When Google set out to discover what makes a high-performing team in 2012, researchers expected to uncover a set of individual demographics, characteristics, or personality traits that made each team great. What they realized, however, was that it was the interactions of a team that determined its effectiveness. But while Google's Project Aristotle made the critical link between psychological safety and high performance, their research did little to teach leaders how to foster psychological safety on their teams.

In this podcast episode, our hosts give you the practical tools you need to put Project Aristotle's findings into actual practice.

Episode Chapters:
01:28 - The Research Premise
06:56 - The Findings
12:40 - Psychological Safety as a Unifying Term
15:55 - Project Aristotle's Shortcomings
17:12 - Psychological Safety's Behavioral Mechanism
23:56 - The L.I.V.E. Model for Teams
28:43 - The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xLsOjAsUbZo
Or download the episode resources: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/what-you-need-to-know-about-project-aristotle

If you want to implement a psychological safety initiative in your organization, you'll need to explain what psychological safety isn't. Why? Because your culture won't change unless it's built on a shared understanding.

Psychological safety isn’t artificial niceness or a lack of accountability. Unless you clarify, stakeholders might think it’s a gimmick or dismiss it because of the baggage of the implied definition of the term. They'll need to know what psychological safety isn’t, along with what it is.

On this week's episode of The Leader Factor, hosts Tim and Junior share the top 7 misconceptions of psychological safety and what to do about them.

Episode Chapters
(00:45) Start
(03:53) Psychological safety isn't a shield from accountability.
(05:06) Psychological safety isn't niceness. 
(06:30) Psychological safety isn't coddling. 
(07:55) Psychological safety isn't consensus decision-making. 
(09:45) Psychological safety isn't unearned autonomy. 
(13:28) Psychological safety isn't political correctness.
(14:30) Psychological safety isn't rhetorical reassurance.  
(16:26) Identifying The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2cr1E4neXGI
Or download the episode resources: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/7-things-psychological-safety-is-not

Can you create value for your team? Contributor safety satisfies the basic human need to make a difference and offer meaningful contributions. When we create contributor safety for others, we empower them with autonomy, guidance, and encouragement in exchange for effort and results. 

Listen in as hosts Tim and Junior discuss how to build Stage 3: Contributor Safety individually, within a team, and throughout an organization.

For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCijFFN7t5w

Download the episode resources: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/how-to-build-the-4-stages-of-psychological-safety

During this week’s episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior dissect the two kinds of leaders who shy away from psychological safety: those who feed on title and status, and those who try to hide their incompetence. They encourage healthy introspection as a tool to avoid becoming one of those leaders yourself. Are you a business leader looking to introduce psychological safety into your organization? Crack yourself open with this enlightening episode.

What is psychological safety? What’s the dilemma? (1:15) Despite the transformative benefits of psychological safety, it puts insecure, mediocre, and poor leaders to the test. It becomes a leveling device that redistributes influence. For leaders who feed on title and status, it threatens their positional power. For those lacking in competence, it threatens their exposure.

Leaders who feed on title and status (9:50). Tim and Junior reference Ralph Linton and differentiate between ascribed and achieved status in the workplace. 

Do you encourage constructive dissent? (22:30) Tim and Junior talk about dissent and how healthy leaders welcome it, while unhealthy ones avoid it. 

Leaders who try to hide their incompetence (28:30). Incompetent leaders try to blend into the hierarchy they belong to. While hierarchies aren’t inherently bad, they’re also not all created equal. Tim and Junior talk about the advantages and liabilities of power hierarchies.

Who gets to participate, and who gets to decide? (37:30) Decision-making rights? Not everyone has them, and that’s on purpose. But participation rights? Everyone should have them. Why?

Imposter syndrome and psychological safety (41:00). Tim and Junior discuss when you should let self-awareness ignite change, and when you should realize that you’re not going to be perfect all the time. 

Related Links:

Why Some Leaders Are Afraid of Psychological Safety Article

How Psychological Safety Cures Imposter Syndrome

The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety

What's at stake? (0:00) If we do this well, we’ll create sanctuaries of inclusion and incubators of innovation. But if we do this poorly, we’ll be perpetually dissatisfied, we’ll create toxic cultures, and our organizations will suffer.

The current state of hiring, firing and promotion (9:00). Do most organizations make these decisions based on technical or cultural criteria? Tim and Junior talk about the process, outcome, and consequence of both.

What role does psychological safety play currently in the hiring, firing, and promotion of most organizations? (16:00) For most, it's a back seat role. If leaders aren't accounting for psychological safety, what are they looking for?

Technical competence isn't everything (19:40) Tim and Junior discuss the cultural and interpersonal components of hiring and why they should be considered in conjunction with technical skill and experience.

Psychological safety is at the heart of healthy culture (24:15). Tim gives listeners an overview of what psychological safety is and how it fits into the HR space.

The difference between cultural fit and cultural competence (29:30). Tim and Junior talk about why using the term "cultural fit" can be dangerous. Cultural competence, rather, has to do with your ability to contribute to a culture of psychological safety.

Firing and psychological safety (34:00). Tim and Junior make the claim that organizations aren't letting people go that should be let go because cultural competence is not a criterion for evaluation.

Promotion and psychological safety (44:45). Turns out, you get what you tolerate. What promotion criteria should we use to ensure that they will perpetuate healthy norms and build a vibrant culture?

Measure psychological safety on your team for free (59:45). Tim and Junior give listeners the chance to put this into practice with a totally free 4 Stages™ Team Survey license.

The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety

Hiring, Firing, and Promotion Webinar

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

LeaderFactor Note #12: 3 Most Deadly Hiring Mistakes

The culture dilemma (00:45). Many organizations tell us that they want to improve their culture, but often don’t know where to start. What does an unhealthy culture look like? What symptoms need to be identified and treated?

The definition of culture (02:30). Culture is the way we interact. It exists anywhere where there are humans. Parts of it are visible, while other parts of culture, not so much.  

How does culture work? (16:00) You don’t fix a culture at the top of an organization, but you can influence it at the team level. Teams need to improve their interactions by modeling and rewarding the vulnerabilities of their colleagues. 

What’s the solution? (31:00) If you want good culture, you need high levels of psychological safety. Psychological safety solves for culture at the level of interaction. 

Building great culture is a process (50:00). Just like fostering trust takes a certain level of consistency over time, psychological safety is delicate and dynamic. It requires consistent effort and deliberate action in order to build and maintain.

The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety

The Ladder of Vulnerability

The 4 Stages Behavior Guide

Vulnerability and interaction are inseparable (03:00). The workplace is vulnerable because it’s full of humans.

Why does vulnerability matter? (08:30) There’s a spectrum of vulnerability and a spectrum of responses to vulnerability. You can reward it, punish it, or do something in between.

How do we create healthy company cultures? (11:30) If we want healthy cultures where inclusion and innovation are the standards, we must reward vulnerability.

What are red zones and blue zones? (13:15) Red zones are environments of punished vulnerability, and blue zones are environments of rewarded vulnerability.

Vulnerability occurs across the 4 stages of psychological safety (24:30). Tim and Junior share common acts of vulnerability found in inclusion, learner, contributor, and challenger safety. 

Vulnerability and inclusion safety (26:00). Inclusion safety satisfies the basic human need to be included, accepted, and belong. It means it’s not expensive to be yourself. 

Vulnerability and learner safety (43:00). Acts of vulnerability in Stage 2: Learner Safety relate to learning and the discovery process. Because learning is fraught with uncertainty and risk, every person brings some level of inhibition and anxiety to the learning process. 

Vulnerability and contributor safety (48:50). Acts of vulnerability in Stage 3: Contributor Safety relate to making a meaningful contribution and reflect a willingness to be held accountable for your performance.

