Episode 15 · 6 December 2022 · 57:43
What is Psychological Safety? (And Why Should You Care?), with Stephan Wiedner from Zarango.com
Featuring Stephan Wiedner
What is Psychological Safety? (And Why Should You Care?), with Stephan Wiedner from Zarango.com
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What the best teams have in common
Introducing the 7 Rs of workplace culture
Meet Stephan Wiedner
The clinical definition of psychological safety (from Amy Edmondson)
Why psychological safety drives high performance
Google's Project Aristotle
interview#google-project-aristotle#psychological-safety#team-effectiveness
The neonatal ICU story — speaking up saves lives
Is House a case study in psychological safety?
Thank people for contributing, then seek understanding
Psychological safety is a team-based construct
Show notes
What Is Psychological Safety? (And Why Should You Care?) — with Stephan Wiedner
Guest: Stephan Wiedner — CEO of Zarango.com and Noomii.com, consultancy firms that train and coach business people on how to create and sustain a high-performance work environment through psychological safety.
Every leader wants creative, innovative, high-performing teams with positive well-being. But research shows there's one factor that matters more than any other: psychological safety.
Stephan joins Al and Leanne to break down what psychological safety actually is (and isn't), why it's the single biggest predictor of team performance, and how leaders can build it — starting tomorrow morning. They dig into Google's famous Project Aristotle findings, the nurse who saved a baby's life by speaking up, and why "psychological fluff" is the last thing this is.
Top 3 Takeaways
Psychological safety is a belief, not a perk. It's the shared belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. It's what separates teams that learn and innovate from teams that hide their errors.
The leader sets the tone — whether they want to or not. Psychological safety is a team-based construct, and pockets of safety (or fear) form wherever leaders create them. Your actions, not your values on a wall, are what people believe.
Start by thanking, then seek understanding. When someone speaks up — especially with something hard to hear — thank them first. Then get curious. The moment you punish or dismiss a contribution, you teach the whole team to stay silent.
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Stephan WiednerWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Stephan WiednerThe best teams had the highest degree of psychological safety, and the worst had the lowest level of psychological safety.
Al ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies, and Workplace Culture podcast. My name is Al and I'm a business owner.
Stephan WiednerMy name's Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd if you're a regular listener, or even if you're not, then this whole podcast, you'll start to learn, is all about taking the complex idea of people and workplace culture, which Leanne knows everything about because she's an amazing psychologist, and then we're trying to translate it so that you, the business owner or the leader, have got implementable ideas that you can basically walk away today and start doing some really good stuff in your workplace. Now, I wanna ask you about this, Leanne, because I've seen quite a few posts recently, and it feels like there's this uprising in employees demanding a better workplace culture. Now, it could be just the Google algorithm because I'm— because I do read these things, then I see more of them. It could be that there's more millennials in the, in the workplace. So therefore, they've got different standards that they're looking for. It could be that they're perhaps a bit more vocal than, than me, which is Gen X, I think I am. Gen Z, I can't remember. So it could be that I'm a bit more vocal, but I I wanted to ask you, Leanne, what are your thoughts on this?
Stephan WiednerYeah, you're Gen X.
Al ElliottI'm Gen X.
Stephan WiednerYeah, I'm a millennial. Hi, guys. We're the ones that started the trouble. The Gen Zs are now picking up the baton. Yeah, no, there is definitely, there is definitely a shift in expectations of employees at work because there's been massive shifts in the way we work, you know, in terms of technology, and obviously massively accelerated by the pandemic. Expectations are different now. And, you know, the world of work is different as well, where there's, you know, the times of having a job that, save for life isn't there anymore, as we've talked about recently with the Twitter layoffs. A safe pension isn't really a thing anymore. So quite rightly, you know, employees now are saying, well, you know, I am, I'm giving you my time in return for good pay, benefits, and a work-life balance. Um, you don't have to like it, but yeah, it's, it's changed.
Al ElliottIt's so interesting because the power shift seems to have been now that, um, before it was like you're lucky to get a job, and now it's almost like employees think you're lucky to get me, which is probably quite a good, quite an interesting shift and quite a good thing to be. Now, you've, you've done some research around what makes a great workplace culture, and you found 7 foundations of wellbeing that makes the, makes a place a really good place to work. So will you talk us through those 7?
Stephan WiednerYeah.
Stephan WiednerSo I think just to give it a little bit of context, when we look at kind of psychological research within organisations, there's lots of overlap between wellbeing, employee engagement, and culture. So what we want to do here at along with is create a very comprehensive tool that can capture all of those things, that employees, business leaders have influence and power over, they can make changes in their business, but then they can also see the measurable impacts on employee attitudes, behaviour, and performance. So yeah, there are 7 foundations within a business that will promote wellbeing, that will promote employee engagement, and all the performance benefits that come with that. We've called it the RX7, And that's because our 7 areas all begin with R. And I was very excited when this turned out to be the case, completely accidentally.
Al ElliottTo be honest, I think one of them I made you change to begin with R, but the rest of the other 6 did. I mean, I put the Al in alliteration, I think. Anyway, shall we crack on with those 7 then?
Stephan WiednerYes. Shall I, shall I list the 7 first? Yes, that's a good idea.
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan WiednerSo we have Reason, Recognition, Resources, Role, Relationships, Resilience, and Remote.
Al ElliottLovely. So let's go through those, those 7. And just, just to reiterate, these are what we found from our research, or Leanne's research, really. I've just written bits of it, is that they're the 7 foundations to make an amazing workplace culture of employee engagement and performance.
Stephan WiednerAnd wellbeing.
Al ElliottAnd wellbeing.
