While “psychological safety” has become somewhat of a buzzword in management circles, it’s a concept that forward-thinking leaders dismiss at their own peril. “I cannot think of a place where lower psychological safety would help you in any way,” says Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson, known for her pioneering research on the topic. “Lower psychological safety would make you take fewer risks, but not necessarily better risks. So having anxiety about what other people think of you isn't a great state for optimal performance.” In this bonus episode of The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer, Edmondson, along with WD-40 CEO Steve Brass, joins hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss how to create a culture of psychological safety—and why it matters. This session was held November 13, 2023 as part of the Culture XChange series sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation and is being broadcast publicly for the first time. Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” You can learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/. *The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*
While “psychological safety” has become somewhat of a buzzword in management circles, it’s a concept that forward-thinking leaders dismiss at their own peril.
“I cannot think of a place where lower psychological safety would help you in any way,” says Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson, known for her pioneering research on the topic. “Lower psychological safety would make you take fewer risks, but not necessarily better risks. So having anxiety about what other people think of you isn't a great state for optimal performance.”
In this bonus episode of The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer, Edmondson, along with WD-40 CEO Steve Brass, joins hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss how to create a culture of psychological safety—and why it matters. This session was held November 13, 2023 as part of the Culture XChange series sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation and is being broadcast publicly for the first time.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Sameer: Hey, Jenny. So, how's life treating you in the Dean's suite?
[00:00:31] Jenny: Well, it's exciting and busy, and I can say I'm learning a lot about leadership every day. That's why I'm so excited to share today's episode on how to create a workplace that is psychologically safe for everyone. It may sound like a buzzword, but I think this episode will make it clear why understanding the role of psychological safety is a critical part of every leader's toolkit.
[00:00:56] Sameer: For sure. And we were lucky enough to host the foremost academic expert on this topic, Amy Edmondson of Harvard, last fall. She joined us, along with WD-40 CEO Steve Brass, for one of our culture exchange events. Let's hear it.
[00:01:13] Jenny: Hello, everyone. It's our pleasure to welcome you to Berkley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation's Culture Exchange, today focused on Cultivating Psychological Safety and Learning from Failure. We are Jenny Chapman, that's me, and Sameer Srivastava, who you'll hear from in a moment, co-founders and co-directors of BCC, and your hosts for today's event.
As you may know, our Culture Exchange series is designed to hone on specific tools and strategies from both an academic and industry standpoint that can enhance employee engagement and organizational performance. Our topic today, linking psychological safety and learning cultures, is one that many organizations are finding increasingly important, and we're happy to share this discussion with you.
[00:02:03] Sameer: Thank you, Jenny.
So, let me begin with the introduction of Amy Edmondson. And it's a real pleasure for me to introduce her because she is, as many of you know, a world-renowned scholar who has written seven books, has over 60 research papers, and a global following.
Her groundbreaking work on psychological safety and organizational excellence has been codified in several books, including The Fearless Organization, and her latest book continues on some of the same threads. It's called The Right, kind of, Wrong, The Science of Failing Well. It's already shortlisted for the 2023 Financial Times Best Business Book, and think you will all find it to be really fascinating read.
Amy has been ranked as one of the world's top management thinkers, and on a personal note, I also am very grateful to Amy because When I was considering a career change to leave my job in industry go pursue a PhD, she was very encouraging of that choice when I made it. And she also helped provide access to a company that served as a site for my dissertation research.
So, Amy, welcome to our session today.
[00:03:09] Jenny: I'm delighted to welcome Steve Brass. Steve is the CEO of WD40, and he is an astute, empathic, and perceptive leader who I've seen up close. Steve and I met when he took one of our CEO courses at Berkeley Executive Education.
And I had a chance to learn about WD-40's distinctive culture, which is built on articulated values, servant leadership, and a focus on collaboration. Steve himself as a leader is also a champion of other cultural hallmarks at WD-40, including prioritizing learning moments over blame and fueling continuous improvement and growth.
This commitment to values and learning has accelerated WD40's success and enabled the company to thrive despite challenges like the pandemic, the great resignation. Today, we're so honored to have Steve share with us his leadership insights and the secrets behind WD40's successful corporate culture.
Steve and Amy's insights. And experiences will provide a deeply informed perspective on how psychological safety can contribute to inclusive and innovative workplaces. And we look forward to hearing from them. So, with that, thank you both for joining us and let's kick off the session. I have a first question.
I'm guessing most people can relate to this question, which is how do you define psychological safety in the workplace? And I'll pass that to both of you.
