. I mean, you can't take risk without feeling a little bit brazen. Right, Bingo, you you totally nailed it, and I think one of the challenges with courage.
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Neil Pretty: Is that an act of courage is doing something that you know might hurt you.
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Neil Pretty: and being stupid is the same thing.
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Neil Pretty: Aristotle, right? My
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Danny Gluch: master's degree. I read a lot of Aristotle coded Aristotle a lot of my thesis, and
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Danny Gluch: it's it's so interesting because so much of right. But the fearless org and and Amy Edmondson talks about fearless as like, you know, that's what psychological safety is, and courage
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by definition, right by Aristotle's definition there has to be fear present
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Danny Gluch: to be correct, that I think
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Danny Gluch: sort of that rubber meets the road. That theory meets actual practicality. Where I think you're really right of
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Danny Gluch: II know Fearless is kind of the goal right where the fearless people experience. We would love people to have experience at work that is just absent of fear and the need of courage. But in actual practical situations. You're so right that it takes risk. It takes courage, and that's
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Danny Gluch: that's a hard pill to swallow, because we we spend so much of our time at work. It's
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Neil Pretty: courageous, is a big ass. I think there's there's a concept that that I heard recently called the supermodel mind. I mean, II was born in the early eighties and grew up in the nineties, and you know the supermodel, you know, that was really the era of the supermodel
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Neil Pretty: and the ideal body. Image conversation went from, you know.
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Neil Pretty: a part of sort of human existence to
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Neil Pretty: massive amplitude.
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Neil Pretty: And now we have the supermodel mind like. There is somehow some way, some position that you can put yourself in. where you will be undisturbed
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Neil Pretty: and at peace
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Neil Pretty: and experience. No discomfort. experience, no depression experience, no fear
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Neil Pretty: throughout your day.
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Neil Pretty: and it's a fantasy that does not exist just like the supermodel, not a real thing.
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Neil Pretty: The idea that you can be on a team and not be disturbed by somebody. is actually a fantasy
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Neil Pretty: that causes a lot more pain to chase than to just understand that sometimes you can have difficult interactions with people.
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Neil Pretty: Your job is to get better at
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Neil Pretty: things like conversation. You know, one of the first things.
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Danny Gluch: It's your job to get better at those interactions. Holy folks.
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Danny Gluch: Is that something to measure?
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Neil Pretty: Yes.
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Neil Pretty: yes, I think it is
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Cacha Dora: well. And, Neil, what I think so also like that an underlying tone of what you're also saying is right like this, this fantasy, super model mind is also kind of directly ignoring the fact that stress is inherent in life.
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Cacha Dora: right like. And and what that super model mind experience. Like all that I was thinking about, people are asking to not be stressed out. They're asking to not have all these stressors. That's really what the fantasy is
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Danny Gluch: totally
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Cacha Dora: which II think is very interesting when you think about it, like, I know it's a measurement thing like, how do you measure stress? But everyone's stress is different, right? Just like I'm sure everyone would approach courage or stupidity in a different way. Aristotle, use better than stupidity.
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Neil Pretty: So
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Neil Pretty: I think this idea that you can't be stressed out
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Neil Pretty: part of this fantasy. And I really I think you pointed on something really important there. But so is then
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Neil Pretty: responsibility.
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Cacha Dora: Because if you've chosen to take responsibility for something.
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Neil Pretty: then you will be stressed out by it.
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Neil Pretty: Now you're talking to somebody who's actually burned out several times in his life. So you know, I'm not going to sit here on some soapbox and say that I know how to manage stress perfectly, or or anything like that.
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Neil Pretty: you know. But there is meaning and purpose and value that comes from taking responsibility for things.
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Neil Pretty: taking responsibility for something like psychological safety. making it a Kpi for leaders in an organization
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Neil Pretty: is gonna cause stress. And it's gonna cause. And that stress is gonna cause some bad behavior and some bad actors.
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Neil Pretty: But the more we train effective skills.
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Neil Pretty: the lower that effect will be.
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Neil Pretty: And I think even to. I was chatting actually with my wife about this this morning because she took some of the tool tools that we train leaders and put it into practice at her work and was one of those like.
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Neil Pretty: I don't know if this is gonna work, but I'm gonna try it, cause I'm stuck.
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Neil Pretty: and it worked, and that was great.
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Neil Pretty: And we were talking about it. I said, Well, you know, really, what it comes down to is when somebody says we need more alignment
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Neil Pretty: on what? What does that even mean?
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Marion: Danny's favorite phrase?
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Danny Gluch: It's it's one of those around this for the next 5 min.