Stephan WiednerYeah. Absolutely. So, yeah, reason, the first one. So this is really providing, and I, I, I like to start each of these kinda definitions with providing because as a leader, I can provide this within the organisation. It's not entirely It's tangible, it's not, you know, how do we do this? I provide this as a leader. So, reason, I provide leading engagement with a clear mission that not only I connect with and I'm excited about as a leader, but that my employees connect with both on a professional and a personal level. So, the second is recognition. That's providing an environment that's based on fairness, representation, and appreciation. The third is resources. That's providing manageable workloads, adequate training for people to do the job that they're currently in, and ongoing development opportunities as well. The 4th is role. So, this is role clarity in terms of the current role. So, what are my responsibilities? Clarity over future roles. Do I have a clear path within the organisation, or indeed externally to the organisation? Freedom in work practices. So, this isn't having to do everything exactly the same way. all the time, I have some autonomy within my role. And then also just mutual respect between leaders and employees in terms of, I have a role within this organisation, and therefore I have some control over what that looks like. The 5th is relationships. So, this is providing information and support to employees through yourself as a leader, through your managers, and harnessing and nurturing that support in peer relationships as well. 6th is resilience. And this is really providing opportunities for employees to build their resilience, and critically, to, you know, the time and space to emotionally and physically recover from work, particularly in frequently changing environments, which is basically just business today, right? And then finally, remote. So, remote's interesting. And pre-pandemic, we were working with clients, on employee engagement and wellbeing, and looking at remote work as something that we believe was driving employee engagement, so it's contributing to positive employee engagement and wellbeing within the business. What we've kind of found in our research post-pandemic, and this is early post-pandemic, so it might change, why we need to always keep an eye on these things. What we're finding is that employee engagement and wellbeing is affected by remote or hybrid work as a workplace arrangement, either negatively or positively, depending on the conditions within the organisation as they currently are. So, what it's basically saying is it's a moderating factor.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Stephan WiednerSo, if your other 6 Rs are doing really well, then more than likely remote work or hybrid work, whatever that looks like for you, is going to work really well, because you've created this environment to facilitate remote work. Equally, if there are some kind of hotspot risk areas, in your organization, then they're probably gonna be related to certain struggles with remote work. So currently, we're finding that remote is a moderator of the previous 6, but that is the— those are the 7 foundations, and that is the RX7.
Al ElliottDefinitely. Now, you'll be hearing, I'm sure, a lot more about that in the new year. I'm not gonna give you any spoilers, but the whole point of this is, I think, that you're going to— you get these things in place, And basically, as long as you do these 7 things, or get these 7 things scoring highly, you've got yourself a decent workplace culture. Now, I think what you said before was that one of the most, or you were talking about one of the most important beliefs, and that's why we've got our guest on today.
Stephan WiednerYeah, so, so the important thing about looking at culture, employee engagement, wellbeing, is to look at it as a predictive model, and something that you can measure. So, all of our 7s in our RX7, each of those can be measured and linked to a specific positive belief or behaviour that employees might have about the organisation. And that, in turn, is going to translate into individual benefits, such as wellbeing, performance, fulfilment, but also business benefits. Like I said before, this has to be commercially sustainable as well. And what we found is that these positive behaviours and beliefs translate into high revenue, higher profitability, and faster growth, to name a few.
Al ElliottSo, in short, you need this if you want to scale, if you want to maybe exit, maybe you want to get investment, you need this.
Stephan WiednerAbsolutely. And, you know, to kind of lead in and segue nicely into today's guest, one of the most important beliefs that can be held by employees in engaging work environment and that boosts wellbeing pretty much exponentially is something called psychological safety.
Al ElliottWe brought in a guest called Stephan, who he will introduce himself in a second. And I'm not going to— deliberately not going to ask Leanne to define psychological safety or why we need it, because these are all the questions we asked Stephan. So let's meet Stephan.
Stephan WiednerMy name is Stephan Wiedner, and I'm the CEO of Zarango.com. It is a training platform where we train folks in psychological safety. The original seed was there in business school. I really enjoyed organizational behavior, industrial organization, like those courses, the kind of HR culture-related courses. And so I've been spending the last 15 years or plus in that area. So I started with coaching. We started, uh, my business partner and I, we started up newme.com. It's a network of thousands of coaches all over the world. And more recently, um, started up Zarango.com for all of our psychological safety-based training.
Stephan WiednerSo, as I mentioned earlier, psychological safety is a belief held by employees in engaging and supportive workplace culture. But what is it exactly? And Stephan's actually got a really good clinical definition.
Stephan WiednerI'll start with the clinical definition, if you call it that, the one provided by Amy Edmondson. She's a Harvard professor. She's really the thought leader in this space. I'm sure I call myself an expert, but She's the real expert, and I'm just learning from her and others in the field. Her definition is that psychological safety is a belief that within your team, within your work environment, you can speak up, say what's on your mind, admit mistakes, and you could do all of that without any fear of some form of negative consequence. To make that a little more tangible in our training, what we say is that the definition for psychological safety is that you're trying to create a culture in which Your people have the courage to speak up and the confidence to know that when they do speak up, they'll be heard.
Al ElliottNow, our Zoom recording there did break up a little bit when he said a really important thing, which was Amy Edmondson. Is that correct, Leanne? Yeah.
Stephan WiednerAmy Edmondson is a Harvard professor and a real pioneer and thought leader in, in psychological safety. And she did say, you know, it's— and she does so much reading. We're gonna leave a link in the show notes that if you wanna, you know, dive into her TED Talk, into her papers, it really is fascinating reading. But she summarised it by the psychological safety as a belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Or in other words, that they just, people feel empowered to question the status quo without that fear of being judged or embarrassed or punished. In its simplest terms, it's creating an adult-to-adult environment. I think that's what we were kind of saying before, it's that, You know, you should want me to work for you as much as I want, you know, to work for you. It's that adult-to-adult transaction. Um, and, you know, as Stephan said, it's not just about allowing people to speak up, it's about doing something with that feedback. Um, and it's by making sure that that employee voice translates into organisational action that you're going to get the most impact out of psychological safety, as Stephan explained.
