Creating a Growth Mindset, Psychologically Safe Workplace Culture
What are the two key traits of a high performing teams and organizations? According to my Five Minutes With guest, leadership expert James Robbins, it’s focusing on nurturing a growth mindset and building a psychologically safe workplace culture.
And as you’ll hear (or read below), a growth mindset and psychologically safety go hand in hand. You really can’t have one without the other!
The Two Keys to a High-Performance Team: Growth Mindset and Psychological Safety
Michael Kerr: Hey everyone. Michael Kerr here with another five minutes with … In this case, I am with my dear old, old friend. Well, I don’t know how old he is, but we’ve been friends for a long time. James Robbins, James is an author, a speaker, and expert on people leadership. And James, I want to hear your thoughts. And what do you think are the two key drivers when it comes to leading people and specifically when it comes to building a high performing workplace culture? What are the two things leaders need to focus on?
James Robbins: Well, thanks, Mike. If you want to build a high performance leadership culture, honestly, there’s two foundational pieces you’ve got to bake into your culture. The first is a growth mindset. You want that to permeate your team so that people feel that sense of they can … Sorry. They can make mistakes. They can get feedback given to them and it’s not going to rock their world. So that’s the first one. And the second one is psychological safety. And that is of course where we’re trying to get the team to be a safe place psychologically so that people can take risks, they can be themselves, they can learn, there’s no dumb questions. And ultimately it’s safety challenge. So a lot of people talk about psychological safety being so important and it is, but it’s never going to be perfect. And that’s why you need the growth mindset baked in because that takes over when the psychological safety fails.
Michael Kerr: I love how you’re using the term baked in because that’s such a great image for what we need to do in our cultures. Kind of bake it in. It has to be part of the fiber, part of the fabric, part of the DNA. So I suspect, is there a chicken and egg relationship here between psychological safety and having a growth mindset?
James Robbins: I would first start with growth mindset. And the leaders got to set the example in that saying, “Hey, this is what I expect of the team. This is what it looks like. This is what it means for me. ” And whether you want to go back and look at some of the work by Carol Dweck or just even the concept of, “Hey, let’s always be in a learning mode so that criticism doesn’t destroy you, right? That it’s not an ego thing. It’s not personal. It’s just business.” And when you can get people there, then that does pave the way for psychological safety.
Michael Kerr: And is it fair to say a lot of this is just about normalizing this stuff, right? When we talk about feedback, for example, it’s like what Netflix I think does so well as a culture. It’s normalizing the idea of feedback. So it doesn’t become this weird thing you only give or receive once a year, once every few months. It’s a daily habit.
James Robbins: Yeah. So a great case study, if you’ve ever looked at Bridgewater and what Ray Dalio did there, where they, talking about baking into the culture, they talked about how if you have a critical thought or opinion, it is your onus to be open with that. In other words, you do not have the right to withhold that. And there’s a semi-famous story now about how Ray Dalia went and did a presentation. They were trying to close a client and apparently he didn’t do a very good job. And someone who was in the meeting, who wasn’t a direct report, but was even one layer down, sent him an email after and it said, “Ray, you deserve to D minus for that presentation.” And he said, “You rambled, you went on. We told you this was a must win. You obviously weren’t prepared. This can’t happen again.” So that kind of challenge only happens when you have created a psychologically safe culture.
And of course, Ray Dalio could have destroyed it in that moment by giving that guy trouble. But what he did was said, “Hey,” then he asked his senior team, “Hey, what do you guys think? ” And they all rated him low as well. So he went back to the original employee and said, “Thanks for the feedback. This is what I’m going to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” So when you have leaders leading like that, leading the way, then you can call people to follow you. At the end of the day, there is a followership to leadership, right? We’ve got to be able to say, “Hey, follow me, follow my example.”
Michael Kerr: Yeah. Oh, I love that story. I just read it recently somewhere. I’m trying to think where, but it’s such a great example. And I read a similar story to that where a CEO, not only did he get feedback from and very harsh, very honest feedback, he shared it with the entire organization to model that this is okay, that in fact, this is more than okay. We demand this of you. We want this of you. We need you to challenge ideas, to challenge perspectives, and yes, even challenge me as your CEO.
James Robbins: And this is where the growth mindset comes in, because if you look at the email that the employee sent, it could have been a lot more tactful. It could have been a lot more respectful. But at the same time, if it has to come exactly in the right way, then we’re going to lose out on so much. And so the growth mindset is able to overlook the imperfections and what’s really the message.
Michael Kerr: Awesome. So don’t always get hung up on being perfect. And that was fabulous. Thank you, James. We’re down to our five minutes. Thank you, everyone.
For more developing a growth mindset at work read this quick article: Leaders Leading Leaders
And for on creating safety and belonging at work: Ten Signs You Work in a Great Workplace Culture.
Questions? Comments? thoughts? Ideas? Please leave a comment or question below!
Known as “The Workplace Energizer!” Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame keynote speaker on workplace culture, workplace culture leadership, and humor in the workplace. Michael Kerr is the author of nine books, including Small Moments, Big Outcomes: How Leaders Create Cultures That Fuel Extraordinary Results. Michael is known as one of the most entertaining, humorous, and insightful keynote speakers on workplace culture and leadership.
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