October 14, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode of the HR Mixtape podcast, host Shari Simpson welcomes Dave Garrison, co-founder of Garrison Growth, to discuss the critical role of leadership in fostering a culturally intelligent and collaborative workplace. With a wealth of experience as a CEO and board member, Dave shares insights on how leaders can inspire their teams to engage fully and create an environment of psychological safety. This conversation is particularly timely as organizations navigate the evolving employee experience landscape, emphasizing the importance of purpose-driven leadership and inclusive practices.
Listener Takeaways:
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Learn how to cultivate psychological safety by prioritizing human connection over tasks.
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Discover why aligning on a compelling purpose can enhance employee engagement and retention.
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Explore strategies for effective feedback that reinforces trust and encourages open dialogue.
Hit “Play” to gain valuable insights that can transform your leadership approach and improve team dynamics!
Guest(s): Dave Garrison, Co-founder, Garrison Growth
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel, well,
Joining me today is Dave Garrison, co-founder from Garrison Growth.
Dave is a market-facing growth leader with 25 years across the
(00:25):
US, Canada, and Latin America, known for building high-performing teams
and practical go-to-market playbooks that put customer value at the
So I want to start with you sharing a little bit with our audience
about your book and your journey and how you really got
(00:49):
Yes. You know, I had the opportunity to be
a CEO in public and private companies for over 25 years and
also sit on the boards of some amazing growth
stories like TD Ameritrade where I was lead outside director
and sit on the boards of companies that failed miserably and learn the
same amount from both, just different lessons. And
(01:12):
I've read so many books where it's like, this is
how I did it. This is not one of those books, because you can't
do what I did, nor would you want to, frankly. I
have much more insight now than I did in those
decades as CEO. But what I was really curious about
is what makes the difference between organizations that
(01:33):
are what we call occasional winners and those that
are game changers. And what we found is
it's usually about the leaders. Because
you can take, give me a B or a C strategy and
give me an A set of leaders, and I can run rings around
an A strategy all day long. But we are,
(01:54):
as leaders, Frankly, the only model
we really have of leadership is from two places. One,
what we learned from the people we've worked for in the past, and two, that
which we learn in grade school. And in grade school, we learn
there is a teacher. That teacher has the answer. There is one
right answer. Nothing can be further from the
(02:16):
truth. So if the leader believes their job is
to give the right answer, then they've already
lost the race. And so this book was really collecting
stories from those leaders who inspire people to
give it their all. And so just imagine. It's
Friday night, you're at a high school football game. Can
(02:39):
you feel the energy in the stands? Those
are everyday people who have everyday jobs. What
happened on Monday when they go back to work? Where did
all that energy go? How come they're showing up and saying, uh-huh,
sure, what would you like me to do? Appreciate the cupcakes, thanks. Where
did all that energy go? This book is about how leaders inspire people
(03:02):
I love that. You know, I am a huge proponent of
there's not one way to get to the end results that,
you know, everybody brings to the table, their unique
skills and experiences. I am a wired
curiosity person, so I ask a lot of questions to
deduce, you know, what is the actual problem we're trying to solve? And
(03:25):
I also use that when somebody gives me an answer, a direction that
I don't quite understand or align with, I get real curious about
it. Like, hey, help explain to me where you got
to that decision, or walk me through the lens that you used,
because you all bring unique experiences. So
I think that ties in really well into this idea of a
(03:46):
culturally intelligent team. Maybe you could define that
Absolutely. Your example brought up a couple of important points in the
book. We have one chapter that's called, you know, basically leaders
ask questions, leaders listen, don't tell. And
it doesn't mean you don't have an opinion. It means you don't learn when
you give the opinion. And one of the principles we talk about for
(04:09):
leaders in the book is curiosity and judgment cannot
coexist. If you're waiting to react to
whatever I tell you, you can't be listening and you can't be
curious. And so one of the things that we do
when we work with leaders in person with our team is
we have them repeat what they heard. And
(04:31):
the way the brain works, we often translate what we heard into
our language, not what the person said. Therefore, we
can't get curious because we really don't know what they said. And
so, another principle that's based on this idea that all
of us are smarter than any of us is, when we make decisions like
you said, let's identify the one specific problem
(04:52):
we're addressing. Because when we run into a challenge, it's usually
a cluster of problems. So let's select one and
then don't go to solutions. Because
what we're trained to do is, well, I've got an idea. No,
I've got an idea. And then we debate ideas. Total waste of time. We
talked about a process in the book called collective genius. And
(05:13):
in the collective genius process, what it says is after
we identify the single problem, then
we ask, what would a great solution look like?
