Psychological Safety Isn’t Coddling: It’s Your Biggest Performance Advantage

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If you have ever said, "Suck it up, buttercup," to one of your employees—

I have too, because I have.

Right. But this episode's probably for anyone that says that habitually.

Yeah, probably.

I know the context at which you say it, and I know the context at which most other— If you've ever said, if you've ever even thought of that—

As a strategy.

This is strategy. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the Business Fix. Happy Tax Day.

I think that's— no, no, no, no. Corporate Tax Day was March 15th.

Yeah, no, I just— I find it so funny that, like, today's episode comes out on April 15th. And, uh, just, it's the bane of so many people's existence. And, uh, tomorrow there's some accountants that breathe a sigh of relief.

Um, not mine because he can't file our taxes until like, right, October, right?

Yeah, no, I, I get it. There's the— but there's a lot of tax, tax accountants out there that finally get to, to breathe again tomorrow. And for them, we say congratulations, good job, um, way to avoid the stroke this year.

Now show up at the networking events we've invited you to.

That you've neglected for the past 3 and a half months. Yeah, no, totally makes sense. And it's, once again, it's Ohio. It's not spring yet.

No, nope, it is not.

Spring-ish.

Yeah, we might get another blizzard.

Right, more springy days though. There's hope, there's hope. I don't look out my window, just start to cry.

No, when do you start to feel like spring is a thing?

May.

May. I trust that we're going to have decent-ish weather by the time we get to May. It still may be cold. Occasionally it might like spit some snow, but it's going to be fine.

I see. I look at it differently. I look forward to just the days, that 1 or 2 days that I can get a hold of and go out and do something. Yeah. Like, I mean, if we get a 50-degree day in January, if we get a 40-degree day in January, we're outside with shorts on. Yeah, I'm, I'm outside picking up sticks in the yard just to be like, I need fresh air.

Yes.

Um, we talked about this earlier, the city mouse, country mouse. Yeah, I, I need outdoors in order to survive. Um, I need to pick up sticks, I need to split wood, I need to do things that make me feel like I should have a beard.

Um, I'm like, oh, the weather's crappy, go do more work. That's kind of how I feel, right?

No, I'm super productive in the winter, super productive for the business in the winter. Uh, that being said, we are going to talk about psychological safety, which so many people think is coddling.

Yeah, fruit, fruit granola stuff. No, it's not.

It's not fruit, fruit granola stuff.

You gonna sing Kumbaya in a circle? What are you gonna do? No.

No, I, yeah, there's, I'm excited for this because I feel like so many people have a wrong perception of this.

They do.

That someone can feel psychologically safe even as you fire them.

Yes, psychological safety makes you money.

Yo.

That's the best way to put it. You wanna make more money? Pay attention.

I'm interested now. I was going to— I was going to— Yeah, yeah.

You're going to check out?

Yeah, I was going to— I was just going to leave. Be like, this is Chrissy's topic. I'm out of here. We get so many, especially like old school leaders that are like, hey, this is soft or coddling. To me, this is an operational thing. It's a requirement. Yeah. Especially as generationally we have seen how that has changed. I have seen old leaders try to apply the just buckle down and do it, the gruff suck-it-up buttercup attitude. And I see how that just makes people like instantly turn up two fingers and hightail it towards the door. To me, if your team doesn't feel safe to fail, they will kick the can down the road, they will hide stuff, and until eventually like, You— terrible example of this, but eventually you end up with a Challenger space shuttle. Yeah. Kind of what happened with that.

So, because nobody wants to tell anybody anything.

No, no, no, no, no. So we're going to talk about risk management as psychological safety instead of being foo-foo nice.

Yes.

Because people like, how is Josh going to talk about this?

Yeah. Well, or if you've ever sat in your organization and you're in a group of people and you've had to have to make a decision or something has come to light, you're like, why didn't anybody tell me this sooner? You don't have a psychologically safe organization.

Correct. The other way that I look at that is too, is can I say this out loud? If you can, yeah, granted there's certain things you shouldn't. If you can, then you've got a psychologically safe organization.

But we're not gonna—

we're gonna spend a whole episode on this. We're not stopping here. So When we hear that old school, like, hey, everyone got participation trophies. What's the HR emotional intelligence definition of this? And why is psychological safety, not coddling, a foundation? It's a necessity for high-performing teams.

