0:00

All groups are definitely not

0:02

created. Equally agree with that. Like

0:05

some outperform others, some

0:08

overachieve, right? It's gets kind of like

0:10

when the two plus two equals 10 sort of idea

0:12

and more times than not it's plus

0:14

two equals one the underachieving

0:17

groups and we've all seen examples of both. Right?

0:20

And interesting question is like well what's the

0:22

cause of that? And on

0:24

the surface we assume it's probably like the

0:26

dynamics of the group, right? What the team's made

0:28

up, characteristics do. We have really smart

0:30

people on this team, but actually

0:33

a lot of research shows that more important

0:35

than the dynamics of the team. It's really

0:37

how the team interacts.

0:39

That is a better predictor of team

0:42

success. And I, I

0:44

think if we zoom out, we've all seen

0:46

examples of this, like that does make sense. Like

0:48

more important than the makeup of the team is

0:50

how they interact and that determines

0:53

our achievement. The question that we have

0:55

to dig into though is what is the cause

0:57

of that? What allows

0:59

teams to work better together?

1:02

What's that made out of two

1:04

camps set out to answer

1:06

that specific question. Like, what's the secret

1:09

sauce of helping a group perform

1:11

better? One was

1:14

one of the world's largest tech companies

1:16

and the other was in New York Times bestselling

1:18

author. They took different journeys

1:20

with a very, very different approach,

1:23

but they ended up landing in the exact

1:25

same place.

1:27

I'm Trevor, I'm Alex. Welcome

1:30

to the learner lab podcast presented

1:32

by a train, ugly.com each

1:34

week, something new that can help us learn. Let's

1:36

go. If

1:39

you think

1:39

give out the nature of the work that we do these days,

1:41

it's almost always on a team

1:43

or at least collaborating with someone. The more so than

1:45

ever, and we're going to continue to head in

1:47

that direction, more time spent working. And

1:50

once we understand that, it really illustrates

1:52

how valuable this pursuit of figuring out why

1:54

certain teams performed better than others really

1:56

is. I hate the term game

1:58

changer, but this actually is, it's

2:00

like this would be a super power

2:03

to understand what creates a great

2:05

group. So finding that answer

2:07

matters. Right? So let's talk about the first

2:10

group. Okay. It's Google. Oh many

2:12

of you probably figured that out. But

2:14

we tried to create that cliffhanger. So Google

2:18

spent five years

2:20

researching like, okay, how

2:22

do we improve the way groups

2:24

work together? What are the variables that

2:26

matter the most? And they actually

2:29

coined this project project Aristotle,

2:32

kind of a shout out to Aristotle's famous quote

2:34

about like a good group should add up

2:36

to more than the sum of its parts. They

2:38

studied over 180

2:40

teams within their company and

2:43

what they did is they came up with like a ton of different

2:45

ways to measure learning performance

2:48

and they looked at like every

2:51

variable you could imagine. So these are like things

2:53

that they thought might relate to better group performance.

2:55

They had their theories but then they tested like everything.

2:58

The frustrating was after years

3:01

of going through the data, they could find

3:03

like no correlations. Like

3:05

they could see teams with a lot of high

3:07

performers that did well and

3:09

teams with a lot of high performers that didn't. So like

3:12

we don't really know why this is happening. Here's the list of

3:14

the variables that they found did not

3:16

predict group performance at Google, location

3:19

of teammates, consensus

3:21

driven decision making, extroversion

3:24

of team members, individual performance

3:27

of the team member's workload,

3:29

size, seniority, team

3:31

size, tenure, what so

3:34

like that is crazy. It's like those are all

3:36

the things that we think matter. If it was going to

3:38

build a team, I would base it off of those at

3:40

least half of them and what they found is like there was no

3:43

correlation in at Google after

3:46

years of wrestling with this problem and finding

3:48

like no answers, they stumbled upon

3:50

a Harvard researcher whose work

3:52

helped unlock this puzzle. It

3:55

was a bit out of left field. It was a bit unexpected,

3:58

but it was a variable that could predict

4:00

group performance and learning

4:02

regardless of the team dynamic.

