July 3, 2025 • 45 mins
What if your team’s biggest performance blocker wasn’t capability—but silence?
In this episode, I’m joined by psychological safety expert Gary Keogh to unpack why so many people still don’t feel safe to speak up at work—and how most leaders are blind to it. We explore what psychological safety really is (and isn’t), why two in five people still hold back, and why 70% of leaders think their teams feel safer than they actually do.
Gary shares practical insights into the four domains of psychological safety, the impact of accurately measuring it, and the powerful shifts he sees during the breakthrough sessions he runs with teams. We also flip the usual doom-and-gloom narrative, highlighting positive examples like Netflix’s “farming for dissent” approach.
If you want to build a high-trust, high-performance culture—this is where it starts.
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Key Takeaways- Silence is the hidden killer of performance: Two in five employees hold back ideas or concerns due to fear, costing organisations innovation, speed, and trust.
- Psychological safety isn’t about comfort, it’s about candour: It’s not about being “nice.” It’s about creating space for honest, respectful challenge without fear of reprisal.
- There are 4 domains of Psychological Safety: Willingness to help, inclusion & belonging, attitude to risk & failure, and open conversations.
- Stop guessing. Start measuring: A 3-minute survey can uncover the truth, spark the right conversations, and drive lasting behaviour change.
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Key MomentsThe key moments in this episode are:
0:00:10 – Why silence still rules too many workplaces 0:04:00 – Gary’s purpose: Unlocking and igniting potential 0:06:40 – What makes people hold back and what leaders miss 0:09:10 – What psychological safety is (and isn’t) 0:13:55 – The four domains of psychological safety 0:17:45 – Real breakthroughs from team sessions 0:22:40 – Why safety must be a group phenomenon 0:26:20 – Netflix's “informed captain” & farming for dissent 0:30:10 – How to handle challenge and feedback the right way 0:34:30 – Data sparks conversation and change 0:40:20 – What sustained impact really looks like 0:42:55 – Gary’s 3 Sticky Notes for building psychological safety
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Join The Conversation Find Andy Goram on LinkedIn here Listen to the Podcast on YouTube here Follow the Podcast on Instagram here Follow the Podcast on Twitter here Follow the Podcast on Facebook here Check out the Bizjuicer website here Get a free consultation with Andy here Check out the Bizjuicer blog here Download the podcast here ----more---- Useful Links Follow Gary Keogh on LinkedIn here Find Gary's website here ----more---- Full Episode TranscriptGet the full transcript of the episode here
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out.
I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tons more success for everyone.
(00:39):
This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.
Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it.
(01:03):
So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.
Okay then, have you ever bitten your tongue in a meeting knowing something needed to be said but stopping yourself because you didn't feel confident or that it was safe to do so?
The possible reprisals of speaking out may not warrant speaking up.
(01:29):
If that's happened to you, how many people in your team are also doing that right now and what are the implications of that?
I mean, let's face it, workplaces talk about openness and trust and having a speak-up culture but how many of us genuinely feel safe to challenge, question or even admit a mistake without some element of fear, be that looking incompetent, ignorant, negative or you're just that destructive and difficult person in the room.
(02:03):
Well, my guest today is Gary Keogh who's doing some frankly brilliant work in the field of psychological safety, helping some very well-known organizations stop guessing and start measuring what really drives high-performing, inclusive and resilient teams and cultures.
So today, we're going to explore the real state of psychological safety at work where it's reported that two in five people still don't feel confident enough to speak up and also why many leaders think things are fine in their teams when they're not.
(02:38):
We'll break down what psychological safety actually is and isn't, unpack the four domains associated with it and flip the narrative by spotlighting what good looks like instead of just focusing on what goes wrong.
I hope you'll hear how some organizations are actively creating environments where feedback isn't feared but welcomed and Gary will also share the results he's seeing from his own powerful breakthrough sessions that help leaders finally connect culture with practical action.
(03:08):
So, if you care about trust, team performance and creating a culture where people don't have to wear a mask to work, stick with us.
This episode might just make you reassess just how safe and productive your own workplace really is.
Gary, welcome to the show, my friend.
Thank you very much, Andy.
Great to be here.
(03:29):
Super to have you, mate.
I'm deadly excited to talk to you, not just on this topic in general but some of the specific brilliant work you're doing with clients and the results that you're getting on a topic that I think can at times get an eye roll or a side eye look from people when we mention psychological safety.
So, I'm really looking forward to getting into that.
(03:50):
Before we do, do me a favour, my friend.
Just introduce yourself to the listeners.
Tell us a little bit about you, what your background is and how come you've landed in this space about psychological safety.
Thanks, Andy.
I think this started for me maybe 15 years ago when I worked as a leadership coach myself.
He said to me in our first session, he said, Gary, what's your purpose?
(04:13):
I have to admit, I didn't really know what he meant.
I was scrambling around for an answer and he said, come on, what lights you up?
What motivates you?
I said, to give my family choices.
He went, mate, it's not that.
I thought, wow, I thought that was quite a good answer.
Anyway, long story short, I worked with him over a number of sessions and I wrote down four words that changed everything for me, unlock and ignite potential.
(04:38):
It was a breakthrough moment for me because I realised my purpose was to do that with the brands I worked on, but more importantly, with the people that I worked with, my peers, my stakeholders and critically, my team.
I worked in four fantastic companies, two FTSE 100 companies, two family-owned businesses.
Unlock and ignite potential got personal because our daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia and we decided, my wife and me, to move three times in four years to get her into schools that specialise in dyslexia.
(05:11):
Why?
So we could unlock and ignite her potential.
Then I went to a leader in the business I worked in, a fabulous organisation called William Grant and said, look, I'd love to train as a coach.
I love coaching, mentoring, leadership, but I don't know if I'm any good at any of that.
I've never had formal training.
She said, what do you need?
I said, I'd love to go to Henley and study coaching and behaviour change.
(05:33):
So I did a master's there and that's where I specialised in psychological safety.
Why?
Because if you get it right, you unlock and ignite potential.
What a beautiful rounding of that circle, right?
As somebody who has struggled with their own purpose years ago, I totally empathise that.
But when you find that thing, that core, I guess that anchor point for you, it's an amazing release because everything else falls into place and it's very easy to understand when you're doing things that are aligned to that purpose and feel right and good and useful and all the other stuff that you confused as being important and beneficial on the other side of it.
(06:15):
I think it's a wonderful thing.
I'm so pleased that I speak to somebody else who's found it and getting to live their best life now as a result of that.
Psychological safety.
I want you to set the burning platform for us as to why we're talking about this today.
I mentioned in the intro that two out of five stat.
But for you, why is it such an important thing to talk about right now?
(06:40):
And that stat is scary, right?
Two in five people on every team not speaking up.
Let's be clear what that means.
They're not saying anything.
They're not being completely quiet, but they are pulling their punches and they are going on with the failing wisdom and maybe not challenging the status quo.
And also let's get under the iceberg.
(07:00):
There's reasons for it.
This two in five people when their alarm clock goes off in the morning, they don't want to look intrusive, so they won't challenge the status quo.
They don't get up in the morning to look ignorant, so they don't ask questions.
They don't want to look incompetent, so they won't talk about mistakes.
So there's some of the things that are getting in their way.
(07:21):
And then overlay that other really important thing you mentioned in the intro, 70% of leaders overestimate how safe their teams feel to speak up.
And why?
Because leaders have rank, they have power, they have access to more data.
And because they feel safe speaking up, they project that on their teams.
And just think about the irony, Andy, of the leader sitting with their team and saying, do you feel safe to challenge me?
(07:46):
What answer do they get?
Everyone says, yeah, I feel great challenging you.
No problem.
And they walk out the room and they say, I've never challenged her on this.
I'd never say that to him.
Or they put in a WhatsApp group what they really think.
So there's a barrier already before we even get anywhere.
And you asked, why is it important?
(08:07):
Well, if you have people speaking up, you get more diversity of thought.
You get better informed decisions.
You get greater innovation and creativity.
If you don't have it, you have people feeling less engaged, demotivated, and absolutely not bringing their whole selves to work.
I think that's so true.
For me, it feels like one of the really strong enablers of that high trust, high challenge, high performance organization.
(08:36):
The degree to which people feel like they can ask a question or show some vulnerability or disagree with something or have a confrontation allows, I guess, that fostering of trust, which means we can challenge the hell out of things.
We can pick things apart, not take it personally, because we feel safe in the environment.
(08:59):
It's OK to challenge these things or make a point or give a different opinion in these things.
They are setting, I think, the foundations for a high performance culture.
Do you agree with that?
Yeah, exactly.
And to build on what you just said, let's be clear on what psychological safety isn't as well.
(09:22):
So it's not guaranteed applause for all your ideas.
It's not a pass on the back, Gary, for everything you do all day long.
It's not about people being agreeable and nice to each other.
In fact, it can be exactly the opposite.
