Episode 119
Psychological Safety: The Hidden Key to Boosting Team Performance and Profits | Karren Jensen
Unlock the secret to a thriving business in the latest Biz Bites for Thought Leaders episode, where Karren Jensen, CEO of Conductor Software, reveals how understanding and enhancing psychological safety directly fuels team performance and profitability. Discover the historical context, the power of a fear-free environment for participation and innovation, and the insights of the CARES model used to measure threat and reward drivers.
Through real-world examples, learn how improved psychological safety boosts sales and productivity, while consistent values and clear communication build essential trust. This insightful episode concludes with actionable tips for business owners to cultivate psychological safety and emphasizes the necessity of a neuroscience-driven leadership approach for success in today's evolving workplace.
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Connect with Karren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karren-jensen-ceo/
Check out her website - https://www.conductorsoftware.com/
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Transcript
Did you know that the hidden key to boosting team performance and
Speaker:profits is psychological safety?
Speaker:Welcome to this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.
Speaker:Today we are diving deep into the science behind workplace performance with Karren
Speaker:Jensen, the CEO of Conductor software.
Speaker:Discover how measuring psychological safety.
Speaker:In of itself can unlock untapped revenue.
Speaker:We are going to learn some practical strategies on how to create an
Speaker:environment where teams thrive.
Speaker:Innovation flourishes, and productivity absolutely soars.
Speaker:This is a conversation that is going to transform the way you think
Speaker:about leadership and team dynamics.
Speaker:Hello everyone.
Speaker:Welcome to another episode of Biz Bites, and I have a very interesting
Speaker:guest with me today because I think we're going to get into a whole lot
Speaker:of different areas that we haven't discussed on Biz Bites before and
Speaker:getting into psychological territories and more information about teams.
Speaker:I think this is gonna be of great value to everyone listing in.
Speaker:So Karren.
Speaker:First of all, welcome to the program.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:It's so exciting to be here and yeah, really looking forward
Speaker:to getting in a bit deeper.
Speaker:It'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker:Karren, why don't we start off by you telling us a little bit
Speaker:about who you are and what you do.
Speaker:So I am one of the co-founders and the CEO of Conductor software.
Speaker:We are a Brisbane based company proudly female led.
Speaker:And we're obviously we're looking at psychological safety.
Speaker:And we've been in that field for quite some time, way before it became the
Speaker:buzzword that we know it to be now.
Speaker:But.
Speaker:The reason for that is it is so fundamentally important to the success
Speaker:of leaders, of teams, of humans.
Speaker:So for us as humans, to thrive into the future of work, we really
Speaker:have to start understanding.
Speaker:What psychological safety really is.
Speaker:You know what talking psychology here.
Speaker:But we have to understand that and we have to be able to monitor
Speaker:and measure that and work.
Speaker:Towards always trying to balance that within the workplace.
Speaker:So Conductor was built for that purpose because we knew it was so important.
Speaker:We knew it would be important into the future.
Speaker:Didn't realize Covid was coming around the corner that's not, just not that ball into
Speaker:the park way faster than we had expected.
Speaker:But now watching what's playing out on the global stage with the US you can
Speaker:start to see just how fundamentally.
Speaker:Important it is to us as human beings to be able to flourish
Speaker:in this modern age of work.
Speaker:I think we need to start with defining that psychological area because as you
Speaker:say, it's become a bit of a buzzword but in many respects, when things
Speaker:become buzzwords, they actually lose their meaning a fair bit to people.
Speaker:And you've, as you said, you've, this came about prior to.
Speaker:It becoming something that lots of people were talking about.
Speaker:So take me back to the beginning.
Speaker:What did it actually mean and what does it come to mean as far as progress has
Speaker:been concerned over the last few years?
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:Look, it actually, it was first termed in 1965, so it has been around for
Speaker:quite a lot of, for quite a long time.
Speaker:And it has morphed in some respects, but basically, whoever's been working
Speaker:with psychological safety and there's been a number of players along the
Speaker:way, but, what we're essentially talking about is that as human beings,
Speaker:we feel safe enough to participate.
Speaker:So Amy Edson talks about being safe enough to speak up, speak out.
Speaker:So that's part of it.
Speaker:Shine and Benni back in 65 though, it was an environment in which you could learn.
Speaker:It's an environment that you, your brain is able to learn because it's not in this
Speaker:state of fear and holding itself back.
Speaker:And am I gonna be embarrassed?
Speaker:Am I gonna be ridiculed?
Speaker:Is someone gonna laugh and think I'm stupid?
Speaker:So when you, we've always known that, we've known that through
Speaker:school, through education, all of our lives, how important that is.
Speaker:We just haven't really had the tools or the insights into our human biology enough
Speaker:to understand why that was so important.
Speaker:And that's been the real game changer.
Speaker:Over the past, 30, 40 years is that we now have tools through neuroscience to
Speaker:be able to understand what's really going on in the brain, what's really going on
Speaker:with our neurobiology, and why this has become so critical for us to understand.
Speaker:The issue is none of this is getting down to leaders who need this information.
Speaker:So that's what Conductor has really set out to do is we want to democratize
Speaker:that this information should be first and format with every person in an
Speaker:organization because it really takes us away from looking at behaviors.