[00:04:35] Amy: Okay, so I define it as belief that you can take interpersonal risks at work. By that, I mean speaking up with a question, a concern, a dissenting view, a wild idea, you know, these are all behaviors that at work can feel interpersonally risky, And yet, if you have the confidence that that's how we roll, that's expected, that's okay around here, then I would call that psychological safety.
[00:05:03] Steve: Just to add to that, in terms of, kind of, re reading the book over the weekend, the right, kind of, wrong, you know, this, kind of, creating a, a matter of creating an environment where employees feel safe to share ideas and collaborate, and they aren't afraid to, share a contrarian point of view is something I took away from reading the book again.
I was struck by, kind of, the importance of active listening as a leadership skill, in terms of encouraging psychological safety. And also, the importance of, kind of, transparent communication and something about, you know, trying, you know, communicating both the good and the bad, right? So, not only sharing success stories, but also what's not going so well.
And I think, as a leader, the importance of, kind of, you know, that showing vulnerability or, or as Amy would call it in her book, fallibility, I think was the term you used, and showing that you're, kind of, human and that we all make mistakes, right? And I think I liked as well the, kind of, reference to the importance of speaking up to a small thing before it becomes a big thing.
Because that's the way that, kind of, things tend to, kind of, escalate. and I guess one of the key messages for me in terms of just rereading the book again, was this, this concept of reframing failure as learning. That's a really, really important thing, really, right? In terms of something, in terms of talking about failures, it's, like, how do we reframe this whole unpleasant area of failure as actual learning?
[00:06:30] Sameer: So, Amy, I want to turn to you next and talk a little bit about your research. And obviously, over a period of time, you've been built out a whole body of research on psychological safety and its impact for organizational outcomes. If you were to summarize some of the key themes that have come out of your research, what would some of those be?
[00:06:49] Amy: I would say that the key themes on their psychological safety research is its connection with learning. and that's what got me interested in it in the first place, that, that learning in some ways, in a. In a hierarchical organization is an unnatural act, but there are conditions, there are contexts in which you absolutely feel it's possible to take the interpersonal risks of learning.
So, probably the most important initial and consistent observation across studies is that psychological safety varies substantially, significantly across groups within the same organization. So, maybe even at WD-40, although occasionally you'll find an organization that has a, sort of, such a strong learning-oriented culture that, that those differences melt away, but more often than not, you will find organizations where some teams have psychological safety and others don't.
Now, famously, Google did a study called Project Aristotle, probably almost 10 years ago now. Where they found that psychological safety was the most significant effective predictor of team performance, which tells us two things. One, that psychological safety is an enabler of high performing teams, but it also tells us more subtly.
That those teams had to vary in psychological safety. And so, if you were to say, how much psychological safety does Google have at that moment? It would have been a nonsensical question because what we saw was that it was variable. That is, for me, a consistent finding across industries, across companies.
It tends to vary and it tends to predict all sorts of behaviors that can be roughly categorized as learning, learning behaviors, you know, asking for help, quality improvement, and it's highly, in many, many studies, predictive of team performance. So, there's that, kind of, the nutshell. 1 of my favorite meta-analyses, which was done by Stuart Bunderson at Washington University and his student, Brent Santer was that psychological safety across, you know, 5000 teams and many different studies was consistently associated with team performance.
But the effect size, you know, the impact of psychological safety on performance was greater the more the work required creativity, problem solving, you know, the more it was knowledge intensive, which is a very elegant result because it says, you know, you can get away with a lack of psychological safety if the work is really routine or mundane or doesn't require a lot of problem solving or collaboration.
But if it does, then that climate factor comes into play in a very big way.
[00:09:28] Jenny: Yeah, super interesting. Steve, picking up on that learning culture, and Amy's talking about learning subcultures even, how have you cultivated a learning culture at WD-40, like, what strategies worked well? What challenges did you encounter along the way? What does this look like, kind of, on the ground?
[00:09:49] Steve: I think, I mean, good to start with the W40 company. So, I mean, learning's in our DNA, right? So, it goes all the way back to the scientists in San Diego who, you know, tried 39 times to find a formula for a water displacement and on the 40 product and on the 40th attempt, they struck gold and found water displacement formula 40, which is WD-40, right?
And so, I'm personally very grateful I didn't stop at 39 because WD 39 would have been much harder to market around the world. And we espouse a culture of the learning moment, and you mentioned it in your introduction, and it's one way we create psychological safety and Your language is very, very important and it's much, much easier to, you know, go to your boss or coach as we call them at WD-40 company and say, I had a learning moment versus I made a mistake, right?
