Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the next edition of our Work Healthy podcast. I'm John Ryan, and for today's podcast, we travel to London to meet a person who has been ranked number one on the latest Thinkers50 rankings of the world's most influential management thinkers. She is the Novartis professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, the author of seven books, including the Fearless Organization, which uncovers the critical concept of psychological safety as the bedrock of successful companies in the new world of work. I'm, of course, talking about Amy Edmondson. We discuss her latest book, the Right Kind of Wrong, where she encourages us to think in a more nuanced way about failure and how psychological safety and how we talk and think about failure are important to create an intelligent organization. She explains how her first major research study threw up a result that seemed to be the exact opposite of her hypothesis that better teams make less mistakes, whereas the data clearly showed the teams with high psychological safety seemed to make more mistakes. But the truth, as she'll explain, was that those teams were willing to declare their mistakes and failings because their culture was supportive and conducive to learning from mistakes and failures. I started the interview by calling to mind a quote from another wonderful thinker, Dolly Parton.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: I'm always taken by a quote that Dolly Parton made when she said, the only problem with having a hit record is that you have to be willing to sing it every day for the rest of your life.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Oh, that's so interesting. Interesting, yeah.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: I just think with psychological safety and what many people know you for.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Is there a touch of that? Is there.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: You know, there is. And, And I have to say, I'm more. I. I will find myself thinking, oh, I don't want to have to talk about that again. I'm a broken record. Which, of course, that. That ages me. Right. Because you're not young, don't even know what a record is. But. But then I. I nearly always find the following when I'm in it.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: When I'm now in the midst of talking, especially to a live group, all sense of repetition goes away. Like I'm just there. And it's. It's. It's the first time.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, I'm sure you've loads of books and the like, but, you know, this is like a difficult second album.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: This is, you know, this is a unique book for me. First of all, it's my first trade book, meaning my first book for a.
For everybody.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: Okay, that sounds a bit much, but my first book for a general audience.
I hope that parents of young children or teenage children will read this book. I hope that people who are just starting out in their careers will read this book. As opposed to my prior books have been largely written. Well, the first books for academics and then the later books for managers and coaches and organization development consultants. Fearless Organization and teaming.
This book is, is for all of us in our lives and in our jobs.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: So it's new. It's a new adventure.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: So in that sense it's special.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: It's funny actually because I was telling my daughter I've got two daughters and one son, but I was telling my daughter whose name is also Amy, she's doing a business degree in University College Dublin. I was saying to her, I'm going to interview Amy Edmondson. She said, oh wow.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: And I said, I'm going to interview.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Her about a four letter word that starts with F and that is completely sociably unacceptable. She says fail is the word. Right.
[00:03:55] Speaker C: Did she laugh?
[00:03:56] Speaker B: She did, she did. But I'm just interested today that that piece about the. The fact that it's not sociably acceptable to fail.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: It's not the biggest problem.
[00:04:08] Speaker C: Yes. Although social and emotional and cognitive all work together. They're all tied up in knots. So it's maybe a better clearer way to say this is we are risk averse for good reason. I mean we've learned and over learned our risk aversion.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: There's a little touch when I hear you speaking that there's this kind of, yeah, we've all got to fail and all that. But, but that's kind of like a really sort of non sophisticated way of looking at what you're talking about.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: That's happy talk and it's non sophisticated is exactly right. And it's also, it's, it's, it's foolhardy. You cannot, no one would really subscribe to the idea that I should just fail all day. Yeah. But if I clarified that and contextualized it is, you are now in a scientific laboratory and you're trying to discover how messenger RNA unfolds so that you can create life saving therapeutics.
And guess what? You will probably not be able to make much of a discovery if you're not comfortable with the fact that most of your experiments will fail. Oh, okay. I got it right. It still isn't fun. But I can absolutely understand why you're suggesting this might be part of the.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Path and this shift to sort of saying, actually let's reframe and let's see that this is Experimentation, really?
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: So it was never going to be a failure in the first place.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Nobody wants, nobody sets out to fail. If you do, then that's mischief or sabotage. You know, you're setting out to learn, you're setting out to make a contribution.