And what I'm trying to find out is, what's on the checklist in
your head that lets you know a solution is great? Because
until we do that, we're going to leap right into debate where
(05:37):
about my idea is better because blah, blah, blah. Don't waste any
time on that. In fact, when we have employees and teams doing
drama-free problem solving, they don't debate. zero, none,
discussion, almost none, because we
gather and align on what great looks
like, what the criteria is, what's the checklist, and
(05:59):
then everybody is free to come up with solutions based
on the same criteria and solving for the same problem.
And one of the things we observe, I've done it, I'm guilty. I
will read something or see something and come up with a great
idea for my company and I come in on Monday morning and I
go, hey team, I've got a great idea, why don't
(06:22):
we? And it's done with love and
the best of intentions and it is a disaster for
generating buy-in because I've
already told them it's a great idea. Here's an alternative. take
the effort to ask yourself what problem is being addressed, what
lets me know it's a great idea and just share only that
(06:43):
much and then ask others to take a
day and think about their great ideas and then get
all the great ideas in the table. I find when you do that,
ego gets detached from the idea and we
I've definitely been on the receiving side of leadership coming
(07:04):
in with a, I'm using air quotes here, but great big
idea that ends up being kind
of a terrible idea for the employee population or the
way they thought it was going to get executed means that the team has
to do double the workload to execute it the way that the leader thought. So
I love that tactic of coming up with
(07:25):
that checklist criteria of what does great look
like Because then you are kind of playing from
the same tools as you have that
thought exercise to come up with those great ideas. Such
a great place to start. How do you, as
an HR leader, as a hiring manager, how do you think
(07:47):
differently about hiring when you're trying to
build these teams that you want to have this sort
Yeah, so hiring generally and promotions
generally have been done on in the hiring case. We
need someone who has five to seven years experience twiddling their thumbs
(08:09):
or whatever it is, and it's all well intentioned. That's all great and good, but
it doesn't help you predict who's going to stay in the organization, who
will step and what their contributions will look like.
So we would suggest that, and one of the things in the
Buy an Advantage book is use your compelling purpose,
which is a simple statement that describes why it's
(08:31):
worth doing. How is this organization changing the
world? Four to six words, it's of the heart, talks about people, why
it matters. After you come up with that compelling purpose, use
it in the interview and say, you know what? Our compelling
purpose is, if it was Walt Disney, creating happiness. How
does that resonate for you? How do you think about that? How do you see yourself
(08:53):
in that? So one, align on compelling purpose. Two,
align on values. If one of your values is integrity,
and I hope you only have two or three values and the values have
at least a sentence to describe them, but assume it was integrity, don't
ask, don't say, hey, our value is integrity, is that important to you?
Because the answer is yes, of course it is. Instead
(09:17):
ask, can you tell me about a time you've been challenged at work
and your integrity has been challenged? What happened? How did you
deal with it? And find out about their relationship with
integrity. And those answers on how
they see themselves in the compelling purpose and how they relate
(09:38):
When you think about organizations that are in different
countries and they're trying to meld the
complexities of different cultural experiences,
different ways of speaking that are influenced by culture, You
know, there are some cultures that you don't kind of question
the boss. You don't have that sort of curiosity conversation.
(10:01):
How do we create this in these organizations that
have these multicultural, multi-country complexities?
I've been blessed with having been CEO of organizations with operations
in 55 countries. I have learned that things like
commission plans, if you try to apply one commission plan, that's a disaster for
cultural reasons, but also conversations. So
(10:24):
let's take Asia. Um, let's take North Asia as
an example of day and night different from how
you'd have the conversation in New Jersey. Like, okay,
let's start. So it's just
putting the language. It, the, the onus becomes on
the leader, particularly the Western leader in using
(10:45):
the language where you are. And I don't mean
literally the language Japanese. I mean, using the approach to
language. So for example, indirect questions, if
one were to have other ideas, what might those other
ideas be? if you were to
tell someone else what a great idea might look like,
(11:07):
what might you tell them? So using the indirect non-confrontational
is a leader's opportunity and obligation in order to
get the best thinking from the team. The other thing
that I recognize in North Asian cultures is to allow
them to collectively decide what
(11:27):
their answers are as opposed to calling out individuals. The
saying that, you know. uh, the, the, the
nail that sticks out gets the hammer applies to different
parts of the world and you do not want to call out people or embarrass them.