4:05

While Google was using their own information,

4:07

looking at the internal, observing their

4:10

teams in New York Times bestselling

4:12

author of the talent code, Daniel

4:14

Coyle explored the exact same question

4:16

through a very different approach. He decided

4:19

to hit the road. He selected

4:21

a number of high performing groups and his

4:23

plan was, I'm just going to go observe

4:25

these groups and see if there's pattern. I kind

4:27

of see what makes them tick. Exactly. So he

4:29

visited Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs,

4:32

Upright Citizens Brigade, the

4:34

Improv troop. He even hung out with a group of jewelry

4:36

thieves. So he spent like four

4:39

years on the road

4:41

observing great groups. He recognized

4:43

these are all very different groups doing very

4:45

different things. So you've got jewel thieves and sports teams. They

4:49

kind of are, I'm good job. There was like some

4:51

sort of like feeling this vibe

4:53

he could see and recognize in all

4:55

these groups.

4:56

They just felt a little

4:58

different, you know, and, and it's a feeling

5:00

that we've all had, like you walk into a room,

5:02

a restaurant, a school, especially a school

5:05

in case it's not obvious. That's Dan

5:07

Coyle. And the journey that we mentioned earlier, a visiting

5:10

all of those groups, that was his research

5:12

process for his new book, the

5:14

Culture Code.

5:15

You walk into a family, you walk

5:17

into this locker room and

5:19

it's different. There's something

5:22

going on. They're like, people are switched

5:24

on, they're a little more attentive. The body language

5:26

is a little more open. The facial expressions of a more open

5:28

the energy and the speed of speech is a little

5:30

higher. You know when you're there, this was like,

5:32

wait a minute, there's something happening between

5:34

people here that is super interesting.

5:37

That's, that's electric. The language you use

5:39

around culture. It's kind of hilarious because it's like, oh, I

5:41

just get that vibe. It's just got that sob, that field

5:44

that, that soft skill that they have. Um,

5:47

well beneath that soft vibe

5:49

is a really hard science. That's totally

5:51

fascinating. And so that's where I went and you quickly light

5:53

upon the work of Amy Edmondson at Harvard and her

5:55

work on psychological safety being just

5:58

this massive thing that until recently

6:00

people really didn't talk about it in that, in

6:02

that way.

6:04

Remember that Harvard researcher who helped solve

6:07

the Google puzzle? Of course I do. That

6:09

was Amy Edmonson. This is mind

6:11

blowing to me. Google and Dan

6:13

Coyle didn't collaborate. They were searching for the

6:15

same answer to the same question

6:18

in very different ways. And they landed

6:20

in the same place. Amy

6:23

Edmondson's work on psychological safety. So

6:26

who would be able to explain this concept

6:28

the best to explain Amy

6:31

Edmondson's work? The vest? Yeah. Who would do it?

6:33

I don't know.

6:35

Okay. I'm with you. Hi, I'm

6:37

Amy Edmondson and I'm a professor at Harvard

6:40

Business School.

6:40

Amy's been studying how groups interact since like

6:43

the mid nineties now. She didn't like

6:45

coin the term psychological safety,

6:48

but she's on the forefront of showing why

6:50

it's like the most important thing

6:52

as far as how groups interact. So

6:54

Amy's been researching this for decades and has

6:56

really like understood its power for

6:58

a long time. Right. And Google and

7:00

Daniel Coyle both arrived at this same place

7:03

through their own research. So what is it? What

7:05

is psychological safety? Really good question.

7:07

So here's the game plan. This is the season

7:10

finale and we're going to go out with a bang.

7:12

This is one of the most important topics we've

7:14

ever touched on and we want to do it right. We're

7:16

going to talk about what this is, why

7:19

it matters and most importantly, how do

7:21

you build psychological safety

7:23

within a group. We have some special

7:25

guests that we're going to bring in to help us with that

7:27

and I couldn't be more excited to get after this,

7:30

but first let's look at what it is.

7:32

It's that we

7:34

have created a work environment where

7:36

we're candidate, where we speak up

7:38

when we're in a group that feels like psychologically

7:41

safe, we're more likely to like

7:43

ask questions, experiment,

7:45

try new things like the risks that matter.

7:48

Yeah, asked for feedback and honestly,

7:50

we're just like more likely to be yourself,

7:53

be authentic and all that has made possible

7:55

when we feel safe and supported. Now

7:58

there's a few myths around this term psychological

8:00

safety that we need to put on the table.