Yeah, so I mean, it's really, it's not about making people feel comfortable. It's about making it safe to tell the truth. That's what psychological safety means. And there are 3 S's of high-performance culture, and they all center around psychological safety. So the first is speak up. So speak-up culture, this is the foundation. People feel able to raise concerns, they can admit mistakes, they can challenge ideas without the fear of backlash. When you're like, I don't understand why people won't tell me things, maybe if you said, I don't understand why people won't tell me things, a little bit different, they might.

If your response is to scream at them.

Yes.

Or if someone else in the company says, snitches get stitches. Yes. There's a problem.

Well, I think it's really simple. If your team can't speak up, your business can't speed up.

Ooh, I like that.

So we talk about S as speak up culture. If you want to go fast, you've got to be able to have people that are willing to pull on the line and say, hey, this isn't working. Hey, this may be an issue. Hey, we have a speed bump. Let's figure this out. The second S is strong standards. And this is, I think, where leaders get it right. Safety doesn't mean softness. Expectations are clear, accountability is consistent, and performance still matters in a psychologically safe environment, right? High safety with low standards is comfort. High safety with high standards is performance. So you have strong standards. So that's the other. So speak up culture, strong standards. And the last is scalable systems. And this is where business it becomes a business advantage because when people speak up and standards are clear, information flows faster, problems get solved earlier, and the company can actually grow. The faster truth travels, the faster the business performs.

There's a problem, you want to fix it.

Yes.

Not duct tape.

Not duct tape. So speak up culture, strong standards, scalable systems, that's what turns psychological safety from that soft concept into a performance driver. So if you have those things in your organization, you're going to model and you're going to have psychological safety. And if you don't want to talk about it as saying the word psychological safety, then how about you just change it to high performance culture? Because psychologically safe equals high performance because you're able to see the issues and you're able to navigate them in real time.

Yeah, no, and I like the high performance culture.

Yeah, just really, I mean, you can release it. I say psychological safety all the time and people, their eyes glaze over and it's like, oh, fine. You want to do a high performance culture? Yeah, I want that. Same damn thing. Fine.

I love when Chrissy gets slightly mad. And it's not directed at me.

It's not you. But there are moments where I just look, I'm like, okay, that's fine. We can use your words.

I totally get it. Because there's so many people that get so hung up on their perception of a specific word instead of what it actually is and or should be.

Yes.

And that's where they get that. Yeah, no, totally, totally get it. Yeah. What happens when people don't speak up? When they don't feel safe to speak up? Let's be honest, you did not start your business so you could spend your days buried in HR paperwork or Googling how to handle employee drama.

That's why I started Clarity HR. We're your fractional HR team, giving you real people, real support, and real solutions. Whether it's compliance headaches, hiring struggles, or just need needing someone to take the people stuff off your plate, we've got your back.

So if you're ready to stop using duct tape and hope as your HR strategy and finally get some peace of mind, head over to clarityhr.com.

That's clarityhr.com. Simple, clear, and here to help.

I'll give you a few seconds to go to the website while we get ready to get back to the show.

Disaster. Nothing. We have culture killers. We talked about that. Yes, we have the, you know, the meeting after the meeting.

Yes.

Yeah. You want to talk about the hidden costs of the meeting after the meeting?

Yeah, I saw that the other day with something, and I was— I saw a group meeting and then I saw 3 people meet and then I saw 2 other people meet outside afterwards. And it was funny. It wasn't— it was a play. It was in a public place.

Yeah.

And I saw the meeting and you can watch and— but you could tell it wasn't a friendly conversation like, hey, how's the wife and kids?

It was like closer together and just kind of—

right. It became very serious all of a sudden. I'm like, oh gosh, I saw this after the meeting. Yeah. And I saw like two of them and I'm like, oh, that's bad. No idea who any of these people are, but I could identify it from across the coffee shop.

And like that person, that probably that third person that was in the meeting that left, thought like everybody got along in the meeting and everything's fine.

Oh, 100%.

So because here's— it's an expensive pattern. Let me think about how to phrase it. When people don't feel safe to speak up in the room, they don't stop having opinions. They just move their opinion outside of the room.

Yes.

So I mean, it went to the next table, it went outside. So that's how we get the meeting after the meeting.

If they don't feel safe talking about it with you, they are still gonna talk about it with someone else.

Correct. But you have to think about this in 3 parts. You get silence, you get side conversations, and then you get a slowdown. Silence in the room is in the actual meeting, everyone nods, there's no pushback, there's no questions, there's no tension. We're like, does anybody else have anything else to say? And you're like, okay, good. And leaders walk out thinking, we have alignment.