And the guru in this space, Amy Evans, talks about creating a candid, energized place to work where people can speak up without fear of appraisal.
(09:45):
And that means you get better contributions.
And another thing is it's not long-winded conversations.
Some people think, well, if we hear from everyone, we're going to be here all day.
And a big learning for me was that awful moment when you're the leader of a team.
And imagine you're in June, June or July, which we are now.
(10:06):
And you're getting to the point where a project isn't going well.
And you're six months into it.
And you sit down with your team.
And you go, yeah, it's not quite happening the way we expected it to do.
And somebody on your team turns around and says, yeah, I could have told you that back in January.
And I remember years ago, my reaction was, why didn't you bring that up sooner?
(10:27):
And now, when I reflect on that, that was the wrong reaction.
The right reaction would have been, what environment had I created so that person couldn't have brought that up sooner?
I think that is a high-quality leadership paradox.
Because I think the initial reaction to that sort of question is often the frustrated, well, why didn't you say?
(10:50):
Just expecting that everybody's going to bring everything to you on their own bat.
But I think that is an incredibly strong reflective question for leads to ask themselves.
Actually, where have I failed here?
What have I not provided you for you to feel like, yeah, this isn't going to work.
Let me tell you why.
You're not going to be seen as a neg ferret.
(11:11):
You're not going to be seen as some sort of sod in the room.
It's that candid space.
I think this is what's fascinating about psychological safety.
And maybe it's those two words that sound grandiose or something.
I still feel it gets a bit of a bad rap.
I think it's sort of like seen as something overly fluffy.
I mean, fluffy is a word we use far too much on this podcast.
(11:32):
But I think it's anything but that stuff.
This is hard, tough stuff that really is about eliciting great performance, great diversity of thought, involvement, engagement, all these great things that if you wrote down the key words you want for a culture, that these are the things that enable that stuff, right?
I think I have some sympathy for, I have some frustration and sympathy, right?
(11:57):
Frustration that the words are being weaponized or misunderstood, but sympathy for the fact that while the concept has been around since the mid 1960s, the research into it didn't really start until the early 90s.
And then there's been a generation of research that has associated and correlated psychological safety to high performance, greater innovation, higher motivation and engagement.
(12:21):
But the first mainstream article on psychological safety wasn't until Charles Dunhigg wrote a piece in the New York Times in 2016 about a project that Google did called Project Aristotle, which was about what performance.
And they concluded after looking at 180 teams, 250 characteristics, the most important element in the team was psychological safety, being able to speak out without fear of reprisal, without being worried something would be weaponized against you.
(12:53):
But imagine if it's been in the mainstream since 2016, that's only nine years, nine, 10 years.
And so if people have a skin deep understanding, then they might associate safety with, well, everyone's just going to agree and be nice to each other.
And you're right, psychological might be a bit highbrow, potentially.
(13:15):
Yeah, I think that's potentially why people kind of don't get it.
There's a bit of Dunning-Kruger in there as well.
I think you hear the headline and you assume you understand what it means.
And therefore you think, I don't need that here.
We haven't got time for that.
We've got shit to do.
And the reality is once you start looking under the skin of this stuff, it's absolutely foundational, fundamental to how teams, effective teams, high performing teams perform.
(13:39):
Absolutely.
Just so we bring everybody up to speed, Gary, I mentioned in the intro, the four domains associated with psychological safety.
Do you want to just bring those to life for us just so we can get everybody understanding what we're really, really talking about here?
Yes, exactly.
And this is where it's important to point out that the concept is layered.
(14:03):
And there are certain things that get in the way.
So the four domains of psychological safety, one is willingness to help.
And willingness to help is I feel confident that I can go and ask someone for help on my team and that help will be forthcoming.
It's just a simple way of expressing that.
And sometimes we don't ask for help, right?
Because we think we should know the answer, especially if we're a leader.
(14:27):
If I ask for help, that could impact my status and people think I look stupid.
So willingness to help is one big area.
Another area is inclusion.
Do people genuinely feel like they belong in the team?
Because guess what?
When they feel like they belong and they're welcomed and their unique background or culture is accepted and respected, well, then they will speak up more.
(14:51):
If they don't, they unlikely will.
Another domain is the team's attitude to risk and failure.
So how are mistakes handled around here?
Do people get blamed for mistakes?
Or do we use the insight from mistakes to get better and to learn and improve?
And the other area is open conversations, open discussions.
(15:16):
Do we genuinely say in meetings what needs to be said?
Or are we pulling our punches or going along with the prevailing wisdom?
And let me give you an example of that.
You will have heard of fight or flight.
So Walter Bradford Cannon, 1920s, American psychologist, came up with that based on us hunting for food in prehistoric, in caveman times, hunted by a saber-toothed tiger.
(15:40):
The same thing can happen in meetings.
You can have a stress response and lash out, which is fight, or you can flight and just withdraw and not say anything.
But the other interesting build on that is the term fawn.
Have you heard of that term?
(Andy Goram (15:54):
No, go on.
Talk to me.)
Okay.
So fawn is when you just agree.
So Andy, you and me are having a conversation in a meeting with the team, and you say, right, I think we should go in this direction.
And me thorning is to be submissive and go, yeah, great idea.
Let's do that.
Well, actually, I don't agree at all.
And I'm the person that says six months down the line, I could have said that we should have done that.
(16:18):
So fight and flight are really well understood.
Fawn is another one.
We don't have open conversations.
I disagree with you because actually it's easier to do, and there's no risk or cost to me in doing that.
And I think that that risk to person shows up in, I guess, what people might commonly understand as things like imposter syndrome and all those different characteristics behind there.
(16:40):
These are some things that will make us think twice about standing up, showing out for fear of that looking incompetent or ignorant of all the words we used in the intro.
And to me, that's a very sad state of affairs because there's another horrible engagement stat that something like two thirds of the people who work in organization are just present.
(17:03):
And when you understand why they're just present and when by present, I mean, they show up, but they don't give you all that they can give you.
Another two thirds of the two thirds, which is dangerous stat territory, but feel that way because no one has ever asked them for that opinion.
And then behind that, there's that fear of putting it forward.
(17:25):
So that whole encouragement, that whole creating an environment that encourages and accepts different ideas and perspectives from other people, you know, that has to play better for us when we're talking about innovation, creativity, teamwork, you know, learning from mistakes.
These are all fundamentally important, aren't they?
(17:47):
.
Massively, and I do think something else you were touching on there, Andy, is how much we get in our own way.
And let me explain that with examples.
So one breakthrough session I've ran with the team, this whole territory of willingness to help each other, which we can measure that and show where that is in a team in terms of a median score, but also the spread of perception.
(18:13):
So the brilliant thing about measuring this is you illuminate how the whole team feels, but you do it anonymously and confidentially so no one knows who's answered it, which is important.
But then you just ask a simple question.
How does it play out in your team, like asking each other for help, as an example?
And in one example, there was a great team, we'd worked together for a while, where one person in the team went forward and said, well, my role's quite technical.
(18:39):
So two people in the team of seven understand my role.
I can ask them to help, but they travel quite a lot.
I can't really ask the other people in the team to help.
So the reaction of the other people in the team was, we may not know the specific technicality of your role, but if you're struggling, please, please come and talk to us.
And this person just her eyes widened and went, oh wow, I didn't know I could do that.
(19:00):
And then the conversation moved on and a gentleman said to the leader in this breakthrough session, well, I know you've recently had a baby.
You're not long in your role.
I know you've got quite on your plate, so I don't really feel like I can come and ask you for help.
And the reaction of the leader to his credit was to say, I know I'm quite introverted.
(19:20):
I know that I can be quite head down when I'm working, but please, if you need help, you must come and interrupt me.
And I really want to do that.
I want you to understand that you can do that.
And this gentleman was like, oh, okay, great.
And then the third thing that happened was another colleague in the team, the same team, all in the space of a few minutes, gentleman went forward and said, well, I don't think I can ask other people for help because I feel I should know the answer.
(19:43):
I feel it will be my own personal failing if I don't know the answer to this.
And his whole team went back in their chairs and said, we think so much of you.
We respect you so highly.
We would never think anything negative about you.
And I think sometimes the problem is Andy is we, we think we're mind readers.
I think I can't bring this up with Andy now because he'll think I'm this or he'll think I'm that.
(20:05):
And we think we're mind readers, but we're not.
And all these invisible barriers that exist in teams just come tumbling down and people have conversations that they just haven't had.
I think, I mean, we will probably get onto this,
I think, when we start thinking about measurement, we make so many assumptions.
As humans, we just love an assumption.
(20:27):
It's our kind of default position.
I reckon I know this what's going on here.
I won't bother asking.
I'll just plow on with my own gut.
And sometimes that's right, but other times it's way, way, way off, but we do cause problems on both sides of the conversation.
We definitely get in our own way and certainly get on our own heads, but what are we doing to other people by doing that at the same time?
(20:47):
What are we not eliciting?