Speaker:Everyone's behaviors or what's their personality type to
Speaker:this is actually a human need.
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Speaker:in the show notes below.
Speaker:Now back to Biz Bites, everyone's behaviors or what's their personality
Speaker:type to This is actually a human need.
Speaker:This is what humans need to thrive, and as we move further and further into AI coming
Speaker:on board, we really do need to understand this because we are driving people
Speaker:at such intense rates at the moment.
Speaker:That cognitively, we're all burning out, we're exhausted all the time, so
Speaker:we're, we don't do that to our cars.
Speaker:We protect our vehicles.
Speaker:They're precious to us and we service them and we make sure that we've got
Speaker:all the fuel and the necessary things within them to be able to ensure
Speaker:that they run at peak performance.
Speaker:Why do we not do this in the workplace?
Speaker:Why do we insist on pushing people to the level that we're
Speaker:burning out and we actually can't?
Speaker:We can no longer cognitively process and make decisions when, at a time when
Speaker:that's really what humanity has to do.
Speaker:There are so many things to unpack in what you just said there, and
Speaker:I'm trying to work out the best starting point, but I think.
Speaker:What I wanna ask about initially is really this bridge between the
Speaker:idea of what psychological safety is and the reality of what it means
Speaker:even to, to leaders in itself.
Speaker:Because therein lies the biggest problem, doesn't it?
Speaker:That is the first and foremost, is understanding what it actually means
Speaker:and what the impact is before you start getting into the tools that you've got.
Speaker:And we definitely want to go through that.
Speaker:At Conductor we, we look at it.
Speaker:A little bit differently because what we are doing is we're actually measuring
Speaker:the drivers of threat and rewards.
Speaker:So those human drivers in which we feel motivated to lean in and participate
Speaker:into something, or where we're actually feeling a threat response
Speaker:and, protecting ourselves, we're actually measuring those drivers.
Speaker:So it's a little bit different to what a lot of regular
Speaker:psych safety tools are using.
Speaker:Not to disparage any of them because I wanted to go a little,
Speaker:we wanted to go a bit deeper into understanding what are the triggers?
Speaker:Not whether it's actually people who actually feel psychologically safe or
Speaker:not, because that doesn't help leaders.
Speaker:I can tell you, your staff don't feel particularly safe with you as a leader.
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:That gives them nothing.
Speaker:And I, for.
Speaker:For the founders at Conductor, we really understood the pressure that
Speaker:leaders are under the demands for them to be the solution to everything.
Speaker:And I think that's a really big expectation for us to hold on any human
Speaker:being, let alone leaders themselves.
Speaker:So that's number one is so when we're able to measure that, what we can see
Speaker:is what is the willingness capacity.
Speaker:For leaders to, and people within the organization to be able
Speaker:to contribute at their best.
Speaker:And what are the practices that we are doing in business
Speaker:that aren't supporting that?
Speaker:And so many of the traditional leader practices, the way that we've learned
Speaker:to be leaders and the demands and the drivers that we have to be leaders,
Speaker:they're actually counterproductive to creating that space where people.
Speaker:Can maintain peak energy and continue to con continue to
Speaker:contribute at their very best.
Speaker:So we've got this disconnect between what we as humans need to be able to
Speaker:perform really well, but the demands of business of what they want us to
Speaker:do, and it's actually counterproductive to being able to achieve that.
Speaker:So we really wanted to get into that and understand what that was.
Speaker:So yes, it's about, where can people speak up, whether they,
Speaker:where can they contribute?
Speaker:Where are their energy levels?
Speaker:Where are we draining that?
Speaker:Who, where are the teams that are most at risk of stress and burnout?
Speaker:Risky behaviors, toxic behaviors, competitive behaviors.
Speaker:Where are we?
Speaker:Where are we rewarding the wrong behaviors?
Speaker:I. A lot of the time unaware that we're actually creating the toxic
Speaker:behaviors that we want to change.
Speaker:So I think that's really important for everyone to understand.
Speaker:As I said, we're not looking at people's, we're not, it's
Speaker:not a psychology assessment by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker:We are looking at where cognitively do we feel safe, which draws onto our emotions
Speaker:to contribute or not to contribute.
Speaker:And then between that's the real gap in business performance and productivity.
Speaker:So what we see is businesses are nowhere near.
Speaker:Operating as well as they could.
Speaker:Most of them are mediocre at best, yet they have no awareness of that
Speaker:because we've become so indoctrinated into these human behaviors and how
Speaker:difficult it's to deal with humans, that we accept all of these behaviors
Speaker:and these actions where it's actually really easy to circumvent that and
Speaker:change the outcome of those things.
Speaker:There is, I. One thing that I wanted to ask you before we get into how
Speaker:businesses can better understand that, because clearly there is a lot to discuss
Speaker:there, but the whole idea of safety and.
Speaker:I'm wondering, is that a term that workers relate to?
Speaker:Is that what they're looking for?
Speaker:Or is this a, some, is this a kind of a, an anchor tool that's
Speaker:been provided around that?
Speaker:Like when you speak to different businesses as you do and you speak to
Speaker:the teams within it, is safety what they are looking for or is it made up
Speaker:of a whole lot of different things?