And in many realms, the only way to do that is to be willing to experiment. And an experiment is an action with an uncertain outcome.
So, yep, I'm going to experiment. Gosh, do I hope I'm right. I sure hope my experiment. I always want my experiments to succeed, but the very nature of an experiment is that some of them will fail.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I was. Funny, even the first story you told in the book, which is actually about your own survey, my own failure, and you're kind of sitting there kind of going, oh, no, Right. I thought you were going to. Actually inside, I thought you were going to say, should I be creative and fake these results?
[00:06:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that would.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: You obviously didn't do that would not.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Have been an appropriate thing to say nowadays. But yeah, there is. I don't remember having that thought, but I could have had it, like. But the problem was, you know, if it were just most failures in social science anyway, the hypothesis is wrong or it fails just by not reaching significance. So it's in the right direction and people will report, oh, it's a trend, you know, it's almost significant, but it's not. So it's not.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: So this wasn't a case of a result that was almost significant, you know, that it didn't quite reach significance. This was a result that was 180 degrees off. It was significant, but in the wrong direction.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And that was scary for you.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Everything was going.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: It was scary, it was puzzling. It was like, you know, first, of course, I spent at least an hour, you know, going back through the program to figure out where I'd done something wrong. But unfortunately I hadn't, you know, I hadn't entered the data wrong or entered the statistical commands wrong. So.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: And we talk about the emotion.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Because I think this is. Yeah. Somewhere else in the book you mentioned. I know this maybe isn't related to this, but it talks about that horrible warm feeling or something that you get when you've just made a mistake.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yep.
Yeah. And you almost instinctively look around to see if anybody. Did anyone see you make it? Because maybe I can pretend I didn't make it, you know? No, I had in. You know, I described several of my failures in the book.
Not too many because it's not a book. About me, but I described this research failure, which, of course, like all good research failures, ultimately allowed me to pivot onto a slightly different question, which was a much more interesting question in the long run.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Life changing for you?
[00:08:28] Speaker C: Life changing for me, indeed. Career changing.
And. But I didn't want people to think, no, Amy fails, but only intelligently. Right. So that's out there. So I describe at least one other failure where I'm hit on the head by a boom in a sailboat race, essentially downwind. And it was completely my error, my lack of vigilance, my looking away in a very dangerous situation.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: And I. No one to blame for that but me.
And. And I felt incredibly ashamed and guilty. And I, you know, and I thought, I just never should have been doing this. And then it's like, later I thought, no, you made a mistake. It's.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: It happens.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: It happens. Right.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: It's.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: It's. It. The mistake wasn't signing up for something hard or challenging. You know, in a sense, you made a mistake that led to a bad outcome. Dust yourself off, get away.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: The easiest way to not make mistakes is to do nothing.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Right. Exactly.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: You know what I mean? So the fact that you were out.
[00:09:33] Speaker C: There, risky, nothing hard.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: And you were doing it, and you were living life right, Doing something you.
[00:09:38] Speaker C: Love, trying to do something kind of.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: So. So, yeah, it is. I think the art of this is to disconnect the emotional aspect from the cognitive and sort of rational aspect of this.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: It is. It is. And that's. I think that's a component of wisdom. I think that's a component of maturity, that ability to stop yourself in your tracks when the emotional, you know, the warm wash of shame or fear or deep anxiety that you will spontaneously experience when something goes wrong or when you screw up and just pause it and say, you know, instead of going, oh, this is awful, and I'm going to die, you say, oh, this is inconvenient. Right. And now what. What will I do differently? So it's learning to interrupt the spontaneous emotions and do a little bit of reframing and reprogramming because the rising comes.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: In like, I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose my.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: I'm going to lose my job, I'll lose my house, I'll lose my family. It's like, no, no, no, no. You know what? You're going to be late for a meeting. Yeah, that's it.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker C: And maybe there will be some people who are quite upset at you. That's okay.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: You know, you'll see your giving people a framework here of to not just bunch all your failures in together as the world does and sees them as all failures are bad. But you want to get people to sort of say no, no, take a more nuanced approach to this.