What are we not empowering?
What are we not releasing from inside people?
This is why I find this topic so fascinating.
If I think about what you've already said today.
So we've established that psychological safety is about candor, not comfort, right?
It's chuck the fluff stuff out the window.
This is about saying what needs to be said.
(21:10):
We've probably got similar values.
One of mine being, I'm a kind person.
I'm not a nice person.
And that's not meant to sound Machiavellian.
That is meant to sound like, I'm going to tell you what I think you need to know because I think it's the kind thing to do.
It gives you an opportunity to see it.
If it's a work-based thing, it gives you an opportunity to change and grow.
(21:32):
Nice people may not tell you because they don't want to hurt your feelings.
And I think this is definitely not what this is about.
I think there's a danger associated with this silence that's going on around the table, right?
We must be missing tricks.
We must be missing opportunities.
We're probably making some bad decisions.
You said in your very first story, well, I could have told you that six months ago.
(21:56):
That's six months' time wasted from silence.
You know, who's got six months to waste in today's world?
It just doesn't happen.
And I think the thing that you've started to uncover for me here is, whilst we'll talk about psychological safety from an individual perspective, it has to be about having a collective condition right within a team.
(22:20):
It's no good if one person, maybe it's that boss who thinks everybody else is okay, who feels confident and competent and okay to speak up.
There may well be people in that team who individually feel confident and competent, but are still fearful of speaking up because of that environment.
So it has to cover the collective, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's a group phenomenon.
(22:41):
You've absolutely hit the nail on the head.
And I mean, there'll be people that do say, and I actually agree with them, they'll say you're only as psychologically safe in a team as how the person who has the least psychological safety feels.
So you're dead right.
This is a phenomenon that exists in a group.
(23:04):
And because if you're talking about the difference between trust and psychological safety, trust tends to be a one-to-one phenomenon between two people, whereas psychological safety is how I feel in a group.
And the other reason why it sometimes gets a bit complex is no one operates in the same group every day in their working life.
(23:24):
They tend to move between different teams.
So it might be, let's say their home team that they're on an organogram with, and they'll work in cross-functional teams throughout the course of the day.
And that's another thing that happens.
Psychological safety is temporal, and it will change in the different groups in which we mix as well.
And I want to pick up on a word that you made.
(23:46):
You brought up a really important word, comfort.
And a recent post I did actually on the difference between nice and kind, which seems to get an awful lot of traction on LinkedIn, was a brilliant leader commented on there about, if you can create a safe environment, then people are more comfortable speaking up and giving people feedback.
(24:06):
And actually, Amy Everson interjected and just kind of made us both aware that, you know what, it might never be comfortable being kind to people.
It might never be comfortable giving people that feedback that will help them grow.
You can still do it with care, but when you're kind to someone and you tell them something you think they need to hear, there is always a risk for you.
(24:27):
And she just made that point, which I thought was great, around, do you know what, I took from it, if you wait to be comfortable, you may never say it.
I love that.
There's a very good old original model, I think it's by Byrne, that the sort of levels of communication, and it has a little triangle in it.
And it talks about the levels of communication we go as we give more risk and we get more trust.
(24:52):
And it starts at the bottom of all those kind of ritual things like, hey, Gary, how was your morning?
Everything okay?
Blah, blah, blah, all that kind of small talky stuff.
And works through the pyramid up to the top where you're really kind of open and sharing and really getting into some deeper stuff, some deeper understanding.
But at each level of that triangle, you are taking a greater personal risk in the payback of getting greater, more sustainable trust.
(25:17):
And I think that to me is exactly what you're getting to there.
Gosh, I mean, we could talk about so many things with this.
What I do really want to get into is not all the negative stuff around this and what isn't happening.
I think we've kind of nicely framed what we think it should be and where people need to act.
(25:37):
I guess the thing I'd like to start getting to is, where are you seeing in the work you're doing great stuff happening?
And I'm also, I don't know whether it will link into this or not, but something you just sort of said about, I'm fine in my team, but it's when I go and work in other teams that I've got a problem.
This is, I think, a complex thing for organizations to get their head around.
(25:59):
Where's the responsibility?
Where's the accountability for creating that kind of matrix safety, if you like?
So I think I've just thrown a lot of you in that sort of question, but if we start with that one, where do you think that responsibility lies and what are you seeing?
And how does that knock onto where you're seeing organizations really lead on this stuff and make it work for them?
(26:20):
I think I can link the two because you're raising a really important point and I'll throw some data as well at you, but essentially when you measure psychological safety, which is very, very simple to do, essentially people in teams break seven questions on a one to seven like that scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
(26:43):
And you get a really clear report on how people feel across those four domains of psychological safety, which we talked about earlier.
You see a roughly 9% drop in psychological safety between someone's home team and when they're in cross-functional teams.
Why?
Because we don't know people in cross-functional teams as well.
(27:04):
We maybe aren't as connected with them and there's different disciplines in terms of maybe marketing, commercial, finance, supply chain, different levels of knowledge in the room as well.
So that'll be a simplistic way of describing why that psychological safety fits.
Let me link that with an organization that I think is doing things really well because a lot of stories around psychological safety are about disasters, whether that's the airlines and shuttles and they should never, they are really important stories, but there are not enough stories on identifying what happens when things go well.
(27:40):
So one organization that I think has psychological safety in their DNA is Netflix because they adopt two simple principles.
For every project, every work stream, they appoint an informed captain who must farm for dissent.
Now informed captain means, the captain element means you make the call.
(28:02):
So it's not the CEO, it's not necessarily the functional head, but you're empowered to make the call because you're the captain.
The informed bit means your obligation is to farm for dissent.
And what that means is someone comes up with an idea at Netflix and they go to content, they go to programming, they go to technology, they go to marketing, they go to sales, and they say, make this idea better or break this idea.
(28:26):
And they are obligated to get the views of other people in the organization.
So they're doing that in cross-functional teams, not just within their own work silo in one place.
So an example, back in 2013, the prevailing wisdom in programming was to release episodes every week, drive intrigue, make us wait, to be continued, and trailer what's coming next.
(28:51):
They released House of Cards, all nine episodes in one weekend in February, and gave control to consumers about when they watched it, how they watched it.
That came from their philosophy of one person makes the call, but only after they've been around the organization and gone, what's the pros and cons of this?
Help me make and break this idea.
(29:11):
So informed captains who farm for dissent, I think it's a great model, it's in their DNA, and it's actually replicable.
Other organizations could have their version of that.
I think the interesting thing about that model is the informed captain making the call.
Because there's an element of, well, hang on, I've asked everybody, or everybody's had a chance to say something, why haven't you taken my idea on board?
(29:38):
And that can cause all sorts of conflict.
But in an organization where it's like, hey, hey, hey, this is how we make decisions.
It's down to this guy, he's going to talk to you, or she's going to talk to all of you.
You have your chance to make or break this.
At the end of the day, though, thank you for your contribution.
It comes down to this person.
Nothing personal about it, they're just informing and making a decision.
(30:01):
That whole circle of understanding is so important, isn't it?
Because that could cause all sorts of problems if that isn't well understood.
Yeah, and it will also cause problems if the informed captain just dismisses people's ideas out of hand.
And this comes down to tone now.
So if you get someone's view, and you demonstrate appreciation for the risks they may have taken, for the contribution they've made, that's what we must do as leaders.
(30:29):
It doesn't mean you have to agree with them.
It doesn't mean that their idea is the one that gets adopted.
And this is the bit that gets confusing, I think, at times on psychological safety.
Like someone says, well, oh, you didn't agree with what I said, therefore I don't feel psychologically safe.
That is to weaponize the concept in the wrong way.
So when there's an understanding that psychological safety means that we are going to ensure that all the ideas are on the table, and we're going to be appreciative that people have taken the risk to do that, but then people also understand that we've chosen this route, and these are the reasons why, then that is creating a candid, energizing place to work.
(31:06):
And leaders, they must start meetings not with, this is a safe place, because that just never works.
People need to feel it.
Exactly right.
We've all been in those meetings, and you don't believe it.
But if someone gives an idea, and you invite that participation, and you demonstrate appreciation, and you explain why you're going down a different route, guess what will happen next time?
(31:34):
They'll come up with more ideas, and they'll make a contribution.
If they dismiss that at hand, then you won't get more ideas.
I think that's so important.
I mean,
I've talked about this sort of stuff, I think, when it comes to internal communication, because
often when you're trying to influence, often emerging, or people who've been leaders for a
(31:55):
long time, and are used to the way that they're doing things, and my way, or the highway, and
you sort of say, you talk about this inclusive involvement, and asking people for ideas and
opinions, and you get, well, yeah, but what if they're just crap?
Well, then you tell them, but you're in a way that shows that you're listening to them, and thanking them for their input.
But you're explaining why it's crap, not just saying it's crap, or doing it.
(32:18):
What's even worse is ignoring the feedback, because then you'll never get anything.