Speaker:That's a really interesting question actually.
Speaker:I. I think there are aspects of the workforce who are, who consciously
Speaker:are thinking of safety, and I think it depends on your role as well.
Speaker:In construction, in mining, in any of those really high risk industries, you
Speaker:are very aware of safety and its impact on not only you, but on your colleagues
Speaker:and the whole thinking of everybody deserves to go home at the end of the day.
Speaker:But I think subconsciously, I believe we are all looking for safety.
Speaker:Like it's, you don't want to, you don't ever feel comfortable walking into a
Speaker:meeting knowing that you are going to be the target that's going, that all
Speaker:the blames going to be put onto, or you are at the pointy end of having to
Speaker:respond to that makes you so fearful.
Speaker:And yes, it can be intoxicating to come through that successfully, but for
Speaker:every human being we can all stop you.
Speaker:You and I can stop now and you can think of an experience that you had to hold
Speaker:your breath, where your stomach felt sick.
Speaker:Where you were sweating, where you had no idea what the outcome was going to be,
Speaker:where you did not feel safe, you did not feel like people were there to support
Speaker:you, protect you, to help you to learn.
Speaker:So what happens there is that, yes, we might all be looking for it.
Speaker:We might not all get it, and you, we get a lot of leaders who go,
Speaker:that's not my job to make it a safe space, but I argue it is because.
Speaker:It's impacting your bottom line.
Speaker:That is the whole focus of conductor.
Speaker:You can choose not to help make a an environment that allows people to make
Speaker:mistakes and learn from it as a team.
Speaker:But it's your productivity.
Speaker:It's you hitting your goals at the end of the day, at the end of the month, at
Speaker:the end of the year, that is impacted.
Speaker:You are not hitting your goals.
Speaker:So when you have an organization.
Speaker:That isn't interested in making sure that people feel safe enough to learn.
Speaker:They don't have a learning environment, and we have enough
Speaker:research globally around this.
Speaker:Now, to understand how important that is, what happens is your teams don't align.
Speaker:So either the individuals in your team don't align, so they'll be competitive.
Speaker:They'll hide information because that's how you are rewarded.
Speaker:You get a promotion.
Speaker:So we're hiding information from each other.
Speaker:Instead of actually sharing that information, which
Speaker:drives new opportunities.
Speaker:So those behaviors are actually impacting the business over a longer term.
Speaker:So yes, I believe subconsciously we all want to feel safe and that there's
Speaker:a balance because we can feel too safe that we don't want to perform or that
Speaker:we're comfortable not performing, and that's no good for an organization
Speaker:either or we can feel so fearful.
Speaker:That we are too afraid to make a mistake.
Speaker:We are too afraid to offer a customer, an a solution that's not
Speaker:part of our product line that could be really unique and valuable.
Speaker:So it, it has consequences at either end.
Speaker:And I think for me, the issue for so long, and the reason I was so excited about
Speaker:being able to start conductor was because.
Speaker:Because how people are feeling in an organization and how they're
Speaker:performing are so disconnected.
Speaker:That's all siloed.
Speaker:We don't know what really works.
Speaker:Leaders don't know what works.
Speaker:Organizations don't know what work, so they don't know what
Speaker:is the right decision to make.
Speaker:It's, and as you were talking there, I was thinking as well that, the most
Speaker:immediate examples that are, that even I can think of as someone who's run
Speaker:my own business for a long time is actually, that knife's edge that you
Speaker:have sometimes when you don't know which way a client's going to go, and they
Speaker:may have been the client for a while and you, they've called for a meeting and
Speaker:suddenly you've worked yourself up into a tears thinking that it's all going to.
Speaker:For some reason, and they could be on completely the opposite page.
Speaker:But it's that anxiety that leads up to that.
Speaker:And and I think there wouldn't be a business owner that hasn't
Speaker:been through that to some degree.
Speaker:And I. So that's, if you think about that's what your staff are going through
Speaker:as well, and it's interesting to know where their thinking is at various times.
Speaker:I've had team members where you are worried that they may be thinking exactly
Speaker:that kind of scenario, thinking the worst.
Speaker:And you are trying to push them into a different place.
Speaker:So how do you go about.
Speaker:First of all, being aware, and second of all, making a at a safe place.
Speaker:So what are the key factors?
Speaker:I think that's, part of the core of what we're doing at Conductor
Speaker:is it can feel very overwhelming.
Speaker:Like you're trying to put all of these pieces together going, oh my God,
Speaker:like this isn't easier for leaders.
Speaker:This is more complicated for leaders because as you're right, depending
Speaker:on your previous experiences.
Speaker:You are creating scenarios in your head about what could be happening.
Speaker:Every employee's doing that, every leader's doing that.
Speaker:So what our reason and our reasoning for being able to measure these threatened
Speaker:reward triggers, these motivators is so leaders don't have to try and guess.
Speaker:So we measure at the team level and we're actually able to create.
Speaker:A roadmap for every individual leader about what it is their
Speaker:team is needing from them so they don't have to guess anymore.
Speaker:So it can be a really targeted approach to them being able to give the leader the
Speaker:understanding of what those drivers are and why that's important for their team.