Vulnerability and challenger safety (53:20). Acts of vulnerability in Stage 4: Challenger Safety relate to challenging the status quo and creating value in new and different ways through innovation. 

Links: 
The Ladder of Vulnerability webinar: https://www.leaderfactor.com/webinars/the-ladder-of-vulnerability
The Ladder of Vulnerability ebook: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/psychological-safety-ladder-of-vulnerability
The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/what-is-psychological-safety
How to Connect with a Person Not Like You: https://www.leaderfactor.com/notes/how-to-connect-with-a-person-not-like-you

How do you create a deeply inclusive environment? (1:15) Tim explains that there's a process and a sequence, and it starts with a focus on your values and beliefs. Once you lay the foundation, you can focus on behaviors and skills, then policies and procedures. In essence, you need to advocate for humanity over human characteristics. 

What are junk theories of superiority? (8:00) To create deeply inclusive cultures, we have to eliminate biases and preferences towards certain characteristics, which ultimately create exclusion. 

The four stages of psychological safety build inclusive cultures (10:33). As a function of respect and permission, the foundation of psychological safety is inclusion. We want to know that we belong. 

Inclusion is a human right (20:45). You shouldn't need to think about it. It's a safety that isn't earned, it's owed. 

How to create a culturally flat organization (27:15). Regardless of position, title, or authority, you should be allowed to contribute, participate, and create value. 

The definition of psychological safety (2:00). Tim and Junior discuss how vulnerability plays into the definition of psychological safety and what it means to create a culture of rewarded vulnerability.

Defining culture is like squeezing Jell-O (6:05). If culture is human interaction, psychological safety gives us the terms of engagement to interact. 

It's impossible to not have any culture (11:45). Just like fish have water, humans have culture. You're in it, and it's in you. 

The history of psychological safety (13:20). Numerous social scientists and psychologists have contributed to the psychological safety space, and Tim and Junior synthesize their contributions to a timeline.

How did the four stages come about? (30:00) Tim explains how his professional career in the world of leadership and culture contributed to The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety framework.

What factors drive and contribute to the demand for psychological safety? (45:00) Mental health, social justice, and a variety of other social and cultural factors have played a hand in the demand, and Junior and Tim give us their take on the what and the why.

Resources available at leaderfactor.com/resources. 

What is challenger safety? (1:12) Challenger safety is the fourth and final stage of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. Do you feel like you can be candid about change? Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better.

What does challenger safety look like across industries? (4:00) Whether you’re an executive at an up-and-coming startup in Silicon Valley, a nurse in a state hospital, or a tenured professor at a prestigious university, every job needs challenger safety.

What’s the social exchange for this stage? (8:00) When we create challenger safety, we give air cover (protection) in exchange for candor. Tim and Junior discuss why we should value candor in the workplace. After all, what’s the point of bleached, sanitized feedback?

What happens when organizations try to hide their lack of challenger safety? (16:00) Silence is expensive. When teams claim they have a speak-up culture, but do everything in their power to keep their teams quiet, their ruse quickly becomes obvious. Eventually, the candor will come out.

How do we avoid echo chambers? (20:00) If all a leader wants in a meeting is validation that they already have the best ideas, they should have a meeting with themself. Tim and Junior explain that avoiding the dangerous traps of groupthink involves harvesting the power of candid feedback.

Where does the word innovation come from? (22:00) Junior and Tim are surprised to learn that the Latin root of the word “innovate” means to renew or alter. 

What is pride of authorship? (27:00) It’s exactly what it sounds like: the sense of ownership that someone feels over their idea, solution, comment, or deliverable. It suffocates feedback and encourages echo chambers. 

Is innovation an engagement issue or a culture issue? (34:00) As the precursor to employee engagement, psychological safety creates a culture of rewarded vulnerability that allows innovation to happen.

How do I neutralize the power difference of hierarchies? (40:45) Hierarchy can easily stifle innovation. When superiority and hierarchy dominate your company culture you definitely won’t innovate.

What’s the difference between social and intellectual friction? (46:30) In these moments of collision, a leader’s task is to simultaneously increase intellectual friction and decrease social friction. High intellectual friction lets your team harness creative abrasion and constructive dissent and arrive at real innovation. 

What happens if you fail to have challenger safety? (53:40) You’ll want to hear it straight from Tim and Junior themselves. Listen to the end to find out.

Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

The Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide

LeaderFactor Note #26
HBR Article: Don’t Let Hierarchy Stifle Innovation

Podcast: Don’t Let Hierarchy Stifle Innovation

Or learn more at leaderfactor.com

Tim and Junior define contributor safety (01:00). Contributor safety satisfies our fundamental human need to create value. It's the perfect blend of autonomy and accountability, freedom and guidance.

The social exchange of contributor safety (5:00). When we create contributor safety for others, we empower them with autonomy, guidance, and encouragement in exchange for effort and results.

Why do we hate being micromanaged? (9:15). Tim and Junior explain why micromanagement gets on almost everybody's nerves and why we crave autonomy and freedom.

A leaders contribution vs. an individual's contribution (14:35). Leaders have to be willing to let go of the reins of execution and find fulfillment and value in innovation. 

The Micromanager vs. the Absentee Landlord (19:45). Micromanagers don't know when to stop offering guidance and trust their employees to do their job. Absentee Landlords aren't willing to offer guidance and direction while expecting perfect outcomes.

Contributor safety introspection questions (23:40). Junior asks a series of questions and asks listeners to crack themselves open and figure out where they fall short in the world of contributor safety.

Discovery and advocacy (27:25). But when you’re willing to ask more than you tell, you transfer those core critical thinking skills to your team instead of keeping them all for yourself. Letting go of the reins means that you transfer not only the execution aspects of the job, but also the fulfilling parts of the work at hand: outcomes, success, discovery, and deliverables can be transferred too.

Tolkien's contributions to contributor safety (39:35). Tim shares a quote from famous writer J. R. R. Tolkien.

How coaching affects contributor safety (41:00). Microcoaching and accountability are fundamental skills that any leader has to acquire in order to be successful in dynamic business environments.

The three levels of accountability (44:10). In any team, individuals may work under three different levels of accountability–task, process, and outcome. Those who work at task-level accountability need to be walked through every aspect of the job. Once a team member shows that they can complete tasks sufficiently, they graduate to process-level accountability: tasks can be strung together in a predictable, consistent process and they will still know what to do. The third level of accountability is where good employees can become influential innovators: outcome-level accountability. Here how we get our work done, how we accomplish our tasks, and how we manage projects and processes don’t matter so much. It’s all about the outcome. 

Stage 2 Learner Safety is is part two in our four part series based on Timothy R. Clark’s book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation. In this episode Timothy R. Clark and Junior Clark answer key questions around how to create a culture where there is both encouragement to learn and engagement in the learning process.

What is Learner Safety? (2:10)
Learner safety satisfies our basic need to learn and grow. We all engage in the learning process and in that process we engage in acts of vulnerability related to learning. A culture of learner safety means those acts of vulnerability are rewarded. Learner safety always precedes contribution and contributor safety.

What is the social exchange? (6:00)
The social exchange is "encouragement to learn in exchange for engaging in the learning process". Who goes first, the team or the individual contributor in the learning process. The leader and the team have a first mover responsibility to provide the encouragement to learn. You can't assume individuals show up ready to learn. The leader sets conditions and sets the tone and it cannot be delegated. We will never grow out of our need to have encouragement to learn. There will always be some trepidation in the learning process.

The organization has an imperative to drive "learning agility". (13:43)
Learning agility means you are learning at or above the rate of change. Without learning agility your organization will slowly become obsolete. Organizations are always becoming obsolete it's just a matter of the rate of the burn.