And so I think that you can flex around cultures. Um,
but one thing is the same, no matter what culture you're in, people
(11:51):
have experience to bring to work and it doesn't matter if they're on day one,
day 100 or their hundredth year at your company, they've
got experience to share and your opportunity as a leader is
Leaning on your many years of experience as a CEO, I
am sure that you have gotten this right and gotten it wrong, because we all do,
(12:11):
when it comes to building psychological safety on your teams and
creating that environment where they feel safe
to ask questions, to challenge hard things.
What has been your approach or what have you found to be successful in
building psychological safety on teams? And
(12:32):
I ask this because I run into this all the time when we're talking about leadership development and
we're talking about talent pipelines and succession planning. And
it's great. We can have all the great programs and the great plans, but
often we miss this very basic step of building psychological safety
That is a great question and worth the effort, whatever
(12:52):
effort it takes to create psychological safety. And to
take a step back, we're in a buy-in crisis, not
just in the US where we're at a decade low of
people saying, I'd recommend this as a place to work. It's true
in the UK where it's half the rate of the US. It's true in Australia. It's
true in France, Germany, Canada, Mexico, on and
(13:12):
on. So we're in a crisis and it's not any leader's
fault, but a couple of things have changed. COVID gave people
a chance to re-examine what work means to them. There's a
different generation that values impact as much as money, and
we're in a time of great uncertainty. So psychological safety
is more important today than it has ever been if retaining
(13:36):
talented employees and getting the best results matter
to you. If those two things matter, then pay attention
to psychological safety. So what's that look like? three things
people are looking for from their workplace today. No
surprise, it is number one, they
align with the purpose. Why is the work worth doing? Why
(13:58):
am I willing to leave my home why am I willing to put
all this work in? Why am I willing to go the extra mile? Because
it's worth it. It's worth it because collectively we are
fill in the blank of four to six words of why it matters, never
about money. So number one is having
a purpose greater than themselves that everybody can see themselves in.
(14:20):
Number two, and this is to psychological safety, being seen
as a human being, not a human doing. So we talk about
in the book, the by an advantage, see people as people
first before you ask them what to do. And if
you do the drive by, like, how are you? Fine, good.
Here's what I want you to do. You've just said you don't care about people.
(14:42):
Right? So take the time to recognize the human being and
all the highs and lows of being a human being before you
go to task land. So be seen as a human being is
a pre cursor to psychological safety.
The third is your voice
being heard and being heard. I'll
(15:04):
tell you what it's not. It's not, Hey, I'm going to give you an opinion and
you as the leader judge that opinion right away. great
leaders mirror what they heard and ask
a humbling question. Did I get that right? And
if they didn't get it right, repeat it again and then
ask clarifying questions. So when we take a group of leaders, say
(15:25):
we have 20 leaders in a room, I'll say to them, do you
know what the word chair means? And the answer is, of course
I know what chair means. I say, okay, tell me what I'm thinking about
when I say chair. and
I'll get 20 different answers. So as a leader, it's
really important we don't assume we know what people mean, but
(15:46):
people feel heard when you repeat what they say and
you ask clarifying questions. Those two things,
being heard and seen as a human being, encourage people
to share opinions. One of the questions we ask of leadership teams
is, how comfortable are you sharing opinions
that you know are unpopular? And if the leadership
(16:08):
team is not sharing opinions they know that are unpopular, I
guarantee nobody below them will. They'll just go, hey boss,
great idea. Sure, let's do it. Where are we going to go to lunch? and
Man, it brings me back to my college years and
(16:29):
all the cognitive dissonance that professors instill
in you during that time where you're just uncomfortable
and you're wrestling with ideas. And we do that as we
are raising our children too, but it's missed in the workplace.