8:02

There's this myth about good cultures that

8:04

they're like these happy, happy, you know,

8:07

seashell and balloon type places. And that is a

8:09

massive myth when you go and visit Pixar.

8:11

I mean watch people work together. It's not

8:13

like we, it's not, it's not

8:15

happy when you watched the San

8:18

Antonio Spurs work together. It's not happy. It's a different kind

8:20

of energy. It's the energy of like working

8:23

on really hard problems with people that you admire.

8:26

Unfortunately in many companies, the word

8:28

nice is used to kind of

8:30

following in a meeting.

8:33

You say something that I think is ridiculous.

8:35

I don't say it to your face because that wouldn't be nice,

8:37

but I tell my colleague in

8:40

the hallway, I mean that's not really very nice if you

8:42

think about it, but we use it

8:44

that way. It just being polite.

8:46

You know, our students here at Harvard Business School, they're

8:48

all, they're all using this term now,

8:51

but unfortunately some of them are using

8:53

it to say can't upset

8:55

anybody. You know that it

8:57

has to be purely comfortable.

9:00

You know, in our classroom you can't say something

9:02

that someone might disagree with

9:04

or be uncomfortable about. Which of course is

9:07

ironic because it's almost

9:09

the exact opposite of what I'm

9:11

all about, right? I, I mean, I'm not, I'm not actually

9:13

all about upsetting people, but I am

9:15

all about how we need to

9:17

be candid and we need to be direct

9:19

and we will, we will mess up. We Will,

9:22

we will stumble and fall, but then we're going to pick

9:25

each other up, you know, spotters ready.

9:27

And so I'm trying

9:29

now to talk about this much more as

9:32

a need for candor. You

9:35

know, a need for, uh, you know, a belief

9:37

that even if I

9:39

get it wrong and sort of step outside the lines,

9:42

you know, as long as I'm sort of on

9:44

purpose, I'm trying to do

9:46

my work well or trying to make our team better,

9:50

then you will forgive me. You know,

9:52

you catch me when I fall, you'll give me feedback

9:54

which I need and deserve.

9:57

So again, it's not about being like fake,

9:59

happy, fake, Nice. It's about candor

10:01

and having the right conversation

10:04

and saying what needs to be said. So

10:06

That's myth number one. And number two is

10:08

this idea that you have to relax your standards

10:11

to create a safe environment. In fact,

10:13

once again, it's kind of the opposite of that.

10:15

My argument would be in order to achieve

10:17

high standards and a dynamic,

10:20

complex, interdependent world, you

10:22

need psychological safety. You need

10:24

people to speak up when

10:27

they're not sure. You need people to take risks that

10:30

are smart. You know that they've thought about, oh

10:32

this might work and they try it.

10:35

It's risky to do that and, and it might work

10:37

or might not work, but either way it's

10:39

just a little bit scary, right? So it's not

10:42

at all. I'm saying high performance requires

10:45

a sense of psychological safety as long as the context

10:47

is, it is interdependence. Part

10:49

of part of being in a, in a, in a great culture is

10:51

you're solving hard problems together and hard problems

10:54

are hard. Like you, you don't

10:56

have, there aren't easy answers where somebody can just

10:58

say, oh, we do this. That doesn't

11:00

happen. So you have to instead have

11:02

to navigate through this, this

11:04

complex landscape and make and

11:07

have real arguments and, and real

11:09

discussions and real debates and

11:11

that stuff is, is, is hard.

11:13

Now, I know a lot of you are listening

11:16

and thinking like, well, we're an all not actually

11:19

safe. Like my position, my starting role on

11:21

this team is not technically safe. My

11:23

job is not technically guaranteed.

11:25

That's true. All of us are human

11:28

and therefore anxious about

11:31

our membership

11:34

and various groups that matter to us.

11:36

You know, this is what work is all about. It's always going to be

11:38

dependent on your ability to add

11:41

value. Um, and so, um,

11:43

and this creates a really interesting potential

11:47

risk and then people are like, well, wait a minute, why are you going, you

11:49

know, how am I going to feel psychologically safe if I might,

11:51

you know, be kicked off team or fired

11:54

and actually in a holding

11:56

back and being silent

11:59

is not seen as adding value. Like

12:01

you're at more risk of, you

12:03

know, being asked to believe

12:06

this team. If we don't hear

12:08

from you then if we do

12:10

now the, the fourth myth is like, well

12:13

this is all good stuff, but

12:15

I can't do it because I'm not in charge.