Stephan WiednerAnd what we knew looking back was that all of the leaders that we were coaching wanted to improve their ability to lead their teams, inspire their teams, et cetera. Gosh, they're all really just trying to improve psychological safety, and we can measure that. And if we can measure it before and after, then we can point to something that says, hey, this is good evidence that the behaviors of this leader are changing and psychological safety is improving. And because we know psychological safety is linked to performance and high, high performance, Then we can assert that this team is performing better.
Stephan WiednerSo, as Stephan says, again, we're talking about a predictive model. This is how the RX-7 works. It's how any great employee engagement model or wellbeing model is going to work, in that, you know, if we understand the foundations, the drivers of employee engagement, and the associated beliefs and behaviors, we're not only going to know where to make changes, but we can measure the impact of these changes too. Um, as I said, from, from individual wellbeing to profitability and even happier customers.
Al ElliottNow, I'm always asking, how does this make a difference? It all sounds lovely, but how does it make a difference? Uh, Stephan's got an amazing example of how it made a difference at Google.
Stephan WiednerYou need to pay attention to it because, um, the main reason is that it's linked to high performance. So I mentioned that earlier, Google did a big study. Google, of course, they're about as data-driven as you can get. And they asked the question, what makes an effective team? Because they had ranked 180 Google teams. They knew the best teams and they knew the worst teams. And so they wanted to know what leads to teams being effective or not. And so they went around the halls of their, their campus and they asked senior leaders, executives, managers, all sorts of folks what they think might matter when it comes to a team. And so they looked at team size, age, ethnicity, cultural diversity, you know, all of these different factors, and nothing correlated. Nothing correlated with the best teams and the worst teams. And so they went back to the academic research, came across the concept of psychological safety, applied that to their dataset, and lo and behold, it was the driving factor. So it was the number one correlating factor with high performance and low performance, meaning the best teams had the highest degree of psychological safety and the worst teams had the lowest level of psychological safety. So that's why it matters.
Stephan WiednerYeah. Such a, a really interesting bit of research from Google. It's, um, if you want to find out more, it's called Project Aristotle. Oh, cool. Um, yeah. Based off of the, um, I guess the idea of Aristotle that the, the sum is greater than its individual parts. Um, but yeah, Google found that employees that felt psychologically safe were more likely to admit mistakes, more likely to collaborate with others, and also to take on new responsibilities and commercially bring in more revenue. Once you then add in the positive correlation of, uh, between psychological safety, um, or the positive relationship between psychological safety, um, employee retention, satisfaction, resilience, and performance, Creating psychologically safe environments is kind of a, a no-brainer, really. I think, what do you, what do you think? It sounds like common sense at this point.
Al ElliottWell, it does, but I think for someone who's just coming to this term psychological safety, it, it, it can sound a little bit like, oh, what else am I gonna have to do to, to make sure that everyone feels happy? And we are gonna go onto the whole fluff and snowflake stuff in a second. So if you are still not convinced, don't worry, that's coming. But I think, yeah, it just, it makes perfect sense. And the fact that Google is doing it, as you say, data-driven tech company, very forward-thinking, used to be and possibly still are brilliant in the, in the leadership area, it just goes to show that this is something which we all really should be listening to.
Stephan WiednerAbsolutely. And if you're still not clear on how psychological safety can impact behavior and in turn organizational outcomes, Stephan has a great example.
Stephan WiednerI'm a nurse, and I see on the chart for this— in this case, it was in a neonatal intensive care unit. So there's a child, an infant, a baby, and on the chart it says, you know, administer this amount of drug, this type of drug, and this amount. And you think the dose is wrong. So it's 2 in the morning, you know, you're the midnight shift, and you think, I really got to call the doctor. So you call the doctor and says, stay in your lane, just follow the orders on the chart, and that's that. So the next time that comes around, what do you do? Do you notice the error on the chart or the potential mistake, and do you call that doctor again? No, because you got reamed out last time. So that's one case where psychological safety affected my ability to be able to pick up the phone and call you, and there's a potential life or death situation. And why that matters is because how often are there mistakes happening in your work environment where you wanna know about those mistakes because you can then do something about it? And another similar study looked at the number of errors that were being reported in hospitals. And what they found is that Teams that had the highest level of psychological safety reported more errors, not less. And that was counterintuitive, right? Amy, that was a study conducted by Amy Edmondson again, and she was expecting that the teams with the highest degree of psychological safety would have the fewest number of errors. And it was exactly the opposite. And it's because it's a reporting issue. If you have a high degree of psychological safety, you report the errors so you can fix them.
Stephan WiednerYeah.
Stephan WiednerAnd if you are in a low psychological safety environment, you hide them. So if you're a business owner, if you're a business leader and you're not hearing about the issues that are happening in your business until it's too late, that's a problem, right? Like if your salespeople are finding out that your biggest customer is upset with you and they're just trying to, you know, cover it up and they don't wanna admit that we might lose our biggest client. That's a problem. You need to find out about that right away. So that's the case for psychological safety. It's getting access to information to make better decisions ultimately. It's how groups of people learn so they can innovate, adapt, change, make things better.
Al ElliottSo I have a question, Leanne. This has just fired something off in my head. Do you think, you know, in House, the, the Hugh Laurie document— not documentary.
Stephan WiednerJesus. It's not a documentary.