We miss this kind of skill set of creating
that cognitive dissonance with questions like, Do
(16:51):
you know what a chair is? And then digging into that and having people think more
broadly. You know, I do love that you mentioned Gen Z.
I'm working on my doctorate. I know I showed that on the podcast before, and
it's around generations using digital tools
and adaptive learning specifically related to HR professional development. And
so I've spent a lot of time learning about different generations and
(17:14):
I am more than excited, thrilled about Gen Z
coming into the workforce and all of the things that they're kind of
pushing and redefining what work looks like. I
don't hear the same kind of conversations around discretionary effort
I heard 10 years ago. I hear more conversations now
about purpose and wellness and impact and
(17:37):
paths for development. And I think that's rising everybody
when we bring those things into the organization. And you
touched base on a couple of those. How have you
coached around wrapping feedback into this whole process
when You know, you've had the good conversations, you're
collaborating, somebody makes a misstep, somebody
(18:00):
makes the wrong move, and you gotta give feedback. But you
Right, so first thing, look in the mirror. If
you tell, if I hear from a leader, ah, so and so, screw that, you
know, I can't believe they did that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'd ask them, what
role did you play in that? And so to
(18:23):
me, performance evaluations and feedback are
best generated by the person themselves. If
we think of ourselves as leaders sitting as judge and jury, okay,
I'd like to talk to you about your last year, exactly what happened.
Um, you haven't been with them for a year. You haven't been there as they've made
(18:43):
decisions and done their work. So you have no place in doing that. However,
as a leader, if you've reached an agreement with them
at the beginning of the quarter or the year, on
exactly what's to be done and you've aligned on
that, it doesn't mean you've handed them their objectives, it means you've co-created
them because done with is more powerful than done to
(19:04):
in generating buy-in. So co-creating objectives,
co-agreeing on what that exactly looks
like, what the evidence would be. and then
asking them, what support can I give you? What do our check-ins look like
along the way? Then anywhere along the way as
a leader, you can say, Hey, I wanted to check in on our objectives and set up a
(19:25):
meeting tomorrow. Would you please be prepared to give me the
performance evaluation and allow the other person
to evaluate themselves? And what you'll find If
you've done it correctly, what you'll find is 80% of
what they tell you are things you would have said anyway and
you get to add 20% in the form of questions. I'm
(19:48):
curious to know when this happened, how did that
line up with our value of X or how did that line up against the objective
of Y? Because you don't know, you're generally reacting
to stories in your head and your opportunity is
to understand what was their experience. you could
possibly guess their experience. You only know it when
(20:09):
you ask, which reinforces psychological safety.
Such good advice, Dave. I do agree
we probably could make this episode three hours long and dive into
a bunch of other stuff, but we do wanna keep it short and sweet for our
audience. So I'll ask you this as our last question. As
you look ahead for the trends that you're seeing and
(20:30):
based on your experience and your longevity as a CEO, what
are some of the trends that you think are gonna most influence organizations going
forward to build these you know, really culturally intelligent,
You know, I think one thing, um, I want to just touch on one other
thing about the current time and mental health that you mentioned. It's so
(20:50):
important. And that is the leader's opportunity is to reinforce
certainty and to be humble about it
and vulnerable themselves because leaders are the ones who start
the vulnerability train. And so what that might look like is to say,
look, I don't know what's going to happen with interest rates. I don't know how these tariffs
are going to affect us. I don't know how this
(21:11):
plays out with our customers. I don't know.
What I do know for sure, and then anchor back into purpose,
anchor back into values, anchor back into current objectives,
and anchor back into your belief that together the team
can accomplish amazing things. So that vulnerability and
(21:31):
that dealing with uncertainty, I think is really important for
mental health. So an important trend here
is, and what would cause leadership teams to lean in, is
when they either get someone who has already done this playbook, and
they're willing to listen to them on how to do it differently, or they
see a division or a department that's generating huge buy-in, getting
(21:55):
great results, and saying, how come the rest of the organization isn't like
that? and leader sees other
companies that smoke them. We know of one
company that's involved in HR recruiting, which
is a smile and dial business, not a glamorous business.
They recognize that their turnover at 50% was
(22:18):
very expensive. They cut their turnover to twice
in half and as a result became the most profitable in
their business and their competitors are all saying, how do they do that? How
do they do that? And the answer is they put people first.