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Danny Gluch: I think you're really hitting on it, Neil of
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Danny Gluch: you know what one of the the key parts of of Amy Edmondson's right psychological safety is the ability to voice dissent.
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Danny Gluch: right, the ability to be the the the not aligned.
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Danny Gluch: and and to have the courage to do that right like in the ideal world. It wouldn't be an act of courage to to take responsibility, to take a stand and say, no, I don't agree.
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Danny Gluch: In reality, that's very stressful, courageous moment. But I think when people in going back to what we talked about very early on was when people are misunderstanding psychological safety.
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Danny Gluch: And they're thinking, Oh, well, it has to be. Everyone's perfectly aligned. And oh, let's let's make sure that everyone agrees. And let's
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Danny Gluch: let's not take stands. Let's not have conflict. Let's avoid those things.
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Danny Gluch: You're avoiding responsibility. You're avoiding those things that actually bring meaning to your work and bring, you know, accountability and recognition right? Even you can't be recognized for something if you don't take responsibility for it.
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Danny Gluch: And there's that dance that takes a really
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Marion: high Eq. For leaders. And and II wish they focused on that more in business school.
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Neil Pretty: I mean, I think it's it's sort of interesting because the most psychologically safe environment have ever been
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Neil Pretty: was in Army cadets.
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Neil Pretty: paramilitary top down.
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Neil Pretty: highly structured.
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Neil Pretty: I would say this
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Neil Pretty: the most
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Neil Pretty: safe.
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Neil Pretty: uncertain. the most socially
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Neil Pretty: so, you know, anxious, I've ever felt have been in organizations and been in context where people have claimed egalitarian
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Neil Pretty: flat matrix organizations. Yep. And it's
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Neil Pretty: not the case that
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Neil Pretty: that's true. In all cases, you know, flat organizations can be extremely productive. Matrix organizations can be extremely productive.
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Neil Pretty: Top down organizations can be extremely toxic. Both can be true. And I think
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Neil Pretty: what it comes down to is when leaders are put in a position where they can lead.
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Neil Pretty: instead of being a a an extension of the bullwhip of the organization when they can be the human beings that they want to be. But they aren't also saddled by
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Neil Pretty: the fear of not being called nice.
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Neil Pretty: You know. I I've seen more leaders lead poorly because they're afraid to be labeled anything other than nice
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Cacha Dora: or unliked. Right?
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Cacha Dora: Exactly. Yeah. I think that's such a good lesson in in anyone's professional career, right? Not everyone's going to like you. And that's okay.
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Cacha Dora: Because at some point you're gonna lose that authenticity of yourself in the process like if I had to be a different person for Mary and Neil and Danny at like, where does kosher go like at some point she's lost in this
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Cacha Dora: corporate landscape of I'm gonna be that mission impossible. Pull off one mask and pull off another right to like match it instead of like being allowed to like. I love what you said. They're like being allowed to lead right? The difference between like that. Are you a manager? Are you just handling tasks. Are you developing people? Are you giving people that safe space like Danny you were talking about where I can dissent in a group context and know that my manager is not gonna
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Danny Gluch: pull me aside and be like, hey, we're just not sure. Safe space is the word there, though, and I might not, and it might not be with it, not being a safe space, but it being an expectation right? One of the
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Danny Gluch: the like examples of psychological safety and language and dissension like that is how Korean airlines handled all the the the plane accidents are happening in like the nineties, and
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Danny Gluch: they changed the language and the structure of the cockpit, so that
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Danny Gluch: the the the people who weren't in charge were able to dissent more freely. Right they they got them out of their very rigid hierarchy in their culture, and got them speaking English. And that worked really, really well.
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Danny Gluch: and that didn't make it any safer right. It. It just made it. What Neil was talking about. The structure that was there was now predictable and stable. You could just say what you meant.
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Marion: It wasn't what everyone wanted to hear. What they really did was change the expectation
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Neil Pretty: right? And it's like we need to. We don't need to be aligned on our opinion.
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Neil Pretty: we need to be aligned on our expectations
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Neil Pretty: of each other, and how we're going to interact with each other.
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Neil Pretty: And I think that's what a lot of this comes down to is this need to create alignment in that way? You know, on how we're gonna be working together because there are times where, you know, a manager is not in a position where they can lead. They are actually distributing tasks.
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Neil Pretty: And
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Neil Pretty: 80% of their role is task. And 20% is leadership, so to speak.
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Neil Pretty: And I think that's also gotta be okay.
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Neil Pretty: You know, I think there is this fantasy that every person is a leader is a fantasy that I wish would just die on some vine somewhere else. I'm sorry, but I've led too many people
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Neil Pretty: to believe that everyone's a leader.