Examples of punished learner safety. (16:51)
Learning is both intellectual and emotional. When someone shuts down our learning process we don't forget. Instances of punished learning vulnerability have lasting effects, they trigger our self-censoring instinct, and shut down the learning process. When you take punished vulnerability to learning public it becomes a nuclear weapon.

How do you balance performance with mistakes? (26:23)
How do you make mistakes allowable as fuel for learning but eliminate mistakes when the stakes are high? The key is creating a place and a time where we have room to make mistake and having clear boundaries between the execution and innovation environments. There is a difference between being on the operating table and practicing on a dummy. First define the boundaries. 

A leader/teacher's job is to transfer critical thinking and accountability. (34:38)
In order to help transfer critical thinking to the learner you must ask questions. The three types of questions are the what, why, and how questions. Part of the answer of creating learner safety is to move away from didactic questions to questions that transfer critical thinking. Learner safety is not soft or enabling but it does require good faith and intent without ulterior motives.

High learner safety is correlated with innovation. (45:45)
One of the jobs of the leader is to oil the gears of collaboration. If individual contributors have high levels of learner safety they are more likely to explore new ideas, discover new solutions, and innovate faster than the rate of change. 

What is the role of the individual in learning process? (49:37)
You are primarily responsible for your own learning and develop. You cannot rely on your organization. It is your job to become an aggressive self-directed learner. If the organization can help you, that's great. Sometimes you will have more support and sometimes you will have less. You have to take responsibility. Without aggressive learning you have "retired while on the job".

Important Links from This Episode.

• Purchase a copy of "The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety" on Amazon.
• Download a free excerpt of the book.
• Stage 1 Inclusion Safety Podcast Episode
• What is Psychological Safety?
• The 4 Stages Behavior Guide (Learner Safety Behaviors)

This series is based on Timothy R. Clark’s book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation. 

You can purchase your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Stages-Psychological-Safety-Inclusion-Innovation-ebook/dp/B07Y3ZJ8B2/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+four+stages+of+psychological&qid=1585587097&sr=8-1

Or download a free excerpt here:

https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/the-4-stages-book-excerpt

What are The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety? (3:00) Tim and Junior give an overview of the concept as a universal pattern that spans all cultures, demographics, and needs. 

The social exchange for inclusion safety (15:45). Every stage is reciprocal, but inclusion safety is different: to qualify for inclusion safety all you have to be is human and harmless. 

Inclusion in the context of diversity and equity (22:40). In the DEI space, inclusion sits very closely with diversity and equity. But what do their relationships look like?

Inclusion safety and behavioral families (00:00). Inclusion safety behaviors exist in behavioral families, some of which are asking, greeting, and validating. Junior shares his personal experiences as a dishwasher. 

Interaction is not connection (37:23). Oftentimes, we assume that just because we’re interacting with another human that that’s an automatic connection. Tim and Junior discuss why that’s not the case. 

Bonding vs. bridging (41:10). Our natural affinities induce bonding behaviors: it’s easy to connect with these people. But when we don’t have natural affinity we need to engage in bridging behaviors.

Inclusion is a prerequisite for innovation (47:15). While it’s probably uncomfortable, the dividends of inclusion are worth it. 

We can either cultivate or crush, nurture or neglect, stimulate or stifle learner safety, the second stage of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. When we have learner safety we feel safe as we ask questions, give and receive feedback, experiment, and admit when we don’t know.

As the highest form of enterprise risk management, learner safety opens the door to innovation. Leaders committed to safeguarding learner safety know that learning is the source of competitive advantage.

An emotionally bruised learner is a cognitively impaired learner. An emotionally empowered learner is a cognitively enabled learner. The choice is yours: What kind of risk will you entertain in your culture? The risk of learning, or the risk of not learning? 

Listen in as hosts Tim and Junior discuss how to build Stage 2: Learner Safety individually, on a team, and in an organization.

For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bND6XuFrEVQ

Download the episode resources: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/how-to-build-the-4-stages-of-psychological-safety

Today Tim and Junior sit down to discuss Tim’s recent Harvard Business Review article titled “Don’t Let Hierarchy Stifle Innovation.” There are a lot of concepts that Tim wasn’t able to include in his article that are discussed today, including how to improve our interactions, how to unleash bottom-up innovation and the role that hierarchy plays in innovation and execution. 

You can read the HBR article here: https://hbr.org/2022/08/dont-let-hierarchy-stifle-innovation

About the article (1:30). Junior introduces the first line of the article as the theme of this podcast. Tim shares what motivated him to write the article in the first place. 

Innovation, hierarchy, and division one football (7:30). Tim shares an analogy from his college football days that explains how extra layers in a hierarchy makes things complicated.

Whose job is it anyway? (11:15) Tim claims that it’s the senior leadership’s responsibility. They have to enlist the rest of the organization, but innovation is embedded in every role. Do we teach our managers how to manage innovation? 

Interactions have an element of quality (15:25). Being at the top of this spectrum of quality means that fear, anxiety, inhibition don’t get in the way. Is it free-flowing? Energetic Candid? 

Sustainable competitive advantage (21:15). Tim and Junior discuss what innovation does for an organization and why it pays dividends in the long run. 

A culture of rewarded vulnerability (30:30). If participation rights aren’t enforced from day one and in the day-to-day, innovation and change won’t happen. You can’t fake the quality of interaction for more than a couple of hours. 

Innovation is unknown (37:00). This will usually cause some angst, a little bit of “I don’t know” and that discomfort is part of how you’ll know that you’re in exploratory inquiry. 

Normalizing constructive dissent (42:15). Tim and Junior break this down: what is dissent? And what do they mean by constructive?

How empathy regulates discovery (50:40). Empathy means “I will try to understand with compassion and curiosity how you arrived at your conclusions from these data.” Tim explains why empathy is crucial to the innovation process.

Welcome to The Leader Factor, version 2.0 of Culture by Design. We appreciate your listenership and are excited about what’s new. Let's introduce you to our hosts:

Tim
As founder and CEO of LeaderFactor, an Oxford-trained social scientist, and a five-time published author in the leadership space, Dr. Timothy R. Clark has coached hundreds of executives and dozens of high-profile CEOs and has worked with many of the world's most well-known organizations.

Junior
Junior is closing in on the better part of a decade at LeaderFactor as Chief Operating Officer. He has spent most of his time implementing LeaderFactor’s tools and methods with global clients. He's seen what works, and what doesn't, and has unique insight into the tactical nature of leadership development.

Leadership is the most important applied discipline in the world. In fact, the leader is the #1 factor in determining organizational success. Becoming an effective leader requires three objectives: First, you have to learn to lead yourself. Then, you must learn how to unlock the full potential of your team. Finally, the best leaders know how to build businesses where culture is a competitive advantage and innovation is the status quo.

Our aim is to synthesize our research and client experience into a practical format for you— to help you become more effective personally and professionally. The goal as we see it is to become the most effective leadership training on the internet. We're excited to have you with us. 

This episode is the first in a four-part series on How to Build The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. Listen in as hosts Junior and Timothy R. Clark, author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety book, share in-depth insights into the thinking behind the 4 Stages framework. The episode covers the history behind psychological safety as a concept, what psychological safety is not, where vulnerability fits into the equation, and how to activate the power of diversity through inclusion. As always, they also share 3 practical ways to create inclusion safety on your teams.

To see the slides and host annotations for the episode, watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zDDBkfA0BFk

Or download the resources from the episode here: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/how-to-build-the-4-stages-of-psychological-safety

In this final episode of the Micro-coaching and Accountability series, Tim and Junior take the previous two frameworks, The Coaching Continuum and The Three Levels of Accountability, and put them together into the ultimate diagnostic tool for leaders. Think of this matrix as a model to operationalize coaching on a dynamic team.