Al ElliottIn House, in the series, then I'm thinking based on that that they had high psychological safety. But then the leader, did they have high psychological? Because what I'm thinking is on one hand, he basically sat down to do the differential diagnosis with everyone. So they're like, right, we want your ideas. Yet, almost every idea was thrown back and going, that's stupid. So, what was the situation there?
Stephan WiednerI think— I mean, I think House is a really interesting case study to use for lots of different things. I think you're right. I think there is an element of psychological safety there, because the thing is that there was— you know, if mistakes were made, House knew about it. House was the first person to know about it. Or if something wasn't working, he was the first person to know about it. to know about it. So, I think there was psychological safety. And I think what's probably been quite interesting, if you kind of mapped that journey of those— I think there was 2 main teams, weren't there, in House?
Stephan WiednerYeah.
Stephan WiednerThere's 2 main teams of doctors over the course of the series. I would imagine that you'd start to see more and more those junior members, the other junior doctors, starting to question House and throw back a similar level of shade and, you're wrong, And I think that's what you— it's probably a good example, a very weird example, but a very good example of nurturing psychological safety in terms of it only works if we can all question each other, whether I am the leader or whether I am the most junior person of staff in the organisation. Everyone has an equal voice.
Al ElliottAnd it just so happens that House is a sarcastic bastard, so he will shoot you down, but you know that he He wants you to question that. Really interesting. Okay, so, but we can't just say, all right, we now have a culture of psychological safety, let's hear it, can you?
Stephan WiednerI mean, not really. I think it does kind of start with that very clear intention and communicating that clear intention with your employees. But even, you know, using that silly example of hair, psychological safety is something that's nurtured and will build over time. So yeah, it's, I mean, it's not just, as we've said, it's, again, hair is a good example. It's not just about getting that feedback. It's also important how you respond to it and respond to it in the right way, as Stephan explains.
Stephan WiednerOh, well, if I share this, is that gonna reflect poorly on me? Hmm, my colleagues aren't reporting these issues. Maybe why would I? Why should I? Then I'm gonna seem like the whistleblower, right? These are all of the impacts that we might be perceiving to our reputations if we share certain pieces of information. And I think that's often, you know, the fact that you just pointed that out is really critical to point out is that that's what's causing people to withhold information is like, how is this gonna affect me? And, um, and so that's why as a business owner or business leader, you need to make sure that you are setting the tone for what information needs to be shared. And then you need to be responding in a productive way. So if what you're asking is, okay, I need to know when there are mistakes, And then you ream someone out when they share a mistake, that's not gonna get you that behavior again in the future. So you have to respond productively. And also another way that folks might share information is maybe there's a chat or some sort of Slack channel where people can just kind of air their issues. And if you just ignore them, like if, okay, so you're giving the ability to share, But then you do nothing with that information. How you respond is as important as kind of the system you set up for gathering the information in the first place.
Stephan WiednerSo, I think there's another couple of really great takeaways here from Stephan that I just want to expand on a little bit. I think, you know, he said that the first thing is to really, you know, thinking about how you respond to this. If you fly off the handle, if you send out an angry email and copy in every single member of the team, That's not going to foster feelings of psychological safety. So, you really do have to take your ego out of it. You need to decide ahead of time how you're going to respond to various levels of mistake, because the minute you lose your shit, psychological safety just isn't going to work. I think secondly, as Stephan said, if you're not going to do anything with this feedback, with these ideas, suggestions, you are better doing Nothing at all, do not open that can of worms. That is going to, you know, I mean, psychological safety then becomes irrelevant. But in terms of employee engagement and wellbeing, you're just going to have a more negative impact. So, if you're not in the position to ask for this feedback and act on it, and by acting, I'm not saying implement every idea, but respond to every idea, then it's just, it's not going to work.
Al ElliottYeah. I love this, taking your ego out of it. I think that is the key to almost anything in business, whether it's sales, marketing, ideation, leadership, HR, anything like that. Taking your ego out of it is really, really smart. Okay, so hopefully we've made a case for why it's important and why you should be considering this and why you should be implementing it in your, in your organization. So let's get on to some practical stuff. So how do we actually do this?
Stephan WiednerYeah, the first thing you wanna do is thank people for contributing and then seek understanding. So as a leader, you wanna make sure that you have your curiosity hat on, if you will. Don't assume you absolutely know what they're trying to say. So sometimes it will be fairly clear, but then other times you might have additional questions, um, or don't assume you know exactly what the person is What we advocate is for managers and leaders to be really curious about what people are contributing, because that makes them really feel heard, right? And understood and appreciated. And if you give people the time of day, they're gonna start to give you more and more information openly, right? Because it's gonna feel more comfortable. They're gonna feel more trust. And that trust is a currency within business, right? The more people trust you because you're willing to listen, And the more they're willing to share and give you insights or information that they're possessing in their, between their two ears.
Stephan WiednerI think what I love most about what Stephan said there is, you know, leaders putting on their curious hat, you know, leading with curiosity. And why I like that, I think it's a, one, it's a really common trait within, you know, leaders, particularly owner-led businesses. They're usually very curious. They've usually built their business because of a curiosity of doing doing something differently, or, or, you know, changing how, you know, the status quo. It's that same mentality, you know, how could we do things better? And what I love is that by applying the same mindset that you leverage to build your business, um, you're gonna embrace, um, this, this concept of psychological safety and really help your employees to contribute in the best possible way to Continually, um, you know, push the envelope. So let's bring this, this idea, this concept to life a little bit more, and let's, um, hear from Stephan again.