And so, the power of language, a learning moment is part of our culture and a learning moment we define as a positive or negative outcome of any situation that needs to be openly and freely shared to benefit all people in the organization. So, that aspect of the language, the kind of psychological safety that creates, you know. And it's much, much easier to, kind of, go and talk about a learning moment versus I screwed up boss. Right. So, that's the first thing I think. I think the second, kind of, element, and this is something that our previous CEO, Gary Ridge, over his 25-year tenure as CEO of the company really instilled, which is the culture of, I'm not here to, uh, to mark your paper. I'm here to help you get an A. And just to think about that, right. And so, I'm here as your coach to help you win. I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to help you win. And, you know, coaching should happen before you go in the field of play. All right.
And so, if you can make that happen as a leader and coach your people right in advance versus judging them posthumously for stuff they've done either wrong or right. I think that is very freeing from a cultural point of view. I think in terms of the, some of the things we've done well recently, as I think of the more recent years, particularly throughout the pandemic, the formation of global squads.
We're a global learning organization. We're a global business. We operate in 176 countries around the world. And so, you know, that's, kind of, our competitive advantage, right? We're up against local competition. And so, how we learn faster globally in order to grow faster as a business is a big part of who we are.
And so, its creation of these global squads. And it started with digital and e-commerce, actually just before the pandemic and then the pandemic accelerated all of those learnings. And the reason I mentioned this is because I think in the digital world, in terms of this culture of experimentation that Amy refers to in her book, it really lends itself very, very well to.
I mean, for quite a, you know, legacy, traditional company, like, us, right, to really experiment very quickly and really learn much quicker, you know, you can get immediate, you can do A, B testing online, you can, you know, test, learn, scale up, refine in one country, and then take those learnings to another country, you can measure your return on investment almost immediately with digital marketing.
And so, I think that's one key area where we, as a business, have really learned to experiment in a much, much faster way. And so, that's been very, very powerful. challenges perhaps we've had along the way, you know, avoiding, kind of, having a box checking mentality, you know, we put, you know, X people through a Y program and, kind of, checking boxes is, kind of, not a good thing.
And even the timing of programs, right? And so, if you're teaching, for example. Interview skills, right? I mean, you want to be teaching it on demand at the moment of need versus just putting it out there at a time when it's perhaps irrelevant to people. And finally, I think one of the biggest, kind of, barriers I've seen has been siloed behavior.
This is all about interdependence as an organization and collaboration. And so, siloed behavior is the, the enemy of that.
[00:13:43] Sameer: Lots of great insights there, Steve. I especially like the idea of, I'm not here to mark your paper, but rather to help you get an A, just a really nice management philosophy. I think that we can all take something away from. So, Amy, I wanted to turn back to you and talk a little bit about your new book.
Very exciting. and in the book, you talk about different types of failure. And in particular, you introduce this notion of three different kinds of failure. Intelligent failures, basic failures, and complex failures. Can you unpack those terms for us? What do they mean? And how do they relate to creating a psychologically safe environment?
[00:14:16] Amy: Great. Sure. So, An intelligent failure, and by the way, that's the right, kind of, wrong. That's the only of the three types that is, you know, genuinely unavoidable and good news. I shouldn't say unavoidable. Unpreventable. It is avoidable, and I'll try to explain the difference in a moment. So, an intelligent failure is the undesired result of a thoughtful foray into new territory.
So, make no mistake, you were disappointed. It's something, something happened. The event was not what you had hoped. But what makes it intelligent? Well, first of all, it's in new territory. So, there really wasn't a playbook that you could rely on. It's in pursuit of a goal. You're not just messing around.
Maybe it's a, you know, new, a new market you're trying to conquer, a new customer account you're trying to get. And You have a hypothesis, or you've done enough homework to have good reason to believe that what you're about to try will work. And it's as small as possible that the setback is no bigger than it has to be to get you the new knowledge that you badly need.
And that's what makes it intelligent. If you violate any 1 of those criteria. Then you're at least I'm not saying it's shameful or anything like that, but you're at least at risk of having been wasteful on some way. So, more simply, an intelligent failure is a hypothesis that was wrong as the result of a hypothesis that was wrong.
That can be in a scientific laboratory. That can be in search of a life partner, you know, that can be in the R&D department of your company. that can be in the sales context, right? There are many, many places where those 4 criteria uphold. Those, even though they're disappointing, they're failures. We must learn to celebrate them, right?
We must learn to welcome them because as I said, they're not preventable because nobody has a crystal ball, but they are avoidable. And the way you avoid them is you just don't take risks. And that of course creates a different, kind of, risk, right? The risk of stagnation or failure to innovate and so on.
So, those we must learn to welcome with heart and soul and, you know, have companies that are doing those at a, at a nice clip. Basic failures are Undesired outcomes that have a single cause, usually human error. There is knowledge. There is a protocol. There is a procedure safety or otherwise.