12:17

The organization's too big. I have bosses who

12:19

control that stuff.

12:21

There's the good news and the bad news of the fact

12:23

that psychological safety scene seems to be very

12:25

local, right? So within companies it

12:27

varies and you know, the bad news is,

12:30

gee, wouldn't it be nice to have just a pure,

12:32

you know, a completely psychologically

12:34

safe organization that's just a dynamic learning

12:36

organization from top to bottom and

12:39

right to left. Well, yes it would be nice,

12:41

but it doesn't tend to work that way. But

12:43

the good news about it being very local

12:45

is it means that the real

12:47

leverage is local. And so each

12:50

and every one of us can show up at work and make

12:52

a difference in terms of creating

12:54

the healthy learning climate in our

12:57

team or with our colleagues.

12:59

Like just how I just, how I show

13:01

up actually matters. You can have

13:03

a, it can have a profound impact on

13:05

just, you know, the few people around

13:07

me.

13:08

That's right. That's right. The culture is the 15 feet

13:10

around you is the way I've heard it described and I

13:12

kind of, I kind of liked that. Okay.

13:14

So now we know sort of what it is and what it's

13:16

not. Right. And almost more important to everyone. It's

13:19

not exactly but where we need to go. Now

13:21

it's like, look, this is the learner lab podcast.

13:23

We're concerned with learning and development. Let's

13:25

look at sort of why it matters

13:28

as far as learning and performance are concerned.

13:30

Our brains have evolved on this

13:32

planet. What are the important things we've evolved

13:34

around like whether we're safe or not. And, and,

13:36

and that is um, a massive,

13:39

massive part that's been, you know, as

13:41

our brains have sort of grown in complexity

13:43

that's, that's been at the core all the time.

13:45

Everybody's brain in a social situation, continually

13:48

monitoring environment for any signal

13:50

of do I have a future with

13:52

these people? Do they care about my success?

13:55

Our brains are built to respond super strongly.

13:58

If these aren't my people, I am not just like,

14:00

I'm not just neutral out. So

14:02

basically our brain is wired

14:04

to fit into groups. Yeah. And it's constantly

14:06

scanning for information to answer

14:08

the question, am I safe? Right. And

14:11

if the answer to that question is no,

14:14

we are in trouble, right? One, when the Amygdala

14:16

is activated and we feel like we're not safe

14:18

learning centers of our brain, like literally

14:21

shut down and let's

14:23

just get to the topic we've touched on in

14:25

every episode of the learning

14:27

lab action, we're

14:29

probably not going to do the things

14:31

that help us grow. Amy Calls these

14:33

learning behaviors. If we don't

14:35

feel safe,

14:36

you're going to be able to learn. You gotta

14:39

learn from mistakes. You've got to be able to speak up. You

14:41

got to ask for help. Like if you're going to be able to learn,

14:43

you've got to feel psychologically safe.

14:45

That makes perfect sense. Not going to ask

14:47

questions, not going to own my mistakes. I don't

14:49

want feedback. I'm not going to try new. I'm

14:51

not going to experiment. I'm not going to step

14:53

out of my comfort zone if I don't feel

14:55

safe. Honestly, this is what Google

14:57

discovered too. It's like we know the

14:59

actions that help us grow in the things we want

15:02

to do. Psychological safety

15:04

is the underpinning thing that

15:06

allows us to do those actions.

15:09

Not only does it affect the way we learn

15:11

and the learning behaviors, but it has a huge

15:13

influence on our performance. Both of those

15:15

things matter to anyone listening.

15:17

That's it. It's the, it's the platform on which

15:19

all the other cultural stuff happens. And if you lose

15:21

it, you lose a lot. So

15:24

you have to think of it as this as this

15:26

first, you know, basic space

15:29

in which you can connect. And if you want to blow up a group,

15:32

blow up safety. Like that's the thing

15:35

that wrecks groups. This soil

15:39

oil has to be healthy soil seeds

15:42

into it to make that

15:44

grow or don't grow. So it's the underpinning.