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Neil Pretty: That's not the case. And it's okay. You know, it's it's it's okay. And it's actually good. We don't want everyone to be a leader. What we want is the leaders that we have
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Neil Pretty: to be put in a better position to lead better.
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Marion: I think one of the things my brain is trying to really
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Marion: get it, you know. Get round, and and I've got this like tussle in my brain. Is that
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Marion: the reason why I think when I look at me. Right? So I'm a younger Jan Xenial right? And
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Marion: I think that through my life experiences and my work experiences my cultural experiences over time.
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Marion: I've naturally developed without knowing it. an understanding and an application of trying to create a psychologically safe space within my immediate team. A lot of things are outside of my control.
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Marion: but the immediate team with me. I strive to do that. And Tasha and Danny hopefully. You would agree with that statement right?
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Marion: but that came through
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Marion: experience, trial, and error, getting it wrong. Things going tits up, crying in trying in a cupcall in the toilet. Like all those things
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Marion: you learn
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Marion: Amy. Again. We learn by failure. Right? And
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Marion: so part of me is like. I want to.
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Marion: I want to take away a lot of that pain and anxiety and stress that I went through to help younger managers, younger leaders coming up there. There are, you know, very quickly gonna be leading industry. I wanna take away a lot of that for them. I don't want them to be crying in toilets and and going through that anxiety and feeling sick
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Marion: on a Sunday night, knowing I've got work the next day, right? I wanna take that away. But
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Marion: there's a certain amount of you can't cotton wool people so much, because that's how we learn. Right?
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Marion: So how I think what I'm trying to ask here is, how can we
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Marion: reach your your Utopia, which is what you just described, which is to me is perfect. How do we get to that place where we're getting our future leaders, our emerging leaders, to really understand all of that, and apply the best practice, but without necessarily
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Marion: going through the same expansive amount of failures that we did to reach that level of awareness. Does that make sense
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Neil Pretty: makes total sense? This question. I have an answer for you that I hope you'll like
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Neil Pretty: company that I'm familiar with. They they sold during the early days of the pandemic. But
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Neil Pretty: wonderful company that was using salesforce
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Neil Pretty: software to do all kinds of cool things, including,
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Neil Pretty: trying to analyze
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Neil Pretty: the time that was spent by their employees
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Neil Pretty: and categorize it into 4 categories.
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Neil Pretty: I can't remember what a couple of the categories were called, but the one that they were focused on was called brutal time.
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Neil Pretty: and they were trying to reduce brutal time to 0.
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Danny Gluch: Hmm!
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Neil Pretty: And what happened is that they started noticing when they got brutal time to 0. People quit within 6 months.
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Cacha Dora: Interesting.
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Neil Pretty: So why, no brutal time? You don't want any brutal time at all
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Neil Pretty: like, of course, you don't want any brutal time at all. This is a West Coast company, so of course, this is how they labeled it brutal time. Right? So they and it was like awesome time. Okay? Good. You know, like that kinda scale.
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Neil Pretty: And literally what they decided and what the their re internal research ended up, did. There were about 550 people, and they measured
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Neil Pretty: every single task throughout the day. They had people doing this constantly. So they huge data set
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Neil Pretty: turns out it mattered the nature of the brutal time.
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Neil Pretty: and it needed to be about 20%.
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Neil Pretty: The connection was that that brutal time was spent doing something meaningful. What that meant was that you could tie it back to something
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Neil Pretty: important that you were working on.
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Neil Pretty: or something that was helping you grow.
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Neil Pretty: you could make that connection for yourself. So do I think that it's good that leaders have stress if it's the right kind. Yes.
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Cacha Dora: yeah, absolutely, you know, crying in a cubicle.
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Neil Pretty: We could probably trim off that kind of stuff, you know that it's probably not very beneficial.
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Neil Pretty: Ii
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Neil Pretty: can't imagine too many situations where you would connect that to a meaningful growth. you know, but if it's causing you stress and anxiety, and there's meaningful growth that comes from it
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Neil Pretty: like I've had sleepless nights
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Neil Pretty: that I'm really glad I had, because the next day
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Neil Pretty: I woke up and had a conversation that was absolutely the best thing that could happen. So you know that sleepless night had a benefit to it, you know, cause it told me that I needed to take action in a way that I hadn't been taking.
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Neil Pretty: you know. So is that there? Yeah, I think there's benefit to that. Can we trim that down?