And for whatever reason, a mistake was made and it led to the bad outcome. And then complex failures are essentially the perfect storms. The, the failures that happen as a result of many little things that add up. Where any 1 of the factors on its own would not have caused the failure, but the confluence of them come together and lead to some bad outcomes.
Now, in all 3 of these definitions, you can have small intelligent failures. You can have larger intelligent failures, no larger than it has to be, but, you know, a clinical trial that doesn't pan out that doesn't produce the, the efficacy you would hope for that new drug. Is very large in the sense that a lot of money and people hours went into it, but it's no larger than it has to be if it's a well-run trial.
And, you know, a bad blind date would be an example of a, of a small intelligent failure. You can have big basic failures. You can have small basic failures. So, it's, it has nothing to do with size.
[00:17:30] Jenny: That's a super useful categorization because I suppose if you can, you shoot for those, advise categories, um, but also you can solve for them a little bit better once they're, kind of, categorized and helps.
It helps you understand probably the root causes or the emergence of the failure. So, that's super helpful. Let me ask Steve another question. And this, kind of, Yeah. Continues the thought of what psychological safety looks like on the ground. What are the measurable benefits you've observed as a result of implementing a learning culture, both in terms of business performance and employee attitudes, employee satisfaction? Can you give us some specific examples?
[00:18:16] Steve: Sure. So, I think when you look at, you know, our, our employee engagements, survey scores were about 93 percent consistently, which is pretty strong. We're pretty proud of that. We have very low turnover rates, about 8%. And that hasn't changed much, actually, all the way through the pandemic and the great resignation.
So, I think because of the culture that we've created, people come to our company, they, they learn and grow, and they stick around. We're offering… we have a really strong internal development focus. We promote about 70% of leadership positions are promoted from within. And so, that's, kind of, the contract, you know, it's, like, if you come to WD-40 company and you perform well, you learn and grow, you know, you will develop as the organization grows.
When I look at our, kind of, market cap in terms of business performance, it's tripled over the past years. And whereas none of that proves causality, right? It's definitely correlated. Yeah, it's all correlated, you know, our learning culture and the fact that we go out of our way to create this safe environment for people to be who they are, create a culture of psychological safety, a culture of belonging.
Right? ourselves a tribe. It's a place where people belong, right? and a real, this real strong ethos of internal development. So, they're all parts of this successful long-term approach. We have a long term focus as well, and I think that's why people, you know, resonate with the vision and mission that we have and the purpose of the organization, and they choose to stay.
And so, this 8-year, 10-year, and many folks, I've been with the business 32 years, and there are many senior leaders in the business who stick around for quite a long time and that leads to real consistency of execution over time. And that's very powerful.
[00:19:55] Sameer: Great. So, let me turn to a question that's really for both of you and you can take it whatever sequence you'd like, as you've talked to different organizations about psychological safety, what would you say is the biggest misconception about what it actually means?
And the second is, for firms that are trying to implement a culture of psychological safety, what's the biggest challenge or roadblock that they're likely to encounter?
[00:20:18] Amy: Let me take the 1st 1 and let Steve take the 2nd 1, although we can, we can go back and forth, but I just wanted to comment on this idea of the correlation that Steve describes, even though I think an even better word is interconnected.
I mean, the, the phenomena you describe of, I think, really the central emphasis on this is a place where people can learn and grow. To me, that almost says it all. And, you know, if you can pull that off, then all sorts of other good things come out of that psychological safety, but retention, belonging, you know, promotions, so I'm comfortable calling that causal.
Because you have a theory, right? You have a theory that you've worked on for a long time and it pans out, right? If it were just, sort of, you’re like us, we're stepping back and we're looking at it and we're going, okay, I'm going to call it causal. We maybe don't have a right to do so, but when you were part of creating it, then I think you have a right to call it causal because it was by design, right?
Thoughtful design. So, and that is a nice lead into, I'd say the biggest misconception, but it's followed. By a close 2nd, the biggest misconception is that psychological safety is about being nice, you know, or such that everybody will just feel comfortable and happy all the time. I mean, I don't know what planet that is true on ever, right? So, it's actually a funny way. It's almost the opposite, right? Because psychological safety is actually permission. To engage in things that will be uncomfortable because of what's at stake, right? Because of the, you know, our passion for the customer or our care for the patients or what have you, right?
That it's, essentially a recognition that we have to feel a little uncomfortable and we have to engage in things. You can't learn and grow without feeling uncomfortable. And so, so psychological safety describes an environment where that discomfort is possible and we accept it because we know it's serving us and our constituents.
