Speak-Up Culture | Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky | 534

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Steven Shedletsky, which is why he goes by Shed, obviously. Yeah, exactly. We'll just go with Shed. Shed is an author of a new book. Which is Speak Up Culture, published by Page Two. He's been around the thought leadership space in terms of being a certified, one of the first certified folks in Simon Sinek's work, and he's with us today. So welcome aboard, Shad. Thank you for allowing me to butcher your name.

Oh, that's all good. It's a delight to be with you. It's when I go to events and the person who's about to introduce me says, you know, there's always that awkward moment where like, I know they're going to ask me how to pronounce my my last name? And my response is, I don't know. So Shedwyrks.

Yeah, why didn't they butcher that? You know, when I was gonna say, why didn't that get chopped when the family came into Ellis Island or wherever they came in like the rest of our name?

Who knows?

It's another story. So where I want to start with you is you are now, you know, an author, you've got your own body of work. But for a long time, you've been making a living delivering other folks' work. And we've seen this with people like Simon Sinek, Brené Brown, John Maxwell. It's a fairly common model of people fall in love with some work, somebody's IP and intellectual property. They have certain skills they can facilitate, they can teach, they could speak, et cetera. But then there's this thing burning inside that says, but I've got my own thing. So tell me how that sort of played out for you.

Yeah. I mean, Peter, I never thought I would do this. I mean, I love Simon's message. I thought I'd be doing that with him for the rest of my career. I still do some work with, with Simon Sinek, which is great. And being out in the world and having keynotes, people would come up to me and say, hey, when are you gonna write a book of your own? And my response would typically be, at least up until about a couple years ago, it was if and when I ever come across something worth writing about. I'm sure you and I have all come across keynote speakers who come out with books because they need something to sell on the back of the room. And I never wanted to write one of those books because I work with this prolific author who's so good at what he does that I didn't see a need to contribute anything further.

Well, on that note, I always look at it and say, oftentimes someone writes a book and you read it and you're like, you know what? That could have been a TED Talk. 18 minutes of that was kind of enough. The real beautiful books, my personal opinion, is the TED Talk where you're like, oh my God, give me more. That really needs to be a book because that was just barely the first nibble of a beautiful meal. And I think you can tell the difference when it's sort of, oh God, I need 60,000 words, 241 pages because it's a book thing.

So, yeah. Yes. And I mean, that's Simon's work in a nutshell. I mean, you know, the beauty of Simon's work is it's complex ideas simply organized and simply presented. In a way that can be understood and acted upon. And though Start with Why is quite repetitive, and Simon says he wrote, did that on purpose, it's like a good accordion where like, yeah, but like you open it up and there's fissures and there's pretty big ideas around culture and leadership. So anyway, I had this moment in the middle of the pandemic. It was the beginning of 2021. And like others, I was bored. And like others, I was contemplating, you know, is this it? And I made a conscious effort to start saying yes to more stuff that would come my way because I've been doing work with Simon for all these years, developed an amazing network of folks. And every now and then someone would reach out to me personally and say, hey, I have this event, can you come speak at it? And I would say, sure, we can do it through Simon's team and this is the cost. And there was one individual, this guy Barry Engelhart out of St. Louis who runs the Society of Human Resources Management out in St. Louis. And I told him, you know, we can do it through Simon, and this is the budget. And he said, that's my budget for all speakers. So we're not going to do that. And I went, okay. And so I hopped on a call with him and I said, well, let's do something else and I can do something and maybe I'll bring along my buddy Rich, Rich Deviney, who wrote the book The Attributes, which is a retired SEAL out of Virginia Beach, wrote this amazing book differentiating between don't just hire on skills, look at human characteristics and attributes. Adaptability, resilience, empathy, right? And so I said yes to my buddy Barry, fully banking on my friend Rich being available. So I get off the call with Barry, I call up my friend Rich, I say, hey, what are you doing October 2021 on this date? And he says, I'm busy. I'll be in Oklahoma giving a keynote. And I went, oops. I went, uh-oh. And so I went, all right, I'll do my own content, whatever that is. So that was, I said yes to that talk around March, April 2021. By June, July, I get the email from the organizing committee on a Friday night. And it said, we're so looking forward to your keynote in October. Please click this link and fill out your talk title and description. And I went, oh, right, right. And so it was just like, let me, let me push on that.

But even though you went, oh, this isn't total blank slate, you've had ideas rattling around in your head, but I think that part of it is In the business side of thought leadership, there's people that are front of the house delivering, people that are back in the house that are on the business. Then there are people that are creators and there are people that deliver other people's stuff. So it wasn't like, maybe it was, I'd be surprised. You didn't have any ideas or any original thoughts. You just didn't have them formatted, structured in a way that you could show to the world, this is what I'm gonna do and how I'm gonna do it. So that, that oh shit moment of give me your outline, you're like, ha ha ha ha ha. Haven't written it yet. Thought I would do it on the plane on my way there.

Well, so I think you're right in giving me more credit than perhaps I'm giving myself. There are two areas that really stood out in my work with Simon over the years and reading Adam Grant and Brené Brown and other thought leaders. And the two sort of ideas were— and Amy Edmondson. The two ideas were, ooh, this thing called psychological safety really matters. And yet it's misbranded. And the other was my role on Simon's team, even though I had an internal role and I was building product and I was leading our speakers and facilitators, the lens and, and the, the number one priority I always saw in my role, and I always made sure it was in my job title and job description, was living our message from the inside out of that company.