Speaker:So the reason that works so well is because you don't need to be offline.
Speaker:You don't need four hours on end doing training.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:Targeted to what's going on in your team.
Speaker:So it's meaningful.
Speaker:It has application for you as a leader, and it's actually providing
Speaker:you with skills and habits that you are able to embed because
Speaker:you are conscious, consciously using them on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker:So we never go in with, 30 different.
Speaker:Issues that a leader would have to address it.
Speaker:It's always one, two, or three things at the most that you would
Speaker:ever look at addressing because the moment you'd start to make changes
Speaker:in those areas, you can start to see the rest of the things fall into line
Speaker:or become a little bit misaligned that a leader needs to focus on.
Speaker:So things I'm talking about, and we all know how important
Speaker:certainty is in an organization.
Speaker:Like we know we have to have values, we need to have a mission,
Speaker:we need to have, goals, KPIs.
Speaker:We also need to know what our role is.
Speaker:But you can start when you start to see that certainty breaking down
Speaker:within a team, because leaders are struggling in being able to provide
Speaker:that communication, that certainty, but also to support their team and make
Speaker:sure that they've, got what they need.
Speaker:You can start to see that.
Speaker:Pull at the edges.
Speaker:I'm gonna say sometimes just really pull at the edges and you can, that
Speaker:starts to create some manifestations in actions not being taken or people
Speaker:not really fully collaborating or contributing into the team, simply
Speaker:because it might be a trigger for them that they're not really sure about
Speaker:what to do and they're too scared to.
Speaker:To just make a guess in case there's ramifications to
Speaker:them making the wrong move.
Speaker:So we're able to just see that in a heat map really easily, really
Speaker:effectively, really quickly.
Speaker:And then the leader can actually target in those particular areas
Speaker:that come across in the factors.
Speaker:And it, as I said it, it's one or two of those factors that would be
Speaker:driving that issue, and then it's just.
Speaker:Leaders being able to understand what can they do each day in able to support
Speaker:and address that and, support the team to feel, not feel so confused or unaligned
Speaker:with what the team's trying to achieve.
Speaker:So it needs to be very simple.
Speaker:It needs to be fast and it needs to be something leaders can
Speaker:look at periodically and just.
Speaker:Start to tweak the things that they're doing within their team.
Speaker:Because teams change all the time.
Speaker:Psychological safety is not a place you get to ever.
Speaker:You have different team members coming in.
Speaker:You have different external environmental things coming in and
Speaker:impacting people's everyday lives.
Speaker:You have different products being released.
Speaker:You have, all, a whole range of different things happening in any
Speaker:organization on any given day.
Speaker:And so, it's not a say, it's not for us to get to this.
Speaker:Oh, you are psychologically safe now.
Speaker:Good luck.
Speaker:And you've got everything you need.
Speaker:It's really about building skills that help you to pay attention to what's
Speaker:going on in the people around you.
Speaker:And the more you learn those habits, the quicker you're able to actually
Speaker:see those things in real time.
Speaker:So you don't, you.
Speaker:What my experience is, I can walk into an organization most times.
Speaker:I don't need to see the results of what conductor's doing.
Speaker:I can already see what's happening in the organization because you become
Speaker:so finely attuned to the micro cues.
Speaker:And I think, what happens in leadership, particularly today,
Speaker:is there is leaders don't have time to look for the micro cues.
Speaker:Those that can.
Speaker:They have really good people skills.
Speaker:But those that are so busy doing business as usual and trying to cope
Speaker:with all of the demands that are being placed on them, they often miss
Speaker:the micro cues and because of our technology that we're on all the time.
Speaker:So it's a very simple process.
Speaker:We benchmark leaders see their results and they work together to be able to.
Speaker:Understand those results and how they will be impacting them, achieving
Speaker:the goals for the organization.
Speaker:And we like to do that with leaders together as a cohort because leaders are
Speaker:feeling really vulnerable at the moment.
Speaker:They don't feel safe enough to often acknowledge that they might be struggling.
Speaker:And so I think.
Speaker:As they're building psychological safety down into their teams, creating leaders
Speaker:who have psychological safety and actually can collab, collaborate more effectively
Speaker:together is really important because then they start as a team to function
Speaker:together to hit the goals so you don't have siloed functions and teams and
Speaker:leaders trying to achieve their own goals.
Speaker:It's what's the goal of the organization that we're all trying to achieve?
Speaker:And that's where the power comes in of building the psych safety.
Speaker:I imagine that one of the hardest things is as well, that you talk about triggers.
Speaker:It's particularly as a leader, if you're aware of what some of the
Speaker:triggers are in, in trying to.
Speaker:Allow for that.
Speaker:You also have to try and be not specific to the person because you don't want
Speaker:everyone else to necessarily know that's a trigger for them as well.
Speaker:Is that so there is that, it's not it's finessing this all the time and
Speaker:there are gonna be new triggers all the time because of external factors
Speaker:that will come into the equation.
Speaker:So it is a difficult navigation path for leaders, isn't it?
Speaker:I.
Speaker:I think if I understand correctly, what you're saying is that an
Speaker:individual's personal triggers.
Speaker:Maybe I'm having, maybe I'm struggling to find a new place to live.