Great meeting.

Everyone does what they're supposed to. But what you really have is compliance. You don't have commitment.

Yeah.

So people are doing it because. So because in that moment, people don't feel safe to disagree, they stop telling you what's actually true. And then that gets you the meeting after the meeting or the side conversation questions after. So the real conversation happens in the hallway, it happens in the Slack channel, or it happens in private in the text thread that you don't have.

Right. That work text thread that includes everyone except you. Yes.

Or when you're in the meeting and all of a sudden you hear a ding and you're like, what's going on? And there's one other person and they're texting and the other person's texting and they're texting. That won't work. Did you understand what they meant? We're not going— like, we're going to have to redo this. Like, they that I know you've been in those moments.

I love seeing it because you see the one person type and then 5 seconds later you see the other person look at their phone.

Yes.

And you're like—

My favorite's when that happens on a Zoom meeting.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

When you can see someone and then you're like, okay, which is, who's the person? And there's been times where I've been in different types of board meetings and different things and I'm like, I know there's a side conversation happening.

Right, right.

Or I'm the side conversation.

Right.

I'm just like, I need you to look at your phone. I need you to look at your phone. I need you to look at your phone. In part because there may be something in the agenda I need you to see first.

But I've seen it in so many cases because you see someone look at their phone and the person that receives the text— this is what I always love— the person that receives the text message isn't bright enough to wait like 45 seconds. No, they, they're just grabbing it.

They are straight up. And I know that there are people that think, well, at least they're talking to each other, so they're collaborating.

No, they're conspiring.

No, they're conspiring and they're fragmenting. And so that's directly tied to psychological safety. If people believe they could say it in the room without consequence, they would. I guarantee you, the person that sets the text thread in motion probably could have the conversation without an issue, but they don't feel like it's either worth it or they're gonna be heard. So forget it, I'm just gonna do this. I'm gonna text my work bestie.

I'm gonna send it to Bob or I'm gonna send it to Carolyn Accounting.

Yes, and then what these side conversations do is they create a slowdown across the system. And this is where cost really gets— it hits. Decisions get second-guessed, work gets redone, energy gets split, trust erodes, and instead of solving a problem in 10 minutes in a meeting, the organization spends 3 days debating it in pieces because they've had 4 different side conversations, a second meeting, an email, and then finally either it breaks and they have to talk about it again, or somebody finally says, you know, this isn't working, or I'm not gonna do the thing. And that's really, I mean, and the same thing happens. So you've got these things that happen with meetings. The same thing happens when there's a mistake, right? If people are afraid to bring up an issue early, they don't eliminate the problem, they're delaying it. And delayed problems, I mean, we know they get bigger, they get more expensive, they get harder to fix. And research from Harvard Business School shows that teams with low psychological safety are significantly less likely to report errors. When we talk about how did this issue happen on this product line or how did this car wind up with this major issue? Well, somebody didn't tell them that this was a problem that happened in engineering and engineering didn't want to tell the organization that was going to be making the part and it just cascades and that leads directly to worse performance and outcomes. So I mean, it's not about feelings. Psychological safety is not about your feelings. It is about flow of information.

Ooh, I like that.

Yeah.

I was going to sing the feeling song, but no.

No.

Okay.

No, don't do that. But here's what I'll tell you. Flow of information. If bad news can't travel fast, your business can't move fast.

I agree.

Yeah.

And bad news typically travels faster than good news.

Yes.

So if bad news can't travel fast, what do you think happens to good news?

Exactly. It dies. It dies. I mean, it does.

You're like, it dies.

Yeah. But you know what? Here's what I will say too about side conversations. Somebody actually has said this to me in the past. If your team won't tell you the truth in the room, they'll tell each other in the hallway. And that's where your culture starts to break. So, and it's the, yeah, Julie Wheeler in our organization, she says it all the time. If your team won't tell you the truth in the room, they're going to tell it to each other in the hallway. Which is why she hangs out in the hallway sometimes in other organizations to hear what's going on.

I've seen it in action. 100%. 100%. That's interesting. Interesting, interesting point. Yay, Julie.

Yeah, yeah, she's good.

So how do you bring in— how do you get people to that point where they can say, hey, I can say this in the room?

Yeah, where they— I mean, you want to get your management team to a space that thinks that leading with fear is— I mean, helping them understand that it's effective. Fear is a tool.

Sure.