[00:11:07] Speaker C: Yes. So the most important, I think the most important contribution of the book is that is the articulation of three kinds of failure. And only one of them is really is good, you know, but all three are part of life, so we need to accept them. All the others are kind of bad and ugly. But again, you know, you learn from the bad and ugly too.
And you know, so good, bad and ugly. I like that. But the, the, let's start with the good kind. The good kind are, yes, caused by experiments in new territory in pursuit of a goal with good reason to believe. You might be right, it might work.
And they are not wastefully large. They're as small as possible.
And that describes a well done scientific experiment. That describes a blind date that a friend of a friend thought you might like. I mean it describes many things in life and in work, but it doesn't describe everything.
And then the other two kinds which are bad and ugly, there are basic failures which are caused by error. There was a formula that you could have followed to get the result. You wanted a recipe for that cake, but you made an error and substituted salt for sugar and the cake was awful.
That's a failure that could have been prevented and with a little bit of vigilance and attention, wouldn't it? But it's a basic one. And some, you know, that's a small failure, bad cake. But there also are many major failures in aviation, in science. Where wasn't that it was a good experiment that turned out to be wrong. It was you did you mixed up the chemicals because they were mislabeled and got the wrong result. That didn't teach us anything new at all. So that's a basic failure. It's not, it's still worth learning from, but it's not a source of new knowledge and progress. And then complex failures are multi causal. They're the perfect storm. They're the kinds of failures that happen when a handful of factors came together at just the same time and just the wrong way and led to a failure.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: But it's interesting, I mean like when I read the book, what I actually see sense when you talk about one specific one and that's the, the Boeing 737, 737s and the way the first one went down and the lessons weren't learned. And you know, I just to kind of quote just reading sort of you at times, I simply cannot bear the frequency of this recurring story. You say that it's maddeningly predictable and, and you kind of, you know, I can grim familiarity like this is culture, right? And this is culture going badly wrong and causing a catastrophic. Yes, with cause of life and all that, but it's happening again and again. So my question to you is what? What's going on with leaders and organizations that they haven't figured this out?
[00:14:18] Speaker C: Why are we so stupid, right?
Why are we so able to repeat the same essential nature of the failures again and again and again? And I think the answer lies in some aspects of human nature. I mean cognitively, like we all know the confirmation bias where we're more likely to see what we expect to see than what's really there, especially if we have strong views about it.
From a group or interpersonal perspective. People are quite reluctant to speak up if they see something wrong. But especially those with power or authority seem to think all is well. It's like very hard to say, but wait, this plane, it doesn't seem safe to me.
And then finally, culturally we are trained from a very early age to want to be right, to want to succeed, to downplay and devalue failure, to see failure as bad and something to be avoided at all costs or barring that, just don't let anyone know that you've failed. So preserve your reputation, even if you know privately that you've failed at something. And those come together to lead the Boeing story to be all too predictable and all too familiar because essentially what you had, and Boeing is operating in a high pressure environment where they believed themselves to be facing real time pressure in terms of launching a new product because of competitive dynamics, because Airbus had a new plane that looked very appealing on many levels. So they felt they didn't have time to start from scratch and do this quite the right way. But I mean, they didn't think they were doing it the wrong way. They just thought, let's take an existing viable, a workhorse, the 737 magnificent plane, and we'll just stretch it a little. Well, that changes the aerodynamics a little. We noticed that. Okay, so we're going to develop some software that helps compensate for some of the weird aerodynamics. But then we don't really want to have our airline customers have to go through expensive and lengthy retraining for their pilots. So we sort of downplay and we genuinely believe it's downplayable that no, this plane, it flies, it flies just like the other one. But you know, and especially cause the MCAST kind of kick in on their own.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Oops.