Speaker:I need to, maybe I can't find, I've gotta change residence and
Speaker:I've got all of this home struggle.
Speaker:So you bring that personal.
Speaker:Pain with you?
Speaker:We do, because it's a bit of a it can create tension, it can create
Speaker:exhaustion, it can create but I don't think it's, what am I trying to say?
Speaker:There's a level of understanding as a leader that we can appreciate the
Speaker:personal things that our people are going through, so we can, we know
Speaker:that somebody might be struggling with something in their day to day life.
Speaker:We can allow space for that, we can allow them time to be
Speaker:able to deal with those things.
Speaker:That's one scenario.
Speaker:But I think a lot of the triggers I'm talking about are the to do with the,
Speaker:those threat and reward triggers that happen every day in the workplace.
Speaker:So for us, we use the CARES model our CARES model, we talk about certainty.
Speaker:Autonomy, relatedness, equity and significance.
Speaker:So these drivers are what drive us as human beings.
Speaker:So if you are a leader, and most leaders often are, a lot of leaders
Speaker:have really high significant needs, like I'm important, I'm recognized
Speaker:as being important because you're a leader, you need to have that authority.
Speaker:So that can be understanding.
Speaker:Or they have very strong needs for autonomy.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:So they don't, they're very autonomous.
Speaker:They make decisions every day.
Speaker:But very often what will happen is leaders will then start to
Speaker:treat their teams in the same way.
Speaker:So they will expect them to operate with autonomy.
Speaker:But you might have a team who, yes, they don't want to be micromanaged,
Speaker:but they might need high degree of certainty about what are the rules?
Speaker:Maybe there's no tolerance for mistakes.
Speaker:Or maybe they've learned that people who make mistakes or don't hit their
Speaker:numbers get fired the next month.
Speaker:So you might have these practices that create this outcome that everyone's
Speaker:fearful of, because it's meant to motivate you to be a really high.
Speaker:Performing worker, but the person at the bottom gets, let go.
Speaker:So you have this duality happening of you have a leader
Speaker:going, just go and do your job.
Speaker:I trust you.
Speaker:But then you have staff just going, yeah, but if what am I gonna get fired?
Speaker:I need this job.
Speaker:I have home commitments.
Speaker:I'm trying to find a house.
Speaker:So you can see that those triggers like pulling at each other, they're not a
Speaker:there's no support mechanism around them.
Speaker:And there's no clarity around what they need to do.
Speaker:And so the leader just wants you to get on to do it.
Speaker:And they're just looking for some clarity about what's going on now,
Speaker:if that's happening, what you have.
Speaker:Is a team that really drains the leader because they're always
Speaker:looking for clarification.
Speaker:They're always looking for someone to be the final decision maker.
Speaker:They don't make decisions on their own.
Speaker:So that can end up draining a leader because they're
Speaker:always, they can't strategize.
Speaker:They're always having to help fix their team's issues.
Speaker:So these are the types of triggers that happen every day in the workplace.
Speaker:Leaders have become really accustomed to them.
Speaker:They talk to us about how frustrating it is.
Speaker:But then when you just start to see what's causing those, then you can start to
Speaker:change the whole dynamics around that.
Speaker:So as the leader becomes much more efficient in their communication,
Speaker:much more clear in what's expected of them, then you have, you can
Speaker:create team members who feel really comfortable making decisions.
Speaker:Day to day with regards to their work because they know now know
Speaker:what the outcome's going to be.
Speaker:So it seems complex, but it's not.
Speaker:It's actually incredibly simple because we don't have the foundations, right?
Speaker:What we see is most leaders don't have an understanding of the foundations.
Speaker:They don't have insight into what's happening at that ground level.
Speaker:They've got all of this leadership knowledge and expectation.
Speaker:But not the foundations built.
Speaker:So if we can give them clarity and insight into that, that creates a very
Speaker:strong base from which to build a team.
Speaker:Because it builds trust, it makes the team more resilient.
Speaker:You have a leader who's not constantly stressing on the edge
Speaker:of burnout, taking on more and more responsibility to cover for their teams.
Speaker:We're seeing that happen so much at the moment.
Speaker:And then you have a team that can actually flourish because they know
Speaker:the rules, they know what to expect, and it's consistently delivered so
Speaker:they can start to trust and relax.
Speaker:Once they start to trust and relax, that means their prefrontal cortex starts to
Speaker:do all the work, not their emotional side, just stopping them and pulling back and
Speaker:not allowing them to actually engage.
Speaker:So two questions that came out of what you were saying there.
Speaker:One part is how often do you need to check the temperature of your
Speaker:team in order to be able to making these results consistently valid
Speaker:and for people to check in on.
Speaker:And then the other side of that as well is.
Speaker:What do we need to do then as a result to take them to trust?
Speaker:I, with organizations we work with, I recommend around two times a year
Speaker:that you would, particularly if you haven't been looking at psychological
Speaker:safety and that you have, the results most organizations are sitting at
Speaker:around in the seventies at the moment.
Speaker:There's a few in the sixties, but most that, so the scores between zero and 100.
Speaker:So most organizations are sitting in seventies.
Speaker:So for us, that's what we see is these are organizations where
Speaker:people, they're accustomed to working in teams but not as teams.