It's a communication tool. So I think, I mean, you tell leaders or I tell leaders, your reaction to bad news determines whether you'll heal the next piece of bad news, how you react. And it also sets the model for everyone else. Again, we model what we mandate. So I don't try to soften the leader in like getting them to understand why fear's important. I try to show them the risk. So as a leader, when someone brings you something that you may not like or may say, hey, I don't think this will work, I realize that sometimes we think our babies our baby is beautiful, and sometimes our employees tell us our baby is ugly. That's okay. All right? You do not need to react emotionally, shut people down, or punish mistakes, right? You say, I mean, when somebody gives you feedback, what should you say, Josh, whether you agree or not?

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. You just say thank you. And I know you may be thinking other things, but just say thank you.

The first word may not be thank.

Yes, but it needs to audibly be thank.

Correct, it needs to come out as thank.

Because it enables your team to understand, okay, they're receiving information. And you can say, thank you. I'm not sure I understand that. Can you tell me more? And then as they explain, give them the opportunity to communicate with you. Understand that you may not be perfect. Your baby may have a blemish and that's okay. All right, so the things that we talk about, we have 3 behaviors. We pause before we react. Take a deep breath, say thank you. We ask instead of assume. Huge.

Big one.

Yes. And then we reward truth-telling even when it's uncomfortable, right? Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I'm sure that it probably wasn't easy for you to think about, like to talk about that with me.

Yep.

There have been a couple times in the last few months where we've had some issues at Clarity and we've had some performance issues that we've had to talk through. And it was my assistant who had hired someone and was managing that person. And she had to come to me and say, Chrissy, I don't know that this person is working out. Here's why. And for her to do that meant that she had to admit that maybe she didn't make the right hire. That's a huge step. That's huge in bravery. So I acknowledge, you know, I really appreciate that you came and told me this. Let's work on how we can build some of these things together and figure it out. But I mean, otherwise I'm saying everything's working. It's like, well, why isn't it working? Oh, because this person isn't working out. I mean, you've got to be able to— I mean, the goal is not perfection. The goal is visibility. When you're talking about high-performance culture, when you're talking about building high-performance culture, because we're not going to call it psychological safety because clearly it's a trigger for some of you. It's You gotta remember, high performance isn't about making people feel good. It's about making sure the right information gets to the right people at the right time so the business can perform, right?

100%.

Yeah.

100%.

If your team can't tell you the truth, you don't have a culture problem, you have a performance problem. It's performance.

Yes, it truly is.

Yes.

It's funny because I, defaulted on your 3 things, I combined them into 1 for me in order to make sure that I do the right thing each time.

Yes.

I had a question that I just defaulted to every single time. Mm-hmm. What do we need to do to fix this?

Yes.

Because if I was able to focus on that, I didn't go to the, you idiot.

No.

I didn't go to the, who screwed this up? It was just, what do we need to do to fix it? Because it's actually what matters. Mm-hmm. And yeah, it kept me from turning into the irate guy.

And especially when you're dealing with crisis, I do not care how we got here. We can autopsy this later. How do we move forward? That's always my question is it's like, thank you for telling me, how do we move forward? And let's work on this together. Because the other part too is sometimes when your team is coming to you and they're saying, hey, this won't work, if you haven't created an environment where they can communicate with you effectively, they may be coming to you when it's absolutely broken. And that is another point. Like, if they're coming to you and it's an abject failure, that is a huge thing where you need to say thank you. I know you may not want to say thank you, but you need to because it sets the precedent for the future.

100%. Because they're not going to try new things if they don't feel like they can fail.

No. And if you're pushing them to innovate, you're pushing them to do things that are uncomfortable, you need to give them 10 times more praise than you do in any other situation because they are learning and they are uncomfortable and they want to do the thing and do it well. And part of doing the thing and doing it well when we're innovating is that we are going to fail. So we want to fail fast. So you— and you can't let them— you— fast failure doesn't happen when you don't create an environment where they can talk about it. So yeah.

Agreed.

So we've talked about an emotional concept, Josh.

And I stayed along.

You did. So how do you take this emotional concept and actually operationalize it?

Turn it into something a robot like me can handle.

I didn't say that. How does this change the way the machine runs? How does high-performance culture also known as psychological safety, change the way the machine runs.

Like I said, I would always go back to how do we fix this? And to me, it was identifying what part of that operational procedure failed.

Yeah.