Probably the 2nd, 1 is that it's, sort of, 1 in the same as job security. And so, there was a, kind of, funny story. About a year and a bit ago when Google had maybe first, you know, massive layoffs in a long time, and there was a story widely reported where, you know, an employee in an all-hands meeting said, you know, you promised us psychological safety. We don't have psychological safety because, you know, look, these layoffs, that's proof where I'm thinking. Wait a minute. You've just stood up in front of everybody and expressed your dissenting view. Sorry. That's psychological safety right there. It's not a guarantee of lifetime employment. It's a recognition that your voice can be heard.
[00:23:04] Sameer: Thank you. And Steve, do you want to take the implementation question?
[00:23:06] Steve: Yeah, I'll take some barriers, right? And so, I think it starts with that as we, kind of, started off the, uh, just fear of failure. It's a massive barrier, right? And so, getting comfortable with, you know, what's the term you use in your book? You're dispassionately analyzing failure, right? And just taking it apart and having processes. And so, you know, that fear of failure is a big barrier. I think that, um, you know, leaders themselves can be a barrier, right? If you're an ego-driven leader and all you want to do is get your opinion out there the earliest possible kind of juncture in a discussion, that's not going to create psychological safety, right?
You have to… you, kind of, have to, you know, to use the old Simon Sinek adage, you know, leaders speak last, right? And so, you have to facilitate the conversation and seek all those points of view. I think that, you know, hierarchies and centralized decision making are, kind of, the enemy of psychological safety and learning as well.
You know, you need to cut through those, kind of, barriers and just get to, you know, communication and that's why I think one of the reasons these squads for us have been so successful, as I look back. yeah, so there's some of the ones I put in.
[00:24:08] Amy: Maybe say a little more about the squads for people who don't know about them.
[00:24:13] Steve: So, in terms of squads for us, so our squads are global squads and they are charged. So, the e commerce squad, we have a reason our CEO, the head of our culture squad is on there. Tricia. Hello, Tricia. So, we have a global squads, we form them. And so, I mean, let's take the culture squad as another one, right?
So, they have a global remit. We did our global culture survey with Jenny a little while back, following the attendance of the CEO program at Berkeley and Haas, gave us a whole lot of insights. And so, we put together a squad. So, on my first day as CEO, that's, I put out the survey. And then we had people volunteer to be part of the squad and we had about 7 percent of the population of the company applied to be part of the, the culture squad.
There's such a passion around the importance of maintaining and building, you know, on our culture going forward. And so. The squad reports into me directly, and they're in the business of making recommendation as to how, you know, from the outputs of the culture survey, how we're going to become an even more adaptive and innovative organization going forward.
And so, they're looking at processes in terms of how we solicit, points of view and creative ideas, and then how we experiment more quickly as an organization. And how we close our learning loops and accelerate our learning loops. So, it's wonderful. It's not Steve going out there and telling the employee base what I think we need to change.
It's our employees themselves making recommendations to senior leadership, some of which have already been adopted.
[00:25:39] Jenny: Yeah, let me add my hello to Tricia. It's nice to see you out there and her squad has done really remarkable work. I would just add that of the great features about the culture squad is that it's cross functional and cross geography.
So, it's really a. A cross section of the organization, and I think it enables these, you know, a broad perspective to be included, but also really interesting ideas to, sort of, percolate up. And it's remarkable, Tricia, what you and the squad have accomplished so far. I've really enjoyed watching that. So, let me just extend the conversation a little bit further.
We're talking, kind of, implicitly about. Leading an organization that. That embraces psychological safety. And so, let's get a little bit more explicit about that. I mean, what specific strategies or behaviors can leaders adopt to promote a more psychologically safe environment? I heard Steve say, you know, you're not the one who's always talking in the room.
[00:26:43] Amy: what are some other ideas For encouraging psychological safety and do these strategies have to be adapted when teams are physically dispersed, either geographically or now in the new world of, hybrid work, Well, I'll, I'll start, which is, you know, to me, the answer is, sort of, team by team and I don't mean, you know, completely different formula team by team, but that it's.
Even if it can be top-down, or at least led and encouraged and espoused and celebrated at the top, the actual work of building psychological safety is, team by team. It's in the context of where work is done. and then that takes me to where the, the, sort of, the fundamental strategy is to lead with the work, right? Lead with the nature of the work. Let's get on the same page about what it is this team, or this unit, or this branch is responsible for, you know, maybe customer service, or it might be a new product development, or, you know, whatever it is, like, taking care of patients. Let's get super clear on, even though it's obvious what we're doing, but let's talk about what it means.