Your objective? To move the individuals you work with up and to the right. To transfer critical thinking and ownership and increase their capacity through coaching. Leaders who coach their people all the way to box nine end up with a team of full thinking partners who are highly skilled, think critically, and take ownership of their roles. They’re encouraging outcome-oriented, future-focused employees who thrive in autonomy and accountability.

For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Uwf4uMvsavs

Download the resources from the episode: www.leaderfactor.com/resources/micro-coaching-and-accountability

Accountability means being answerable for performance. The scope and levels to which we are held accountable vary based on role, willingness, skill, and need. But we can all agree that organizations function based on shared accountability. This means that as teams increase their capacity for accountability, organizational function will also increase.

So how do we become accountable to the unenforceable, ourselves? Here’s another diagnostic tool that you can use to determine where your people work currently, and where they want to be. The 3 Levels of Accountability illustrate the relationship between autonomy and accountability and help us set our sights on the ultimate goal: Outcome-level accountability.

For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jMBu1jgo8vE

Download the resources from the episode: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/micro-coaching-and-accountability

In this first episode of a 3-part series on Micro-coaching and Accountability, Tim and Junior introduce us to The Coaching Continuum, a framework that can be used to identify coaching patterns in leaders. It runs from “Tell” on one side to “Ask” on the other. 

A leader has one primary objective: To expand the capabilities of the people they lead by increasing their ownership and critical thinking skills. There are two levers that a leader can pull to do this. They can model, or they can coach. Those who rely on directive, one-sided interactions to manage their people will breed dependency and learned helplessness. Those who use inquiry-based conversation in their management will create facilitated self-discovery. Effective leaders use both ends of the spectrum. Where on the continuum do you fall?

For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4jOPXTMT8M

Download the resources from the episode: www.leaderfactor.com/resources/micro-coaching-and-accountability

This week, we're talking about intelligence. Most people have a view of intelligence that's not just wrong, but damaging. Our conception of intelligence affects our goal choice and the intensity of our efforts. It affects how we perceive ourselves and our potential. In the episode, Tim and Junior discuss how intelligence is more like athleticism. They emphasize the importance of adopting a growth mindset and choose Carol Dweck's definition of intelligence, the intersection of motivation, ability, and effort, as the most helpful definition a leader can adopt on their leadership journey.

Takeaways

• Intelligence is not fixed and can be improved through effort and learning.
• Our conception of intelligence affects our goal choice and the intensity of our efforts.
• Adopting a growth mindset and seeing intelligence as malleable can lead to greater achievement.
• Rejecting limiting beliefs and embracing a more expansive view of intelligence is crucial for personal and professional growth.
• Intelligence is the intersection of motivation, ability, and effort.

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction and Objectives

(03:01) Redefining Intelligence

(14:47) Intelligence as a Multi-Dimensional Concept

(36:14) Increasing Intelligence Through Effort

(46:55) Rejecting Limiting Beliefs and Embracing a Useful Definition of Intelligence

(49:28) Conclusion and Call to Action

This week, Tim and Junior outline the resilience cycle, which, similar to patterns we see in ecology, consists of disturbance, adaptation, and recovery. They share 5 practical ways to become more resilient as a leader, including spreading out, leaning on positive emotions, developing effective coping mechanisms, adopting a growth mindset, and seeking strong social support.

Takeaways

• Resilience is a learnable process that involves responding to and adapting to challenges.
• Spreading out and diversifying one's identity can help build resilience.
• Harnessing the power of positive emotions, such as hope and optimism, can aid in resilience.
• Developing effective and varied coping mechanisms, including sleep, food, and exercise, is crucial for resilience.
• Adopting a growth mindset and seeking strong social support are important strategies for building resilience.

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction

(01:02) Understanding Resilience

(06:32) Resilience in Ecosystems

(10:16) Types of Disturbance

(13:01) Disturbance and Adaptation

(18:51) Path 2: Positive Response to Disturbance

(19:20) Resilience as a Learnable Process

(20:17) Strategy 1: Spread Out

(25:27) Strategy 2: Harness the Power of Positive Emotions

(35:39) Strategy 3: Develop Effective and Varied Coping Mechanisms

(42:34) Strategy 4: Adopt a Growth Mindset

(44:59) Strategy 5: Seek Strong Social Support

(48:11) Conclusion

This week, our hosts navigate through an extensive amount of research literature to come to some conclusions on self-esteem and how to approach it. When we rely on external factors to determine our self-esteem, we open ourselves up to dangerous perspectives. This kind of contingent self-esteem can lead to chronic insecurity in leaders, which gets in the way of their ability to lead effectively and can have detrimental effects on individuals and organizations. In the episode, Tim and Junior suggest three ways to develop a healthier sense of self-worth and tell us which definition of self-esteem they think works best.

Takeaways

• Self-esteem is a complex concept that encompasses self-competence and self-liking.
• Contingent self-esteem is dependent on external factors and can be detrimental to well-being.
• The measurement of self-esteem can be assessed using scales such as the Rosenberg self-esteem scale.
• Contingent self-esteem can impact decision-making, relationships, and emotional health.
• The influence of social media has led to the emergence of image-based contingent self-esteem.
• Contingent self-esteem is linked to vulnerability to negative emotions such as depression and anxiety. Beware the dangers of contingent self-esteem and the negative impact it can have on personal well-being and leadership effectiveness.
• Personal experiences can shape one's self-esteem, and it is important to recognize and challenge negative influences.
• Contingent self-esteem can lead to chronic insecurity in leaders, hindering their ability to lead effectively.
• Pathological self-esteem, characterized by narcissism and hubris, can have detrimental effects on individuals and organizations.
• Develop a healthier sense of self-worth by finding your intrinsic motivation, celebrating effort rather than outcomes, and promoting self-compassion.

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction and Overview

(00:50) The Complexity of Self-Esteem

(06:04) Measurement of Self-Esteem

(09:19) The Impact of Self-Esteem on Decision-Making and Well-Being

(12:07) Introduction to Contingent Self-Esteem

(16:37) The Destructive Nature of Contingent Self-Esteem

(21:23) The Influence of Social Media on Contingent Self-Esteem

(22:26) Assessment of Contingent Self-Esteem

(25:13) The Link Between Contingent Self-Esteem and Negative Emotions

(25:58) Beware the dangers of contingent self-esteem

(33:38) Contingent self-esteem and its negative effects on leadership

(43:39)Tactics for developing a healthier sense of self-worth

(47:35) Find your why

(49:00) Celebrate effort, not outcomes

(50:53) Promote a healthy dose of self-compassion

Have you ever thought about leadership as an invitation? If your goal is to improve and make a positive impact, then leadership will be an inevitable part of your journey. The job to be done, then, is to recognize and accept the invitations that come your way. These could be invitations to grow, help others, or even sometimes, to fail. Tim and Junior make one thing clear, choosing leadership over comfort and contentment is the ultimate call to adventure.

Takeaways

• Leadership is about healthy influence and is not dependent on positional power.
• Leadership is an invitation that is inevitable if one's aim is to become better and make a positive impact.
• Declining leadership invitations can lead to missed opportunities for growth and influence.
• Subject matter expertise and leadership are not mutually exclusive; both can be developed and leveraged together.
• Imposter syndrome should not prevent one from accepting leadership invitations.
• Accepting leadership invitations helps avoid stagnation and apathy. Rejecting leadership invitations can lead to long-term consequences and a cycle of apathy and helplessness.
• Literature teaches us about the human condition and the importance of striving for something greater than food, drink, and contentment.
• The law of least effort and human biases can influence our decision-making and lead to inertia and mediocrity.
• Accepting leadership invitations requires a balance between self-interest and altruism.
• Successful failures, where we learn and grow from failed outcomes, are an important part of accepting leadership invitations.
• Choosing leadership over comfort and contentment is the ultimate call to adventure.