If you have, like, if this is something, if you're trying something new and it fails, just realize, hey, we're trying something new that failed. Great, we gotta try something different. If it's something that you do all the time, you should have an SOP for it. What failed in the SOP? Sometimes it's a person screwed up. Sometimes it's a person forgot something. I always look at that as an opportunity, as, hey, do we need to change our operations to adapt for this? Or was this just that someone dropped the ball once? I'm not going to— I'm not going to turn the company on its head for a mistake. No.

How did this happen?

Right. But if this is something that we start seeing a pattern out of, and I know you guys have heard me say 10,000 times, once is not a pattern. Twice is not a pattern. You got to have 3 or 4 times before it's a pattern. If you see a difference in pattern, then you got to realize, hey, do we change our SOPs to adapt for this? If you make it Bob screwed up, then once again, people are going to hide.

Yeah. Or who did this?

Right. If you focus on why did the system allow this to get screwed up, then people are willing to help you fix the machine.

It's a simple language shift.

100%. If someone screws up, they typically know it. They don't— they aren't oblivious to it. If they are oblivious to it, then your SOPs really need some work. If Bob screwed up, Bob knows Bob screwed up. If you have the right people, Bob wants to fix it. Bob doesn't need screamed at about it because Bob already feels bad enough about it. So work with Bob to fix it, to make sure, and to put in safeguards so it doesn't happen again. If Bob doesn't want to fix it and Bob kicks it down the road, it's time to find either A, someone besides Bob, or you have to look in the mirror and like, what is my culture set up for this?

Yeah.

Have I set this up as a kick the can down the road culture until finally Josh loses his ever-loving mind about it?

Yeah.

It should never get to that point.

Yeah. Or how did this get— well, we knew eventually you would come back and fix it. And if you're the hero in your business all the time, you've created that monster. That's your fault.

Yeah, 100%.

We've talked about that in the past.

Yeah, it's in business, if it happens, it is your fault. As the owner, as the leader, it's your fault. The other thing that I have always tried to do is I like to call it the operational red pull cord. It's like the one on your garage door. It's like the big red button on the assembly line.

Yeah.

Anyone they see an issue can push the big red button that says do not press. They are allowed to push the big red button.

Yes.

And you go to that person and say, hey, thank you. Like you said, thank you. What do we got? If you empower people to be able to stop the press, stop the line, you have empowered people to— first off, they're going to take that responsibility seriously because they realize they're creating a lot got to work for their co-workers and people around them. Something needs to be redone. Yeah, but they realize that, hey, they are also probably saving those people from a whole lot more work on down the road. So giving them that ability to pull the stop allows them to prevent that operational debt of, of a scaling mistake. Yeah, if you fix it now, it's only going to get worse. Um, the example that I want to give is a newspaper. If you notice a typo and you've already printed 500 500 issues, push the button. Yeah, because we don't want to notice the typo after we've printed 10,000.

No, and retractions are expensive.

Yeah. All— so yeah, that's the thing. And it's once, once again, it is making sure that you are doing this to, to say you can pull this cord in order to make sure everyone around you is successful. Yeah. It cannot be— once again, snitches get stitches. No, I have been in so many businesses where that's the case, where you're like, you are afraid to say something. Yeah, because, A, I mean, I've been in businesses where I've been screamed at.

Yes.

And I'm like, what? What is this doing? I get it. I screwed up. I cost us some money. I'm sorry. This is costing us much more money as you sit here and berate me instead of let's go fix this. Because now that you've berated me, I don't care what the hell you do. I'm not fixing it. No, go right ahead. Fix it yourself. You say it's such a problem. Well, it's your problem then.

Yeah.

On the backside of that, from a marketing standpoint, marketing is filled with misconceptions. It is filled with terrible expectations. Your marketing team has to be able to come to tell you it says, hey, We've spent 10 grand on this and it's not working. Stop spending money on it. Yeah. Many marketing companies won't tell you, hey, this isn't working.

No, they'll just take your money.

They just— they're, they're afraid of losing that. And then they're afraid of— yeah, you have to be able to say that if we aren't at this point, at this point in time, it's failed. We're done. Yeah. Marketing is not a, not a stick money in one end of the machine. It comes out as more money the opposite end of the machine. Doesn't work that way. You have to be willing to try new things. If you aren't, you end up with— I still remember when I was at the truck dealership, owner wanted to put up a billboard because that's what we'd always done. I was looking at geofencing. I wanted to take in every dealership around us that was our competitors. I wanted to show them our ad and we could. 8 times. We could show them our ad 8 times to 2 times the number of people that would see the billboard on 77 South and New Philadelphia. And the way I presented to the owner was, hey, if we try this, we're able to do this, and we can take $400 a month, soak it in diesel fuel in the parking lot, and light it on fire and still be ahead. His response was, no, I want the billboard. I want the billboard. Because once again, no failure, no failures allowed. And the billboard, first off, you don't know if it's a win.