Speaker:That makes sense.
Speaker:So scores much lower than that.
Speaker:People are very individualized, very self-protective.
Speaker:But at this 70 range.
Speaker:We're accustomed to working in teams, that means we can collaborate.
Speaker:But we don't know how to work as a team and we need to be able to get teams to
Speaker:work as teams because then you can have robust conversations and idea exchange.
Speaker:So twice a year in order to to start off.
Speaker:So that might be for the first year or two.
Speaker:To so that leaders start to understand where their teams sit and to start
Speaker:working through some of these factors.
Speaker:So it really depends on the speed of the leaders in how and
Speaker:how much knowledge they have.
Speaker:And as they understand the neuroscience and the neurobiology that sits
Speaker:behind each of these factors, then they start to understand.
Speaker:The opportunities that are ahead of them and how to
Speaker:capitalize upon those and how to.
Speaker:You're moving away from the carrot and stick manipulation approach
Speaker:of leadership, like trying to get people just to do what they need to
Speaker:do to actually being an influencer.
Speaker:You become a key influencer.
Speaker:You become a leader that people, because they trust you, because they know your
Speaker:expectations, because you are predictable.
Speaker:They know what to expect.
Speaker:And it allows them to follow through.
Speaker:So I definitely would say two, two times a year for the first couple
Speaker:of years so that they're learning and understanding those skills.
Speaker:And then after that, you may go to once a year depending on what's
Speaker:happening, but it depends what go, what's going on in organization.
Speaker:We have organizations who use it before going through an m
Speaker:and a merger and acquisition.
Speaker:Or change project so that they can understand what's the capacity,
Speaker:what's the resilience level of the organization to be able to support this.
Speaker:So the usual ways, particularly in a change project, let's identify
Speaker:who the change champions are because we're gonna get them to do the work.
Speaker:That's a whole lot of additional work that you are putting on a few people.
Speaker:As opposed to ensuring you've got everybody understanding that why the
Speaker:change is important and actually the majority supporting the change project
Speaker:because you've got so much better communication coming through that it
Speaker:leads that change very simply instead of pulling you, this anchor behind
Speaker:you trying to get everyone to change.
Speaker:So that, that would be my recommendation.
Speaker:And it ranges from depending on what's coming through in the results.
Speaker:So that's always the tricky piece.
Speaker:It could be that there are.
Speaker:Policies and practices that need to be looked at.
Speaker:So they might need support or working groups in order to be able to do that.
Speaker:They could do that themselves.
Speaker:They can hire consultants in to help them do that.
Speaker:We do a lot of coaching and workshops just to get that neuroscience
Speaker:and neurobiology information.
Speaker:The why.
Speaker:Behind these things, why they're important to us as human beings.
Speaker:That's the piece I wanna get to the leaders because that what,
Speaker:that's, it transforms the way you look at life, transforms your
Speaker:relationship with your families.
Speaker:It transforms the relationship you have with stakeholders, with clients.
Speaker:You use every part of this with every interaction that you have.
Speaker:'cause you start to understand people in a very different way.
Speaker:So it could be coaching, could be cohort coaching.
Speaker:Could be workshops, depending on the extent and the level of what's
Speaker:going on in the organization and what it is they want to achieve.
Speaker:Is your utilization or efficiency rates not high enough?
Speaker:Is it sales conversion rates?
Speaker:Is it work health and safety metrics?
Speaker:So what's not working?
Speaker:And that's always the target for us.
Speaker:So whatever changes we are doing is always.
Speaker:To lift that bottom line piece.
Speaker:And once you do that, leaders start.
Speaker:And do you see that?
Speaker:I was gonna say, do you, yes.
Speaker:Is that once you've been working with the business for a while you start to see
Speaker:those, the impact of what you're doing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's not even a while.
Speaker:It's not even a while.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:Oh my gosh, that can happen so quickly.
Speaker:We've had a retailer, they increased their sales conversion rates by
Speaker:14.3% within 60 days by folk, by improving the psychological safety,
Speaker:helping the leaders understand what it was and what their teams needed.
Speaker:We've had we've had dev teams improve lines of code by 50% within 30 days.
Speaker:We currently have a, one of our partners who works in the services
Speaker:sector call centers not-for-profits, anyone that delivers services.
Speaker:So what we're seeing is for every 1% improvement in efficiency or
Speaker:utilization, they're seeing a 12% increase in bottom line revenue.
Speaker:So 1%.
Speaker:It's huge.
Speaker:It's absolutely huge, particularly if you're talking not-for-profits
Speaker:because they have such little margin.
Speaker:Anyway, so this is what psychological safety goes to the heart of you
Speaker:actually, because your teams can't align.
Speaker:How can you be efficient?
Speaker:You can't make that efficiency because you are all disconnected,
Speaker:focusing on different things.
Speaker:But when you focus on.
Speaker:When you actually can connect it to the bottom line, you're keeping the
Speaker:leaders focused on what's important, but you are giving them the skillset
Speaker:and the habits to make sure that they can bring the people along with them.
Speaker:And that's the game changer, and that's what we haven't had.