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction

(00:44) Defining Leadership

(04:11 )Leadership as an Invitation

(05:11) Leadership as the Inevitable End

(06:26) Personal Examples of Leadership Invitations

(11:42) Consequences of Declining Leadership Invitations

(14:22) The Temptation to Decline Leadership Invitations

(20:15) Imposter Syndrome and Leadership

(22:42) Avoiding Stagnation and Apathy

(24:18) The Consequences of Rejecting Leadership Invitations

(28:03) The Law of Least Effort and Human Biases

(30:46) The Negative Implications of Contentment

(36:06) Accepting Leadership Invitations: Recognize, Say Yes, and Try

(41:01) Successful Failures: Learning and Growing from Failed Outcomes

(47:31) Choosing Leadership Over Comfort and Contentment

What are the HR best practices when it comes to toxic leadership? Should you coach the leaders? Or should you fire them? When it comes to toxicity, organizations often wait too long to get involved. Learn how to identify the symptoms of poor leadership and intervention strategies to preserve and protect your teams' cultural health.

Episode Chapters:
00:00 - Start
00:40 - How common is toxicity in the workplace?
04:07 - Toxicity is a spectrum of influence.
11:48 - The definition of a toxic leader.
13:55 - Identifying two types of toxic leaders.
17:57 - Two organizational failure patterns.
23:26 - Intervention strategies for both types of toxic leaders.

✅ Download the resources/slides from the episode: 
https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/what-to-do-with-a-toxic-leader

Or watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/18zfabFNKBo

This week, Tim and Junior are talking about the importance of doing the little things for a long time. Why? Because leaders sweat the small stuff. They know that over time, focusing on the little things plays a key part in sustaining goals, maintaining a sense of control, building momentum, and recognizing improvement.

Takeaways

• The compound effect of doing little things for a long time can have a significant impact on personal and professional success.
• Small actions and habits are controllable and sustainable, leading to gradual improvement and building momentum.
• Focusing on the little things allows for progress over perfection and generates more evidence of success.
• Taking responsibility for one's current position and evaluating performance daily are key ways  to achieving meaningful results. Focus on daily performance and the power of a 24-hour cycle.
• Evaluate pursuit and achievement over different timeframes, such as 24 hours and 24 months.
• Embrace suspense and milestones as part of the journey towards achieving goals.
• Prioritize renewal and recharging to maintain motivation and energy.
• Don't seek external recognition; find satisfaction in the quality of your inputs.
• Embrace anonymity and silence as opportunities for growth and development.
• Find magic in the mundane by appreciating the small, daily actions that contribute to long-term success.

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction and Surprise

(01:37) The Importance of Little Things

(05:01) Control and the Little Things

(06:09) The Compound Effect in Personal and Professional Life

(09:56) Examples of Doing Little Things for a Long Time

(13:46) The Benefits of Small Actions

(16:13) Progress Over Perfection

(24:15) Perception of Behavior and Motivation

(29:26) Taking Responsibility for Your Position

(32:29) Evaluating Performance on a Daily Basis

(34:48) The Power of a 24-Hour Cycle

(37:08) Evaluating Pursuit and Achievement

(39:37) Dealing with Suspense and Milestones

(43:22) Renewal and Recharging

(45:12) Don't Look for Recognition

(49:25) Finding Satisfaction in the Quality of Inputs

(50:02) The Value of Anonymity and Silence

(53:42) Looking for Magic in the Mundane

Tim and Junior talk about the two primary failure patterns in leadership, incompetence and corruption. Effective leaders are leaders with high competence and high moral character. A deficiency in one or the other leaves us susceptible to poor choices, values, and influence on our leadership journey. As part of the episode, our host outlined four different types of leaders. Are you the apprentice, the accomplice, the villain, or the hero?

Takeaways

• Leadership failures often fall into two categories: incompetence and corruption.
• Character and competence are both essential for effective leadership.
• Influence can be positive or negative, depending on the combination of character and competence.
• The relationship between incompetence and corruption can lead to a downward spiral in leadership and life. Leadership can be categorized into four quadrants: the apprentice, the accomplice, the villain, and the hero.
• Developing both character and competence is essential to becoming a hero leader.
• Plotting your current and future positions on the leadership field helps identify the gap and create tension for growth.
• Closing the gap requires a fearless examination of personal leadership pathology and a commitment to change.

Timestamps

Introduction (00:00)

The Two Failure Patterns: Incompetence and Corruption (00:35)

The Two Axes: Character and Competence (03:01)

Character and Competence: The Intersection (04:17)

Building Influence through Competence and Character (06:18)

Influence Can Be Positive or Negative (08:00)

The Relationship Between Incompetence and Corruption (16:11)

The Four Character Types: Apprentice (25:42)

The Accomplice (29:13)

The Villain (31:19)

The Hero (34:27)

Plotting Your Position (40:18)

Closing the Gap (46:53)

Final Thoughts (58:13)

We're talking about interview questions this week. Why? Because poor interview protocols are dangerous and inefficient. They decrease your chances of finding the right person to join your team. During the episode, Tim and Junior highlight the limitations of traditional interviews and give you 10 unique interview questions to help you improve your 3D interviewing skills. Some of these questions are kind of unconventional. But the concepts should help you create a more engaging and effective interview experience that will land you hires that you love.

Takeaways

• Traditional interview questions are often cliché and fail to elicit meaningful responses.
• Asking real and thought-provoking questions can lead to more authentic and insightful conversations.
• The interview process should focus on critical thinking, self-awareness, and the ability to reflect on past experiences.
• It is important to continually refine the interview process to create a more engaging and effective experience.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Importance of Interview Questions

01:23 Improving the Interview Process

06:24 The Limitations of Traditional Interviews

08:11 The Concept of 2D vs 3D Interviewing

09:08 The Impact of Personal Life on Work Life

10:31 The Importance of References

11:30 The Challenge of Resume Accuracy

14:03 The Problem with Rote Interview Questions

15:01 Question 1: What are you better at than anyone else within a mile of this room?

18:39 Question 3: What don't you know that you wish you knew?

21:07 Question 4: How would your enemies describe you?

21:36 Question 5: How far away is the future?

23:03 Question 6: You're the president of the country and you get impeached. Why?

23:31 Question 7: What's something that you know for sure?

24:00 Question 8: Tell me about the last time you spent your own money to learn something new

36:24 Question 9: What's the first thing a team member would complain about when working with you?

41:13 Question 10: What character in a popular film or book are you most like?

51:40 Continually Refining the Interview Process

In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior sit down to talk about leading through uncertainty. The content from this episode comes from Dr. Clark’s most recent Harvard Business Review publication, an article entitled What Employees Need from Leaders in Uncertain Times. In the episode, they explore the impact of uncertainty on individuals and organizations and share four practical strategies for effectively leading teams through uncertain times.

Takeaways

• Uncertainty is a constant in life and can have both negative and positive impacts.
• Creating thick trust is essential for effective leadership during uncertain times.
• Inoculating with vision helps motivate and guide individuals and teams through uncertainty.
• Increasing honesty and transparency builds trust and fosters a positive work environment.
• Seeing uncertainty as an opportunity allows leaders to explore new possibilities and stay competitive.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

03:10 The Impact of Uncertainty

11:06 Perception of Uncertainty

19:57 Creating Thick Trust

27:11 Inoculating with Vision

35:17 Increasing Honesty and Transparency

39:46 Seeing Uncertainty as Opportunity

50:25 Conclusion

Important Links
HBR Article

We can all agree that identifying potential leaders is a crucial part of organizational success. But too often, leaders are promoted purely for their technical ability. What would happen if organizations put equal weight on cultural competence in their promotion criteria? In this episode, we're talking about just that. Listen in as our hosts, Tim and Junior, discuss the question, what are the subtle signs that someone will make it in leadership?