And so I think the trend is about if you want to be competitive and getting
the best people, retaining the best people and getting the best
(22:40):
results, put people first and ask yourself
as a leader, how do I build the environment that
allows people to be their best self to tap into full potential? And
that is buy-in. So start at buyinbook.com, go
take the assessment. It's free and rank yourself on
(23:02):
Dave, I love it. Thanks for taking some time out of your day to sit down
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find show notes
and links at thehrmixtape.com. Come back
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel, well,
Joining me today is Dave Garrison, co-founder from Garrison Growth.
Dave is a market-facing growth leader with 25 years across the
(00:25):
US, Canada, and Latin America, known for building high-performing teams
and practical go-to-market playbooks that put customer value at the
So I want to start with you sharing a little bit with our audience
about your book and your journey and how you really got
(00:49):
Yes. You know, I had the opportunity to be
a CEO in public and private companies for over 25 years and
also sit on the boards of some amazing growth
stories like TD Ameritrade where I was lead outside director
and sit on the boards of companies that failed miserably and learn the
same amount from both, just different lessons. And
(01:12):
I've read so many books where it's like, this is
how I did it. This is not one of those books, because you can't
do what I did, nor would you want to, frankly. I
have much more insight now than I did in those
decades as CEO. But what I was really curious about
is what makes the difference between organizations that
(01:33):
are what we call occasional winners and those that
are game changers. And what we found is
it's usually about the leaders. Because
you can take, give me a B or a C strategy and
give me an A set of leaders, and I can run rings around
an A strategy all day long. But we are,
(01:54):
as leaders, Frankly, the only model
we really have of leadership is from two places. One,
what we learned from the people we've worked for in the past, and two, that
which we learn in grade school. And in grade school, we learn
there is a teacher. That teacher has the answer. There is one
right answer. Nothing can be further from the
(02:16):
truth. So if the leader believes their job is
to give the right answer, then they've already
lost the race. And so this book was really collecting
stories from those leaders who inspire people to
give it their all. And so just imagine. It's
Friday night, you're at a high school football game. Can
(02:39):
you feel the energy in the stands? Those
are everyday people who have everyday jobs. What
happened on Monday when they go back to work? Where did
all that energy go? How come they're showing up and saying, uh-huh,
sure, what would you like me to do? Appreciate the cupcakes, thanks. Where
did all that energy go? This book is about how leaders inspire people
(03:02):
I love that. You know, I am a huge proponent of
there's not one way to get to the end results that,
you know, everybody brings to the table, their unique
skills and experiences. I am a wired
curiosity person, so I ask a lot of questions to
deduce, you know, what is the actual problem we're trying to solve? And
(03:25):
I also use that when somebody gives me an answer, a direction that
I don't quite understand or align with, I get real curious about
it. Like, hey, help explain to me where you got
to that decision, or walk me through the lens that you used,
because you all bring unique experiences. So
I think that ties in really well into this idea of a
(03:46):
culturally intelligent team. Maybe you could define that
Absolutely. Your example brought up a couple of important points in the
book. We have one chapter that's called, you know, basically leaders
ask questions, leaders listen, don't tell. And
it doesn't mean you don't have an opinion. It means you don't learn when
you give the opinion. And one of the principles we talk about for
(04:09):
leaders in the book is curiosity and judgment cannot
coexist. If you're waiting to react to
whatever I tell you, you can't be listening and you can't be
curious. And so one of the things that we do
when we work with leaders in person with our team is
we have them repeat what they heard. And
(04:31):
the way the brain works, we often translate what we heard into
our language, not what the person said. Therefore, we
can't get curious because we really don't know what they said. And
so, another principle that's based on this idea that all
of us are smarter than any of us is, when we make decisions like
you said, let's identify the one specific problem
(04:52):
we're addressing. Because when we run into a challenge, it's usually
a cluster of problems. So let's select one and
then don't go to solutions. Because
what we're trained to do is, well, I've got an idea. No,
I've got an idea. And then we debate ideas. Total waste of time. We
talked about a process in the book called collective genius. And
(05:13):
in the collective genius process, what it says is after
we identify the single problem, then
we ask, what would a great solution look like?