[00:16:52] Speaker C: But they kick in on their own a little too vigorously at times and no one told the. Anyway, so I mean there's plenty of sort of dubious imperfections along the way, but it's ultimate and it's ultimately the perfect storm. And I do, I do point out, you know, because I, you know, I wanted to trace that one back that when kind of the beginning of the story is a couple of decades ago when McDonnell Douglas and Boeing supposedly merged. But really in a sense the ethos of McDonnell Douglas took over the C suite, you know, and they were, Boeing was more engineering, was more engineering and design and, and you know, the executives were, were in the factory and in the lab every other day, whereas McDonnell Douglas was more, just culturally, historically had been more steeped in finance and accounting. And unfortunately that culture took over and they decided to move headquarters from Seattle near the actual engineers all the way to Chicago where there's no longer that easy camaraderie and coordination. Right. No one would have thought, oh, let's do this and have it result in fatal accidents.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: So people get to the top of organizations. Hopefully you'd imagine because they're smart, right? But so like even you talk about risk aversion that they don't realize that if you build an organization with a culture of risk aversion, you're actually going to get more mistakes.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: It's either paradoxical or ironic or both. You know, the more we, the more we have people who are risk averse, which makes them then risk averse interpersonally. The more we are setting ourselves up for bigger risks, you know, and bigger, more consequential failures.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: I'm just wondering, is it insecurity with leaders? Because I always remember there was a time where I actually thought, you know, the key of life was being right all the time, right. Suddenly that moment came in my life where I suddenly went, actually, you know something? It's great to be wrong now and again. And actually you get yourself into trouble being going around as that cocky kind of person who's been right all the time.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: And the most important reason why you get yourself in trouble is that no one will tell. They begin to pick up on the fact that you believe you're right, you know you're right and you're the boss. So the last thing I want to do is kind of disagree with you and say no, you might Be wrong here. Like, what's in it for me? You know, so. And then so you, you get no disconfirming data, so you become more and more walled off from thinking again.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: And, you know, the rest is history.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: I remember even somebody I knew, they. They kept on saying, as a manager, any good news for me?
[00:19:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Which what they were basically saying was, I don't want to hear any bad news.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: And they didn't exactly who they were saying. They didn't know they were saying that.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: They thought they were saying, I'm interested in you and I'm enthusiastic about what you do. But the message they were actually sending was, don't bring me bad news.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: So when you, let's say, consult with an organization and you see the culture is all about sort of playing culture and all that sort of stuff. What things? Because there are people listening to this and they're kind of going, okay, you know, get the book, read the book. Get it. Understand, I want to refocus our organization.
What are the key things that you need to do?
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Well, here I'm going to.
I'll be flippant for a moment, but I'm going to say, here's the formula. Aim high, team up, fail well, learn fast, repeat. That's the formula. But now let's break it down a little. Because in a way, it's not that the people who get promoted are not clever and capable. They are. It's that they may not always be systems thinkers. They're not always thinking about. They're very here and now. And they're not always thinking, wait a minute, If I do and say this now, that might come back to haunt us later.
So it's partly that discipline to sort of step back and think. If I'm saying to people now, any good news for me that might signal later that might lead them to be reluctant. So I often start with, you know, I'll ask a group of executives to check their ratios. Then I think, I mean the finance stuff. And I say, no, no, no, check your ratios. How much of what you are hearing in a given week is, you know, good news, green versus bad, progress versus problems. All is well versus we need help. You know, success versus failure. So let's call those the green and the red. And if your weekly intake is mostly green, or, God forbid, entirely green, you probably have a problem because you're operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world. There is no way that everything's green in the industry you operate. It's like things are going wrong. Unfortunately, you're not hearing about it.