And that person may have a crap idea today, but tomorrow could absolutely unleash a huge revenue stream for you, or save you loads of money from profit, or really have a great connection for a customer that released something new, or have a great idea for a new product.
(32:39):
If you shut them down in any of those ways, will you suppress any of that opportunity going forward?
So I think this is where this topic, I come back to keep repeating myself, it's fundamental.
I don't think it's a nice-to-have.
I think it's kind of like absolutely front and center.
If you want a high-performing organization, a high-performing team that is built on high trust, high challenge, you've got to look into this stuff, right?
(33:07):
Because you can't just demand it.
You've got to create it.
You've got to curate it.
.
I totally agree. I think this is the foundation for high performance.
And let me be really clear, I don't get any dictatorial leaders phoning me up going, Gary, I've got a command and control style.
I did tell everyone what to do.
Can you help me out?
(33:27):
No one like that phones me up.
I get people get in touch with me because they care about their culture, because they care about their people.
And they might say something like, I don't feel like I'm quite getting out of the team what I need, or I need to empower people a bit more and get more ideas, more of a contribution.
Something's not quite connecting in the right way.
(33:49):
People who call me are ones that care about their people, and they want to create an environment where voices are heard, respected.
And they also understand that we're not going to go with every idea someone comes up with.
But if you don't go with your idea, we'll absolutely explain why.
Yeah, I'm 100% with you there.
I know you're doing a lot of work in the room with teams, running breakthrough sessions, sharing this data, doing, I guess, live polls, as well as surveys on this sort of stuff.
(34:18):
What are some of the common aha moments that you've seen when you have this data in front of everybody in the team?
What's going on?
So I think the biggest aha moment is the way the survey results are shared.
So the survey takes less than three minutes for anyone to fill in.
So that's how long it takes you to find out how safe people feel.
(34:40):
The big aha moment is when you share results in a room full of 100 people or a room full of nine people.
It's demonstrating what the median score is, so the middle score of all the scores, whether it's nine or 100.
And then you show the spread of perception in the team.
I think that's the first aha moment that comes out, Andy, because someone could be sitting there going, well, I feel fine speaking up.
(35:03):
But then they suddenly see that their colleagues don't.
And so the first penny drop moment is people going, oh, wow, this is not just down to the leader.
The leader plays an oversized role, let's be clear, in creating psychological safety.
But it's down to everyone in the team, like, what am I doing that maybe is creating a situation where people can't raise things?
(35:24):
So that would be the first penny drop moment.
I think the data is the critical part because it's the colleagues' personal, it's their data.
They've expressed what they feel.
But it's the catalyst for the conversations that they're not having.
And what do I mean by that?
Teams spend a lot of time on strategy.
(35:45):
They spend a lot of time on KPIs.
They spend a lot of time on deliverables, as they absolutely should.
And I've spent an awful lot of time on that in 27 years, working in four organizations, and they should.
But they don't spend enough time on the interaction between the team members and how well that works or doesn't work.
And frankly, you don't get the former, great strategy, great execution, achieving KPIs, without having a candid, energizing place to work, where connection is bringing out the best ideas, moving innovation forward, and making people feel truly engaged.
(36:18):
So I'd say two big moments will be, one, okay, I know how I feel, but I didn't know how everyone else feels.
So we're not mind readers, and we should forgive people for that.
The second bit is, okay, what conversation does that drive?
And how does that lead to the behavior change we can hold each other accountable to, and potentially even policy change as well?
(36:39):
I bet you've seen and heard and been involved in some very interesting conversations with that data.
I wonder if there's a meta thing going on here sometimes with the scores, where maybe the scores are in places because the team isn't feeling psychologically safe, but wants to project that because they don't feel psychologically safe enough to answer the question, honestly.
(37:02):
But I guess even when you see those results, it might spark us some interesting conversations in the room, right?
Are we really that good?
Totally.
I've also been in a situation where the opposite is true.
So I've seen inflated scores where a team had a score of 90%, so top quartile benchmarks externally for asking for help in the team or willingness to help in the team.
(37:25):
And they sat there and looked at the screen and said, oh, wow, that's generous.
To which my response was, oh, that's interesting because it's your data.
And they were pondering.
And I said, how does it play out in your team?
And then, interestingly, when they talked about it, the data was basically not aligned with the conversation.
That's not important.
The important thing is the conversation they then had to create an environment where it was more comfortable for people to ask each other for help.
(37:52):
I think that's fabulous.
I think these surveys, these questionnaires, they legitimize a conversation.
They provoke a conversation.
I'm with you, though.
I think when I've ever done a similar thing with these questions, it's the scale.
It's the look around the room when 10 out of 12 people are up the other end of the scoring scale.
(38:15):
But over here, there's clearly a couple of people who aren't.
Now, who's that?
What's the problem?
What's going on?
We didn't see that.
We didn't know that.
We didn't appreciate that.
What is going on?
And it's often the bravery of those people who score, I guess, less highly that then provokes realism in the room about what's really going on.
(38:37):
And like you say, then a decent conversation emerges from there.
And at that point, I guess you can move forward as a team, right?
Yeah, totally.
Because you're then combining the quantitative data with the lived experience of the team.
And look, the irony is not lost on me.
You need psychological safety in those breakout sessions, right?
Because you're trying to get under the iceberg.
And who said what, again, is less important.
(39:00):
What's important, or who scored what, rather, is less important.
What's important is, how do you drag the people that have got the low scores up?
What environment can you create to make sure that they actually are answering that differently next time?
Because there's an opportunity to redo the survey in 3, 6, 12 months' time, however you feel.
And this is why the spread of perception is important.
(39:22):
Because you can see an average score of 86%, as an example.
But you can see plenty of people would be scoring in the 50s.
And if we get blinded by average scores, well then, we'll look at the number and just think everything's okay.
Which is why it's important to combine quantitative data with the lived experience of people in the team.
(39:43):
And that's where, I mean, forget what anyone else might say about the breakthrough sessions that I run.
The consistent feedback I get at the end is, we've had conversations today that we never have had, and they will lead to better performance.
And that's why I want to ask you, finally, there's all the heat of the moment in these breakthrough sessions about what the score says and what conversations you have.
(40:05):
But it's what happens after that, right, is where things happen.
What are some of the great shifts you've seen from these breakthrough sessions where we're sharing the data, having the conversations, and then things change?
What have you seen?
Yeah, and it's important in the breakthrough session that when you agree an action plan, what I tend to do is ensure that the leader and the leaders or people in the team take ownership of one of the four domains of psychological safety.
(40:32):
So you reflect really clearly on the score, you bring it to life with lived experience, you talk about the behavior change you want to see, and then you've got people that are really checking in to see that happens.
So it's critical in a breakthrough session, you don't just get a problem solution and then everyone's forgotten about it in three weeks' time.
So you need an action plan that's going to be enduring and people calling out the behaviors that are reinforcing a safe environment, people can be candid, and call out behaviors when they're not doing that as well.
(41:02):
And probably one of the most satisfying emails I got recently was from a board member who dropped me a note saying, just been to a board meeting of one organization that had done a breakthrough session back at Christmas time last year.
And she was expressing how they're still implementing five, six months later, the change that they agreed to in a session we ran on the 18th of December.
(41:25):
And actually, that's a bigger compliment than anything anyone says to you on the day about how good a workshop or a breakthrough session is.
It's much more satisfying to hear actually, the actions that they defined, the behavior they wanted to change, the policy adjustments they want to create, so that they can speak candidly with each other are enduring, and they're still happening five, six months later.
(41:49):
So the thing that also you're pointing to is, where's the accountability to make sure these behaviors are reinforced and pulled out, and teams collectively permitting to that over the long term?
I love that.
I mean, oh goodness, I think I say this at the end of every podcast episode.
There's so much more I want to talk to you about.
(42:10):
And I'm pretty sure this won't be our last conversation, recorded or not.
But this is such a fascinating topic when you really start to get into the practicalities of it, and the conversations that happen, and the attitudes that change.
I absolutely love it.
But we are fast running out of time, Gary.
So we've come to the part of the show I call Sticky Notes, which is my lazy attempt to summarize the takeouts from today's show by getting you to do it, and getting you to do it in a way that my little brain can cope with by giving me three pearls of wisdom that you reckon you could fit on three sticky notes.
(42:41):
And then we'll whack those up on the Instagram channel when the episode goes live.
So when we think about giving advice for organizations wanting to understand and move forward with this psychological safety concept, what three bits of advice would you leave behind today, Gary?
I'd say, first of all, stop guessing and hypothesizing how safe your team is to speak up and measure it.
(43:04):
It will cost you three minutes of your team's time.
And then you'll go from hypothesizing to knowing.
Then be open about what the dynamics are.
So combine the lived experience with the data.
And then commit to behavior change.
That means people can voice their concerns, come up with great ideas that will absolutely add value going forward.
(43:28):
And that will put you in a much, much better position.