15:46

So it doesn't matter what industry we're in or what

15:48

field we're in, what plants were growing.

15:51

The soil matters a lot. You could argue

15:54

more than anything. So

15:56

now that we understand what safety is, what

15:58

it's not and why it matters, let's

16:00

transition to looking at how we can build it

16:02

time to get into the weeds and come up with some

16:04

like concrete applications. And the cool thing

16:07

is for almost everything we're going to

16:09

touch on, it's relevant to anyone

16:11

in any place, in any group, regardless

16:14

of where we're at on the totem pole. Now

16:16

to help us with this section, we have two special

16:18

guests. We have two members of the

16:20

Grinnell College women's volleyball

16:22

team. This team has gone through a massive

16:24

transition in the last few years. Literally

16:27

Four seasons ago they won two matches.

16:29

Oh, that's, that's not great. Not the

16:31

best. And this

16:34

previous season they finished second in the conference and won

16:36

more games than any program

16:38

in school history. Wow, that's really great.

16:40

Big Leap. We have their head coach.

16:42

My name is Eric Reagan. Uh, I'm the

16:44

head volleyball coach at Grinnell College. We

16:47

have one of their co captains, Nora

16:50

Hill. I'm a senior captain of the Grinnell College volleyball

16:52

team.

16:52

And here's the cool part. The focus

16:55

of the team this season was

16:57

building psychological safety.

16:59

And not only was it building psychological

17:02

safety, but they used the book, the

17:04

Culture Code written by Daniel Coyle. To do that.

17:06

I think that the culture code really, I

17:09

recommend every single person

17:11

who works in a group with just humans in general read

17:13

it and best practice is telling

17:16

us right now that if we can

17:18

build a culture that does have a shared purpose

17:20

where people share vulnerability

17:23

and they're safe enough to do so, they're

17:25

going to achieve at a higher level

17:27

and learn a ton along the way

17:29

to get the ball rolling with this. Let's head back to our expert

17:32

Amy. Smart idea. Yeah. She says

17:34

that to build psychological safety, there's three

17:36

big things we need to look at.

17:37

I like to put them in three buckets

17:40

and they're, they're kind of temporal buckets,

17:42

you know, first, second, third. But I don't mean to

17:44

imply a sort of simple linear

17:46

path and then you're done. It's a little

17:49

ongoing journey.

17:51

Uh, but, but bucket one is kind of stage

17:55

setting and, and to me, stage setting is

17:57

kind of the work we do

17:59

to remind ourselves

18:01

and each other that we face uncertainty

18:04

or challenge or interdependence or

18:06

all three.

18:06

So basically it's being real about the work that

18:08

we're going to do and it's going to be uncertain and

18:11

we have to acknowledge that. Absolutely. Regardless

18:13

of what it is we're doing. If the goal is

18:15

to grow, to innovate, to be creative,

18:18

sort of the price of admission there is struggle

18:20

and mistakes and failure and it's about putting that on

18:23

the table and kind of owning that, that

18:25

it's not always comfortable to do

18:27

these things. And when we share that

18:29

and own that with our people, I think that's

18:31

a great way to set this stage.

18:33

Yeah. And even acknowledging that fear, it's

18:35

okay to feel that fear right now, but you have

18:37

all no five women on

18:39

the court and a bunch of women not on the court supporting

18:41

you. And so even if you feel

18:44

fear, creating the safety to talk about that

18:46

I think is important.

18:47

And I think another component of this is sort of connecting

18:49

the broader why, like why are we doing this?

18:52

Absolutely. And getting people on board with like, Hey,

18:54

there's a reason that we're doing this and

18:56

providing maybe the underlying science

18:59

that supports it.

19:00

Like, we just can't do it. We have to educate

19:02

our people on the like the research

19:04

behind it, right? And that was the value

19:07

of us. Like reading the book together

19:09

as a team, starting that and

19:11

like creating that buy in in the group

19:13

from the good apples or the leaders or

19:15

whatever you want to call can take sort of a lot

19:18

of energy up front.