Stephan WiednerFor sure. I think there's many good examples of organizations that do psychological safety well. Um, I can think of one organization that's made it a real top priority for them, and they're in the finance industry. And so what's a priority for them, especially among their investment team, is getting really good information because they make decisions about what companies to invest in. They wanna make sure that even if there's one dissenting voice in a room of a dozen, that that dissenting voice is heard. So they're creating an environment where all of those folks are able to share their information. Now, that's not a simple task. Like, I think the idea of what they want to have, which is complete information for decision-making, is really, really clear. What is hard about it is that these folks, by and large, are looking at investments and making decisions, and they're basically being paid for their knowledge. And so they don't wanna look stupid. They don't wanna look like they're uninformed. They wanna be making decisions on complete information. And so if there's some sort of like, hmm, I'm not so sure, and I'm not even sure how to fully articulate why, But I have an intuition, you know, my sense is this industry operates in this way, and this company's a little bit different than all the other companies in the industry, and here's why. And like, maybe they can't fully articulate why they're thinking, I'm not so sure, I'm a little bit hesitant about this as a buy. They might not say anything. So again, they've been able to put in place some systems and really group norms.
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan WiednerBy setting a certain agenda. Like, so, okay, for these meetings, here's how we're gonna run this meeting. We wanna hear everybody's, you know, top 3 reasons for, top 3 reasons against, and we want you to think about it ahead of time cuz this week we're gonna be reviewing companies A, B, C, and D, right?
Stephan WiednerSo they're giving people, they're knowing their tendencies and accommodating the, the agenda of the meeting to allow people to have that time to want to invest the time and energy to I think that's actually a really good approach, to give teams this agenda, this expectation ahead of time, not only for different personalities and thinkers, but also as a way of, you know, saying, we're so committed to this that we are giving you time to come up with why we're wrong about this. It really cements that through. And I think, you know, another way to do it could be, you know, again, you're relying on individuals with that to feel comfortable. Create team meetings where you're asking people to come up with their Or create working groups with a set agenda. You 4 are for this idea, you 4 are against this idea. It doesn't matter how you individually feel. Use the information to come up with the pros and cons as you can see them. Yeah, I think it's a really, really cool technique. And just to pick up on something else that Stephan said there as well, you know, and this sums it up brilliantly, is all of this, everything about gathering data within your organisation on employee engagement, wellbeing, how people are thinking and feeling, is to give you the full information, the full picture you need to make decisions within your business. If you're not quite ready to kind of make this big change within your business and put it all out there, think about doing, asking for some kind of anonymous feedback, or some kind of survey that we've talked about before on the podcast. Sometimes that can be a good place to start, to understand what the current climate is within your business. Um, to then make bolder moves, uh, that Stephan is talking about.
Al ElliottSo clearly the biggest impact on psychological safety is the leader.
Stephan WiednerUm, psychological safety is a team-based construct, and so you're gonna have pockets where psychological safety is gonna be high and pockets where psychological safety is gonna be low and everything in between. And what we find, um, really tends to influence psychological safety is The leadership starting at the top, but then also leaders within certain departments. So certain leaders and managers will cause psychological safety to go down or up depending on their skills, their abilities to manage their team and manage psychological safety. So, um, are there organizations that uniformly have low psychological safety across the board? I think if you look at the top, um, and you look at who's leading those organizations, that's probably gonna be the best indication.
Al ElliottSo here's a question. And I'm sure a lot of listeners are saying this out loud. What happens if you start hearing things you don't really want to hear?
Stephan WiednerYou will hear things you don't want to hear. You know, it's just the way things are. Nothing is 100% perfect. And also, if people aren't questioning things, then they're not innovating, they're not creating, and they're not driving the change in performance within your business that you need. So you are gonna hear things. you don't wanna hear. Um, but yeah, as I said earlier, it is like opening a can of worms. This is what Stephan thinks.
Stephan WiednerYeah, I think what you're pointing to is the anxiety we might have as business leaders to, I, if I ask the question and I get an answer, I now need to deal with it, right? Yeah, I think that's a question you wanna ask yourself. Are you willing and able to do that? And maybe there's some areas that you're willing to explore with your staff and others Where you're not. Like, there's some matters that you wanna fully decide. Like, you're the business owner, you're the business leader, maybe you're the divisional leader. Like, you're gonna make the call. Like, at the end of the day, it is a business, and usually businesses require one person to make the call. And so we're not saying you have to honor every piece of input. Right? Because remember, gathering information from your staff is not about agreeing with them. It's about giving them a voice and making them feel like what they have to say matters. And the more you can do that, the more engaged they're going to be, the more likely they are to really lean into their work and not just Okay, well, boss told me to do this. I guess I'll do it even though I think it's a terrible idea, right? So if, if you can think about engagement, psychological safety is a means for facilitating high levels of engagement, and lower levels of engagement are gonna be facilitated when, when there's less psychological safety, when folks are not there, their voice doesn't matter. So that, I think that's a simple way of thinking about it. Do you want to get the best outta your people?
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan WiednerThen you wanna foster psychological safety and their input and make their voice matter.
Stephan WiednerDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Stephan WiednerAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Stephan Wiednerthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like Their work, and we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Stephan WiednerIt is. It's such it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioral science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that will be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Stephan WiednerIt can.
Stephan WiednerAnd are we all just status-seeking monkeys?
Stephan WiednerI am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Stephan WiednerBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back, because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Stephan WiednerSo come back. I'll cut that out.
Al ElliottKeep that in.
Stephan WiednerA client said to me once when we were kind of new in our relationship and in the project and starting to explore kind of employee voice and psychological safety, and they said to me, you know, but Leanne, we're running a business, not a democracy. I was like, yes, but you're also running a business, not a dictatorship. You can have— we're not saying, as Stephan said, that you're giving over complete control to your employees, or you have to do everything they say. That's not the point. Business leaders, you can set boundaries. You can, to the kind of input that you want, what your expectations are, manage employees' expectations.