And why doing this, whatever this is, well, is going to require us to lean in with honesty, right? It's going to require us to take the risks of asking for help when we're in over our head or sharing a wild idea. So, it's, like, creating the case in people's minds for why this matters and then letting them figure out.
the best ways to support each other in this inherently hard thing of truth telling, right? And, and taking interpersonal risk and engaging in those kinds of learning behaviors. And it will take slightly different forms in, you know, frontline, production teams versus, executive teams.
[00:28:29] Jenny: What did the kids say these days? Double click on that? Because, you know, to me, that's the key to culture change too, is conducting it in the context of the work that you're already doing. People talk about culture change being so ethereal and difficult and broad. it really shouldn't be an add on. It should be done in the context of the work that you're already doing. And I'm hearing you say the same thing about emphasizing psychological safety.
[00:28:54] Amy: not offline, it's inline, online, right? Exactly. And it's, and it's really about, for culture, just the same stuff, right? It's just more local. it's changing the norms, changing the behaviors, changing the taken for granted assumptions about how we show up with each other, you know, and what, good looks, like, you know, good looks, like, curious, good looks, like, I'm not sure, can you help me out here? Good doesn't look, like, oh, I'm perfect all the time. I never make a mistake.
[00:29:22] Jenny: Right. Great. Steve, you're the one who's been in the hot seat as an actual leader, what have you learned, not a thought leader, what have you learned about cultivating a learning organization as a leader?
[00:29:36] Steve: So, I think as a leader, it starts with your behavior, right?
So, people, you know, observe. Yeah, what you do, not what you say. So, it's critical for, you know, leaders to walk the talk, right? I think that's the first thing, right? In terms of not just talk the talk, but also walk the talk. And then it's vulnerability or fallibility, right? Just, just demonstrate, you know, tell stories of, you know, publicly about some of the learning moments you've, uh, you've had, right?
So, this concept of, you know, admitting when you don't know, that's very, very powerful as well, right? And if Gary Ridge used to say in my previous CEO that, you know, the, the most underused words in the English language are, I don't know, right?
Those are your most powerful words. And so, if you can learn to use Say that as a CEO or a senior leader, I think it's very, very powerful. And then if you can combine it with what do you think, right, you're going even further, and inviting a perspective in. So, I think that's important. I mean, you come down down to, you know, it's the whole system, isn't it, right, the whole, you know, top level, distributed leadership are the ones that execute this and their behaviors, right. In terms of the organization, the hardware, the culture of the organization and your vision values and mission. Right. And so, all of those things play into it. So. The way you, you know, what you reward, what you recognize as an organization.
So, one of my, kind of, awards, which Tricia actually won this year, uh, is the contrarian, right? So, somebody who puts forward contrarian points of view and you, you publicly applaud those. And, the points of view that change the way we do business. And that's really, really powerful. It's really hard and it takes moral courage. And so, we absolutely want to applaud that kind of behavior in our company.
[00:31:15] Amy: what did she do to earn this very prestigious award?
[00:31:18] Steve: Just leading the culture squad and raising some very uncomfortable issues. These are some, she's challenging some of our culturally held beliefs. This organization's held for, you know, 30, 40 years, and that's not an easy thing to do.
[00:31:30] Amy: No. That's great.
[00:31:31] Sameer: Great. Let me ask the last question I have relates to intelligent risk taking and the extent to which it might reduce the level of accountability that people feel if you create psychological safety around that. Is there a risk of lost accountability? And if so, how do you mitigate against that risk?
[00:31:48] Amy: I don't think so, but, you know, this may depend on how you define accountability and, I'll go back to basics here and I define accountability as the ability and willingness to take account for what happened. And that includes, you know, to try to fully understand how I contributed to a failure, you know, some, kind of, mishap, some, kind of, shortcoming, by what I did, by what I didn't do, but also an appreciation of the other factors, right?
A clear-eyed look at what happened and why. And I think that ability to be scientific about it is enhanced. With psychological safety, right? about being transparent so that we're all on the same page about what's really true. it's certainly not a question of excusing sloppiness or inappropriate conduct, you know, or mailing it in even, right?
Sort of, not trying, not doing your best, which I think, which is, With a greater accountability, I mean, greater psychological safety, there's more of a clear line of sight on what's really going on. Encouraging risk taking is something that we need in order to innovate and keep, you Creating the companies that will thrive tomorrow, you need to be able to make your case for why this was a sensible risk, right?
This is not about encouraging just wild eyed speculation and large bets that we can't afford. Right? about first you do your homework and you say, you know, this just might work. And of course, that's a team sport. You never, we don't want lone rangers out on their own, sort of, making wild eyed bets. We want, we want people to run it by someone who has a different perspective, run it by someone with maybe a different area of expertise or or different market experience.