Three really, really simple sticky notes.
And I desperately, desperately hope people take this topic far more seriously.
If people want to find out a bit more about you, Gary, and where you are and these breakthrough sessions over this, where should they track you down, my friend?
(43:50):
So LinkedIn, I'm on there.
So just look, Gary Keogh, K-E-O-G-H on LinkedIn.
There's not many of us, so hopefully I'll be up there.
Also website, gkexeccoaching.com is another place to find me.
And also through yourself, Andy. If someone wants to get in touch and get in touch that way, that's another way of doing it.
(44:12):
Perfect.
Love it.
Gary, I have thoroughly enjoyed chatting to you today.
I feel like we've done it some justice, but my God, like psychological safety itself, there's so much more to it.
Thank you so much for coming on.
I really appreciate your time.
I appreciate yours.
And let's do a sequel.
Let's do it, mate.
I look forward to that.
You take care, buddy.
(44:32):
Thank you.
Okay, everybody, that was Gary Keogh.
And if you'd like to find out anything more about the things that we've talked about in the show today, or track down Gary, please check out the show notes.
So that concludes today's episode.
I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward.
(44:58):
If you have, please like, comment, and subscribe.
It really helps.
I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast.
Until next time, thanks for listening.
Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out.
I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tons more success for everyone.
(00:39):
This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.
Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it.
(01:03):
So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.
Okay then, have you ever bitten your tongue in a meeting knowing something needed to be said but stopping yourself because you didn't feel confident or that it was safe to do so?
The possible reprisals of speaking out may not warrant speaking up.
(01:29):
If that's happened to you, how many people in your team are also doing that right now and what are the implications of that?
I mean, let's face it, workplaces talk about openness and trust and having a speak-up culture but how many of us genuinely feel safe to challenge, question or even admit a mistake without some element of fear, be that looking incompetent, ignorant, negative or you're just that destructive and difficult person in the room.
(02:03):
Well, my guest today is Gary Keogh who's doing some frankly brilliant work in the field of psychological safety, helping some very well-known organizations stop guessing and start measuring what really drives high-performing, inclusive and resilient teams and cultures.
So today, we're going to explore the real state of psychological safety at work where it's reported that two in five people still don't feel confident enough to speak up and also why many leaders think things are fine in their teams when they're not.
(02:38):
We'll break down what psychological safety actually is and isn't, unpack the four domains associated with it and flip the narrative by spotlighting what good looks like instead of just focusing on what goes wrong.
I hope you'll hear how some organizations are actively creating environments where feedback isn't feared but welcomed and Gary will also share the results he's seeing from his own powerful breakthrough sessions that help leaders finally connect culture with practical action.
(03:08):
So, if you care about trust, team performance and creating a culture where people don't have to wear a mask to work, stick with us.
This episode might just make you reassess just how safe and productive your own workplace really is.
Gary, welcome to the show, my friend.
Thank you very much, Andy.
Great to be here.
(03:29):
Super to have you, mate.
I'm deadly excited to talk to you, not just on this topic in general but some of the specific brilliant work you're doing with clients and the results that you're getting on a topic that I think can at times get an eye roll or a side eye look from people when we mention psychological safety.
So, I'm really looking forward to getting into that.
(03:50):
Before we do, do me a favour, my friend.
Just introduce yourself to the listeners.
Tell us a little bit about you, what your background is and how come you've landed in this space about psychological safety.
Thanks, Andy.
I think this started for me maybe 15 years ago when I worked as a leadership coach myself.
He said to me in our first session, he said, Gary, what's your purpose?
(04:13):
I have to admit, I didn't really know what he meant.
I was scrambling around for an answer and he said, come on, what lights you up?
What motivates you?
I said, to give my family choices.
He went, mate, it's not that.
I thought, wow, I thought that was quite a good answer.
Anyway, long story short, I worked with him over a number of sessions and I wrote down four words that changed everything for me, unlock and ignite potential.
(04:38):
It was a breakthrough moment for me because I realised my purpose was to do that with the brands I worked on, but more importantly, with the people that I worked with, my peers, my stakeholders and critically, my team.
I worked in four fantastic companies, two FTSE 100 companies, two family-owned businesses.
Unlock and ignite potential got personal because our daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia and we decided, my wife and me, to move three times in four years to get her into schools that specialise in dyslexia.
(05:11):
Why?
So we could unlock and ignite her potential.
Then I went to a leader in the business I worked in, a fabulous organisation called William Grant and said, look, I'd love to train as a coach.
I love coaching, mentoring, leadership, but I don't know if I'm any good at any of that.
I've never had formal training.
She said, what do you need?
I said, I'd love to go to Henley and study coaching and behaviour change.
(05:33):
So I did a master's there and that's where I specialised in psychological safety.
Why?
Because if you get it right, you unlock and ignite potential.
What a beautiful rounding of that circle, right?
As somebody who has struggled with their own purpose years ago, I totally empathise that.
But when you find that thing, that core, I guess that anchor point for you, it's an amazing release because everything else falls into place and it's very easy to understand when you're doing things that are aligned to that purpose and feel right and good and useful and all the other stuff that you confused as being important and beneficial on the other side of it.
(06:15):
I think it's a wonderful thing.
I'm so pleased that I speak to somebody else who's found it and getting to live their best life now as a result of that.
Psychological safety.
I want you to set the burning platform for us as to why we're talking about this today.
I mentioned in the intro that two out of five stat.
But for you, why is it such an important thing to talk about right now?
(06:40):
And that stat is scary, right?
Two in five people on every team not speaking up.
Let's be clear what that means.
They're not saying anything.
They're not being completely quiet, but they are pulling their punches and they are going on with the failing wisdom and maybe not challenging the status quo.
And also let's get under the iceberg.
(07:00):
There's reasons for it.
This two in five people when their alarm clock goes off in the morning, they don't want to look intrusive, so they won't challenge the status quo.
They don't get up in the morning to look ignorant, so they don't ask questions.
They don't want to look incompetent, so they won't talk about mistakes.
So there's some of the things that are getting in their way.
(07:21):
And then overlay that other really important thing you mentioned in the intro, 70% of leaders overestimate how safe their teams feel to speak up.
And why?
Because leaders have rank, they have power, they have access to more data.
And because they feel safe speaking up, they project that on their teams.
And just think about the irony, Andy, of the leader sitting with their team and saying, do you feel safe to challenge me?
(07:46):
What answer do they get?
Everyone says, yeah, I feel great challenging you.
No problem.
And they walk out the room and they say, I've never challenged her on this.
I'd never say that to him.
Or they put in a WhatsApp group what they really think.
So there's a barrier already before we even get anywhere.
And you asked, why is it important?
(08:07):
Well, if you have people speaking up, you get more diversity of thought.
You get better informed decisions.
You get greater innovation and creativity.
If you don't have it, you have people feeling less engaged, demotivated, and absolutely not bringing their whole selves to work.
I think that's so true.
For me, it feels like one of the really strong enablers of that high trust, high challenge, high performance organization.
(08:36):
The degree to which people feel like they can ask a question or show some vulnerability or disagree with something or have a confrontation allows, I guess, that fostering of trust, which means we can challenge the hell out of things.
We can pick things apart, not take it personally, because we feel safe in the environment.
(08:59):
It's OK to challenge these things or make a point or give a different opinion in these things.
They are setting, I think, the foundations for a high performance culture.
Do you agree with that?
Yeah, exactly.
And to build on what you just said, let's be clear on what psychological safety isn't as well.
(09:22):
So it's not guaranteed applause for all your ideas.
It's not a pass on the back, Gary, for everything you do all day long.
It's not about people being agreeable and nice to each other.
In fact, it can be exactly the opposite.
And the guru in this space, Amy Evans, talks about creating a candid, energized place to work where people can speak up without fear of appraisal.
(09:45):
And that means you get better contributions.
And another thing is it's not long-winded conversations.
Some people think, well, if we hear from everyone, we're going to be here all day.
And a big learning for me was that awful moment when you're the leader of a team.
And imagine you're in June, June or July, which we are now.
(10:06):
And you're getting to the point where a project isn't going well.
And you're six months into it.
And you sit down with your team.
And you go, yeah, it's not quite happening the way we expected it to do.
And somebody on your team turns around and says, yeah, I could have told you that back in January.
And I remember years ago, my reaction was, why didn't you bring that up sooner?
(10:27):
And now, when I reflect on that, that was the wrong reaction.
The right reaction would have been, what environment had I created so that person couldn't have brought that up sooner?
I think that is a high-quality leadership paradox.
Because I think the initial reaction to that sort of question is often the frustrated, well, why didn't you say?
(10:50):
Just expecting that everybody's going to bring everything to you on their own bat.
But I think that is an incredibly strong reflective question for leads to ask themselves.
Actually, where have I failed here?
What have I not provided you for you to feel like, yeah, this isn't going to work.
Let me tell you why.
You're not going to be seen as a neg ferret.