And what I'm trying to find out is, what's on the checklist in
your head that lets you know a solution is great? Because
until we do that, we're going to leap right into debate where
(05:37):
about my idea is better because blah, blah, blah. Don't waste any
time on that. In fact, when we have employees and teams doing
drama-free problem solving, they don't debate. zero, none,
discussion, almost none, because we
gather and align on what great looks
like, what the criteria is, what's the checklist, and
(05:59):
then everybody is free to come up with solutions based
on the same criteria and solving for the same problem.
And one of the things we observe, I've done it, I'm guilty. I
will read something or see something and come up with a great
idea for my company and I come in on Monday morning and I
go, hey team, I've got a great idea, why don't
(06:22):
we? And it's done with love and
the best of intentions and it is a disaster for
generating buy-in because I've
already told them it's a great idea. Here's an alternative. take
the effort to ask yourself what problem is being addressed, what
lets me know it's a great idea and just share only that
(06:43):
much and then ask others to take a
day and think about their great ideas and then get
all the great ideas in the table. I find when you do that,
ego gets detached from the idea and we
I've definitely been on the receiving side of leadership coming
(07:04):
in with a, I'm using air quotes here, but great big
idea that ends up being kind
of a terrible idea for the employee population or the
way they thought it was going to get executed means that the team has
to do double the workload to execute it the way that the leader thought. So
I love that tactic of coming up with
(07:25):
that checklist criteria of what does great look
like Because then you are kind of playing from
the same tools as you have that
thought exercise to come up with those great ideas. Such
a great place to start. How do you, as
an HR leader, as a hiring manager, how do you think
(07:47):
differently about hiring when you're trying to
build these teams that you want to have this sort
Yeah, so hiring generally and promotions
generally have been done on in the hiring case. We
need someone who has five to seven years experience twiddling their thumbs
(08:09):
or whatever it is, and it's all well intentioned. That's all great and good, but
it doesn't help you predict who's going to stay in the organization, who
will step and what their contributions will look like.
So we would suggest that, and one of the things in the
Buy an Advantage book is use your compelling purpose,
which is a simple statement that describes why it's
(08:31):
worth doing. How is this organization changing the
world? Four to six words, it's of the heart, talks about people, why
it matters. After you come up with that compelling purpose, use
it in the interview and say, you know what? Our compelling
purpose is, if it was Walt Disney, creating happiness. How
does that resonate for you? How do you think about that? How do you see yourself
(08:53):
in that? So one, align on compelling purpose. Two,
align on values. If one of your values is integrity,
and I hope you only have two or three values and the values have
at least a sentence to describe them, but assume it was integrity, don't
ask, don't say, hey, our value is integrity, is that important to you?
Because the answer is yes, of course it is. Instead
(09:17):
ask, can you tell me about a time you've been challenged at work
and your integrity has been challenged? What happened? How did you
deal with it? And find out about their relationship with
integrity. And those answers on how
they see themselves in the compelling purpose and how they relate
(09:38):
When you think about organizations that are in different
countries and they're trying to meld the
complexities of different cultural experiences,
different ways of speaking that are influenced by culture, You
know, there are some cultures that you don't kind of question
the boss. You don't have that sort of curiosity conversation.
(10:01):
How do we create this in these organizations that
have these multicultural, multi-country complexities?
I've been blessed with having been CEO of organizations with operations
in 55 countries. I have learned that things like
commission plans, if you try to apply one commission plan, that's a disaster for
cultural reasons, but also conversations. So
(10:24):
let's take Asia. Um, let's take North Asia as
an example of day and night different from how
you'd have the conversation in New Jersey. Like, okay,
let's start. So it's just
putting the language. It, the, the onus becomes on
the leader, particularly the Western leader in using
(10:45):
the language where you are. And I don't mean
literally the language Japanese. I mean, using the approach to
language. So for example, indirect questions, if
one were to have other ideas, what might those other
ideas be? if you were to
tell someone else what a great idea might look like,
(11:07):
what might you tell them? So using the indirect non-confrontational
is a leader's opportunity and obligation in order to
get the best thinking from the team. The other thing
that I recognize in North Asian cultures is to allow
them to collectively decide what
(11:27):
their answers are as opposed to calling out individuals. The
saying that, you know. uh, the, the, the
nail that sticks out gets the hammer applies to different
parts of the world and you do not want to call out people or embarrass them.