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Neil Pretty: Can we trim off some of those stressful environments? There's stressful events. Yes. Can we help people make connection to stressful events and growth. Yes, and can we shorten the amount of time that people are taking
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Neil Pretty: in those stressful environments in in, in that sort of negative lens
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Neil Pretty: and learning from them. And I think that's what what we aspire to create in a learning organization isn't to. And we're very careful to not call them safe spaces. We don't make spaces. That's a tool for Dei professionals. In my mind.
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Neil Pretty: We don't make those
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Neil Pretty: we create learning environments. Learning requires growth or learning leads to growth, and that's generally there's some degree of discomfort
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Marion: turns out 20 brutal times about right? Well, Confu Confucius, right? Comfort is the opposite learning.
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Neil Pretty: So 100. You know. I'm so fascinated by that, because
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Marion: I mean very hard to take a lot of that into reality, day to day reality right to to any normal
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Marion: running the mill business right?
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Marion: But what an exciting place to be in terms of that knowledge and that awareness being there and thinking about as practitioners. How do we start to really
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Marion: bring a lot of that thought and methodologies into Workspace today to set the stage for the transformation that needs to happen tomorrow. And and I think
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Marion: I mean, even as an academic, theoretically trying to get your head around. That is like. you know, that's it's a lot. But
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Neil Pretty: really exciting. I can see Danny's like super excited by this. I think there's a few things one. So in our training we have something called the framing the work checklist leaders, toolkit. We made part of it into a checklist. There's 6 items.
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Neil Pretty: Bye.
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Neil Pretty: if you could have those 6 items and you can discuss those and create conversation around those you're 80 aligned. Great
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Neil Pretty: skills around. Inquiry are massive. measuring psychological safety and then having conversation about it. you know, and not debate.
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Neil Pretty: but which is the problem which is a big problem in the Us. Sort of
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Neil Pretty: predilection towards debate and away from dialogue. Some of those things like there are some really basic things. And then the other one is like relationship.
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Neil Pretty: I think one of the saddest things that I've become aware of is is, you know, I grew up answering the phone.
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Neil Pretty: One of the first things I was taught was how to answer the phone. And then, if I wanted to talk to a friend. I had to be uncomfortable. I had to call my friends and talk to their parents first.
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Neil Pretty: which sucks when you're like 8, and then I could maybe hang out with my friend if I negotiated with the parents bunch of people I'm uncomfortable with.
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Neil Pretty: But there's a whole generation that didn't learn that they didn't get those skills. So we can't
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Neil Pretty: be upset at them for not being comfortable on the phone. We have to understand that they didn't get that training. So things like going for a walk with people.
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Neil Pretty: you know, using your one on one time to develop relationships instead of offer feedback.
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Neil Pretty: I'm sorry you're gonna give me feedback once a year. That's a whole lot of unproductive time. Feedback happens all the time. Relationship building should happen consistently as well. But there is evidence that if you increase the quality of relationship
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Neil Pretty: quality of your leadership quality of your work, the quality of your teaming, all these things happen. So if you have a couple of these things in place. having a clear outline of what you need to create alignment on as a group.
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Neil Pretty: some conversational skills as a leader. the ability to ask good questions and listen.
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Neil Pretty: And then you have relationship with people. understand what they want, where they want to grow, challenge them in that way. You you understand what is important to them. Give them responsibility in that direction.
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Neil Pretty: You've got like a few things to do as a leader, and you've got most of what you need to do as a leader covered.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah. And I, when when I hear you talking about that I are very specific skills, competencies, attitudes, behaviors that could be measured
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Danny Gluch: and could be worked on. And leaders could reflect right as they're meeting with each other or meeting with with, you know, whoever's coaching and mentoring them.
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Danny Gluch: And and those conversations could be like, Oh, yeah, you you really need to work on your your ability to listen and connect. Bring that closeness, that proximity with your with your team.
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Danny Gluch: right? And all of a sudden, if if you're measuring those, I think you're really measuring poor psychological safety without really measuring it right?
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Danny Gluch: And II think so much of the problem is, the mentors are talking to the managers, and they're just like, Well, how's your team producing? Are you getting? Are you getting people to finish their tasks? And like, as soon as you've done that you've you've already lost the plot cause you've gotten away from exactly what you were talking about. Which is
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Cacha Dora: the environment relation. You're really kind of looking at environment. Yeah.
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Neil Pretty: yeah.
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Neil Pretty: yeah, I think that's that's where we get wh, what? Where we've misfired, particularly in North America, is the assumption that results come first, and then things like
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Neil Pretty: relationship and creating alignment. And I kind of made a joke about that earlier. But that is like really important. Just people don't know what the help means. You know. There, there's all these different pieces that come in after
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Neil Pretty: performance. The reality is they come first, and then performance happens. As a result, you know, psychological safety and foundation. Then accountability is built on top of that. And then learning. And then
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Danny Gluch: performance. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think there, there's a saying in sports, of of winning
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Danny Gluch: cures, illnesses. And I actually think it's wrong. I think winning cures symptoms. You're you're not as worried about your symptoms of being non, psychologically safe or not inclusive or not really good environment.