(11:11):
You're not going to be seen as some sort of sod in the room.
It's that candid space.
I think this is what's fascinating about psychological safety.
And maybe it's those two words that sound grandiose or something.
I still feel it gets a bit of a bad rap.
I think it's sort of like seen as something overly fluffy.
I mean, fluffy is a word we use far too much on this podcast.
(11:32):
But I think it's anything but that stuff.
This is hard, tough stuff that really is about eliciting great performance, great diversity of thought, involvement, engagement, all these great things that if you wrote down the key words you want for a culture, that these are the things that enable that stuff, right?
I think I have some sympathy for, I have some frustration and sympathy, right?
(11:57):
Frustration that the words are being weaponized or misunderstood, but sympathy for the fact that while the concept has been around since the mid 1960s, the research into it didn't really start until the early 90s.
And then there's been a generation of research that has associated and correlated psychological safety to high performance, greater innovation, higher motivation and engagement.
(12:21):
But the first mainstream article on psychological safety wasn't until Charles Dunhigg wrote a piece in the New York Times in 2016 about a project that Google did called Project Aristotle, which was about what performance.
And they concluded after looking at 180 teams, 250 characteristics, the most important element in the team was psychological safety, being able to speak out without fear of reprisal, without being worried something would be weaponized against you.
(12:53):
But imagine if it's been in the mainstream since 2016, that's only nine years, nine, 10 years.
And so if people have a skin deep understanding, then they might associate safety with, well, everyone's just going to agree and be nice to each other.
And you're right, psychological might be a bit highbrow, potentially.
(13:15):
Yeah, I think that's potentially why people kind of don't get it.
There's a bit of Dunning-Kruger in there as well.
I think you hear the headline and you assume you understand what it means.
And therefore you think, I don't need that here.
We haven't got time for that.
We've got shit to do.
And the reality is once you start looking under the skin of this stuff, it's absolutely foundational, fundamental to how teams, effective teams, high performing teams perform.
(13:39):
Absolutely.
Just so we bring everybody up to speed, Gary, I mentioned in the intro, the four domains associated with psychological safety.
Do you want to just bring those to life for us just so we can get everybody understanding what we're really, really talking about here?
Yes, exactly.
And this is where it's important to point out that the concept is layered.
(14:03):
And there are certain things that get in the way.
So the four domains of psychological safety, one is willingness to help.
And willingness to help is I feel confident that I can go and ask someone for help on my team and that help will be forthcoming.
It's just a simple way of expressing that.
And sometimes we don't ask for help, right?
Because we think we should know the answer, especially if we're a leader.
(14:27):
If I ask for help, that could impact my status and people think I look stupid.
So willingness to help is one big area.
Another area is inclusion.
Do people genuinely feel like they belong in the team?
Because guess what?
When they feel like they belong and they're welcomed and their unique background or culture is accepted and respected, well, then they will speak up more.
(14:51):
If they don't, they unlikely will.
Another domain is the team's attitude to risk and failure.
So how are mistakes handled around here?
Do people get blamed for mistakes?
Or do we use the insight from mistakes to get better and to learn and improve?
And the other area is open conversations, open discussions.
(15:16):
Do we genuinely say in meetings what needs to be said?
Or are we pulling our punches or going along with the prevailing wisdom?
And let me give you an example of that.
You will have heard of fight or flight.
So Walter Bradford Cannon, 1920s, American psychologist, came up with that based on us hunting for food in prehistoric, in caveman times, hunted by a saber-toothed tiger.
(15:40):
The same thing can happen in meetings.
You can have a stress response and lash out, which is fight, or you can flight and just withdraw and not say anything.
But the other interesting build on that is the term fawn.
Have you heard of that term?
(Andy Goram (15:54):
No, go on.
Talk to me.)
Okay.
So fawn is when you just agree.
So Andy, you and me are having a conversation in a meeting with the team, and you say, right, I think we should go in this direction.
And me thorning is to be submissive and go, yeah, great idea.
Let's do that.
Well, actually, I don't agree at all.
And I'm the person that says six months down the line, I could have said that we should have done that.
(16:18):
So fight and flight are really well understood.
Fawn is another one.
We don't have open conversations.
I disagree with you because actually it's easier to do, and there's no risk or cost to me in doing that.
And I think that that risk to person shows up in, I guess, what people might commonly understand as things like imposter syndrome and all those different characteristics behind there.
(16:40):
These are some things that will make us think twice about standing up, showing out for fear of that looking incompetent or ignorant of all the words we used in the intro.
And to me, that's a very sad state of affairs because there's another horrible engagement stat that something like two thirds of the people who work in organization are just present.
(17:03):
And when you understand why they're just present and when by present, I mean, they show up, but they don't give you all that they can give you.
Another two thirds of the two thirds, which is dangerous stat territory, but feel that way because no one has ever asked them for that opinion.
And then behind that, there's that fear of putting it forward.
(17:25):
So that whole encouragement, that whole creating an environment that encourages and accepts different ideas and perspectives from other people, you know, that has to play better for us when we're talking about innovation, creativity, teamwork, you know, learning from mistakes.
These are all fundamentally important, aren't they?
(17:47):
.
Massively, and I do think something else you were touching on there, Andy, is how much we get in our own way.
And let me explain that with examples.
So one breakthrough session I've ran with the team, this whole territory of willingness to help each other, which we can measure that and show where that is in a team in terms of a median score, but also the spread of perception.
(18:13):
So the brilliant thing about measuring this is you illuminate how the whole team feels, but you do it anonymously and confidentially so no one knows who's answered it, which is important.
But then you just ask a simple question.
How does it play out in your team, like asking each other for help, as an example?
And in one example, there was a great team, we'd worked together for a while, where one person in the team went forward and said, well, my role's quite technical.
(18:39):
So two people in the team of seven understand my role.
I can ask them to help, but they travel quite a lot.
I can't really ask the other people in the team to help.
So the reaction of the other people in the team was, we may not know the specific technicality of your role, but if you're struggling, please, please come and talk to us.
And this person just her eyes widened and went, oh wow, I didn't know I could do that.
(19:00):
And then the conversation moved on and a gentleman said to the leader in this breakthrough session, well, I know you've recently had a baby.
You're not long in your role.
I know you've got quite on your plate, so I don't really feel like I can come and ask you for help.
And the reaction of the leader to his credit was to say, I know I'm quite introverted.
(19:20):
I know that I can be quite head down when I'm working, but please, if you need help, you must come and interrupt me.
And I really want to do that.
I want you to understand that you can do that.
And this gentleman was like, oh, okay, great.
And then the third thing that happened was another colleague in the team, the same team, all in the space of a few minutes, gentleman went forward and said, well, I don't think I can ask other people for help because I feel I should know the answer.
(19:43):
I feel it will be my own personal failing if I don't know the answer to this.
And his whole team went back in their chairs and said, we think so much of you.
We respect you so highly.
We would never think anything negative about you.
And I think sometimes the problem is Andy is we, we think we're mind readers.
I think I can't bring this up with Andy now because he'll think I'm this or he'll think I'm that.
(20:05):
And we think we're mind readers, but we're not.
And all these invisible barriers that exist in teams just come tumbling down and people have conversations that they just haven't had.
I think, I mean, we will probably get onto this,
I think, when we start thinking about measurement, we make so many assumptions.
As humans, we just love an assumption.
(20:27):
It's our kind of default position.
I reckon I know this what's going on here.
I won't bother asking.
I'll just plow on with my own gut.
And sometimes that's right, but other times it's way, way, way off, but we do cause problems on both sides of the conversation.
We definitely get in our own way and certainly get on our own heads, but what are we doing to other people by doing that at the same time?
(20:47):
What are we not eliciting?
What are we not empowering?
What are we not releasing from inside people?
This is why I find this topic so fascinating.
If I think about what you've already said today.
So we've established that psychological safety is about candor, not comfort, right?
It's chuck the fluff stuff out the window.
This is about saying what needs to be said.
(21:10):
We've probably got similar values.
One of mine being, I'm a kind person.
I'm not a nice person.
And that's not meant to sound Machiavellian.
That is meant to sound like, I'm going to tell you what I think you need to know because I think it's the kind thing to do.
It gives you an opportunity to see it.
If it's a work-based thing, it gives you an opportunity to change and grow.
(21:32):
Nice people may not tell you because they don't want to hurt your feelings.
And I think this is definitely not what this is about.
I think there's a danger associated with this silence that's going on around the table, right?
We must be missing tricks.
We must be missing opportunities.
We're probably making some bad decisions.
You said in your very first story, well, I could have told you that six months ago.
(21:56):
That's six months' time wasted from silence.
You know, who's got six months to waste in today's world?
It just doesn't happen.
And I think the thing that you've started to uncover for me here is, whilst we'll talk about psychological safety from an individual perspective, it has to be about having a collective condition right within a team.
(22:20):
It's no good if one person, maybe it's that boss who thinks everybody else is okay, who feels confident and competent and okay to speak up.