No.

So it can't fail.

How many people say, I saw the billboard? No, they never.

No. But if you don't know if it fails, you can get away with that. The thing that the radical directness— is that the polite way to call it for me? Radical directness?

Yeah.

You are clear and kind. Clarity is kindness.

Yes, to be clear is to be kind.

I am radical directness.

It's very true.

Safety does not mean no tough talk.

No.

It means the team knows exactly where they stand so they don't have to guess. I have been in positions before where I had no idea where I stood with the company. I'm like, am I losing my job? Constantly thinking like you're going to lose your job is no way. First off, it's stressful as hell. Second off, I'm not going to put any effort in.

No, and if you keep thinking you're always going to lose it, you're gonna go find another one.

100%. 100%. And then people are like, hey, no one wants to work. Correct. No, no one wants to work in an environment where they have no idea where they stand. That directness also comes across as consistency. Um, I've worked for people where you, like, you had no idea what their answer was going to be. Um, if I went with someone, like, to tell someone, hey, we'd like to try this marketing initiative, we'd like to try this operational initiative, you knew what their answer was up front. You just needed their blessing.

Yeah.

I've worked for people where you had no idea what they were going to say. You could be like, I think they're in a good mood today. I'm going to go ask. And you would ask when they're in a good mood and they're like, what the hell are you talking about? You're like, oh, wrong, wrong. Good mood.

Yeah, wrong. Good mood.

With that, you remove the fear of the unknown.

Yeah.

No one wants to run into a dark room. People are willing to run into a room that has the lights on. No one wants to run into a dark room.

No.

If you have the lights on for your people, Guess what? They're going to be willing to run in there for you. The last thing that I want to talk about, because I've been in these situations and I'm sure that you have talked to people about these situations, is chill the hell out. It may be a big deal in the moment.

Yes.

It may be a big emotional deal for you.

Yeah.

Don't make it an emotional deal for your employees. No. Anger defaults to yelling. This is why I said earlier, I defaulted to when someone came to me with a problem, how do we fix it? Yeah, because if I approached it with that mindset, I wasn't allowed to get mad. No, because I instantly went to, let's fix this as soon as we can so it's not costing us more money. Let's fix this so it's not costing us more people. And if I was— if I go at it that direction, that person feels safe in coming to me, not like I'm going to turn into one of those inflatable used car things. Yeah, I was screaming. That all being said, yeah, some of the— one of the things that I kind of want to discuss with this, how do you do the messenger audit? So what happens when, like, the person that brings the bad news?

Yes.

Because sometimes it's the person that brings the bad news isn't necessarily the one that caused the bad news. No, I don't. Once again, snitches get stitches.

Yeah. They may just be the brave person who knows how to handle you. Which is sad.

And that's— that's— so how do you handle that person? Because the last thing that we want to do is yell. We don't want to kill the messenger.

Yeah.

We also don't want— like, we don't want our company to be set up so we only have one messenger.

Yes.

Because then snitches will get stitches. How do you audit for the messenger?

So I would say in Healthy, high-performing cultures, the messenger gets thanked. We say thank you. That's it. Because they're protecting the business. In unhealthy ones, they get blamed. And that's how issues get buried. And so, I mean, if you are going to punish the person that brings you bad news, congratulations, you have just trained everyone to hide their problems. And you're like, I don't think my business has any issues. And they are in the back with the dumpster fire, like just fanning the flames. Because they're afraid to freaking tell you.

They just close the lid on the dumpster.

And it's just, they're like, oh, I heard an explosion in the back. I wonder what that is. That is your business blowing up because you've created a culture where no one wants to tell you there's a problem. And then you're like, why didn't anybody tell me? Because of you. Because you've created this environment. If you're a small business owner navigating the world of marketing or looking to establish yourself as an industry expert, you already know the power of a great podcast.

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And now back to the show.

If you have ever said that statement, why, why didn't anyone tell me? Yeah, you already know the answer.

You know the answer. It's you. And there have been times where I've said that in my organs. I'm like, oh crap, I've got a problem. I got to fix this.

Yeah. There are certain things like that is a red flag to yourself. Why did anyone tell me?

It is.

Yeah.