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan Wiednerin terms of what you're going to do with it. You don't have an obligation to accept every piece of feedback, um, and then action it. Um, it's more about facilitating that discussion. And if someone gives you an idea, you know, it's as simple as saying, I love that, that's such a great idea. I'm not sure it's gonna work for the business right now because of this specific reason, but let's pick that up in 3 months' time and see where we're at. Um, it is, it's facilitating that discussion. It's that adult-to-adult conversation.
Al ElliottSo let's just play devil's avocado for a moment then here. Um, so what would you say to business owners who are telling you that this is just fluff? This is for the snowflakes out there who, who need to feel safe.
Stephan WiednerI mean, I'd probably just tell them that they're wrong, but I think, uh, yeah, Stephan's got my, my back on this one.
Stephan WiednerPsychological fluff.
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan WiednerWhat makes it different is that it's, it's not fluff, it's science. There's science backing this. There is data, there's evidence, and we know it matters. And so, um, one of the things that we're looking to do is we're conducting a study right now because we're focusing a lot of our training on those interpersonal skills. It's how to be curious, how to ask an open-ended question, How to reflect back to someone that you really understand them. Because so often what we know is that big organizations are starting to look for leaders that have great listening skills. Yeah, but how do you assess that and how do you teach that? Because most people, I'm guessing 90% of people think they're in the top 10% of listeners, right? We all think we're good listeners, but are we? And so we focus on, on those interpersonal skills and We often focus on what are called soft skills, and we think that's a misnomer. They're not soft skills, they're hard skills. You can measure them, we can assess them through a performance task. And we get folks to respond to those stimulus videos by recording their response. What would they say in the room? So it's not a hypothetical, they actually record what they would say, and we can assess those.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Stephan Wiednerbehavior specialists, interpersonal skills experts who can code the responses to say, um, to, to look for 8 skills that we know are correlating with good positive outcomes. And so, um, it's, these are not soft skills, these are hard skills and they can be learned.
Stephan WiednerHear, hear. This isn't fluff. This is the science of human behavior. Do you know what is fluff, Al?
Al ElliottUh, no.
Stephan WiednerMyers-Briggs. Do you know what else is fluff?
Stephan WiednerGo on.
Stephan WiednerRecruiting for culture fit. And one more. Do you want a third one?
Al ElliottYes, go ahead.
Stephan WiednerSushi fucking Fridays. That is fluff. We have empirical evidence backing up psychological safety, and when it's done right, businesses will measure the impact for themselves. If you're Do me a favour. If you're embarking on any people and culture intervention, whatever it is, take a snapshot of your performance before that intervention starts. I'm talking revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, employee engagement, well-being, productivity. Any data points you have, any metrics on performance you have within your business, take a snapshot. before that intervention. Then once that intervention is finished, 6 months later, take that snapshot again. If your performance hasn't increased in the areas you expected it to, that intervention hasn't worked. Maybe that intervention was fluff, maybe it was executed badly. If you are doing this right, if you are using the science of people within your business right, you will see tangible, measurable impacts on your performance. Yeah.
Al ElliottBrilliant. Okay, well said. So let's assume that someone does do all that, someone that, that someone listening says, yeah, I'm gonna do this. They implement everything that Stephan and you have talked about. We fast forward 6 months. How, how do they know that it's working?
Stephan WiednerWhat characterizes an environment with high degree of psychological safety? It's people speaking up, right? And so what's the opposite of that? It's quietness, or what I might call politeness. So if everyone's just really polite and no one's willing to say the uncomfortable thing, then that's a sign that you have a lower level of psychological safety. I think the misconception is that if I'm a leader, if people are kind of agreeing with me and everything seems okay, that everyone's happy and all is good, and that a true sign of a low workplace environment is one where people are fighting with each other, openly calling each other names kind of thing. And that's not the case. So instead, we see that low levels of psychological safety are environments where just people are not speaking up, or they're just being polite. They're agreeing with you all the time, and you're never— a classic example is in a meeting, if you're sitting there and you say, okay, I think we should do this, folks. What do you think about this idea? And everyone just goes, yeah, sure, let's do that. You want to empower your people to be able to speak up and say, that's good. It's a 7 out of 10. What would make it a 10 out of 10 is this.
Al ElliottAnd for most people who've started a business because they see the commercial opportunity, an entrepreneur, then they're not necessarily schooled in leading. And I think And I think that a lot of people, and I fall in this trap myself, is that you sit there and you think because nobody's saying anything, it's a good idea. And you think, I keep coming up with these great ideas, don't I? And then, you know, 6 weeks down the line when it hasn't worked, you're like, well, why didn't that work? And then someone pipes up and goes, well, because the software doesn't really support that kind of thing, or, you know, that sort of idea. So I think this is such an important thing to remember is that you might feel that everything's okay because people aren't disagreeing with you. That could actually be 100%.
Stephan WiednerAnd I think, you know, there's, there's some, some little things that you can look out for and maybe just sit and reflect now on, on your business that, that I've, I've experienced as a leader, and it has been a red flag, and I've run towards it and, and tried to, to understand it better. Things like, as you know, as I've said, presenting ideas and getting no pushback— red flag. Presenting an idea and getting venomous pushback, But from the same person that always gives you pushback, red flag. Listen, you know what, I need to sit down and have a coffee with that person because clearly they've got some ideas I need to hear. Um, and I think finally, just that— I mean, there's a balance between always feeling like you're fighting fires, but if you're, if you're in a position where you're not fighting any fires, everything is going smoothly and brilliantly, Red flag. There's a fire. It's just no one's called 999, right? There's a fire.