There may well be people in that team who individually feel confident and competent, but are still fearful of speaking up because of that environment.
So it has to cover the collective, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's a group phenomenon.
(22:41):
You've absolutely hit the nail on the head.
And I mean, there'll be people that do say, and I actually agree with them, they'll say you're only as psychologically safe in a team as how the person who has the least psychological safety feels.
So you're dead right.
This is a phenomenon that exists in a group.
(23:04):
And because if you're talking about the difference between trust and psychological safety, trust tends to be a one-to-one phenomenon between two people, whereas psychological safety is how I feel in a group.
And the other reason why it sometimes gets a bit complex is no one operates in the same group every day in their working life.
(23:24):
They tend to move between different teams.
So it might be, let's say their home team that they're on an organogram with, and they'll work in cross-functional teams throughout the course of the day.
And that's another thing that happens.
Psychological safety is temporal, and it will change in the different groups in which we mix as well.
And I want to pick up on a word that you made.
(23:46):
You brought up a really important word, comfort.
And a recent post I did actually on the difference between nice and kind, which seems to get an awful lot of traction on LinkedIn, was a brilliant leader commented on there about, if you can create a safe environment, then people are more comfortable speaking up and giving people feedback.
(24:06):
And actually, Amy Everson interjected and just kind of made us both aware that, you know what, it might never be comfortable being kind to people.
It might never be comfortable giving people that feedback that will help them grow.
You can still do it with care, but when you're kind to someone and you tell them something you think they need to hear, there is always a risk for you.
(24:27):
And she just made that point, which I thought was great, around, do you know what, I took from it, if you wait to be comfortable, you may never say it.
I love that.
There's a very good old original model, I think it's by Byrne, that the sort of levels of communication, and it has a little triangle in it.
And it talks about the levels of communication we go as we give more risk and we get more trust.
(24:52):
And it starts at the bottom of all those kind of ritual things like, hey, Gary, how was your morning?
Everything okay?
Blah, blah, blah, all that kind of small talky stuff.
And works through the pyramid up to the top where you're really kind of open and sharing and really getting into some deeper stuff, some deeper understanding.
But at each level of that triangle, you are taking a greater personal risk in the payback of getting greater, more sustainable trust.
(25:17):
And I think that to me is exactly what you're getting to there.
Gosh, I mean, we could talk about so many things with this.
What I do really want to get into is not all the negative stuff around this and what isn't happening.
I think we've kind of nicely framed what we think it should be and where people need to act.
(25:37):
I guess the thing I'd like to start getting to is, where are you seeing in the work you're doing great stuff happening?
And I'm also, I don't know whether it will link into this or not, but something you just sort of said about, I'm fine in my team, but it's when I go and work in other teams that I've got a problem.
This is, I think, a complex thing for organizations to get their head around.
(25:59):
Where's the responsibility?
Where's the accountability for creating that kind of matrix safety, if you like?
So I think I've just thrown a lot of you in that sort of question, but if we start with that one, where do you think that responsibility lies and what are you seeing?
And how does that knock onto where you're seeing organizations really lead on this stuff and make it work for them?
(26:20):
I think I can link the two because you're raising a really important point and I'll throw some data as well at you, but essentially when you measure psychological safety, which is very, very simple to do, essentially people in teams break seven questions on a one to seven like that scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
(26:43):
And you get a really clear report on how people feel across those four domains of psychological safety, which we talked about earlier.
You see a roughly 9% drop in psychological safety between someone's home team and when they're in cross-functional teams.
Why?
Because we don't know people in cross-functional teams as well.
(27:04):
We maybe aren't as connected with them and there's different disciplines in terms of maybe marketing, commercial, finance, supply chain, different levels of knowledge in the room as well.
So that'll be a simplistic way of describing why that psychological safety fits.
Let me link that with an organization that I think is doing things really well because a lot of stories around psychological safety are about disasters, whether that's the airlines and shuttles and they should never, they are really important stories, but there are not enough stories on identifying what happens when things go well.
(27:40):
So one organization that I think has psychological safety in their DNA is Netflix because they adopt two simple principles.
For every project, every work stream, they appoint an informed captain who must farm for dissent.
Now informed captain means, the captain element means you make the call.
(28:02):
So it's not the CEO, it's not necessarily the functional head, but you're empowered to make the call because you're the captain.
The informed bit means your obligation is to farm for dissent.
And what that means is someone comes up with an idea at Netflix and they go to content, they go to programming, they go to technology, they go to marketing, they go to sales, and they say, make this idea better or break this idea.
(28:26):
And they are obligated to get the views of other people in the organization.
So they're doing that in cross-functional teams, not just within their own work silo in one place.
So an example, back in 2013, the prevailing wisdom in programming was to release episodes every week, drive intrigue, make us wait, to be continued, and trailer what's coming next.
(28:51):
They released House of Cards, all nine episodes in one weekend in February, and gave control to consumers about when they watched it, how they watched it.
That came from their philosophy of one person makes the call, but only after they've been around the organization and gone, what's the pros and cons of this?
Help me make and break this idea.
(29:11):
So informed captains who farm for dissent, I think it's a great model, it's in their DNA, and it's actually replicable.
Other organizations could have their version of that.
I think the interesting thing about that model is the informed captain making the call.
Because there's an element of, well, hang on, I've asked everybody, or everybody's had a chance to say something, why haven't you taken my idea on board?
(29:38):
And that can cause all sorts of conflict.
But in an organization where it's like, hey, hey, hey, this is how we make decisions.
It's down to this guy, he's going to talk to you, or she's going to talk to all of you.
You have your chance to make or break this.
At the end of the day, though, thank you for your contribution.
It comes down to this person.
Nothing personal about it, they're just informing and making a decision.
(30:01):
That whole circle of understanding is so important, isn't it?
Because that could cause all sorts of problems if that isn't well understood.
Yeah, and it will also cause problems if the informed captain just dismisses people's ideas out of hand.
And this comes down to tone now.
So if you get someone's view, and you demonstrate appreciation for the risks they may have taken, for the contribution they've made, that's what we must do as leaders.
(30:29):
It doesn't mean you have to agree with them.
It doesn't mean that their idea is the one that gets adopted.
And this is the bit that gets confusing, I think, at times on psychological safety.
Like someone says, well, oh, you didn't agree with what I said, therefore I don't feel psychologically safe.
That is to weaponize the concept in the wrong way.
So when there's an understanding that psychological safety means that we are going to ensure that all the ideas are on the table, and we're going to be appreciative that people have taken the risk to do that, but then people also understand that we've chosen this route, and these are the reasons why, then that is creating a candid, energizing place to work.
(31:06):
And leaders, they must start meetings not with, this is a safe place, because that just never works.
People need to feel it.
Exactly right.
We've all been in those meetings, and you don't believe it.
But if someone gives an idea, and you invite that participation, and you demonstrate appreciation, and you explain why you're going down a different route, guess what will happen next time?
(31:34):
They'll come up with more ideas, and they'll make a contribution.
If they dismiss that at hand, then you won't get more ideas.
I think that's so important.
I mean,
I've talked about this sort of stuff, I think, when it comes to internal communication, because
often when you're trying to influence, often emerging, or people who've been leaders for a
(31:55):
long time, and are used to the way that they're doing things, and my way, or the highway, and
you sort of say, you talk about this inclusive involvement, and asking people for ideas and
opinions, and you get, well, yeah, but what if they're just crap?
Well, then you tell them, but you're in a way that shows that you're listening to them, and thanking them for their input.
But you're explaining why it's crap, not just saying it's crap, or doing it.
(32:18):
What's even worse is ignoring the feedback, because then you'll never get anything.
And that person may have a crap idea today, but tomorrow could absolutely unleash a huge revenue stream for you, or save you loads of money from profit, or really have a great connection for a customer that released something new, or have a great idea for a new product.
(32:39):
If you shut them down in any of those ways, will you suppress any of that opportunity going forward?
So I think this is where this topic, I come back to keep repeating myself, it's fundamental.
I don't think it's a nice-to-have.
I think it's kind of like absolutely front and center.
If you want a high-performing organization, a high-performing team that is built on high trust, high challenge, you've got to look into this stuff, right?
(33:07):
Because you can't just demand it.
You've got to create it.
You've got to curate it.
.
I totally agree. I think this is the foundation for high performance.
And let me be really clear, I don't get any dictatorial leaders phoning me up going, Gary, I've got a command and control style.
I did tell everyone what to do.
Can you help me out?
(33:27):
No one like that phones me up.
I get people get in touch with me because they care about their culture, because they care about their people.
And they might say something like, I don't feel like I'm quite getting out of the team what I need, or I need to empower people a bit more and get more ideas, more of a contribution.
Something's not quite connecting in the right way.
(33:49):
People who call me are ones that care about their people, and they want to create an environment where voices are heard, respected.