Speaker:So, give me a few tips for business owners that are sitting out there at the
Speaker:moment going, what is it that we can do immediately to try and understand a, I
Speaker:was gonna say if we have a problem, but as you say, pretty much everyone is gonna
Speaker:have something that they can improve and problem may be too strong a word, but.
Speaker:What are the things that they can be immediately attuning
Speaker:into and starting to shift that will make a bit of a difference.
Speaker:One of the big things I see consistently in organizations that I think they,
Speaker:to really start with organizations, have they create their values, okay.
Speaker:Which are really important.
Speaker:It's really important to understand what the values of an organization are.
Speaker:But then those values aren't lived by leaders or teams further down,
Speaker:particularly in large organizations where they spend so much money
Speaker:developing their mission, their values and their objectives.
Speaker:So that lack of cons.
Speaker:This comes back to consistency.
Speaker:'cause the brain is a prediction machine.
Speaker:We need to predict.
Speaker:That's why Covid was so difficult.
Speaker:It's why things are so difficult now.
Speaker:We can't predict what's gonna happen into the future.
Speaker:We've got all this catastrophizing going on.
Speaker:None of us have been through a world war.
Speaker:We've never been through this much turmoil.
Speaker:We've never been through what the United States is going through right now.
Speaker:The United States have always been this major partner for a lot of the countries,
Speaker:Western countries, we are seeing all this play out, but we've got no map to
Speaker:go, oh, this is how we deal with it.
Speaker:And that's what the brain needs.
Speaker:It absolutely.
Speaker:That's how it functions.
Speaker:Oh, this happened.
Speaker:I know what to do with that.
Speaker:I'm going to make this decision.
Speaker:So the, when you have organizations that don't, whilst these are your values,
Speaker:but then everybody's not aligned to those values or they're not actually.
Speaker:Living those values.
Speaker:There's certain individuals who get to do it differently, who have,
Speaker:different rules that they can live by.
Speaker:That is the biggest odor of trust.
Speaker:So if there is anything for any executive team, CEO is to understand that because
Speaker:I guarantee you there are leaders further down who might who circumvent those.
Speaker:And that creates, if you feel like there is a lack of trust in your
Speaker:organization that's potentially where it will be coming from.
Speaker:The other big thing is we're just one big happy family, which a
Speaker:lot of organizations talk about.
Speaker:Sorry about that.
Speaker:That's often, it can be true.
Speaker:It can be true, but often what I see is.
Speaker:Big, happy families just mean people are too scared to speak up.
Speaker:So you are going to struggle to innovate.
Speaker:You're going to struggle to understand what it is your clients really need.
Speaker:'cause it means you either have staff who really don't care, they don't
Speaker:they feel like they don't belong or nobody listens to them anyway, so
Speaker:they're not gonna raise things 'cause they know it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker:I think as an organization you are missing a lot of opportunities
Speaker:when your people don't want to com don't want to sit down and have a
Speaker:chat with you and go, Hey, I was.
Speaker:I was with Joe, our client this week, and he said this if your cl, if your
Speaker:staff aren't coming back and sharing that stuff, you are missing gold.
Speaker:And that's a big red flag.
Speaker:Ai, there's a lot happening with ai.
Speaker:There's a lot that's going to happen with ai.
Speaker:There's a lot of opportunities for people with ai, so I think
Speaker:a lot of people, particularly at the moment are seeing this as.
Speaker:A launchpad to go and do something different because they're not
Speaker:finding satisfaction in their roles.
Speaker:So I think if you, if that's happening in your organization as well, if you
Speaker:feel like people aren't satisfied, you don't just have to put up with it.
Speaker:It's not just people.
Speaker:There's a reason for it.
Speaker:There is stuff happening inside your organization as to why they're not
Speaker:satisfied, and it is so easily rectified.
Speaker:But you have to just understand what those triggers are, that the
Speaker:barriers that are getting in the way from people going, this is a company
Speaker:that I really believe in and trust.
Speaker:I don't think they're lofty goals at all, so we should all be aiming for them.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:There are so many great tips in there, and it says one of these things that
Speaker:we could keep unpacking for many hours.
Speaker:But just before we wrap up, I think there's two things.
Speaker:One, one firstly was just to lay the groundwork for all of this.
Speaker:There's a fair amount of neuroscience and training and stuff behind it.
Speaker:This is not just something that you've just magically pulled out
Speaker:of the clouds to come up with.
Speaker:This is.
Speaker:Based on a fair amount of work.
Speaker:And I think it's important that people do understand that, right?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:Yeah, so my background is I used to work with Linda Ray at Neuro Capability.
Speaker:Neuro capability delivers neuroscience of leadership training
Speaker:to leaders all over the globe.
Speaker:I also.
Speaker:Studied policy at uni.
Speaker:So looking at the cause and if I was always interested in the cause
Speaker:and effects of things, so looking at government policy and programs.
Speaker:Have this background in the social sciences of always looking at the
Speaker:environment and what were we trying to do and what was the outcome.
Speaker:And that's just fed this crazy view and desire I have in the world of.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why do we just accept what we're doing even though we're not getting the
Speaker:results that we want to be getting?
Speaker:So yes, we can change that.
Speaker:And neuroscience just opened me up to all of that.