Al ElliottThis is so interesting because I think the, the classic, the, as I just mentioned before, the, the, the, the natural feeling is, oh, everything's okay. So can we go into some, some tangible, you know how I like a list of things and ideally they've got 3 on them. Can we maybe go into like 3 or 4 steps of what someone does after they finish listening to this? What, What they can do to implement this in their workplace?
Stephan WiednerYes. I think step one, understand that people want to be heard.
Stephan WiednerYeah. There's facilitating a discussion for sure. And also, um, you know, people just wanna be understood and heard. So it's like, yeah, okay, I get it. I want one thing, you want the other. How are we gonna meet in the middle? Or, or, you know, it, it certainly does facilitate A discussion. And I think so often people wanna just be, feel heard. And as long as they feel heard and appreciated, they're more likely to acquiesce, if you will, or more likely to, um, yeah, acquiesce. Because if you look at research around conflict resolution, often it starts with demonstrating understanding. Why? Because if you understand what the other person really wants, Mm-hmm. Then they're more likely to wanna understand what you want. That's a good way to make negotiations happen, right? You're more likely to get to a yes when you demonstrate, you lead by showing understanding. Oh, okay. I get what you really want. You really want this, this, this, and that. Hmm. Okay. Well, let me tell you what I really want. I want this. And they're more likely to hear now because I heard them first.
Stephan WiednerAgain, adult-to-adult conversation. I hear so many business leaders say that they're craving this within their organization, but this adult-to-adult conversation does mean relinquishing a little bit of control, uh, which can be hard when you've built a business from the ground up. So yeah, step 1, understand that people want to be heard and that they do have valuable contributions to make. With that in mind, step 2, be curious when someone does speak up.
Stephan WiednerYeah, the first thing you wanna do is thank people for contributing. And then seek understanding. So as a leader, you wanna make sure that you have your curiosity hat on, if you will. Don't assume you absolutely know what they're trying to say.
Stephan WiednerAnd then of course, step 3, measure it. This is not fluff, this is not intangible. This is the science of people. Measure it.
Stephan WiednerUm, you know, we offer folks a free team assessment. It's super quick and easy. Amy Edmondson's survey that she developed is 7 questions, so it's been robustly tested and it works to measure psychological safety in a team-based environment. And it takes 3 minutes for everybody to answer the questions. So we could administer the assessment, and then what it produces for us is a report. We get a report and we—
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan WiednerUse that as a conversation starter with teams. This is a starting point. Okay, here's the psychological safety on this team. Let's talk about it. How do we get this score? Why is it 7 outta 10 instead of 9 outta 10? And then we can ask the question of, okay, well, what could we do about it? So that's the first thing is let's just measure it. Let's get a baseline measure so that we can influence it. That which you can measure, you can change.
Stephan WiednerAnd finally, have a think about what might be stopping people from speaking up. I've mentioned this before, and I'll continue to bang on about it. One of the most important things you can do as a leader is engage in reflective practice. What is going well? What isn't? What could be stopping people from feeling comfortable to speak up?
Stephan WiednerThe second thing is, as a leader, what you wanna be thinking about is what might be causing people to withhold information. And when I say withhold, I don't mean in like a, Um, like in an intentional way, like what's causing them to not want to speak up, I guess. And just be attuned to it and be attuned to it for yourself. Like, are there uncomfortable bits of feedback that you feel like you wanna say to some of your staff members or team members and you're just not saying it? Like, what if someone's quality of work is not there? Are you willing and able to go up to them and say, this is not good enough?
Stephan WiednerYeah.
Stephan WiednerThis needs to be better and here's how. Or are you maybe a little bit too agreeable and you're saying, yeah, this is pretty good, okay, thanks, you know? Um, so you wanna make sure that you yourself are speaking up and you're noticing when you're not and what's causing that. So notice it in yourself and then notice it in your team. Notice, hmm, oh man, She's not saying anything right now. I wonder if it's because so-and-so just made a kind of a judgy comment. Hmm, interesting. So just start noticing.
Al ElliottOkay, so these 4 steps. Step 1, understand that people want to be heard. Step number 2, be curious when someone speaks up, seek clarification, don't assume you know. Step 3, measure it. And we talked about Stephan's measuring tool, which we'll link to. And step 4 is think about what's stopping people from speaking up in the first place. So why are we saying this is all coming from the leader, Leah?
Stephan WiednerEverything comes from the leader. Honestly, as a business leader, the, the responsibility on your shoulders is great, um, but realizing that does kind of make it a bit lighter. Um, you know, everything you do, every move you make has impact on your team, on their engagement, on their well-being, on their performance. There is no room in this world for lazy leadership. There's a great book, um, called The Promises of Giants by Jon Amici, and he explains this really beautifully, um, in terms of kind of the impact and moves you make. Um, so yeah, if you are a new leader, a new manager, if you are starting a business, if you're 10 years in and want some inspiration, I will link that in the show Um, because it is, it, it brilliantly explains how everything comes back to the leader, but that's okay, we've got this. So I asked Stephan, our expert on psychological safety, does he agree? Does the leader set the tone?
Stephan WiednerAbsolutely, absolutely, 100%. I think the leader sets the tone. The belief that one has, or the perception that one has about the degree to which There's psychological safety in their team is almost like a sum total of all of the interactions that have happened up until today, up until this moment. So all the Slack messages, emails, you know, one-on-one conversations, team conversations, all of that is gonna inform me on how safe it is to speak up in this environment. What comes out of all of those emails and communications are norms. Norms are really powerful. And we as humans, maybe, Leanne, you have that experience of going to a new job. And what do you do when you get into a new job? Quickly, you're like, okay, if I have an issue, who do I ask? How do I ask them? Do I just send them an email? Can I— you like, there's all these social norms that exist that aren't necessarily explicitly written down, but they're driving our behavior. And we want to fit into those norms. That's like Culturally, that's generally how we want to operate. And it usually starts with the core values of the business. Like, for example, if you want to— if you're all about diversity or you're all about transparency, you know, that's one of your core values, transparency. And then you as a leader, you're kind of withholding information. What are the people going to say? They're going to say, oh, we're not all about transparency. We're actually about transparency with an asterisk beside it. We're transparent to a degree.