Key Takeaways:

• Identifying potential leaders is crucial for the success of organizations.
• Five subtle signs that someone will make it in leadership include: washing the dishes, acknowledging silent contributors, spending their own money to learn, taking initiative, and admitting when they don't know something.
• These signs reflect qualities such as humility, initiative, and a commitment to personal and professional development.
• Leaders should prioritize learning, take ownership of their own development, and be willing to take action and make decisions.

Chapters

00:39 Identifying Potential Leaders

12:19 Subtle Sign #1: They Wash the Dishes, Take Out the Trash, and Refill the Paper Towels

21:17 Subtle Sign #2: They Acknowledge the Efforts of Silent Contributors

28:36 Subtle Sign #3: They Spend Their Own Money to Learn

33:37 Subtle Sign #4: They Kill the Snake When They See the Snake

39:27 Subtle Sign #5: They Say 'I Don't Know' When They Don't Know

47:11 Conclusion

This week, our hosts Tim and Junior are talking about the limitations of a traditional, four-competency emotional intelligence model. Why? Because LeaderFactor’s private emotional intelligence assessment, EQindex™, is now publicly available! This assessment, and its Leadership 360 version, is based on a 6 domain, 30 skill model that measures what we believe, what we know, and what we do as we interact with others. If you’re wanting to know what the future of emotional intelligence looks like in 2024, this would be the episode to listen to. As always, you can find important links from the episode, as well as transcripts and show notes, on our website at leaderfactor.com/podcast.

Key Takeaways:

• Emotional intelligence is the ability to interact effectively with others and is crucial in personal and professional settings.
• The traditional four competency model of EQ is limited and does not consider motivation and intent.
• The EQ Index model introduces the regard competencies to address this limitation.
• Beliefs influence awareness and perception, which in turn influence behavior.
• The dominant linear causal pathway in EQ is beliefs, awareness, and behavior.

Chapters:

01:35 Introduction to EQindex™

02:47 The Importance of the EQ Index Model

03:42 Defining Emotional Intelligence

04:13 Emotional Intelligence as a Delivery System

05:24 The Relationship Between EQ and Performance

07:06 The Limitations of the Traditional EQ Model

09:20 The Four Competency Model of EQ

12:11 The Need for the Regard Competencies

13:42 The Order of the EQ Domains

15:44 The Relationship Between Beliefs and Awareness

16:48 The Influence of Beliefs on Perception

18:12 The Dominant Linear Causal Pathway

34:13 Summary and Takeaways

Important Links:
EQindex™

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Junior and Dr. Tim Clark discuss a daunting but important question: What do you do with a toxic leader? Too often, organizations will either do nothing or wait too long to react to evidence of harmful leadership. But toxic cultures can't and won't heal themselves. And the remedy largely depends on the kind of leader you're dealing with. Listen in as Tim and Junior explore the characteristics of toxic leaders, the consequences of toxic behavior, and the role of culture in creating, maintaining or preventing toxicity. You'll learn how to distinguish between an actively toxic and passively complicit leader, and discover how to hold your leaders culturally accountable for their behavior.

‍Takeaways

• Toxic leaders exist and can have a significant impact on organizations.
• Toxic leadership is often a result of insecurity and unmet human needs.
• Actively toxic leaders should be removed from the organization, while passively complicit leaders can be coached and held accountable.
• Tolerance for toxic behavior leads to the normalization of toxicity and can have long-term consequences for the organization.
• It is important to prioritize long-term thinking and hold leaders accountable for their behavior.
  ‍

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

04:11 Pathological Behavior and Consequences of Toxicity

10:26 Culture and Toxicity

17:02 Toxic Leadership and Unmet Human Needs

22:18 Identifying Actively Toxic and Passively Complicit Leaders

26:21 Passively Complicit Leaders

35:15 Actively Toxic Leaders

43:11 Long-Term Thinking and Tolerance for Toxicity

In the final installment of our Leadership Journey series, we delve into the intricacies of Leading the Business with Dr. Tim Clark and Junior. This episode uncovers the transition leaders must undergo from tactical to strategic thinking, focusing on optimizing the whole while preparing for the future. 

Key Points & Timestamps:

1. Transitioning to Strategic Thinking (03:03)
   • Moving from a tactical mindset to a strategic mindset requires leaders to see the big picture and think systemically, ensuring the organization's long-term viability and competitive edge.
2. Understanding Enterprise-Level Responsibility (07:05)
   • Leaders must embrace a broader scope of responsibility, constantly assessing and innovating how the organization creates and delivers value today and in the future.
3. The Role of Decisions in Strategic Leadership (10:53)
   • Highlighting the importance of decision-making, leaders must cultivate the judgment to navigate complexity and uncertainty, driving the organization's strategic direction.
4. Balancing Preservation and Innovation (23:55)
   • Strategic leaders must run parallel paths: preserving the value of today's business while disturbing the status quo to innovate for the future.
5. Principles for Effective Strategic Leadership (26:11)
   • Emphasizing the need for clear goals, prioritization, adaptive capacity, and setting the right tone at the top, this section offers actionable strategies for leaders at the helm of business strategy.

Important Links Mentioned in the Episode:

• Leadership Journey Series: leaderfactor.com/podcast
• Live Webinar on Emotional Intelligence: Registration Link

Tim and Junior continue their Leadership Journey series by diving into part two on leading teams. They discuss the challenges leaders face when transitioning from individual contributor to managing others.

0:02:15 - Transitioning from independent contributor to leading a team requires a fundamental shift in mindset and skills. It's often under supported by organizations.

0:08:50 - The team is the basic unit of performance for solving complex problems, not the individual. Adopting a team mindset is critical.

0:13:06 - Promoted leaders can struggle with the loss of their technical identity and skills which defined them previously.

0:19:52 - Building trust enables teams to accomplish more together. The components of trust are integrity, mutual respect, competence, communication and initiative.

0:36:35 - Effective coaching is not telling. It's collaborative, leverages strengths and transfers ownership and critical thinking.

Links

Part 1 of the Leadership Journey Series
EQindex™ Live Event

Today, Tim and Junior kickoff a three-part series on the leadership journey: Leading yourself, leading the team, and leading the business. Today's episode is focused on leading yourself. Tim and Junior emphasize taking personal accountability and ownership of your own development. You'll hear insights on cultivating wellness, self-awareness, and a growth mindset. Tim and Junior also share their personal learning habits from consuming quality information across multiple mediums to embracing curiosity.

Why LeaderFactor? (03:11) Tim shares the meaning behind LeaderFactor's name and founding. Leadership is the ultimate applied discipline, it's the factor that affects every aspect of your business.

Leadership and personal accountability (06:45) Without personal accountability, nothing happens. As an inside-out discipline, the demands you make of yourself will reflect the demands you make on your business.

The nature of contribution (14:21) Tim and Junior share Paul Thompson and Gene Dalton's four levels of contribution. They explain how to move through these levels as you work to better lead yourself. To do so, you must own your own development.

How's your coachability? (29:14) Tim and Junior share the two things that everyone needs to improve to become better at leading themselves. The first is willingness, and the second is self-awareness.

Personal learning patterns (43:34) Listen to our hosts share their learning patterns, some of the things they do personally to learn and develop their skills.

Episode Links
The Future of EQ Webinar

Psychological safety is a cultural initiative that was made to be measured. It’s the best indicator of cultural health in your organization. Let’s talk about how to measure it effectively. 

Every effective psychological safety assessment has these 5 things:

(1) A valid, quantitative instrument.
(2) Space for qualitative feedback.
(3) Org-wide reports, team-level data.
(4) Demographic data capability.
(5) Built-in forward momentum. 