19:20

And so I think that you have to get in that mindset

19:23

of like this is worth it. And like there's a reason,

19:25

a purpose that I'm doing this because

19:27

we're really talking about the functions

19:29

of a culture, right? They've, the functions

19:32

are, we need to stay together that safety,

19:34

we need to share information. Well

19:37

that's vulnerability. Like that's how we share

19:39

information and we need to figure out where

19:41

we're going. Well that's, that's purpose. So

19:44

however you do it, there's not one way to achieve

19:46

those three functions.

19:48

There's a lot of different ways to do it, but those

19:50

have to happen because you need to,

19:52

if you're a group, you need to navigate through

19:54

these complicated situations together. And

19:59

the second bucket is proactive

20:03

inquiry.

20:03

When she touches on this in her book, the free of this organization,

20:06

she calls us inviting engagement or inviting

20:08

actions. The way I see it as the focus

20:10

of this bucket is we

20:13

grow through action. So it's about

20:15

finding ways to encourage action.

20:17

And so our people are getting the reps of

20:19

sharing and asking for feedback

20:21

and doing the things that builds safety. And there's

20:24

no definitive blueprint here, but there's a lot of ways

20:26

to go about this.

20:27

You know, by by asking, by asking

20:29

good questions and that can be just subordinate to,

20:32

you know, to bosses or, or to peers. Do

20:35

you have any thoughts about this

20:37

product, this project, this, you know,

20:39

this customer or this experience I've just

20:41

had and you would be,

20:44

it would be very awkward for you not to respond.

20:46

I mean, you're not going to just sit there mute when

20:49

I asked you if thoughtful question,

20:51

you could say, no, I really haven't thought

20:53

about it and don't feel like I have something to add.

20:55

But you're not going to be just mute. But

20:58

this kind of proactivity and that sounds

21:00

so obvious and it is, but

21:02

the reality is if you actually tape record

21:05

a lot of workplace conversation, the

21:08

jet new in question is a rare beast, right?

21:10

There's a lot of rhetorical questions, you know,

21:12

I'm right, right? It, you agree

21:14

with me, don't you? You know, or um,

21:17

well, wouldn't that fall apart

21:20

if we did it that way? I mean really.

21:23

Okay, boss. Yeah, it would fall apart if we did it that way.

21:25

But, but the genuine question that

21:27

kind of invites your thinking

21:31

and gives people room to respond is, is

21:33

pretty unusual and very

21:35

powerful. And any one of us can use it.

21:37

It's free. I mean,

21:39

for me, the number one way that I think

21:41

I created safety was like by being vulnerable

21:44

myself. And I think that

21:46

even though it gets brought up a lot, modeling

21:49

is so important. And behavior, heart

21:51

of inviting engagement is often modeling

21:54

it. You know, if I'm unwilling to tell

21:56

you three things, I just

21:58

messed up. How, how can I expect you

22:00

to do the same? And

22:04

then the third, the third bucket is monitor

22:06

your responses, right? Cause there will be,

22:09

in our today's workplace, and

22:11

especially anytime that learning is needed,

22:13

there will be, there will be bad

22:15

news, there will be disappointment,

22:17

there'll be dissent, there'll be things I disagree

22:19

with and have to just, you

22:21

know, to help foster psychological

22:24

safety, they have to kind of take a deep breath

22:26

and say, oh that's interesting.

22:28

Thanks for that clear line of sight. What

22:31

do you think we should do?

22:32

The big idea here is, okay, when

22:35

these actions start to occur, how

22:37

are we responding to them? If a mistake happens,

22:39

how do we respond? If we ask

22:42

for feedback and get feedback, how

22:44

are we responding to that? That makes a lot of sense.

22:46

So if you told me that you wanted me to give

22:48

you feedback, but then when I gave you feedback,

22:50

you've lashed out at me, right? I'm not going to do

22:53

that again. I don't feel safe doing that. Exactly.

22:55

And this is super common. Hey, give me

22:57

some honest feedback. Let's practice candor,

23:00

right? Then you give it to me and I get real mad. It's

23:02

like, guess what, you're not going to continue

23:04

to give that. So the way I see it is

23:06

the way we respond can either encourage

23:09

more action that builds the safety

23:11

or it totally shuts it off.

23:13

I can respond in such a way that invites

23:16

more input. They can respond in

23:18

such a way that invites a joint

23:20

problem solving or both.

23:22

And in fact, another way to think about this response

23:24

really isn't new. I have a productive response

23:27

or an unproductive response to

23:29

what comes my way. It doesn't mean, you know,

23:32

it's not happy, sad, it's not good bad.

23:34

It's just, is this, it's going to help

23:36

us, oh in the direction

23:38

we want to go. Uh, I think one thing

23:40

that we do really, really well is celebrate

23:42

mistakes. And if people

23:45

are trying

23:46

to develop specific

23:48

things in their skillset, right? So

23:51

if my teammate can recognize

23:53

me struggling with that and trying to get better,

23:56

that makes me feel safe and

23:58

I'm more apt to do that again, which

24:01

is really, really special.

24:03

Talking think about mistakes is

24:05

very different than teams that are really outcome focused,

24:08

I think. And that comes from, you

24:10

know, our philosophy as a

24:12

team, but then also how we interact with each other

24:14

and how you respond when someone makes

24:16

an error. It doesn't go the way you want I

24:18

think is very, very important. There's

24:20

a guy who studies critical moments theory where

24:22

it's like, look, you know, group norms get formed

24:25

and like these just these infant, what

24:27

happens at the first disagreement, any group

24:30

come together. What happened to the first disagreement? That is huge.

24:32

That is a massive turning point for setting

24:35

up a norm of how you're going to interact or are people going

24:37

to share weakness or are they not going to show weakness in

24:39

a bad culture? 10 Texans ended up pulling

24:41

you down in a good cultures. Tensions

24:44

ended up being a source of fuel because

24:46

you are always turned toward them and you're always

24:48

trying to to figure him out. Everyone

24:51

on the team is not going to be best friends, not

24:54

the end goal. I think at any one point,

24:56

cause that would be not genuine. That'd be fake. That'd be false

24:59

niceties. But I think it's about having

25:01

enough of a team culture of safety

25:03

and vulnerability that even if this person is

25:05

not your favorite person on the team, you can still take

25:07

feedback from them positively.

25:09

The big idea here is that the way that we respond

25:11

is that they're going to encourage more of those actions we

25:13

want to see or shut them down. Now

25:15

look like this isn't always going to be easy

25:18

and it's not going to go perfectly. No. Like

25:20

this is a learning process and there's gonna be bumps along the way.

25:22

But the idea is to be aware of setting

25:24

the stage, inviting action, and

25:27

being very aware of our response.

25:28

I'm thinking of specific examples

25:31

where we were able to have candid

25:33

conversations about things and specific

25:35

examples when it didn't go well, because

25:37

it definitely did not go well sometimes.

25:40

And the piece that was missing when

25:43

it wasn't going well is

25:45

people couldn't be vulnerable because they didn't

25:48

feel safe in that particular situation

25:50

because they either felt attacked, right,

25:53

and didn't want the feedback, or

25:55

they felt like they were right and

25:57

we're potentially above what we're talking about,

25:59

right? So then it does come back again

26:01

to that safety piece.

26:04

What's happening here is, is akin to

26:06

a language and like any language, there's

26:08

sort of a core set of nouns and verbs,

26:10

but it's a language, not awards, but a behavior.

26:13

So you, you, you send the signal

26:15

with your behavior and we're built to receive

26:18

those behaviors and have our brains light up in response

26:20

to them. So building the safe environment isn't

26:22

just like putting a poster up on the wall that, or

26:25

like people walk in and we go, welcome

26:27

your safe. Right? The way that we do this

26:30

is we, we send signals and we send signals

26:32

through action and behavior. That's what

26:34

builds this culture. And so realizing

26:36

that as a leader, whether it's a leader of a classroom

26:39

or the leader of a group leader of a team, that

26:41

you have this window in which you to deliver

26:43

that signal of safety, you need to deliver

26:45

that and redeliver that and redeliver that.

26:48

Because our brains are built to require

26:50

that constant signal. Like it's okay

26:52

now it's okay, now it's okay. Now we're still connected.

26:54

There's a lot of different ways to do it. You know, every, every

26:56

great culture is not the same. But underneath

26:59

they're sending these basic spin

27:02

heyvrill signals back and forth through our actions.

27:04

We're sending the signal, you matter, you belong,

27:06

we're in this together. That's exactly right. And you

27:08

can't, you almost can't overdo it when it comes

27:10

to that stuff. You can be insincere and that doesn't

27:13

work. But authentic signals of like,

27:15

Hey, you know, we share a connection, we share

27:17

a future. We are in a relationship

27:19

and, and I'm thinking about the past and the future

27:22

and you and I'm in the moment. Uh,

27:24

so there's not like a color by

27:26

numbers way to send belonging cues, but there's a whole

27:29

sort of symphony of ways to send them. And

27:32

another one is just eating together. Like,

27:35

you know, there's something that happens when people eat together

27:37

and with groups that I've seen that they always,

27:39

you know, good groups make a priority out of

27:41

mealtime. You want to create signals

27:43

that people matter. That's why I

27:45

think it's really important to spend time like meals

27:48

and traveling even like on the

27:50

bus, those signals matter.

27:51

Yeah. And I think especially on

27:54

a college sports team where

27:56

there are new people coming in every

27:59

year, it's like they're not freshmen

28:01

here that are part of our team and

28:04

it's like it's better for us if we can get

28:06

them feeling that way right away and feeling safe.

28:09

And that's where like the belonging cues come in.

28:11

So like our leaders did a great job

28:13

with our first years this year. Right? Bringing

28:16

them into our culture from day

28:18

one. It's not like they have to

28:20

prove themselves to be a part

28:22

of Ge CVB. They are a part

28:24

of it right away as the season

28:26

went on, having regular

28:28

meetings about it. So we just

28:30

don't want to talk about these things when stuff's

28:33

not going right. We want to talk about it

28:35

all the time so we can keep upgrading.

28:37

It's like a candle you need to relight

28:39

all the time. It's not like you can

28:42

just sort of send them, oh we send them in the

28:44

first first month of the year and

28:46

then we're all set like that's

28:48

not how it works. I think that also once you

28:50

feel the benefits, I like being

28:52

a part of a group that feels safe together. You

28:55

like just want to keep reinforcing that because

28:57

one, you have more successful outputs, but two,

29:00

it just feels better. It's the same thing we feel with,

29:02

with all great sort of coach mentors

29:04

in our life and when you ask people about their best coach,

29:06

what they end up always getting around to is like they

29:08

really believed in me. You literally

29:11

talking about like, Oh, we had a great skillset of

29:13

teaching Algebra. Right? They don't talk about

29:15

that. They talk about that sense of belief

29:18

that is very individualized, which

29:20

means a lot. When you say someone believes in

29:22

me, you're, you're saying they see me

29:25

same way I see me like they see

29:27

me as a in a special way. And

29:29

you can't do that without individualizing stuff

29:35

Alex, it's time to do your thing. Give

29:37

him the recap. If

29:39

we want to build better teams are more productive

29:42

teams and we have to invest in our culture.

29:44

And the foundation for investing in a culture

29:46

is psychological safety. Yup.

29:48

And in order to build that, we need to

29:50

set the stage. We need to invite

29:53

engagement. So we get those reps

29:55

and then we need to be really aware and monitor

29:58

our responses to those events that

30:00

happen. And don't forget those belonging cues,

30:02

the constant signals that you matter,

30:04

you're safe here and that we're a team and you belong.

30:07

A couple of important things before we let you

30:09

go, like to give a special shout out to

30:11

Nora and Eric for kind of giving us the

30:13

blueprint of how to dig in and build this.

30:16

I'm a huge thank you to Daniel Coyle. He's

30:18

been a great mentor to us. Uh,

30:20

the culture code is one of my favorite books I've

30:22

ever read. Please check it out. And

30:26

I think we have to give a ton of love

30:28

to Amy Edmondson here. It's like without

30:30

her work, none of this exists and she's been

30:32

in the trenches since the 90s working

30:34

on this, her book, the fearless

30:37

organization just came out a few months ago. Highly

30:39

recommend that if you want to really dig

30:41

into this research, and

30:44

the final thank you is to all the learners

30:46

out there. This has been the

30:49

most incredible project that

30:51

we've ever done. Um, we

30:53

had no idea how it would turn out, but

30:55

it is just blown my mind

30:57

at like how supportive

30:59

everyone's been. This is the end

31:01

of season one, many seasons

31:04

to gum. We're going to take a little break

31:06

and we will be back soon and we can't wait to get

31:08

after it again. Thank you guys.