And often when I'll just do that simple little red, green, they'll, I'll see the eyebrows go up. I mean, I'll see people really realizing, you know, I'm happier when I'm only hearing good news, but I'm actually worse off. And so you have to train yourself to train yourself to flip that upside down, to sort of saying, when I'm hearing only green, I must force myself to be unhappy, not happy.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: And that the response to that, isn't it when people actually do put up the hand and say, actually we could have a problem here, how you respond is critical.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: Oh, exactly. So the three, you know, I say the sort of the three things you must do as a leader to build a learning environment and a learning organization is be absolutely clear about the nature of the work and the challenges that you face that you have taken on meaning you, the organization, you know, describe the vuca world that we live in, talk about how challenging and meaningful it is that we can provide these products or services to customers.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: You're trying to give people a rationale for why it's worth the effort to kind of lean in to all of this complexity and challenge and to speak up. Then you are inviting people and you're asking good questions. You're creating systems and structures that require people to share their insights, to share their questions. You're trying to have and hold very high quality conversations, fact based, rational conversations. And then how you respond, how you respond to the red is the most important thing you do as a leader. And so you have to train yourself not to have your natural human automatic response, which is how the, you know, and instead to say thank you for that clear line of sight, that pause.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Isn'T it who Somebody in the book. Pause. Yeah.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: Thank. Yeah. First pause. Larry Wilson talking about pause, stop. Challenge, choose. But thank you for that clear line of sight. How can we help? Right, so it's a. So aim high is. Let's be ambitious. Let's say why it matters. Let's have purposeful missions and work then, wow, that's hard. We can't do it alone. We're gonna have to team up. And then if we team up, especially across boundaries, things will go wrong. So let's learn fast. Repeat.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: I'm just interested, you know, cultures around the world, some will take this on better than others. I don't know, maybe you probably know more about it than I do, but Japanese culture, you know, this idea of losing face and the like, is that something that's going to Be hard for them to sort of.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: I point you to exhibit A, Toyota.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yes, I saw that. Yeah.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: And exhibit A. I don't mean literally, but figure figuratively.
Toyota is a magnificent culture and learning organization, and it doesn't do it by being. It hasn't built in sort of Japaneseness into. It's almost the opposite, because what they have built in is a culture where everyone is willing to pull a cord if they even suspect there's a problem, where people are willing to ask for help, where people are rewarded for finding problems.
And, you know, so where the red is good, the red is a treasure. And so it's brilliant what they've done. It took a lot of effort. It led to enormous value. And you have to pause to reflect on the fact that much of that is almost quintessentially not Japanese.
Now, do Toyota employees sort of leave work at the end of the day and go back to their communities and act in weird ways? Probably not. They probably go back to their communities and know exactly how to behave. So you don't have to violate or, you know, be. Be disrespectful of your cultural norms in your society or country, but you do have to figure out what cultural norms do we need inside these four walls to produce excellence.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: I think it's interesting. This isn't just for organizations.
[00:26:06] Speaker C: No, this is for people.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: This is for everybody.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: It's for everyone.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: You mentioned the family a lot.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: Yeah. So, I mean, like, well, just think, you know, I did a lot of healthcare, a lot of research in healthcare delivery and became quite fascinated by the relatively new meaning 20 years ago policy and some organizations of blameless reporting, like, we need you to speak up so we can learn and prevent problems and so forth. And then I thought, well, that's a thing for families too. And I mean, you really want your, especially teenage children to speak up when they have a problem. They're in a situation they can't handle, they don't know what to do, and they will automatically assume a parents don't want to hear about it. They want me to be perfect and always make good decisions and get straight A's. Right. So I can't ask them. No, no, no. Like, you want to make sure there is an absolute, no questions asked, I need a ride home sort of policy for safety.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: And again, it strikes me at the speech that you made, one of the questions from the audience was about suicide.
It's so sad, it's tragic. And I just really wonder because then one of the books you recommended was on perfectionism.
And this link between that and human fallibility, I mean, maybe you could talk into that a little bit, because I just think it's so, so important.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: Yeah, well, you know, the big mistake we make really, is thinking we're not supposed to make mistakes or we're not supposed to be fallible. And a psychiatrist I met years ago at the job I used to have, Maxi Maltzby, he. He said we're fallible human beings. You know, each and every one of us even abbreviated that fhb. Right. And, you know, the more I heard him say it, the more I thought, okay, that's not so bad. Yeah, it's true. Right. I'm a fallible human being. So are you.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:27:56] Speaker C: Get over it right now. Let's go have some fun. And so, you know, I think the kids. And this was. All of those conversations I was having years ago were, well, before there was a such thing as social media, let alone the Internet.
And so the plot thickens. You know, the challenge is greater for today's young people. And it was hard for us, sure. But it's really hard today because you're seeing stylized, curated glimpses into other people's perfect lives, which are not true, but your brain and your amygdala are telling you they are true.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: But the education system, I also think is good because what it does from a very early age is it. It puts you into competition with people, which is not what you need for life. Life is about collaboration.