And then think clearly about what metrics you'll be looking at and when you'll be able to declare it working or not working and sell and cut your losses when the time comes and celebrate the learning.
[00:33:49] Steve: Steve, anything to add on that question? for my part, I mean, two things. I mean, the first thing W40 could be, we're a values driven organization and we're really clear what our values are and they help guide behavior. So, that's one thing I would say.
And we also have a really clear set of boundaries in the organization and they are crystal clear to people and the sandbox people can play with, you know, where can you innovate to, where do you push it to? It's really important to know that and have clear expectations about your boundaries.
And so, I think that acts as guardrails and, you know, creativity loves constraints, right? And a lot of people get that, even within our, kind of, organizations, like, oh, you know, we have all these rules. It's actually that sets you free. Having really clear constraints actually sets you free to innovate within those, those constraints.
So, that's the first thing. The second thing that I really picked up, one of the key learnings, and I have Amy's quote on my office desk now, um, It's about assumptions. And her definition of assumptions is taken for granted beliefs that feel, like, facts. I absolutely love that definition. And so, I think actually for my own, it's been an important learning for me.
I read Amy's book a few months ago. for me in my first, kind of, year as CEO, you know, there's been a couple of occasions where, where I've made assumptions that were pretty big assumptions, but I didn't check and I went public and we made guidance based on some assumptions we made around, kind of, you know, uh, volume loss.
I was, kind of, a little bit arrogant about it's like, oh, you know, we've got a really strong brand. And even though we've increased our prices by, you know, a substantial amount, we're not going to lose volume because we're WD-40 and people love our brand. Well, I was wrong, right? And so, um, Yeah, if I'd have checked my assumptions and invited a contrarian opinion, you know, what if the opposite happens?
You know, play advocate and conducting that kind of pre-mortem, right, versus a post mortem. That's a really powerful skill that I think is one of the key things that I've picked up from this book.
[00:35:51] Sameer: Great. So, let's turn to the audience questions. And the first question comes from an audience member who is a candidate to win our very own Contrarian Award with this question.
Let me tell you what the question is, which is, listening to both of you speaking, one could walk away with the belief that psychological safety is a panacea or an unalloyed good. but tell us what are, are there any downsides or unintended consequences of psychological safety?
[00:36:17] Amy: Well, I don't, I honestly, I don't think that's the same question, right?
Panacea, in a sense for me, suggests that, and I absolutely strongly agree this is a problem and not true. Panacea suggests that it's just psychological safety is a cure all and, you know, all you need is to work on the psychological safety and then, you know, like, great performance will happen.
Psychological safety is, like, taking off the brakes, but you still need fuel for the car, right? You still need values and a compelling purpose. And, you know, a reason to get out of bed in the morning because you really care. You really want to do well on this project on this task, what have you.
and psychological safety will not give you that motivation. it's more about freeing you up, right? To tell the truth, to take risks. So, you know, I think that's, sort of, part one. It's not the whole show. We need interpersonal skills, we need motivation, we need purpose, you know, all that good stuff.
But, I'm obviously biased, but I actually think it is an unalloyed good. I cannot think of a place where lower psychological safety would help you in any way, right? Because it's not that lower psychological safety would make you take, you know, it would make you take fewer risks, but not necessarily better risks.
Right? So, having anxiety about what other people think of you, isn't a great state for optimal performance. Now, it's not that psychological safety can go, you know, up and up and up and up and up and never stop. I think there's just, first of all, it's not the default, but it's about having enough confidence.
That you can lean in to do the work rather than worry and tie yourself in knots about, you know, what will so and so think if I say that.
[00:37:59] Sameer: Steve, any thoughts on this question?
[00:38:01] Steve: Yeah, I'd just add, so, I think with this, world, this uncertain, volatile, fast changing world of ours, you know, it's changing from, kind of, you know, the survival of the fittest from this to the survival of the fittest to learn.
And psychological safety absolutely underpins learning, right? There's no question. and I look at our own journey, it's about more experimentation, and quicker learning loops and how we drive quicker learning to grow faster. And so, I mean, for me, it absolutely, it's centrally underpins it.
Learning and accelerates learning. I think the other point is to go back to Amy's earlier point about this isn't about being soft, right? Again, our old CEO, previous CEO, Gary Ridge, used to talk about, you know, demonstrating care and candor and the secrets in the end. You have to be tough with people, right?
Psychological safety does not mean being soft. It means, you know, you absolutely hold people accountable, for behaviors and for performance.
