Bernadette Boas talks with a consultant about why employees need to see real examples of safety before they'll speak up at work. B Corporations use strict metrics on people, profit, and planet to embed safety into structure. Even without certification, any company can adopt these practices.
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I think there's a lot of really bold people that stay quiet because when I think about safety, I think about safety in my body, safety in my nervous system. Do I have a, a previous example showing me that this is okay, that the lion's not gonna come eat me, right? That I can step out and not have a huge consequence on myself and my life. And a lot of times we've actually seen the opposite where you've maybe tested it out, or you've seen somebody try it out and they got fired, or they got in trouble, or they got put on plan, or whatever that is. So you probably have had more examples in your life of it actually not being safe, that the stakes are really high, and you have less examples of, wow, I saw that person cry in the meeting and nobody shamed her or him. In fact, they got curious about it. Or I saw that person asked for that raise and they were met with curiosity, or whatever those examples are, right? We, we need proof that it's going to be okay, and that can come from other people's experiences and that can come from our own. But it comes back to like, does my nervous system go into like fight or flight? Why? Because I don't know, I don't feel sure enough how this going to go.
Yeah. No, I love that.
I love that.
Now, on all those elements that you said, if they were put into place, do you find any organizations that create those type of environments even based on goals that they establish for their leaders that they actually define, they put metrics to, they, uh, you know, assess it. They report on it. They really kind of hold them accountable to them to ensure this shift, whether it be at a team level or the culture itself. Have you ever found that?
I think B corporations are great examples of that. Now, it's not like I've been involved in a lot of B corporations to be like, oh, every one of them does this, but they have very strict metrics to meet that show that you care about the people, profit, and the planet. And so, and it's very challenging to get a B Corp certification. And in fact, you're held to these pretty high metrics over and over and over again to prove that you put your money where your mouth is, for lack of better saying. And so I think that type of organization is designed to be set up that way. So I worked with Beautycounter for about 9 years as a consultant for them. And that was my first experience of a B Corporation. And I loved it. I loved it. I loved the true compassion for the people working for the company. I love the compassion for the environment. I love how thoughtful their decisions were from like, you know, every detail to like the brand of tampons they put in the bathroom for our conferences were like, oh, this is helping women in third world countries and this is why we chose them. It was like, Every single detail showed that they cared. And so it wasn't just, oh, we have these values on our website or these, you know, these values that we were told to make as part of our brand kit. It was like a real embodiment of what they stood for.
Yeah. And for those watching or listening that may not understand what B corporations are.
Mm-hmm. I'm not an expert on that, but essentially it is a business with a triple bottom line. There's a, a rigid certification process that a corporation has to go through in order to be part of that. So like Patagonia, Ben Jerry's. Oh my gosh. Well, Beautycounter was one of, there's so many, but if you'd go to like B, I think it's bcorporations.com, you can see a list of them.
And I wanna put that in our, uh, uh, show notes for everyone because I think that's impor— that would be a great read and great education, uh, for any, any, you know, leader within a business. And, you know, take out what you might not be going for the certification, but you can take out some elements of it that you can then feel safe about possibly implementing in your, in your own culture. So let's talk about the, the safety, the psychological safety of, you know, employees in setting up that type of culture. What does that take? And/or what, what is the biggest impact that you find when there isn't that psychological safety?
I'm sure you've felt that in your life, of what that— what the impact is. I think everyone, if we asked anybody listening, tell me a time where you haven't felt safe, everyone would have an answer, and probably more than one. So I think what it takes is— this is going to oversimplify it, but it takes vulnerability, and it takes, especially from a