[00:28:46] Speaker C: Aim high, team up.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Right?
[00:28:47] Speaker C: Right. And we learn that the student on my left and the student on my right is the competitor is the enemy, not is the collaborator, is my friend. Right.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: And that exact thing, because when you talk about the.
The airline pilots and the like, who. It was presumed the research would show that they got tired, they make more mistakes, but it was actually counter. No, that's not the case.
[00:29:15] Speaker C: The individuals made more mistakes, but those who were in intact teams, who had gotten to know each other's, you know, strengths and weaknesses, were able to compensate for each other. So I see. You make a mistake, I'll tell you.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Hey, you catch it for me, I'll catch you.
[00:29:28] Speaker C: Right, exactly.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: And that idea, I think. And so, I mean, that's one of the things that the. The core of what you're about is that. That ability to make teams work better.
[00:29:37] Speaker C: So, yeah, because teams have the ability to compensate for our individual shortcomings or gaps. You know, I'm good at this, but I'm not good at that. But you're good at that. So, yeah, I Mean, the whole idea of a team is instead of divide and conquer, it's like, let's come together and figure it out.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I remember at a. An organization, their C suite, their senior team, basically we're all sort of individually doing their own thing and taking responsibility for their own areas because the bonus system was based on their own areas. But then they changed the bonus system and suddenly now I was actually quite concerned if your area wasn't operating. I dig in because it's my bonus.
[00:30:18] Speaker C: On the line and I call that mutual accountability. Right. You work. I can't just lecture you and say, why don't you take mutual accountability with your team? Okay, thanks very much. But no, but if I suddenly. If the bonus system Sudd1 in which you will not do well, if I'm dropping the ball, okay, you're gonna help me. But if the bonus system was one in which every time I drop the ball you get more money, you're gonna practically kick that ball out of my.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. So just. You also mentioned in the book this kind of the biggest challenge. I suppose you come up with leaders where they turn around and they kind of go, okay, so if I say failure's okay. If I psychologically safe environment, that's like performance is just going to drop the standards, I should go for high standards and you know, let's make no mistakes.
[00:31:04] Speaker C: I see. Yeah. I say you have to convert that from an either or mental model, which is understandable. I know where it came from, to a both and mental model, which is in fact your job as a leader is indeed to convey and inspire high standards. Right. You want people to want to work hard in service of your customers and to convey and enable a learning environment where there's honesty, where there's sharing, where there's teaming, you know, and, and so you need psychological safety and high standards. And in that upper right hand quadrant where you have both psychological safety and high standards is where learning happens, where high performance happens, where innovation happens, where, you know, so it's not. We tend. I mean, I honestly do think there's a taken for granted belief that this is a trade off. I can either go for psychological safety or high standards and say, no, no, no, it's two leadership tasks, neither of which is easy, both of which are.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: Critical in the book. One, I was fascinated because I just hadn't considered it, but about minorities and the situation that exists for them is harder.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: Yes. And the very def. I mean the definition of being a minority is you're not in the majority.
You might Be an only. You might be just a part of a smaller group. And so what happens is you're more at risk for being. For your behavior being then generalized to other people from your group. Right. So if you're a minority in the organization and you have a big failure, you will be worried that you will be harming other people in. In the same group that you're in.
And so it's an unequal license to fail.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: It's interesting. And on top of that, you also differentiate between psychological safety and belonging. Yes, because again, because you asked the question earlier about inclusion there. I thought that was interesting.
[00:33:03] Speaker C: I mean, so all three things, you know, psychological safety, inclusion and belonging are. Are terms with formal definitions that are different.
Belonging means I really feel that I belong here. I feel a full part, a full member of this community. And inclusion is I'm included in the important decisions or activities around here. And psychological safety is. I believe that I can speak up directly and forthrightly and take risks.
And so those are three different concepts. But in practice, they will have a lot of overlap because the more I believe I can lean in and speak up directly, the more sort of I'm likely to be and feel included. And ultimately, if a lot of bad things don't happen as a result of what I say and do, I do start to have a sense that I belong here.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Two final questions. So the two groups I'd love you to talk to, number one, is the individual employee who is actually not feeling that they're in a psychologically safe environment. And oftentimes it can be a toxic manager or the like that they're really struggling with. What advice do you give to them?