[00:39:03] Jenny: Yeah, great insights. We have a question from the now famous Tricia, which, which I'll read and it seems like we've touched on this point a little bit already. So, maybe this is more of a summary statement of some of the things that the two of you have covered, but, you know, how would, you know, if psychological safety is increasing in your organization?
How would you track, let's say, progress on increasing psychological safety? What would you see?
[00:39:33] Amy: Well, I'll jump in with the, there's a formal, you know, there's a formal answer, which is in your employee surveys, you can have a measure. The chances are, you already have a measure that's at least close enough to it. and that measure would have items, like, it's, you know, if you make a mistake around here, it's held against you, or it's easy to say what's on my mind, or it's easy to, um, ask for help if I need it, or things like that.
My more informal response is, check your ratios. And by that, I don't mean your, you know, financial statements. I mean, what's the ratio of red to green, like, how much of what you hear as a manager, let's say, on a weekly basis is, you know, got a problem versus, hey, all is well, you know, or I need help or, you know, no, no problem here or, you know, failure versus success.
And if it's. Too much green. it will feel good, I promise, but it may not be good, right? It may indicate, because you're operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world, so it, it may be that things are going wrong and you're just not hearing about it. So, at least get curious about whether that's the possibility.
[00:40:40] Jenny: That's funny. I was just at a faculty meeting and there was so much red.
[00:40:46] Amy: A lot of psychological safety.
[00:40:49] Jenny: Yeah. Steve, how about you?
[00:40:51] Steve: Um, and so I think it's, kind of, the same point, you know, initially, which is about having data, right?
So, like, you know, Jenny, if I go back to your class that, uh, on the CEO program on culture, right? So, having data and having proper analysis helps you demystify culture. Yeah, the culture is held up as this, kind of, you know, a wonderful, special thing that you can't touch, but as we've, kind of, got into, you know, implementing the learnings from your class, it's really, really, really useful.
And so, when I think about our global culture survey and surveys since then, our D, E, I, and B survey we've run, right? And so, we measure on that for psychological safety. And so, overall, as a company, you're in, like, the 80%, you know, people feel they can, they can challenge their boss. They can challenge the status quo.
But the data shows you that actually it's not true of all groups. And so, we have much lower, significantly lower incidents with females, ethnic minorities, and younger people. And so, that then gives you some where to start, right? In terms of, okay, now we want to go and work on programs to develop psychological safety with those groups.
And then you can measure and put KPIs in for what progress you intend to make over time. And so, for me, it absolutely starts with demystifying culture and putting a suite of analytics in.
[00:42:08] Sameer: Great. So, I think we have time for maybe one more audience question, and there's one that I want to pose to both of you, because we've talked a lot about the role of leaders in cultivating climate of psychological safety, but This question asker, puts herself or himself in the position of the subordinate, who is trying to influence upward.
And say, as a leader, who is not creating a particularly psychologically safe environment, what are some things that one can do when working upwards in a hierarchy to try to create more psychological safety?
[00:42:38] Amy: You know, I like to say a problem above you become a problem below you, right? So, in fact, you know, the most important thing is to focus on that, which you can control, and not worry too much about what you believe other people should be doing differently, but can you influence?
Yes. And I think the best way to influence a manager, or even, you know, and other people on a team you're on. Is through genuine inquiry, right? It's, through showing up with such a curious and energized stance on God. What are people seeing, you know, what if you bring that energy and that curiosity to the work itself, um.
It's contagious, it's infectious. And so, just do what you can to show up as a learner. I mean, as a learner, as a grower, you can do that, it will have either a small or a large impact on others. And particularly if that learning spirit is focused on, you know, the shared work that all of us do care about.
[00:43:42] Steve: Thank you, Amy. Steve? I think the way we're going in as an organization, and I mentioned the squads, really, kind of, developing into a, kind of, a series of network groups, or I won't use the term squads. And so, I think the world is, He's, kind of, headed that way. And so, based on projects, right, people who are passionate, like, the culture squad, like, the e-commerce and digital squads, they're getting together with a common purpose.
They're given, you know, accountability, they're given funds and decision rights, and they don't go anywhere near a leader. Let's make it happen, right? And so, I think that's a new world we're operating in. And so, this concept of the networked organization, we have a whole, kind of, new ethos of leaders coming through the organization who just act that way.
They love this feeling of belonging that, within a global organization, being part of a network without, kind of, hierarchies really interesting and exciting for them. And I think that's a really powerful.
[00:44:35] Jenny: That's great. Thank you so much. So, we want to thank everyone for joining us and for your excellent questions.
I want to thank Amy and Steve for being such experts on this topic that they have crystallized what they know and can offer it in, really tangible, actionable, bites. So, I really appreciate that, that knowledge transfer. Thank you so, so very much.