Learn more about PSindex™: https://www.leaderfactor.com/psychological-safety-survey
Watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1ZM5ymESJ9g
Or download the episode resources: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/measuring-ps-what-most-l-d-leaders-dont-realize

In today's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior discuss a question brought up in a recent Harvard Business Review article, which is, can you have too much psychological safety? The article suggested that excessive amounts of psychological safety could undermine accountability and performance. Tim and Junior share their perspective, pushing back on some of the misconceptions about what psychological safety really is and what it really means.

Defining psychological safety (01:35) Most of the debate around the question of whether you can have too much psychological safety stems around your definition of the term. Tim and Junior share theirs: Psychological safety is an environment of rewarded vulnerability that considers four stages and categories of behavior, we have inclusion, learning, contribution, and challenging.

The leader's role in creating psychological safety (14:03) Most environments create accountability by necessity. For industries in highly regulated environments, it's the leader's job to define culturally and operationally the upper control limit, the lower control limit, and the center line. Everybody needs to understand the tolerances, constraints, regulations, and limitations and work within that.

Psychological safety does not imply rogue behavior (34:10) Even though psychological safety gives employees permission to innovate and challenge the status quo, this doesn't mean that people are free to ignore policy and procedure to do what they want when they want. Oftentimes, we're talking about incremental and derivative innovation, looking for a 1% improvement, and making marginal gains.

Important Links
HBR: Can Workplaces Have Too Much Psychological Safety?
The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety

In this two-part series, Tim and Junior discuss practical steps for effectively challenging the status quo. Innovation requires some dissent and deviation from the norm, but challenging the status quo can be difficult since it often feels personal. Today they cover the final 5 tips including bringing credibility, knowing your boss, framing dissent as exploration, and using data to support your case.

Key Points:

• Be transparent about potential unintended consequences (6:32) - When proposing a new course of action, be candid about the risks and unintended consequences. This builds credibility and shows you are managing risk prudently.

• Bring credibility (17:57) - Develop competence and a track record of good decision making to increase your believability when challenging the status quo. Understanding your expertise and track record informs how you position arguments.

• Know your boss (28:16) - Understand your boss's personality, biases, preferences and goals. You can be right in your comments but wrong in your approach. Consider timing and use tact.

• Frame dissent as exploration (33:30) - Use curiosity rather than contradiction. This lowers social friction while maintaining intellectual friction for effective challenging.

• Use data (39:42) - Look for quantitative then qualitative data to support your case. But also be transparent and call the data what it is, even if you only have a hunch. Make asks proportionate to the evidence.

Links:
Challenging the Status Quo Pt.1 
How to Challenge Your Organization’s Status Quo — Productively

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior tackle a common organizational-wide dilemma, how do you effectively challenge the status quo? Questioning the prevailing mindset is tricky business. While innovation requires deviation from the norm, pushing for change often feels like a personal confrontation rather than an objective debate. So in this episode, Tim and Junior will provide concrete actual advice for skillfully and safely challenging the status quo, whether you lack formal authority or you find yourself at odds with the entrenched stakeholders.

Key Points

1. Anticipate the opportunity (20:45) Very few organizations have open-mic, challenge-the-status quo forums, so expect to do so in the context of your natural workflow. It may be an informal opportunity that allows you to introduce your idea.
2. Ask for permission (25:26) You may use a question like: Do you mind if I offer a different perspective? Or, may I suggest an alternative way to look at this? This allows you to position your interaction as a contribution rather than a confrontation.
3. Begin with inquiry, not advocacy (30:05) Challenging the status quo often evokes defensiveness. Rather than advocating a position that might divide, exclude, or marginalize, disarm with questions that recruit others into dialogue.
4. Model emotional intelligence (35:54) Paradoxically, the challenger must often create psychological safety for the challenged, giving them space to acknowledge and come to terms with needed change. Let your emotional intelligence be your guide.
5. Demonstrate a grasp of the past (40:41) Demonstrate contextual understanding by acquiring a thorough knowledge of previous decisions and how the status quo came to be. Become a master of the current state.

Read Dr. Clark's HBR Article
How to Challenge the Status Quo Productively

Original Air Date: November 21, 2022

The culture dilemma (00:45). Many organizations tell us that they want to improve their culture, but often don’t know where to start. What does an unhealthy culture look like? What symptoms need to be identified and treated?

The definition of culture (02:30). Culture is the way we interact. It exists anywhere where there are humans. Parts of it are visible, while other parts of culture, not so much.  

How does culture work? (16:00) You don’t fix a culture at the top of an organization, but you can influence it at the team level. Teams need to improve their interactions by modeling and rewarding the vulnerabilities of their colleagues. 

What’s the solution? (31:00) If you want good culture, you need high levels of psychological safety. Psychological safety solves for culture at the level of interaction. 

Building great culture is a process (50:00). Just like fostering trust takes a certain level of consistency over time, psychological safety is delicate and dynamic. It requires consistent effort and deliberate action in order to build and maintain.

The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety

The Ladder of Vulnerability

The 4 Stages Behavior Guide

In this episode, Tim and Junior discuss how high-performing teams are formed and maintained. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams, and high-performing teams have patterns. Although there are many patterns, Tim and Junior will focus on a core four in this episode, including how high-performing teams (1) connect, how they (2) improve their skills, how they (3) view transparency and autonomy and how they (4) continuously seek innovation.

The benefits of improving your teams' performance (01:43) Remember, individuals rarely accomplish extraordinary feats alone. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams. As you improve your teams, you’ll get two things: Leverage and scale. You'll be able to multiply the force, scope, and magnitude of your organizational efforts.

How do high-performing teams connect? (13:55) High performing teams know each other. If your team doesn’t know each other, it’s not a high performing team, or at least it won’t be for very long, or when things get hard. Tim and Junior share the story of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and why a 3-day offsite was one of the most important things he has done as a CEO.

How do high-performing teams improve their skills? (26:33) High performing teams are constantly growing. When teams acknowledge that the knowledge they have today is not enough, they open themselves up to development. 

How do high-performing teams view transparency and autonomy? (38:10) High performing teams are focused on achievement based on transparent, meaningful metrics. Tim and Junior talk about Google's Project Aristotle and how they discovered that psychological safety is the #1 indicator of high-performance. 

How do high-performing teams chase innovation? (50:44) High performing teams believe in continuous improvement. They're proud but never satisfied. At the end of the day, challenger safety not just as challenging the organization, but challenging ourselves to do better and be better. 

Important Links
Show Notes

Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide

This special year in review episode of Culture by Design features hosts Tim and Junior interviewing members of the LeaderFactor team. They get unique perspectives on psychological safety trends and insights from 2023 based on interactions with clients. Guests include Jillian (Marketing), Ryan (Technology), Kelsea (Sales), and Alex (Client Success).

5 Key Moments

• Interest in psychological safety continues to grow exponentially based on search volume (0:04:21)
• Audiences want both a business case and practical guidance on implementing psychological safety (0:04:21)
• Individual contributors feel most vulnerable about expressing disagreement compared to managers (0:24:55)
• Successful organizations measure psychological safety as a baseline and track progress over time (0:37:58)
• Consistent effort over an appropriate time horizon is key for cultural transformation (0:58:56)

Important Links

• LeaderFactor Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide: https://leaderfactor.com/guide
• LeaderFactor Complete Guide to Psychological Safety: https://leaderfactor.com/resources/complete-guide-to-psychological-safety
• LeaderFactor Ladder of Vulnerability: https://leaderfactor.com/ladder

In this episode, Tim and Junior introduce five simple but powerful questions to align teams and get everyone on the same page. They explain why alignment is critical yet often neglected, review the high cost of misalignment, and provide a practical framework to drive shared understanding and commitment among team members.