And so I think that you can flex around cultures. Um,
but one thing is the same, no matter what culture you're in, people
(11:51):
have experience to bring to work and it doesn't matter if they're on day one,
day 100 or their hundredth year at your company, they've
got experience to share and your opportunity as a leader is
Leaning on your many years of experience as a CEO, I
am sure that you have gotten this right and gotten it wrong, because we all do,
(12:11):
when it comes to building psychological safety on your teams and
creating that environment where they feel safe
to ask questions, to challenge hard things.
What has been your approach or what have you found to be successful in
building psychological safety on teams? And
(12:32):
I ask this because I run into this all the time when we're talking about leadership development and
we're talking about talent pipelines and succession planning. And
it's great. We can have all the great programs and the great plans, but
often we miss this very basic step of building psychological safety
That is a great question and worth the effort, whatever
(12:52):
effort it takes to create psychological safety. And to
take a step back, we're in a buy-in crisis, not
just in the US where we're at a decade low of
people saying, I'd recommend this as a place to work. It's true
in the UK where it's half the rate of the US. It's true in Australia. It's
true in France, Germany, Canada, Mexico, on and
(13:12):
on. So we're in a crisis and it's not any leader's
fault, but a couple of things have changed. COVID gave people
a chance to re-examine what work means to them. There's a
different generation that values impact as much as money, and
we're in a time of great uncertainty. So psychological safety
is more important today than it has ever been if retaining
(13:36):
talented employees and getting the best results matter
to you. If those two things matter, then pay attention
to psychological safety. So what's that look like? three things
people are looking for from their workplace today. No
surprise, it is number one, they
align with the purpose. Why is the work worth doing? Why
(13:58):
am I willing to leave my home why am I willing to put
all this work in? Why am I willing to go the extra mile? Because
it's worth it. It's worth it because collectively we are
fill in the blank of four to six words of why it matters, never
about money. So number one is having
a purpose greater than themselves that everybody can see themselves in.
(14:20):
Number two, and this is to psychological safety, being seen
as a human being, not a human doing. So we talk about
in the book, the by an advantage, see people as people
first before you ask them what to do. And if
you do the drive by, like, how are you? Fine, good.
Here's what I want you to do. You've just said you don't care about people.
(14:42):
Right? So take the time to recognize the human being and
all the highs and lows of being a human being before you
go to task land. So be seen as a human being is
a pre cursor to psychological safety.
The third is your voice
being heard and being heard. I'll
(15:04):
tell you what it's not. It's not, Hey, I'm going to give you an opinion and
you as the leader judge that opinion right away. great
leaders mirror what they heard and ask
a humbling question. Did I get that right? And
if they didn't get it right, repeat it again and then
ask clarifying questions. So when we take a group of leaders, say
(15:25):
we have 20 leaders in a room, I'll say to them, do you
know what the word chair means? And the answer is, of course
I know what chair means. I say, okay, tell me what I'm thinking about
when I say chair. and
I'll get 20 different answers. So as a leader, it's
really important we don't assume we know what people mean, but
(15:46):
people feel heard when you repeat what they say and
you ask clarifying questions. Those two things,
being heard and seen as a human being, encourage people
to share opinions. One of the questions we ask of leadership teams
is, how comfortable are you sharing opinions
that you know are unpopular? And if the leadership
(16:08):
team is not sharing opinions they know that are unpopular, I
guarantee nobody below them will. They'll just go, hey boss,
great idea. Sure, let's do it. Where are we going to go to lunch? and
Man, it brings me back to my college years and
(16:29):
all the cognitive dissonance that professors instill
in you during that time where you're just uncomfortable
and you're wrestling with ideas. And we do that as we
are raising our children too, but it's missed in the workplace.
We miss this kind of skill set of creating
that cognitive dissonance with questions like, Do
(16:51):
you know what a chair is? And then digging into that and having people think more
broadly. You know, I do love that you mentioned Gen Z.