Now, at some point, as you continue to grow your business, you build a high-performance culture. There may be a moment when you go, I had no idea that was an issue because your team members have already fixed it for you.

Correct.

And that's okay. You celebrate that when you find that out.

100%.

They're like, hey, we want to tell you something that happened, but we already fixed it.

Great.

Yeah. Have a party.

Yeah, not pizza party, but have a party. Have a party. What happens to innovation with fear?

Oh, um, thank you, Chrissy.

Chrissy is mourning innovation. Yeah, that was a mournful sound.

It is, because you can't have them in the same room.

No, you can't. You just can't.

No, because if people are afraid of being wrong, they are only going to bring you safe ideas. And safe ideas rarely move the needle.

Correct.

So innovation requires permission to try and fail and adjust. Fear creates compliance. Safety creates creativity.

Yeah, if people are allowed to fail. Now, what I always like to say with that is there should be guardrails on that.

Where— Absolutely.

Where is the failure point?

Yes.

When, when do we call time of death?

Or like, I mean, and it's one thing when you're having— if you're brainstorming, if you're like, when we talk about there are no bad ideas. Like, we want to generate a lot of things. Doesn't mean we're going to accept all the ideas, but let's throw everything out when we're thinking about what we want to talk about, what we want to innovate. You've got to give them permission to be creative.

I agree.

And not be judgy about it. And you can, I mean, like somebody says, hey, I think we should do this, and in your mind you're going, that's not going to work. Like, just say thank you for 5 freaking minutes. Let them talk about it because it may get you to a point. Now, I'm not saying that like, If you sell insurance and you're like, all of a sudden you're like, we're going to sell shoes. Like, that's maybe not a good idea. But—

So can I, because I made an Al Bundy reference before.

Yes. You're welcome.

The other thing that I see with that, and I love that, is I have had some amazing ideas come out of bad ideas. Yes. Because—

Some of my best have come from a disaster created.

Well, not only that, but someone has presented an idea to me. And I say, okay, thank you, and someone else presents something— it triggered an idea for someone else, it jumps, right? So the bad idea may eventually evolve into a good idea, but if you shoot it down like skeet shooting— yeah, where they're like, pull! No, every idea is gonna— like, you're never gonna get that innovation out of it, and you're just gonna stay stuck where you are.

No. There's a great example, and I can't remember the book that it was from, but it was like the fast food. I think it was McDonald's. They were in a room trying to innovate. They're, you know, wouldn't it be a great idea if someone could just drive up and hand somebody a bag of food that they just said they needed, but they never had to even talk to the drive-through? And at that point in time, you're like, well, that's absolutely stupid. How in the world would that ever happen? Hello, now that we have apps on our phones where we just type in exactly what we want, drive magically to the And they can tell exactly who we are because of the app on our phone and they shove the bag of food to us. Like, those are the things that happen. But I mean, only because somebody said, that's a really interesting idea.

Right.

Let's talk about this. They say, that's stupid. They went, oh, we don't know how that's going to work, but we can think about that.

This is a dumb idea. Let's talk about it enough till it becomes somewhat smart for us.

Yes. So you've got to give things room to breathe.

Something that I want to talk about is, I mean, I mean, I preach the success is a shared thing all the time as a core value. I feel, and I think you feel the same way, you need to share as much bad news as you do good news, or at least you need to share them in the same fashion.

Yeah.

When stuff goes sideways, share it.

Yes.

Don't call Bob out and be like, Bob screwed this up. We have— everyone knows, including Bob, we had a problem in X. We have taken care of it. Here's how we have fixed it, and here's what we are making— doing to make sure that it doesn't happen in the future. Go ahead and call that out. In the same sense, when Bob says, hey, we had this problem that I fixed, like you said, share that. Yeah, get that out there. Make sure that the people know about it. Um, what I don't like is when there's only good or only bad news. Once again, you're creating a culture of fluff.

Yes.

I've been in companies where they're like, hey, everything's great.

And I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's not.

Correct.

Pretty sure it's not.

I think— do you work here? Have you been in the building recently? Um, this is an absolute shit show.

Um, here, I'm gonna hand you a marshmallow. Let's go toast next to the dumpster.

I mean, like, right? Yes, yes. I, I see it all the time where people don't share— yeah, the, the bad news with the good news. You have to have some bad news in your company sometimes.

I think if you want people to act like owners, you have to trust them with the whole story of the organization. And you don't have to tell— you do not— do I have to tell them every nitty-gritty detail? No, but you have to give them enough to be able to understand what's going on.