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you're winning. And the the production is really good
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Danny Gluch: because you you have no need to look at it, because, look, we're doing so well.
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Neil Pretty: and the longer that goes on the worse it's gonna get, and the harder it is to course, correct. Well, and this is where we we talk often about things like first order and second order, thinking.
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Neil Pretty: you know, our our one of my colleagues likes to use the example of, you know, if you're in a room and it's 68 degrees, and the temperature is supposed to be at 78 degrees or sorry 70 degrees. You go. Well, something's wrong. We need to turn it up 70 degrees.
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Neil Pretty: Well.
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Neil Pretty: second order thinking is going is 70 degrees the right temperature.
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Neil Pretty: you know. So the question is, are we winning? Well.
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Neil Pretty: I don't know. We worked with one organization that had a a turnover rate of 54%,
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Neil Pretty: you know. But they were making money.
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Marion: Wow, yeah.
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Cacha Dora: it's kind of like one of those things. You see it on paper. And yeah, looks great. But what's the actual experience like, what's the environment like? Like, I think about a turnover rate of that much. And I'm like.
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Cacha Dora: how fast. Is that happening? Are you losing institutional knowledge like my brain just goes like a million places about the work environment. And the
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Cacha Dora: is it just like a stress incubator. You know what I mean? Or are people's brutal times at 80. And they're like.
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Danny Gluch: yeah, wonder how much they could be making turnover?
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Cacha Dora: Yeah, yeah.
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Danny Gluch: yeah, this conversation is taking so many awesome turns. I wanna as we wrap up dial us back to.
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you know, now that we've had all the conversations.
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Danny Gluch: Do we think we should measure psychological safety? Is a Kpi.
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Neil Pretty: Well, I here's here's my answer.
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Neil Pretty: I think we should measure psychological safety.
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Danny Gluch: But I think we should make
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Neil Pretty: different things that are associated with high quality leadership
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Neil Pretty: Kpis, instead of psychological safety.
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Neil Pretty: You know, members on your team should be able to understand what your purpose is together as a team.
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Neil Pretty: they should be able to understand and articulate how you, as a team work interdependently, how you navigate uncertainty. You know they should understand what failure is.
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Neil Pretty: and be able to articulate that you know to me those are, you know, few of many things like do you feel appreciated?
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Neil Pretty: You know appreciation is a strategic tool for leaders. It's not a pad on the back. If you think it's pat on the back here. You're missing out on a big
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Neil Pretty: opportunity to to improve the outcomes of your team and and the productivity of your team. There's so there's lots of these other things that you can measure more easily
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Neil Pretty: and be more targeted with your interventions. If they're low and
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Neil Pretty: share success and repeat, if they're high. you can do a lot in that realm.
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Neil Pretty: But if you measure psychological safety as a Kpi, it's less
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Neil Pretty: ideal.
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Neil Pretty: But if you but you must measure psychological safety to understand what it is in reality, because most leaders over predict it. 70 to 85% of the time they over predict it.
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Neil Pretty: and understanding where psychological safety is low is gonna understand where you need to help train and develop people.
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Danny Gluch: I'm gonna pretend that I said the same thing cause that was brilliant.
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Danny Gluch: Ditto me, too. I'm gonna I'll be third. It's like a reddit post 75 to 80 over index. How psychologically safe it is. No, it doesn't shock me. It's just it's it's one of those numbers. It is so big
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Danny Gluch: that it's like, how can we not go out? And now measure those those components to actually make a change right?
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Neil Pretty: And for the most part, it's not because leaders are jerks a lot of people get to. It's like, it's actually because what we're really good at
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Marion: is sanitizing things to our leaders. We want to make it sound like it's all rosy, it's true
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Danny Gluch: so well on that note.
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Marion: Ha!
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Danny Gluch: Any, any last final thoughts? But I that was oh, man.
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Marion: I don't know. I feel like I need to lie down in a dark room with a damp cloth on my forehead.
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Marion: It just makes me want to pick up one of Amy's books. So that's where my! She's been a great help for me while I've been walking around. I I've listened to a lot of her audio books. Everyone go check that out. Go check out Aristotle performance. You can find Neil pretty on Linkedin. You can email us at elephant, at the fearless. px.com. Be sure to give the podcast like subscribe 5. Star review all of that.
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Danny Gluch: and thank you everyone. We'll see you next time.