[00:34:20] Speaker C: Well, you know, first of all, I want to. I want to make sure that I'm clear that there is. There is a line beyond which you should not have to tolerate. I mean, if there's. If there's genuine, you know, bullying or harassment or worse, you need to get help. You need to report that. You need to, you know, find yourself into another position or find them into another position outside the organization, preferably. But that's the. I mean, I think that's not the typical situation. The typical situation is that you've got an ineffective manager who. Who is inadvertently conveying that either he or she doesn't want to hear from you or that you're not measuring up or that they don't want to hear bad news, et cetera, et cetera. And certain extent, it's a shame that they're not yet as good at their job. As they could be. So have a little compassion for them. I know that's hard.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Very generous.
[00:35:19] Speaker C: But more generally, more often than not, the problems you're experiencing can be improved by taking the courageous step of having an honest conversation about the experience you're having. So you never say, hey, you are bad and you're making me uncomfortable or whatever. What you say instead is, I'm worried about X. Right. I worry that in our team, we're not sharing some of the really unusual ideas. Like, I'm not hearing unusual ideas from the team. So I'm worried about that. I'm just making this up. In other words, you have to be a little bit courageous. No one will come along with a magic wand and try to talk honestly about the impact, the impact of, let's say, the environment on your ability to do spectacular work. Because that's. It's ultimately, it's all about the work. And if you can, you know, and jot down some of your thoughts about what really is sort of blocking your ability to shine and share that from an eye perspective, more often than not you can start to influence and create a more positive culture.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: Because I think most people want to perform well. So the final group then would be the leaders of organizations. So what's your big ask of those people right now? To do things differently that will get a different result and will be better.
[00:36:56] Speaker C: First and foremost, call attention to uncertainty and fallibility. Your own and the systems that you're leading just kind of make it clear that, you know, all will not automatically be well. Right. It's kind of. It's like Ben Berman, the airline captain, who says, I've never flown a perfect flight. I need to hear from you. You're essentially saying the analogous message, which is, we are in a complicated, ambitious market space where anything can happen. Roll up your sleeves, everybody. We need you.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Life is on site.
[00:37:30] Speaker C: Yeah. So you're really calling attention to context in a. In a thoughtful and inspiring way. Second, you are inviting voice. You're asking good questions of your team. You're helping the organization put structures and systems in place that ensure that we do things like after action reviews or brainstorming meetings or, you know, you're making sure that voice is enabled because it's not spontaneous by humans ever. And then finally, really monitor your response. News is even more valuable than good. You can imagine that, like 95% of what's going on is going as it should, but that doesn't help you very much at the top. Right. You should just.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:38:14] Speaker C: Right? But it's the 5% where you actually want to know it, because you have the opportunity then to make that business.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Before it's too late.
[00:38:23] Speaker C: That's where your leverage comes. That's where your influence comes, is knowing about those problems and helping people organize themselves to find the solution to those problems, not from just sitting back and, you know, celebrating the fact of all the successes.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Yeah, Well, I really hope that people will be inspired, and I'm sure they are. Like, I mean, for your work in psychological safety, that's just stunning and brilliant, and it's changed people's lives, and that's the impact that's made a difference. And then this book on top of it, I think, weaves in beautifully psychological safety in such a smart way, and I think it gives people a license to talk about failure.
[00:39:01] Speaker C: Yes, yes. Now, hey, like, let's read the book and let's talk about failure.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:39:05] Speaker C: Absolutely. You know, what kind of failure was that? Was it basic? Was it complex?
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Let's learn to do intelligence failing. Well, lovely, Amy. Thank you so much.
[00:39:15] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: What a joy it was to meet Amy and to listen to her thoughts and learn from her voice. Vast array of knowledge on this most important topic. Next up on the Work Healthy podcast, we discuss meditation and mindfulness with a former monk. It's a really interesting subject to get your head around. And until next time, mind yourself and remember, work Healthy.