And they also understand that we're not going to go with every idea someone comes up with.
But if you don't go with your idea, we'll absolutely explain why.
Yeah, I'm 100% with you there.
I know you're doing a lot of work in the room with teams, running breakthrough sessions, sharing this data, doing, I guess, live polls, as well as surveys on this sort of stuff.
(34:18):
What are some of the common aha moments that you've seen when you have this data in front of everybody in the team?
What's going on?
So I think the biggest aha moment is the way the survey results are shared.
So the survey takes less than three minutes for anyone to fill in.
So that's how long it takes you to find out how safe people feel.
(34:40):
The big aha moment is when you share results in a room full of 100 people or a room full of nine people.
It's demonstrating what the median score is, so the middle score of all the scores, whether it's nine or 100.
And then you show the spread of perception in the team.
I think that's the first aha moment that comes out, Andy, because someone could be sitting there going, well, I feel fine speaking up.
(35:03):
But then they suddenly see that their colleagues don't.
And so the first penny drop moment is people going, oh, wow, this is not just down to the leader.
The leader plays an oversized role, let's be clear, in creating psychological safety.
But it's down to everyone in the team, like, what am I doing that maybe is creating a situation where people can't raise things?
(35:24):
So that would be the first penny drop moment.
I think the data is the critical part because it's the colleagues' personal, it's their data.
They've expressed what they feel.
But it's the catalyst for the conversations that they're not having.
And what do I mean by that?
Teams spend a lot of time on strategy.
(35:45):
They spend a lot of time on KPIs.
They spend a lot of time on deliverables, as they absolutely should.
And I've spent an awful lot of time on that in 27 years, working in four organizations, and they should.
But they don't spend enough time on the interaction between the team members and how well that works or doesn't work.
And frankly, you don't get the former, great strategy, great execution, achieving KPIs, without having a candid, energizing place to work, where connection is bringing out the best ideas, moving innovation forward, and making people feel truly engaged.
(36:18):
So I'd say two big moments will be, one, okay, I know how I feel, but I didn't know how everyone else feels.
So we're not mind readers, and we should forgive people for that.
The second bit is, okay, what conversation does that drive?
And how does that lead to the behavior change we can hold each other accountable to, and potentially even policy change as well?
(36:39):
I bet you've seen and heard and been involved in some very interesting conversations with that data.
I wonder if there's a meta thing going on here sometimes with the scores, where maybe the scores are in places because the team isn't feeling psychologically safe, but wants to project that because they don't feel psychologically safe enough to answer the question, honestly.
(37:02):
But I guess even when you see those results, it might spark us some interesting conversations in the room, right?
Are we really that good?
Totally.
I've also been in a situation where the opposite is true.
So I've seen inflated scores where a team had a score of 90%, so top quartile benchmarks externally for asking for help in the team or willingness to help in the team.
(37:25):
And they sat there and looked at the screen and said, oh, wow, that's generous.
To which my response was, oh, that's interesting because it's your data.
And they were pondering.
And I said, how does it play out in your team?
And then, interestingly, when they talked about it, the data was basically not aligned with the conversation.
That's not important.
The important thing is the conversation they then had to create an environment where it was more comfortable for people to ask each other for help.
(37:52):
I think that's fabulous.
I think these surveys, these questionnaires, they legitimize a conversation.
They provoke a conversation.
I'm with you, though.
I think when I've ever done a similar thing with these questions, it's the scale.
It's the look around the room when 10 out of 12 people are up the other end of the scoring scale.
(38:15):
But over here, there's clearly a couple of people who aren't.
Now, who's that?
What's the problem?
What's going on?
We didn't see that.
We didn't know that.
We didn't appreciate that.
What is going on?
And it's often the bravery of those people who score, I guess, less highly that then provokes realism in the room about what's really going on.
(38:37):
And like you say, then a decent conversation emerges from there.
And at that point, I guess you can move forward as a team, right?
Yeah, totally.
Because you're then combining the quantitative data with the lived experience of the team.
And look, the irony is not lost on me.
You need psychological safety in those breakout sessions, right?
Because you're trying to get under the iceberg.
And who said what, again, is less important.
(39:00):
What's important, or who scored what, rather, is less important.
What's important is, how do you drag the people that have got the low scores up?
What environment can you create to make sure that they actually are answering that differently next time?
Because there's an opportunity to redo the survey in 3, 6, 12 months' time, however you feel.
And this is why the spread of perception is important.
(39:22):
Because you can see an average score of 86%, as an example.
But you can see plenty of people would be scoring in the 50s.
And if we get blinded by average scores, well then, we'll look at the number and just think everything's okay.
Which is why it's important to combine quantitative data with the lived experience of people in the team.
(39:43):
And that's where, I mean, forget what anyone else might say about the breakthrough sessions that I run.
The consistent feedback I get at the end is, we've had conversations today that we never have had, and they will lead to better performance.
And that's why I want to ask you, finally, there's all the heat of the moment in these breakthrough sessions about what the score says and what conversations you have.
(40:05):
But it's what happens after that, right, is where things happen.
What are some of the great shifts you've seen from these breakthrough sessions where we're sharing the data, having the conversations, and then things change?
What have you seen?
Yeah, and it's important in the breakthrough session that when you agree an action plan, what I tend to do is ensure that the leader and the leaders or people in the team take ownership of one of the four domains of psychological safety.
(40:32):
So you reflect really clearly on the score, you bring it to life with lived experience, you talk about the behavior change you want to see, and then you've got people that are really checking in to see that happens.
So it's critical in a breakthrough session, you don't just get a problem solution and then everyone's forgotten about it in three weeks' time.
So you need an action plan that's going to be enduring and people calling out the behaviors that are reinforcing a safe environment, people can be candid, and call out behaviors when they're not doing that as well.
(41:02):
And probably one of the most satisfying emails I got recently was from a board member who dropped me a note saying, just been to a board meeting of one organization that had done a breakthrough session back at Christmas time last year.
And she was expressing how they're still implementing five, six months later, the change that they agreed to in a session we ran on the 18th of December.
(41:25):
And actually, that's a bigger compliment than anything anyone says to you on the day about how good a workshop or a breakthrough session is.
It's much more satisfying to hear actually, the actions that they defined, the behavior they wanted to change, the policy adjustments they want to create, so that they can speak candidly with each other are enduring, and they're still happening five, six months later.
(41:49):
So the thing that also you're pointing to is, where's the accountability to make sure these behaviors are reinforced and pulled out, and teams collectively permitting to that over the long term?
I love that.
I mean, oh goodness, I think I say this at the end of every podcast episode.
There's so much more I want to talk to you about.
(42:10):
And I'm pretty sure this won't be our last conversation, recorded or not.
But this is such a fascinating topic when you really start to get into the practicalities of it, and the conversations that happen, and the attitudes that change.
I absolutely love it.
But we are fast running out of time, Gary.
So we've come to the part of the show I call Sticky Notes, which is my lazy attempt to summarize the takeouts from today's show by getting you to do it, and getting you to do it in a way that my little brain can cope with by giving me three pearls of wisdom that you reckon you could fit on three sticky notes.
(42:41):
And then we'll whack those up on the Instagram channel when the episode goes live.
So when we think about giving advice for organizations wanting to understand and move forward with this psychological safety concept, what three bits of advice would you leave behind today, Gary?
I'd say, first of all, stop guessing and hypothesizing how safe your team is to speak up and measure it.
(43:04):
It will cost you three minutes of your team's time.
And then you'll go from hypothesizing to knowing.
Then be open about what the dynamics are.
So combine the lived experience with the data.
And then commit to behavior change.
That means people can voice their concerns, come up with great ideas that will absolutely add value going forward.
(43:28):
And that will put you in a much, much better position.
Three really, really simple sticky notes.
And I desperately, desperately hope people take this topic far more seriously.
If people want to find out a bit more about you, Gary, and where you are and these breakthrough sessions over this, where should they track you down, my friend?
(43:50):
So LinkedIn, I'm on there.
So just look, Gary Keogh, K-E-O-G-H on LinkedIn.
There's not many of us, so hopefully I'll be up there.
Also website, gkexeccoaching.com is another place to find me.
And also through yourself, Andy. If someone wants to get in touch and get in touch that way, that's another way of doing it.
(44:12):
Perfect.
Love it.
Gary, I have thoroughly enjoyed chatting to you today.
I feel like we've done it some justice, but my God, like psychological safety itself, there's so much more to it.
Thank you so much for coming on.
I really appreciate your time.
I appreciate yours.
And let's do a sequel.
Let's do it, mate.
I look forward to that.
You take care, buddy.
(44:32):
Thank you.
Okay, everybody, that was Gary Keogh.
And if you'd like to find out anything more about the things that we've talked about in the show today, or track down Gary, please check out the show notes.
So that concludes today's episode.
I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward.
(44:58):
If you have, please like, comment, and subscribe.
It really helps.
I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast.
Until next time, thanks for listening.
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