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan WiednerAnd then not— but not more, right? Or if it's all about diversity, and then when new ideas are offered, you shut them down or you don't quite honor them, or maybe you're not making any action to really bring in, you know, try to represent more a broader, diverse set of people within your culture, people are gonna know we're not really about diversity. So you wanna state your values and then really honor them.
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan WiednerAnd make sure that all of your actions are congruent with them so that you're reinforcing those values again and again. And people within your organization are gonna say, okay, yeah, we are all about transparency. And I can tell it's not just lip service, it's through our actions and our words every day.
Stephan WiednerOh, this is so important what Stephan is, is saying here. Having values does not make an authentic leader. Living those values, role modeling those Those values and consistently. Employees will put up with a bad manager, a bad leader, for much, much longer than they will an inconsistent leader. That incongruence just causes so much stress. We've talked about neuroscience before. It's just that threat state is induced. So, yeah, if you— don't worry about being a good leader or a bad leader. Worry about being a consistent leader. Yeah.
Al ElliottThis is gold. I love that people will put up with a bad leader longer than they'll put up with an inconsistent leader. That is a fantastic way to finish it. So let's just talk quickly about some resources. So if you got this far, then I'm hoping you've enjoyed it. So we have a couple of, a couple of ideas if you want to learn a bit more. Where does Stephan suggest to start, Leanne?
Stephan WiednerLet's hear from Stephan.
Stephan WiednerSo Google Project Aristotle. And that is a, that's the research project that Google conducted to That answer the question, what makes an effective team? And they have some really useful resources on there that describes what they did in their research study, but they also have some worksheets that as a team lead, you can use to facilitate discussions in your team.
Stephan WiednerStephan has also very kindly offered, um, a free consultation to anyone listening to the Truth, Lies, and Workplace Culture podcast. Um, yeah, which is an incredibly generous offer. And well worth taking up. So let's hear a bit more about what Stephan is offering our lovely listeners.
Stephan WiednerWe generally spend an hour to maybe even 2 hours debriefing the results with the team to help establish what that baseline is and then create a bit of an action plan for you moving forward. And, um, and so I'd love to do that with any team. It's grati, you know, it's on me. Um, and, and I, I'm unattached to the results there. Obviously I wanna work with organizations and teams. And if there's a good fit there, great. But I'm really honestly happy to work with the team, help them take that very first step of instilling psychological safety within their organization, and then, and then we'll part ways. I'm totally okay with that.
Al ElliottSo, I mean, what he's talking about here is he'll do this for free for you. You've obviously got this far and you realize that he knows what he's talking about. So definitely take him up on this, I think.
Stephan WiednerYeah, I think it really shows a lot about a practitioner who is so passionate about what they do and also so confident that it's going to work that they'll offer that first step for free. So yeah, I would jump on this. And I should say now as well, there's no kickback for us. We're not being paid by Stephan or here to promote his stuff. It's just mutual respect and admiration for each other's work. So definitely take him up on that offer.
Al ElliottYeah.
Stephan Wiedneroffer, you can head over, we'll put it all in the show notes, but you can head over to Zarango.com, that's Z-A-R-A-N-G-O.com, and that will take you through to the website, Stephan's website, and there's a link on that page that you can book a consultation. Some other great resources as well there that Stephan mentioned, we will leave links to Amy Edmondson's book and her TEDx talks, and for all my fellow academics and psychologists out there, Or people that just like to read a good scientific journal of an evening over a glass of wine. There's a Google Scholar link for Amy Edmondson as well. Yeah, I think so many great resources. I love that Stephan is standing behind his work and his belief. And yeah, psychological safety, you know, it is one of those, another people and culture term, but one that I think is really worth paying attention to.
Stephan WiednerYeah.
Stephan WiednerSo I think we should end, um, on Stephan and that passion, um, for psychological safety and some final words of wisdom as to why it matters and the impact it can have, not only on you as a leader, uh, but on your employees and the performance of your business.
Stephan WiednerYou know, you don't wanna just make a profitable business, but a business that gives the folks that are inside your walls a voice. And that's what I'm really about. You know, I know that 70% or maybe more of people are simply punching the clock. They don't feel like their voice matters at work. And I want to change that. I want people to be able to go to work and feel like what they have to contribute matters. And they're actively moving the world forward. Because ultimately, if that other 70% of people who are showing up to work every day can feel more like they're contributing, we're gonna solve the world's biggest problems. We're just going to do that.
Stephan WiednerI love that. And if you'd like to hear more about Stephan and his work, we'll also leave a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
Al ElliottFabulous. So thank you, Stephan, for joining us this week. Um, we— if you've enjoyed this, then please— well, do you know what would be really, really useful is if you were leave a review for us on your favorite— I mean, iTunes is probably the best one, but anything that you use, leave a review for us. Hopefully it'll be 5 stars because that's really gonna help us. Share the episode and just tell 1,000 of your closest friends, really, because we're fairly, we're fairly early on in the, in our podcast journey with this particular podcast. And we, we quite, we're kind of proud of it. We want more people to hear it, don't we?
Stephan WiednerWe are. It really helps other people find the podcast if you yet, write a review, fancy subscribing, then it all will pop into your downloads every week. But, um, but yeah, thank you to everyone who has listened so far, and we look forward to bringing you another episode next week.
Al ElliottDefinitely. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye.