Creating Psychologically Safe Workplaces with Dr David Weiss
Welcome back to We Are Human Leaders! Creating a psychologically safe workplaces begins with the one who leads the work environment.
Today we are sharing our conversation with Leadership Coach, and CEO of Weiss International, Dr. David S. Weiss, Ph.D., ICD.D, CHRE. Dr. Weiss has coached numerous leaders throughout his career changing the narrative that leaders should always do the talking, to leaders talking less and listening more.
Giving your team an opportunity to contribute their ideas first before you pitch in yours will create an output of diverse ideas. He discusses that the highest level of psychological safety in the workplace is when all individuals are able to challenge a concept in a way of conflict without contempt, getting rid of the unnecessary artificial boundaries. We also talk about creating an environment where employees are not afraid to speak up knowing that their workmates and leaders will listen.
As Dr. Weiss shared, it’s not about building innovative leaders, it's about building leaders of innovation. Leaders who are able to draw out the innovative capacity of others, and work with diverse teams to create psychologically safe environments.
A human leader is a humane leader who prioritizes the psychological welfare of every individual in the team.
Episode Highlights:
Psychological Safety and Coaching
Defining what a psychologically safe workplace is
The issue of a psychologically unsafe environment
The role of a team coach
Key ingredients to achieve psychological safety
Innovative intelligence
Listening skills of a leader
The V.U.C.A Framework
Being present to build psychological safety
C.L.E.A.R. Leadership coaching
Traps that human leaders often fall into
How the pandemic and technology affected leadership coaching
The place to start changing our ways of leading
More about Dr David Weiss:
Dr. David Weiss. David is the President & CEO of Weiss International Ltd, an international coaching and consulting firm based in Toronto that focuses on leadership coaching and leading innovation. David is also a Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation, and a Certified Life and Wellness Coach. He also is a regular guest faculty at the Executive Development programs at the Schulich School of Business and St. Mary’s University.
Previously, David was an Affiliate Professor at the Rotman School of Management, Senior Research Fellow at Queen’s University, and VP and Chief Innovation Officer of a multinational consulting firm. David’s doctorate is from the University of Toronto, and he has three master’s degrees. He was honoured as the first lifetime Fellow of the Institute for Performance and Learning, the recipient of the “HR Leadership Award” at the Asia-Pacific HR Congress, and the recipient of the “Distinguished Lecturer” certificate from the Government of Canada.
David has published over 60 professional articles and he has written seven books including the best-selling books The Leadership Gap and Innovative Intelligence. He has provided coaching for leaders throughout the world, and he has facilitated executive and leadership sessions in Canada, USA, England, France, Hungary, China, Russia, Malaysia, Israel, Uganda, South Africa, and Chile.
Connect with Dr. David Weiss:
Website | www.weissinternational.ca
LinkedIn | ca.linkedin.com/dr-david-weiss
Twitter | @DrDavidWeiss
Book | Innovative Intelligence: www.amazon.com/Innovative Intelligence
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For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Alexis, Spk1 Sally Spk2 Dr David Weiss
spk_0: Welcome back to the We are Human leaders podcast. I'm Alexis Zahner and together with my co host Sally Clarke today we're speaking to Dr David Weiss. Today's conversation is centered around the concept of psychological safety, something that is becoming increasingly important and topical for leaders and organizations to get a handle on Dr David Weiss also helps us to understand how we can imbue coaching styles into our leadership style and the impact on our capacity to build psychologically safe workplaces. David is an incredibly credential man who brings such a depth and wealth of knowledge to today's conversation. David is the president and CEO of Weiss International and international coaching and consulting firm based in Toronto that focuses on leadership coaching and leading innovation for a full list of David's incredible accolades and qualifications. We encourage you to check out our show notes. In the meantime though, let's dive into this impactful conversation.
spk_1: Welcome to We are human leaders, Doctor Wise. It's wonderful to have you with us and we'd love to start by really understanding a little bit of your story, your background and how you've come to be doing the high level work that you do in leadership coaching and psychological safety today.
spk_2: First of all, it's a pleasure to be here and thank you very much for inviting me to be on the show. It's a great opportunity to share ideas that I believe are extremely important about psychological safety and coaching. I've been working in this space for decades but certainly the pandemic has made psychological safety issues and coaching so much more important. We're dealing with remote workers. We're dealing with situations where people are not necessary comfortable speaking up and if you think of psychological safety as something about how do you speak up and not feel like you'll be judged or punished or reprimanded in any way and coaching? Is that 1 to 1 relationship that there are professionals like myself who do executive coaching, leadership coaching, high potential coaching. But the coaching that a leader who is in an organization does is very different than what an external would do. And the expectation of them is that they're capable of offering some coaching. And that became even more dramatic as an expectation during the pandemic. And even now, as we're going through some level of recovery from the pandemic.
spk_0: Absolutely. And just before we dive into, looking at, I guess the business case for psychological safety in the workplace, can you help us get a better understanding for what this term actually means? What does it mean to have a psychologically safe work place?
spk_2: Well, it's become extremely popular, probably Amy Edmonson's book, The Fearless Organization took the topic and made it a number one bestseller. So, and she's a marvelous, marvelous contributor to the field, but we've been thinking about this and so she for decades and Weiss International, we've been working on how do you make executive teams leadership teams effective and make them work well. And we've always noticed that there's something about leaders where they have this image of, you know, I'm a great leader, I ran a meeting, this executive challenging meeting and no, no one spoke up because they all accepted my ideas immediately. And the question immediately after is did they really accept it? Or were they not willing to share an idea because you talk first and they knew what you wanted to do? So why would it be worthwhile to talk up? And you know, so we would look at this and we'd say that there's trust that's lacking in that leadership team, you know, you have 10 smart people around the room. If you have no variability of thought, we've got a problem, why aren't we getting different opinions? We should be hearing different ideas, why aren't you drawing it out of people to, to actually make sure that they have space to do it. Then in 2016 there was this really cool article which you can google, it's about google. So google did research on teams and they were exploring the issue of why putting the right people on the bus as jim Collins said, actually, sometime times generated teams that were great, but sometimes generated teams that did not perform well and they came up with a series of things that they found were issues. But the number one dominant issue was what they called psychological safety. If you put a diverse team, very talented people together on a team. The theory is they'll generate new brainstorm ideas and do great things. But if they aren't feeling safe To bring up the ideas because they feel they might be punished, looked at negatively shut down in any way, then what will happen is having a diverse team will sub optimized and they won't perform well. So psychological safety took off as a language around 2016 and it's been reinforced and reinforced. And actually, it's riding on some of the safety in the workplace diversity, equity inclusion issues. How do we ensure this belong? So, it picked up a momentum of a wave that I believe is very constructive that people are talking about it.
spk_1: And I wonder if one of the reasons that it's resonating so much David is that we all have, I think all of us have lived experience of what it is like to operate in a psychologically unsafe environment in the workplace and even beyond. And the contrast when it is safe is so enormous, not only in what we produce and how we collaborate personal experience of that workplace. So, I think it's something that really resonates quite viscerally for people in that sense as well.
spk_2: Absolutely. And it's so much easier to find examples of psychologically unsafe environments because unfortunately, many people have vast experience is being in psychologically unsafe environments. But one thing that is important in psychological safety is it's a group phenomena. Psychological safety is not about individual trusting another individual, but it's what is the climate that's created within that collective space and in that collective space? Is it okay to speak up? And if it's not, sometimes the leader who has a great deal of influence over the psychological safety in that group may not even be aware of the level of psychological unsafe. T they may think that because they talk so much because they get a lot done, that, you know, it means that everybody is contributing and sometimes it really helps to have a team coach. So that's another relationship of psychological safety and coaching, that is the third eye looking at the team and how they're working and then processing it and saying, what were you doing? Asking questions to understand whether that was actually a safe environment or not a safe environment?
spk_0: Yeah, I could totally see how that perspective from someone on the outside could actually help really illuminate some of those issues where psychological safety perhaps to the leader feels like it may be present, as you mentioned, because everything seems like it's happening and everyone feels like they're productive, but perhaps there are these gaps where it's not present. And so for me, David, it feels like some of the key ingredients here around psychological safety is firstly that it's about the interconnectedness of a team. It feels to me like trust is either a precursor to like to psychological safety or part of the equation there. And the other thing I heard you say is or what I've deduced from what you've said is this idea that people must feel safe to actually challenge what's happening. So it's not about a leader standing up and feeling like they can give their and and keep the team on track, but there also has to be this kind of two way dialogue from the team back to the leader and amongst one another, other. Any other key ingredients there of the psychological safety equation that we need to really be fostering or be aware of.
spk_2: So there are a few Alexis, great reflection. Some people would think psychological safety is just on the level of can I contribute to the conversation? But when it's at the highest level, psychological safety is exhibited where people are able to challenge and not only challenge each other but challenge the authority where because authority is, there doesn't mean that I'm no longer allowed to offer a different opinion. Now, in a lot of cultures, we're dealing with the world that would be experiencing something highly inappropriate, but the more that within the microcosm of your team and we could expand that to the macrocosm of your organization, the ability to challenge the voice of authority in a way that is conflict without contempt. It's not about the person, it's about the idea and we're working on trying to build an organization that's coming up with the best possible ideas and we need to hear your voice and if it's different than what the leaders voices, how do we allow for that to be shown and shared in a way that ultimately helps us get the best ideas rather than stopping because of these artificial boundaries of authority hierarchy. Fear, which gets in the way of coming up with the best ideas sometimes.
spk_0: Absolutely. And I just want to pull one thing that I just heard you say there, David, that I think we can't move on without reiterating, that is conflict without contempt. So, recognizing that the team and the leader may have this tension around a project or whatever it is, but the interpersonal relationship side of it needs to stay separate from that, so we are solving the problem, but the problem does not become part of us. And I think that very quickly in conflict it can spill over from this task orientation into this affective, you know, interpersonal orientation just wanted to pause there before we move on it and and reiterate that discernment.
spk_2: But it's extremely important idea in the book that I co authored innovative intelligence. There are a couple of very big ideas. The book went viral. It ultimately was translated into multiple languages and so on. One of the big ideas was it's not about building innovative leaders, it's about building leaders of innovation, which is leaders who are able to draw out innovative capacity of others work with d diverse teams and psychologically safe environments to draw out all the ideas, you don't have to be the smartest person. That was the notion because, you know, you may not be the most innovative person, but you need to be the person who can draw it out of others. But the second big idea, which really is not found in a lot of the innovative literature that came out of our research was that emotional intelligence is extremely important for innovative intelligence and that relates back to psychological safety. You know, do you have the emotional intelligence to be able to create an environment where people can contribute and challenge in a way that is conflict without contempt rather than leveraging language in a way that makes another individual feel uncomfortable trying to win an argument by trying to say, oh, you always do that or you know, stop saying that, you know, all of a sudden controlling these kinds of things are extremely important. And the leader has emotional intelligence tends to be stronger at actually being a leader of innovation. So those are two very big ideas. Simple techniques I recommend to leaders who struggle with us and one of them is talk last instead of talking first. Just you know, keep it simple in your brain. Why is that a good idea? You know, and any time you make a rule, you gotta break it right. But you know, as a principal, what's your default? Your default would be talk last. Why? Because you are not aware of the implications of your authority on others. That reduces the scope of possibility of thought by virtue of talking first. So if you talk first, people who are listening, who are going to defer to the authority, even if they're willing to contribute will narrow the band considerably to a standard deviation around your idea rather than offering ideas that may be quite different. And so therefore you lost assets. Think of it in terms of that for a second. And if that's the case, then why are you talking first? Leaders sometimes saying it'll speed up the process because we'll get a good idea right away mine. But if you talk last or later, then what ends up happening is you'll hear the many ideas and then your contribution will be in the value add space, which leads to a second line that I tell people is try never saying things that people already know which has a ripple effect of saying, what do you know, what do you believe? I'll talk after, I know what you would say, and then I'll say whatever I can to add value to it. So being that added value contribution space rather than being the first one to comment. And by virtue of that, you'll have a broader array of thoughts and you likely will have people who are willing to contribute more ideas and potentially even challenge more openly.
spk_1: And I love that, David, I think that's really an incredible way of really avoiding what can very quickly happen, which is a sort of a groupthink response when people simply are trying to anticipate what they think someone wants to hear. And so being able to facilitate, to hold that space for people to bring forth ideas and also to have the emotional intelligence to navigate these different ideas, to pull them together and to allow co collaborations that have happened in front of you I think is a really
spk_2: potent
spk_1: way to lead. I just want to zoom in on something in particular that I think leaders who are working in these team environments and doing things like talking last. I'd love to know a little bit more about some of the perhaps the listening skills that there might be in ensuring that when you're allowed people to talk first, you're also offering them a space that is safe for them to truly say what's on their mind rather than trying to anticipate what they think you're going to want to hear in that situation.
spk_2: Very much so. That actually does link with the topic of the day of psychological safety and coaching, because coaching is a real listening art, but not just listening blankly and keep talking, keep talking, keep talking. But listening to hear the nuances here, the metaphor here, the images that people talk about identifying patterns and through that questioning process, help individuals see things in a different kind of way. And I linked psychological safety to coaching. I've just written a piece on it and it's rather intriguing. Just think about it for a second if you have a high psychologically safe environment and let's take for a second a situation where coaching is initiated by an employee. So the employee wants to talk to their manager in a situation where there's high psychological safety. They want to talk about personal things, They want to talk about a challenge. They're facing their home life pandemic and how they, you know, whatever it is they initiate the conversation, high psychological safe environment where in the collective we're open and honest in that environment, you would imagine the probability is the individual will be open with that leader. You know, they do it in the group. Why wouldn't they do it into one oh one. That leader will exhibit that listening that you're referring to sally and without prejudice, you know, with openness where they're really hearing and not spending the entire time listening thinking about the next comment they're gonna make or rather flow with the individual. And that would be great. But imagine if I need to talk to the person I report to and it's not a psychologically safe environment. Now, it's an intriguing thing that's gonna happen. The probability is I'll come to that leader late. I'm not going to come at an early stage of the issue because you're not safe. So I'm gonna come to you at a much, much later stage in the process and by virtue of doing that, I'll be in a position of actually coming to you almost at a crisis point. So leaders need to know that if it's not psychologically safe and someone initiates a conversation about a stress they're experiencing, that they need to talk to you about pay close attention because it's probably late in the process if it's not a psychological safe environment. Now there's really two kinds of coaching that leaders do in workplaces. You know, they don't coach for An hour. Like I do, they coach for 15 minutes. It would be more sporadic and selling it so far, that's quite different. But imagine if the second type of coaching leaders do one is employee and initiated, the second one is the leader initiated, right? So I as the leader want to talk to you because we have to talk about what just happened at work. What did you do? I saw the way you interact with the customer. So the interchange that just occurred, it was problematic. We need to talk about that. If the environment is psychologically safe and I bring up an issue which might be experienced as criticism, you know, challenging you, but it's a psychologically safe environment. The response again, it's all probability is more likely that they'll listen to you and they'll work with you and trying to figure out what happened. But if it's a psychologically unsafe environment and I tell you that what just happened with you and that other individual, you're upset with each other, You know, perhaps we could talk about that, it's the third time it's happened, we need to chat and it's psychologically unsafe, The probability is higher. The employee will respond very defensively and it'll be a very challenging coaching situation. So there is a direct connection to the climate you're in and the capability of a leader to actually exercise effective coaching. And it's an important relationship that needs to be thought about.
spk_0: Interesting about what I just heard you say, David is it almost feels to me like a chicken and an egg concept, because I think as you've highlighted there's these moments where leaders have more of a formal coaching sort of relationship, employee comes to them. They approach employee about said issue. But I wonder what if leaders were to
spk_2: sort of
spk_0: identify more coaching moments through the flow of the day and could taking on a sort of coaching mentality generally actually helped build the psychological safety. So rather than sort of, you know, we have a lot of control and command, sort of reprimanding punishment tends to be like this fear based leadership. But what if leaders were to actually just coach more generally in the day to day moments perhaps that could actually feed into that sort of interconnectedness of psychological safety and that's why I said sort of, you know, that chicken and sort of egg analogy there.
spk_2: Yeah, the the language that's used is coachable moments and, you know, in the workplace doesn't have to be formal. Can it be in the moment when it happens as something occurs, where you are able to see what happened and engage in conversation, that would be an appropriate questioning without being threatening and have a psychologically safe culture in your environment where that would be allowed outstanding leaders do that all the time. You know, it's not gee I don't coach except for a formalized moment. It becomes part of their leadership style of how they engage with employees on an ongoing basis. Absolutely.
spk_0: And it sounds like it almost needs that level of self awareness and eq that you've already spoken to to notice, you know, how do I react in this situation or how do I choose to respond in a way that's going to build that relationship with the employee and approach potentially, you know, a conflict situation or a situation where mistakes have been made in a way that we can learn from and maintain that psychological safety because it strikes me, you know, I've been an employee. I've also led teams that it's sometimes in those tiny little 1% moments where someone snapped at you or someone has made just the smallest passive aggressive comment or made you question yourself, that tiny moment can sit with you and can totally destroy your trust and then your future thinking around how you take problems forward. And I wonder if again, as you said, those coachable moments, leaders just taking that moment To pause and to reflect on how they want to move forward is actually such a big moment in building that psychological safety every single day and those 1% moments,
spk_2: right? So it doesn't just happen when they're collectively in a meeting in a group setting or does it need to be believable because you function like that on a consistent basis and that is absolutely part of the leadership capability that you need to build and the leadership competency to be someone who is coaching all the time to build that psychological safety. So the comment was is it a chicken or an egg? In other words, are you starting with coaching to build psychological safety or do you build psychological safety which allows you to be more effective as a coach? And I think this one just like the chicken and the egg. We could debate this one for a long time and the answer is and this is a mindset of leaders who coach, leaders who build psychological safety is they move away from the mindset of either or you know where it's one versus the other and they move to an end. Also mindset where we're dealing in a vodka environment Is a word that's become extremely popular. It's actually a made up word of four words of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous and in fact it started in the late 1980s when there were dramatic changes in Europe. But it really during the pandemic got another resurgence because there's just so much volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. So I do a great deal on linkedin. I'm honored to have many followers Over 50,000 on one of the posts. I put a flip of UCA where I said, what if we kind of got it out of this doom and gloom, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous mindset and said the v stands for vision? You know, you know, why is it up to stand for volatile but not vision of where the future is but maybe more in the terms of vision as in what's your purpose? What are you all about? The U instead of uncertainty could stand for understanding. We need to be in a world where everybody needs to understand. We need to you know, create a psychological safe place where everybody can ask why and like Simon Sinek start with why, you know, how do we actually get everybody in the space to feel that it's okay not to understand and ask why. And the sea is curiosity. How do we unleash the environment where everybody can ask questions And everybody could bring in things from the outside world to try to add to the way we think. And the A stands for agility, which really is saying that not agile as a program, but you know, can we create a workforce that's accepting and also that's accepting that we're not going to get it right the first time anymore because no one knows the answer to. When do we go back to the office? No one knows the answer of Should we wear masks? Should we not? Should I get another vaccine? How I should be with my family, How I should be at work? How do I work from home in this environment? How do I create virtual work teams that are effective and all these various challenging questions. No one's going to get it right the first time because we don't have any precedent. We don't have any research. So the flip of UCA went over really big from negative imagery division, understanding curiosity and agility and a lot of people said yes, some hope because there's very little hope out there now.
spk_1: I think that's such a fantastic reframe of vodka and I think that's exactly what a lot of us need. And this is not a head in the sand kind of optimism or hope that we're seeking. But I think in order to create the change that's needed in the world and in business we need to have a genuine sense of things are possible and there are options available to us. So I think that's a fantastic reframe there and a regular listeners know that I'm a little bit of, I always have a bit of a spiritual angle and I, the things as you were speaking. I was thinking that there's a question of two things. One is being able to be very present in the moment in order to create psychological safety and to really connect with people, to listen, to hear what's really going on to sense emotionally what's happening and also genuineness. Because we'll make mistakes. But if we're not doing it from a genuine place, people will sense that. And I can imagine it almost works counter productively and can always create more dissonance and more digression in a team because people when it doesn't come from the right place.
spk_2: Absolutely. And I would often suggest to leaders that if you're not genuine or if you're tricky leader who shades things a little bit shades the truth to make it sound better or more compelling. And the individuals see it and they pick up on the lack of genuineness, and they pick up on the fact that you weren't being totally truthful, will they tell you that they see you as not being genuine or that they see you as not being truthful. And the probability is if you're not being genuine and you're not being totally truthful, I would then add that you're probably questionable about trustworthiness. So I probably would not tell you. So the leader leaves after doing those behaviors believing that they fooled everybody and the people who saw it won't tell you. So that reinforces your belief, but I'll tell everybody else. And ultimately the psychological safety will be severely compromised in that environment and the leader may not even understand why it happened.
spk_1: Yeah, I think that's an example that I've certainly lived that experience in my career. I think many of us have. So thank you for sharing that very sort of real example of the importance of genuineness in how we approach psychological safety as leaders. Now you've reframed vodka as a framework and I understand you've also developed a wonderful poaching technique known as clear C L E A R and I'd love it if you could unpack that for us a little bit. So we understand how we can use the clear coaching techniques to be more effective as a leadership coach.
spk_2: So I'm coming out with a new article on clear leadership coaching. It will appear in the association magazine, it's a journal from the Canadian Society of Association executives and I'm speaking at their conference and so on. So I made up an acronym because, you know, my sense is people remember things if there is some order that they can draw and refer to so clear refers to five words. One is context. The second one is, listen, the third is empathy, the fourth is action and the fifth is respect throughout and the idea is that the leader who is coaching, including the professional coach, like I'm a certified coach with the International Coach Federation and things like that. We all need to understand the context that we're operating in the context is extremely important and the psychological safety when you're coaching is one of the elements of context, but it's not only the work context, it's also the personal context what's happening in the person's life. And since Covid came and there's been a blurring of work and personal leaders are now in people's homes, there's balancing work and personal, it's no longer work life balance, it's essentially meshed and all these things are part of the new reality. So the leader really needs to understand the systemic context as well as the context for that individual. And so that understanding is extremely important. The l then stands for listening and what that is getting at is is the classic mistake that a lot of leaders make, which is they talk too much and they don't listen enough, just like you said earlier, sally and you know, rather than saying this is what I think is going on, what do you think I'd rather than open it up with what's on your mind, Tell me more about that. You know, what would you like to work on if they're bringing it forward, chat about in the next 10 minutes or if I'm bringing it forward, how can we actually reflect on this in a way that will be useful to you. So you're listening, you're entering with a listening mindset and once you know what you're talking about and kind of map it out as a 15 minute coaching session so that took four minutes. The context is before really. And then you spend the next seven minutes or so on empathy and what you're doing in the empathy part. Of course it's empathy throughout. But what you're doing is you're getting away from your own mindset of what you think is going on and trying to enter into the mindset of the person you're coaching and giving absolute positive regard. So turn off the judgment. Listen really closely and I tend to try to simplify it to what might be you know what questions I'd like to ask them. You know what would be questions to go deeper. The person says I'm really upset about that simple question. You know tell me more about what upset means to you don't make the assumption you know what the word upset means. You know I feel like I'm swamped you know all these metaphors what does swap mean to you? You know don't take it at face value. Stay in one spot a little bit longer to let them tell you the story to go one level deeper. And then you know the other element which leaders are capable of doing because they have relationships over time is to share observations of patterns. How does this relate to what happened last week and then ask the individual to describe it. What you're doing is through the empathic step is you're helping someone explore it further work it a little bit deeper to see if it generates some realizations. That's the E. So C. L. E. Context. Listen, empathy. Now the action you need to come forward with an action. And one of the insights that people really like about this model when I teach it because I teach it in organizations as well as use it is the notion of small steps that you know leaders are used to in strategy big moves and so on. But in coaching it's about mobilizing, it's about a small step. And once you mobilize what might be a small step you could take in the next week to advance this instead of saying, you know, what's our plan over the next six months or three months which will be overwhelming. Remember these people often are stuck in whatever it is. So small steps becomes a real great asset to helping them mobilize to be able to move forward. I don't know if you you know, during covid, you know, you didn't go out of the house, you couldn't move and you're on the couch and you know, someone would say, you know what can you just stand up, you know, get off the couch and stand up and once you're standing okay, I can walk and you generate your own momentum. It's the same notion as small steps and the last one is respect for out and what that really means is when you're going to be offering a suggestion, recognize that the during coaching, the person you're coaching owns it, not you. So offer your suggestion with respect and the way I tend to do it is ask would it be okay if I offered you a suggestion and then when you offer your suggestion don't just offer it to, you know, have you considered this idea? Also invite the person to be able to say yes or no to it? So end it with what's your thoughts about that rather than just saying, Have you considered this idea which they may interpret if I'm a leader as I'm telling them what to do but in a nice way. Right. So the closing of saying and what do you, what's your thoughts about that or you know, does that work for you or whatever that actually does it? So model people use it all the time. Now context. Listen, empathy, action and respect throughout. And my timing was four minutes and listen seven minutes on empathy and four minutes on action and respect throughout and the context throughout. And that became the 15 minute coaching session.
spk_0: That's such a potent model David and I love it for a few reasons firstly it's simplicity and just a few things I wanted to kind of pull out because my next question is really going to be low looking at some of the traps that human leaders fall into here. But I noticed you sort of you framed a few of these already for us and the first thing I really loved about this concept of the r I'll start there is that I really appreciate how you said here, when we're offering suggestions or advice that it's really important to qualify that first. And I think as someone, you know, who's been on the receiving end, I'm sure we've all been on the receiving end of coaching moments, there's nothing more frustrating than someone giving you sort of unsolicited advice and often we forget that perhaps the person has tried to think about every possible scenario to get themselves out of the situation, and that's why we're in still in the situation because they sort of haven't come across that yet. So I really appreciate this qualifying of, you know, are you ready to hear my thoughts or my advice or my direction with this the second part as a leader that I feel so important in that is the empowering piece where he said, it's not just about being instructive, but it's about helping the person come to their own conclusion or solution around moving forward and as leaders and I've certainly, you know, unknowingly or perhaps not on purpose, done this
spk_2: often we
spk_0: have so many demands to manage, we have time frames that we need to be achieving with projects, whatever it is. So we want to see a resolution as quickly as possible to keep, you know, the wheels on the bus moving so off and we can get really stuck in being instructive to just give the person the instruction of how to get out of the situation they're in and I think it can be really disempowering but sort of tying that back then too like psychological safety. It also can feel to the employees sometimes like we don't have the trust in them to fix their own problem. So I appreciate that the R. Is really about involving the employee in coming to a solution or taking that,
spk_2: you know
spk_0: putting that one ft forward in front of the other. So thank you. I think that model was fantastic and one more reflection I have on that is the L. For me when you're speaking about listening something we speak a lot about human leaders is listening to learn. And I think you really covered that well between the L. And the E. It's really about listening to shift your perspective as a leader. So you can build that cognitive and also emotional empathy towards another person and we really can't build that perspective unless we bring that beginner's mind to that listening moment. So a very very potent model. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. David,
spk_2: Do you think learn is a better word than listen for that opening piece. You know, I was thinking that you know to learn what the person really wants to rather than just listen because empathy and listen are close and so I guess we're not trying to demonstrate is every framework is iterative, nothing is fixed.
spk_1: I think sometimes also these words sort of embody different things for each of us. So it might be I do, I have to say I like the idea of learn because it does suggest a really active, a specific way of listening in order to grow. So yeah, this is I love this life iterative process that we're having here.
spk_0: Yeah. And for me, just to reflect on what learning means to me, listening is a huge part of that. I think we can't learn if we're not open to listen, but I think leaders aren't always perhaps aware of the other ways that they can learn about the context of an employee. I think observation is a huge tool, you know, bringing that on board there is really important as well. So perhaps an iteration of clear but certainly listening is a very key piece there. So yeah, thank you for that, David,
spk_2: that's great. And with reference to traps, there are so many, the number one trap that leaders run into is working too hard to give advice and it's counterintuitive for leaders because many of them got to the position where they are in because they know and they have knowledge, they have experience, they might say I've been through all that before and they make many assumptions and that leans them into advice and even if they are more effective as coaches and they know how to not just give advice, they find subtle ways of saying things that are really giving advice anyway, so it is a challenge for leaders to say, you know, I'm gonna enter into your mindset and really try to know the way you're thinking, not the way I am and that's a very challenging trap for people to avoid and encouraged leaders that are gonna try to do that. Who are listening to this wonderful theory by Donald Michael baum called interruptions. And the idea is that as you try to modify behaviors, the question is at what point does it come into your awareness and that's an interruption? So if it's really late in the process, maybe someone told you about it. But then all of a sudden you say, I'm going to try to really hold back on giving advice and even turn off that tape in my mind, that that is the advice giver. So it's not gonna be playing as I'm listening. And then again I said all of a sudden I gave advice, but this time I interrupted myself immediately after I gave it, that's significant progress, Congratulations you gave advice, but at least you know, you did it and then if you actually keep at it eventually, you'll catch yourself before you do it and the interruption will happen before saying something and then you won't do it. So it's a journey, this is not to snap the finger and you'll be able to do it well to slow process, you know, take small steps, just like we advise in that action phase, but it is doable
spk_0: agreed. And I think, you know, in interestingly there as well, David, it's about this, you know, the advice giving really comes back to the leader seeing their role often as a problem solver as well. It's quite often, you know, they feel like their job is to keep the wheels on the bus turning. So there's often we don't even notice as leaders, how our own sort of ego driver, our own agenda is actually driving some of those conversations and how we're steering things and because we need to see an outcome. And so we're sort of trying to get us to that solution orientation
spk_2: as quickly
spk_0: as possible as well.
spk_2: Absolutely. And the leaders need to realize that that is an outstanding capability in the right place, is not that you need to stop doing that. You need to know when it actually does not add value to do that. In many other places, it adds tremendous value. Member. It's and also, and the situation where you're coaching, the suggestion to our human leaders is to actually be thinking about coaching. Even if you're the one who's bringing up the issue as the ownership of the person, you're coaching, they need to own it if they're really going to do something about it, they need to own it, there's performance management and in performance management or if there's performance related issues, there may be points where you're going to tell people this is the way you've got to behave or this is the way you have to perform. But if in the coaching space, see what happens as an experiment, if you allow the person you're coaching to really own it and own the direction and trust the process and and see if in fact it emerges with positive outcomes.
spk_1: I love that you use the word experiment David, because I think what was really coming to mind as you're speaking for me was this sense that there is, I think an element of courage that leaders have to bring in order to make this shift. And perhaps I think particularly through the pandemic and in the I'm going to call it the old framework, but you know, this challenging times that we're facing, there's often an expectation, I think subconsciously or otherwise, that the leader will provide certainty, stability, have answers and create a sense of certainty in an uncertain environment. And I think it takes a level of courage perhaps to say I'm actually not just going to flow through that old way of behaving and do what I think is expected of me. I'm going to hold some space to listen, to use this clear technique in order to allow people to really come to their own conclusions. And I think that really of course, we know, you know, that's a lot of science shows how essential that is to genuine change. It has to be our own
spk_2: conviction
spk_1: that gets us there. It can't just be something that's coming from an external place.
spk_2: Absolutely. We do have, this is a unique time, clearly Covid pandemic, but the unexpected outcome of what we're capable of doing right now, or coaching virtually one of the characteristics of coaching prior to the pandemic was it was in person, so it was geographically bound by and large. Now, I'm coaching people in europe, I'm coaching people in other countries, people are showing up on time because it's the time when they are comfortable having coaching, they're less concerned about me showing up to their office because I'm not showing up at their office and or them coming to me for that matter, it's just on teams, it's just on zoom or whatever platform we're using and so the reach to find coaches who can actually help externally, and even internally for people who are working with a virtual workforce to engage with them in a much more, you know, productive way. Because of the advent of this technology is a wonderful shift that has allowed what I think is greater psychological safety as well, as much more effective coaching to occur to a much broader audience than we had anticipated in the past. And that may be one of the outcomes of this pandemic that hopefully we're able to sustain.
spk_1: I certainly hope so too. David and I I'd love to sort of draw together this incredible conversation and we're so grateful for your time and your expertise that I feel like we've talked about such important components of leadership, certainly human leadership in terms of really focusing on our coaching skills and creating psychological safety. I'm wondering if there is for those of us who want to grow in this area, what is the first step or a great place to start to change the way that we're leading to embody these ways of coaching and bring in psychological safety in a really active way.
spk_2: Leaders need feedback, they need to know what is happening and where to work. Early in my career, I did sports psychology work and I was working with professional and athletes and so on. And when you work with people who are fairly skilled, it's not a generic answer where you do this and that will work and there are things that have a higher probability, it's really a diagnostic process. So leaders should be seeking out three sixties, not even as a lot of times it works even more effectively if it's a series of interviews with key people that would be knowing them more deeply and to pinpoint precisely what are they doing that. In fact is helping the process that is from an appreciative perspective that builds psychological safety that makes them more approachable as a coach, makes them more effective as a leader and what are they doing that in fact might be getting in the way that is, you know, blocking and it might be one thing for one leader and very different for another. And then let's do a proper diagnostic process. So my first recommendation is let's not just jump in with solutions, let's start with questions and see, you know, what is the right thing to do for that individual that ultimately will advance them most effectively, both in psychological safety and the role as a coach of others. A
spk_0: very valuable place to start, David. And I think, you know, we appreciate that so much. This idea of let's get a better picture of what's going on before we start prescribing solutions that may or may not actually resolve the areas of work that we need to focus on as an individual. And certainly being open and comfortable with sometimes uncomfortable feedback is something that we are really on board with at human Leaders as well. So, dr Weiss, thank you so much for joining us on that. We are Human Leaders podcast today. We've learned so much from you and we're so excited to dive deeper into the clear model and see how we can use this in our leadership at Human Leaders as well. Thank you
spk_2: Real pleasure. Thank you so much. And it's great chatting with you.
spk_0: Thank you for joining us for this incredibly practical conversation with dr David Weiss for more information about David, the clear model that we discussed in today's episode and to link with him on social media and via his website, take a look at our show notes at www dot We are human leaders dot com. If you've been inspired by today's conversation to evolve the way that you lead, join us and be supported in community, we welcome you to find us at www dot We are human leaders dot com. That's all for now. And we'll see you next episode.