I'm working on my doctorate. I know I showed that on the podcast before, and
it's around generations using digital tools
and adaptive learning specifically related to HR professional development. And
so I've spent a lot of time learning about different generations and
(17:14):
I am more than excited, thrilled about Gen Z
coming into the workforce and all of the things that they're kind of
pushing and redefining what work looks like. I
don't hear the same kind of conversations around discretionary effort
I heard 10 years ago. I hear more conversations now
about purpose and wellness and impact and
(17:37):
paths for development. And I think that's rising everybody
when we bring those things into the organization. And you
touched base on a couple of those. How have you
coached around wrapping feedback into this whole process
when You know, you've had the good conversations, you're
collaborating, somebody makes a misstep, somebody
(18:00):
makes the wrong move, and you gotta give feedback. But you
Right, so first thing, look in the mirror. If
you tell, if I hear from a leader, ah, so and so, screw that, you
know, I can't believe they did that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'd ask them, what
role did you play in that? And so to
(18:23):
me, performance evaluations and feedback are
best generated by the person themselves. If
we think of ourselves as leaders sitting as judge and jury, okay,
I'd like to talk to you about your last year, exactly what happened.
Um, you haven't been with them for a year. You haven't been there as they've made
(18:43):
decisions and done their work. So you have no place in doing that. However,
as a leader, if you've reached an agreement with them
at the beginning of the quarter or the year, on
exactly what's to be done and you've aligned on
that, it doesn't mean you've handed them their objectives, it means you've co-created
them because done with is more powerful than done to
(19:04):
in generating buy-in. So co-creating objectives,
co-agreeing on what that exactly looks
like, what the evidence would be. and then
asking them, what support can I give you? What do our check-ins look like
along the way? Then anywhere along the way as
a leader, you can say, Hey, I wanted to check in on our objectives and set up a
(19:25):
meeting tomorrow. Would you please be prepared to give me the
performance evaluation and allow the other person
to evaluate themselves? And what you'll find If
you've done it correctly, what you'll find is 80% of
what they tell you are things you would have said anyway and
you get to add 20% in the form of questions. I'm
(19:48):
curious to know when this happened, how did that
line up with our value of X or how did that line up against the objective
of Y? Because you don't know, you're generally reacting
to stories in your head and your opportunity is
to understand what was their experience. you could
possibly guess their experience. You only know it when
(20:09):
you ask, which reinforces psychological safety.
Such good advice, Dave. I do agree
we probably could make this episode three hours long and dive into
a bunch of other stuff, but we do wanna keep it short and sweet for our
audience. So I'll ask you this as our last question. As
you look ahead for the trends that you're seeing and
(20:30):
based on your experience and your longevity as a CEO, what
are some of the trends that you think are gonna most influence organizations going
forward to build these you know, really culturally intelligent,
You know, I think one thing, um, I want to just touch on one other
thing about the current time and mental health that you mentioned. It's so
(20:50):
important. And that is the leader's opportunity is to reinforce
certainty and to be humble about it
and vulnerable themselves because leaders are the ones who start
the vulnerability train. And so what that might look like is to say,
look, I don't know what's going to happen with interest rates. I don't know how these tariffs
are going to affect us. I don't know how this
(21:11):
plays out with our customers. I don't know.
What I do know for sure, and then anchor back into purpose,
anchor back into values, anchor back into current objectives,
and anchor back into your belief that together the team
can accomplish amazing things. So that vulnerability and
(21:31):
that dealing with uncertainty, I think is really important for
mental health. So an important trend here
is, and what would cause leadership teams to lean in, is
when they either get someone who has already done this playbook, and
they're willing to listen to them on how to do it differently, or they
see a division or a department that's generating huge buy-in, getting
(21:55):
great results, and saying, how come the rest of the organization isn't like
that? and leader sees other
companies that smoke them. We know of one
company that's involved in HR recruiting, which
is a smile and dial business, not a glamorous business.
They recognize that their turnover at 50% was
(22:18):
very expensive. They cut their turnover to twice
in half and as a result became the most profitable in
their business and their competitors are all saying, how do they do that? How
do they do that? And the answer is they put people first.
And so I think the trend is about if you want to be competitive and getting
the best people, retaining the best people and getting the best
(22:40):
results, put people first and ask yourself
as a leader, how do I build the environment that
allows people to be their best self to tap into full potential? And
that is buy-in. So start at buyinbook.com, go
take the assessment. It's free and rank yourself on
(23:02):
Dave, I love it. Thanks for taking some time out of your day to sit down
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find show notes
and links at thehrmixtape.com. Come back
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