5 Key Points

1. Alignment ensures strategies, goals, processes, and people are working together effectively (0:04:28). It is a matter of degree, not binary.
2. Misalignment compounds over time if unaddressed, risking failure (0:05:41). Assuming alignment without verifying is dangerous.
3. The 5 Alignment Questions framework verifies understanding, surfaces concerns, clarifies roles, anticipates needs, and checks commitment (0:25:37).
4. The questions invite participation through inquiry-based dialogue (0:27:29). Metrics alone don't ensure alignment.
5. Alignment requires continuous intervention as misalignment is the natural process (0:50:13). It must be maintained through regular cycles.

Links:

HBR Article: 5 Questions to Get Your Project Team on the Same Page
Show Notes: leaderfactor.com/podcast

In this episode of the podcast, Tim and Junior dive into the critical leadership skills of accountability and critical thinking. They discuss why these competencies are important for leaders and team members to develop, define what accountability and critical thinking mean, explain the vital interrelationship between accountability and critical thinking, and share thoughts on how we can effectively build these skills in ourselves while also transferring them to others. Tim and Junior emphasize that these are practical skill-building concepts that align with the four stages of psychological safety.

5 Key Points:

1. Accountability is being answerable for your behavior and actions (0:03:08). It's about taking ownership, being proactive and transparent, and being willing to learn from mistakes.
2. Critical thinking involves gathering and synthesizing information to inform your beliefs and behaviors (0:03:39). It's about evaluating information objectively to make sound judgments and decisions.
3. Accountability and critical thinking are interrelated - you need critical thinking to properly evaluate your performance and take full accountability (0:09:47).
4. As leaders, we must model accountability and critical thinking ourselves first before expecting it from others (0:34:13). We have to hold ourselves to high standards of performance and evaluation.
5. To transfer critical thinking, use open-ended questions, invite participation in solving problems, teach the inquiry process, and model critical thinking in your own work (0:25:51).

Links:

Show notes: https://www.leaderfactor.com/podcast

3 Levels of Accountability Episode: https://www.leaderfactor.com/podcast/the-coaching-and-accountability-matrix

In this episode, Tim and Junior conclude their series on emotional intelligence (EQ) by discussing practical ways to improve it. They explain that EQ is a learnable skill that requires deliberate practice focused on improving behaviors. The key is consistently gathering feedback, monitoring your progress, and making incremental improvements over time.

5 Key Takeaways with Timestamps

1. EQ is a learnable skill, not a fixed trait (0:02:46) - Unlike IQ which is relatively stable, EQ can be improved significantly through effort and practice over time.
2. Willingness and self-awareness are key to improvement (0:17:35) - You have to be willing to see your deficiencies clearly and put in the hard work to change your behavior.
3. Motivation comes from within (0:30:18) - No one can give you motivation, you have to find it in yourself by considering the costs of not improving.
4. You have to change your behavior (0:38:00) - You can't just think your way to better EQ, you have to deliberately practice new behaviors.
5. It's an ongoing cycle (0:49:13) - Continuously self-monitor, gather feedback, improve your behaviors, and repeat. EQ improves incrementally with consistency.

Important Links

• Show Notes: leaderfactor.com/podcast
• EQ Index Self-Assessment: https://www.leaderfactor.com/eqindex
• Feedback and Episode Requests: info@leaderfactor.com

In this episode, Tim and Junior delve into what they term the 'core logic'—a vital exploration of how EQ is not just an individual trait but the cornerstone of collective team intelligence. As they unpack the causal chain, they reveal how EQ is the linchpin in cultivating a safe space for vulnerability, ultimately steering both personal growth and organizational success. 

Key Points

1. The Importance of Assessing Emotional Intelligence [00:03:12]
   Junior underscores the importance of measuring emotional intelligence. He invites listeners to anticipate the launch of EQindex™ as a pivotal development opportunity and invites listeners to join the waitlist at www.leaderfactor.com/eqindex.
   
   
2. The Essence of EQ [00:07:45]
   EQ is defined as the ability to interact effectively with others. The discussion revolves around the nuances of 'effectiveness' and its significance in personal and professional realms.
   
   
3. Psychological Safety as Rewarded Vulnerability [00:12:30]
   The concept of psychological safety is explored as a cultural norm where vulnerability isn't just accepted; it's celebrated and seen as a strength.
   
   
4. Causal Relationship Between EQ and Success [00:18:55]
   A clear line is drawn connecting individual EQ to team psychological safety, and further to the tangible impacts on career progression and organizational achievement.
   
   
5. The Interplay of EQ and Organizational Culture [00:24:10]
   A hypothesis is presented that individual habits of emotional intelligence are the seeds from which team cultural norms grow, particularly through leadership influence.

Important Links

• Episode Series on Emotional Intelligence: https://www.leaderfactor.com/podcast/what-is-emotional-intelligence
• Leader Factor EQ Index: www.leaderfactor.com/eqindex
• Show Notes: leaderfactor.com/podcast
• Feedback and Topic Requests: info@leaderfactor.com

Your career, business, and closest relationships are only as good as your emotional intelligence. And your ability to improve your EQ is only as good as your ability to measure it.

Every effective EQ assessment has 5 things: (1) a valid, qualitative instrument, (2) multi-rater feedback, (3) real accountability mechanisms, (4) consideration of internal/external motivation, and (5) built-in forward momentum.

In this episode of The Leader Factor, hosts Tim and Junior dive into an EQindex™ self-assessment sample report to discuss what to look for when evaluating emotional intelligence instruments and how to use an EQ assessment in a coaching scenario. 

Watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ns1l3aQ37FI
Learn more about EQindex™: https://www.leaderfactor.com/eqindex
Download the episode resources: https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/measuring-eq-what-most-l-d-leaders-dont-realize 

In today's episode, Tim and Junior will continue our series on emotional intelligence. If you joined us last week for our kickoff of this series, you'll know that we answered the question, what is emotional intelligence? We shared our unique definition of emotional intelligence, which is the ability to interact effectively with other people. Today, we'll continue the discussion by answering the question, why is emotional intelligence central to competitive advantage? Be sure to check the show notes for links to all relevant resources related to this episode, including a link to learn about EQ Index, our proprietary EQ assessment that we will be making publicly available for individuals and teams early next year.

EQindex Assessment

This week we're kicking off a new series on emotional intelligence. Our approach to EQ is different. There’s the mainstream idea of EQ, and then there’s ours and this episode will give you an inside look into how you can make EQ practical and actionable for the individuals and teams you work with. 

• Emotional Navigation [0:06:00]: Tim delves into the core concepts of emotional intelligence, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and self-management in personal development and leadership.

• Emotional Intelligence and Relationships(0:18:00): The conversation shifts to social awareness and relationship management, highlighting how emotional intelligence enables us to understand and influence the emotions of others effectively.

• The Six Competency Model (0:24:30): Tim and Junior discuss the six competency model of EQindex™, which includes a comprehensive range of skills that underpin strong emotional intelligence and its application in leadership.

• EQindex™ Snapshot (0:31:35): They touch on the EQindex™ assessment tool, describing its efficiency in providing a concise and accurate picture of an individual's emotional intelligence in just 15 minutes.

• EQindex™ Evolution (0:37:22): The episode wraps up with exciting news about the upcoming release of the EQindex™

Join the waitlist for EQindex™ public launch: https://www.leaderfactor.com/eqindex

Here at LeaderFactor, we're all about helping our clients take the theories behind psychological safety and culture and turn them into actual practice inside their organizations. Our goal is to make our content and frameworks as actual as possible, and that's what this episode is all about. We've taken some recent favorite practical moments from Tim and Junior and compiled them together. We'll have three segments from a few different episodes, each ranging from 10-15 minutes.