Speaker:It was like, oh my gosh this is the why behind everything.
Speaker:And it's so powerful and you don't need to be a neuroscientist
Speaker:to understand that at all.
Speaker:It's there.
Speaker:There's so many things that we do on in an everyday practice.
Speaker:That come from that understanding.
Speaker:It's, we use it in economics, we use it in marketing, we use it in education.
Speaker:So much of what neuroscience is showing about human beings is just giving us the
Speaker:evidence that, so instead of us just, psychology was often just about trying to
Speaker:get research, testing animals and humans, unfortunately at times for both of them
Speaker:to try and understand why we do things.
Speaker:Thanks to neuroscience, we've actually realized that the brain isn't fixed.
Speaker:The brain continues to learn and grow otherwise, before that we
Speaker:just assumed whatever you, your temperament, your personality, your
Speaker:behavior, your intellect, it was fixed and it couldn't be changed.
Speaker:And actually it can dramatically.
Speaker:Neuroscience has really just opened up a window.
Speaker:I think there's many doors to come as we continue to explore the human condition.
Speaker:And we should always be trying to learn more and better ways.
Speaker:And I always knew it was important.
Speaker:I just didn't real, like I had no idea.
Speaker:A, I was coming down the pipeline and.
Speaker:This capability is something AI will not be able to replicate.
Speaker:So leaders, if you want to be a leader through AI learning, this is going
Speaker:to be one of the best things you can do for yourself because it gives you
Speaker:higher order thinking and understanding.
Speaker:I, I think just to wrap things up, there's a question that I ask.
Speaker:All of my guests and I was just gonna say that I think you've already given
Speaker:us a whole bunch of different answers to this, but I'm interested in your one
Speaker:main response to it, which is, what is the at heart moment that many of your
Speaker:clients have when they start to work with you that you wish more people knew
Speaker:they were going to have in advance?
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:I think
Speaker:I'm trying to put it into words.
Speaker:'cause I've, yes, I've had those big aha moments.
Speaker:I've had doors closed.
Speaker:No one's allowed to leave the room.
Speaker:We are, I wanna hear more about this.
Speaker:I think for me it's the fact the conductor, particularly for A CEO or
Speaker:CFO or COO, these executives who are making decisions every day, they often
Speaker:don't get to see the full picture.
Speaker:They get bits and pieces of analysis from different groups and they're
Speaker:trying to understand and do the best that they can with that and for them.
Speaker:So when we show them our bubble chart that plots, the psych safety of each
Speaker:of their teams against a particular KPI and how they're performing, the
Speaker:big aha moment that we see is that then when they see that they're not
Speaker:performing as well as they could be like.
Speaker:The enormous opportunity that they have to lift performance even higher
Speaker:that they had no awareness of.
Speaker:And to realize that it's just so simple to achieve.
Speaker:There's work, but it's not complicated.
Speaker:It's not years and years of work and investment.
Speaker:I think that's the biggest one when you can quantify that.
Speaker:Yeah, it's, our first client.
Speaker:We were able to show them $88 million in untapped revenue opportunity.
Speaker:Now, we weren't going to get all of that.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:But when we could look at their KPIs and how much they were leaving on
Speaker:the table in an environment where they were losing money and they were
Speaker:considering having to close some areas, it completely blew their mind.
Speaker:And that's why when I refer to it with what's going on in the US at
Speaker:the moment, you've got Musk in this march for efficiency that we've got
Speaker:to cull everybody and cut departments.
Speaker:And yes, some of that might need to happen, but what we're showing is you
Speaker:can actually increase even more of that.
Speaker:By focusing on the people and creating an environment that just allows them
Speaker:to be able to contribute at a much higher level, and that has much greater
Speaker:gains because you're also looking at the community services and all the
Speaker:downstream effects that you will not see at the back end of what the US is doing.
Speaker:They're not recording that, so.
Speaker:There's just another opportunity and another way to do this that's
Speaker:so much better for businesses, communities, humanity in general.
Speaker:I. So often businesses jump to the conclusion that to create
Speaker:efficiencies you have to cut.
Speaker:When in fact, if you drive more out of the what you already have,
Speaker:then that can be a much better result than trying to cut back.
Speaker:And I, this is such a worthwhile argument.
Speaker:I've seen that many times myself, and I've seen it in the not-for-profit
Speaker:sector as much as I've seen it in the for-profit sector.
Speaker:And it is about an attitude of how you go about things.
Speaker:Thank you so much for everything that you've given us today.
Speaker:It was amazing amount of of insights and information for everyone
Speaker:to, to take on board and look.
Speaker:We will obviously include all of the information about how to get in
Speaker:contact with you and your, and to have a look at the company and how
Speaker:your actual software works and 'cause it is a very visual tool as well.
Speaker:So it is something that I encourage everyone to.
Speaker:Ta to check out through the show notes afterwards.
Speaker:But for now, thank you so much for being part of Biz Bites.
Speaker:Oh, thank you.
Speaker:It's been wonderful.
Speaker:I've really enjoyed being able to have this chat.
Speaker:Thank you so much,
Speaker:and thank you everyone.
Speaker:Don't forget to subscribe and never miss an episode, and we look forward
Speaker:to your company next time on Biz Bites.
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