I totally agree. So what, like, what should people take away from this today? To me, um, do you ever do the, uh, I screwed up meeting?

Yes, yes I do.

I usually do it in a way too where I'm like— I— it— they always— they always know I screwed up when I'm like, hey guys, I'm sorry, but We need to work on this. I did it. I did a bad, bad thing.

Yeah, I model what I mandate with people. So I admit when I, oh, they did it wrong.

Well, same thing. And I try and keep our employees and contractors all set up with like, here's what went right, here's what went wrong. So yeah, I do the I screwed up meeting.

Yeah, I say reward the truth, right? What you reward gets repeated. So make sure that honesty is one of the things that you reward so they repeat it.

Correct.

Yeah.

You don't need to— hey, Bob, glad you screwed that up.

Let's give him a pie.

No, thanks for coming to me, Bob. The other one that I like is check the telephone game is to make sure that like you are still hearing the full story. Yeah. If there is a dumpster fire out back that they put out, you should get the full story on like the— so many times I have seen it where this was a large dumpster fire, like a construction dumpster fire. And someone's like, hey, the garbage can caught on fire. Yeah. No, no, no, no, this was a dumpster fire.

Yeah.

So make sure that what you're hearing is actually what happened.

Yeah, I would say go to the source. So yes, you have middle managers that sometimes are the ones that are really talking to you in the leadership team, but there is a lot of benefit in walking the floor. So build a habit of hearing directly from the front lines to skip that layer occasionally, because clarity comes from proximity, not just reports.

Yeah, 100%. You have to be out there.

Yeah, yeah.

Talk to people. And that, that comes from that directness. Like, be out, like, be direct with the people, open that line of conversation with them so that way you can have that quick conversation instead of Bob feeling like he needs to butter you up for 20 minutes to say, hey, the dumpster's on fire.

And I would say normalize those hard conversations. You've got to make it clear that those conversations are part of how the team operates. It's not a sign that something's wrong, it's a sign of what is right in the organization.

Can you have too much psychological safety?

I don't think so. You can have too much comfort.

I like that.

Yeah.

No, I agree with that.

Yeah. High safety plus low standards equals comfort. High safety plus high standards equals performance. So I don't think you can ever have too much of it because when real safety is paired with standards, people feel safe, right? And that's—

I feel like, yeah, and I feel like psychological safety is just knowing what to expect. So much of what leadership is and what we talk about is expectations and setting those expectations. They know if something goes bad, they're going to— what's going to happen. As long as they feel comfortable with what's going to happen, great.

Yeah. What's the red flag word for a manager that they use to signal they're accidentally coddling instead of leading?

There's so many of them. It's fine. It's fine. And all I can think of is that meme of the dog drinking a beer.

Yes.

In that bar that is on fire.

Yeah.

Going, it's fine. Everything's fine. To me, that is that. That is it.

Yeah.

Now, granted, as business owners, whenever we talk to each other, how's things going? Oh, amazing.

Really? Yeah.

Amazing. Everyone's like, yeah, no, they're awesome. Got good stuff going on. Yeah, we're We're not sure how we're going to make payroll this week, but we're good. No. So to me, it's one thing, but don't let the external talk go internal.

Yeah.

If there's issues you need to talk about.

Yeah, talk about them.

Yeah. What's the red flag word for you? Is it everything's fine?

Yeah, it actually is. How's it going? It's going. They say it's fine or it's going. How's your day? It's a day. Those are the 3 where I'm like, The one when they say it's a day, I'm like, I want 3 words that describe this day. And then they'll usually look at me and I'm like, words? You give me your 3, I'll give you my 3. That breaks it. And so then they know, oh, I can tell her whatever.

Is it bad that usually all 3 of mine are a swear word?

Sometimes they are in the HR space too. So we're used to it. I kind of expect if one of them isn't, I'm like, Wow, how's it really that good of a day? Or what? It's that bad? We can't— you can't use— you can't use your favorite word.

So nice. I love it. I absolutely love it. That to me seems like a great place to end this week because we feel psychologically safe enough to talk about the shit show that sometimes is life. Do us a favor, go to businessfixpodcast.com. We would love to hear what you want to hear next. What are the problems in your business? You can stay anonymous if you don't want to admit it to other business owners, that's fine. Send it in the DMs. We'll, we'll, we'll keep it anonymous for you. That we're gonna talk about, I believe next week is when to coach, when to correct, and when to—

Oh yes. That's a fun HR topic.

It really is. It really is. Do us a favor. Take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.