And so, well, you have to, you know, and, and I think that's important, irregardless of your thought leadership, is you have to eat your own dog food. Every touchpoint of the organization needs to be representative of whatever it is. You know, if you're talking about vulnerability, if you're talking about resilience, whatever your IP is, at every step along the way, you better represent that.

Yes. And I've seen far too many prolific organizations who talk a good talk on the outside, but you go into their internal operations and it's toxic.

Well, and I also think that there's a piece of it is why does someone get, go from being intrigued by, to curious by, to obsessed with an idea? And some of it, and this is just my theory, I don't have the data to back it up, is it's probably something that started in therapy, you know, or What, you know, if somebody's working on trust, maybe they have trust issues. If somebody's working on, you know, being overwhelmed in the workplace, maybe they're like, whatever it is, there's usually an origin story, whether they're aware of it or not, that is deeply personal and internal.

My dear friend Leanne Davey, who wrote the book The Good Fight, she did my book launch with me in Toronto. She co-facilitated or emceed. It was brilliant. And she said business books are written for two reasons. One reason is it's something that you're just so good at. Yeah. You have to get it out of you. Yeah. You have to get it out of you, or everyone keeps asking you like, how do you have conflict conversations? Like, you're so good at this, right? And then there's the other, which Leanne says has been hers, which is she's so awful at it.

Exactly.

That she needed to write the book. Herself, right? So I think, and I think, you know, those aren't binary. I think there's a spectrum. But yeah, I mean, the origin—

So how did you come up with the IP and the thought leadership that's now living in Speak Up Culture? And what are you doing? What else are you doing with it? Because obviously, you're not living large on royalties.

Yet. Yeah. Yeah. So So first and foremost, you know, my origin story with this is I grew up with a stutter. So I know what it feels like to be voiceless. And that, that would, you know, talk about the thing that I unearthed in therapy. It's that, you know, and I'm such a big believer that the very things we can overcome, especially as young people, can be the things that can become our strengths and our purpose.

So, and that's awesome, because who would have thought that, you know, a younger Shed the Stutterer is going to make a living being a professional speaker, communicator, et cetera. So kudos to you. I mean, that's—

thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for sharing that.

Yeah. I also married a speech therapist, which was a great choice.

Well, cheaper than paying for the services, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, for my kids and nieces and nephews, yes. So, I mean, that's one. The other is just my experience, 15-plus years in a career and seeing different cultures, both teams I've been part of, clients that I've served. And seeing the stark difference between those that have a speak-up culture, and it's marvelous both for relationships and results, and then the very opposite and how much effort is wasted in organizations that don't have a speak-up culture.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So when you use a term like speak up culture, yeah, right. So I love it, but I think that you probably have What is your definition of what a speak-up culture is and why is it better than one that doesn't look like that?

So a speak-up culture is an environment in which people feel it is both psychologically safe and worth it to speak up, to share ideas, opinions, feedback, concerns, disagreements, especially with someone more senior to them, and admit mistake. And they do all of that believing it will lead to improvement not being ignored and not being punished. Okay.

So stay there for a second because I believe, just my belief, one, one dude's belief that there are elements of any high quality thought leadership that are evergreen. So irregardless of did the stock market go up 1,000 points? Are we in a recession? What's going on in Ukraine? Like, irregardless of what's going on, economic cycles, there is something evergreen on what you're talking about with speak up culture, right? Then there are also things that happen where for whatever reason, something becomes more in vogue or we're talking about it. So take, let's take psychological safety as a perfect example. I believe pre-COVID, we rarely had that conversation or what it, it, it really, you know, psychological safety meant someone, you know, wasn't going postal in your office. The only training we had is if some, wow, if Shed came into work and kept, you know, with the news saying, I think I'm gonna end my life. Okay. Well, we had systems to respond to that. But other than extreme, that wasn't a term or a thing that we talked about. I mean, I grew up in a check your baggage at the door environment in the workplace in the '80s when I got out of college, it was like nobody wanted to hear your crap. It's like we own you from 9 to 5 or 9 to 7. Do your job, get the hell out and like, okay, go tomorrow, go grab a beer or 7 and deal with your own shit, right? Like it's different today. So I think My point in that is right now the world is more open to these conversations than it was 3 to 5 years ago. So how do you respond to that?

I fully agree. And I mean, I call it the Starbucks problem, which is when Starbucks— That's boring. What's that? That's boring.

Well, that's boring.

Thank you. Let me add on. So part of the issue though is it's in our human experience where the pendulum swings too far.

Exactly right.

Right. So Starbucks is popular. There's a Starbucks on every block, and then it scales back. So I agree because I'm not sure if you're aware, there is this thing called the COVID-19 pandemic where everyone was struggling. And so all of a sudden this thing called empathy and compassion and psychological space and mental health, really, it was already, you know, there was already a movement going in that direction. But we had this equalizing, or I don't want to say equalizing because some folks hurt more than others socioeconomically, but everyone suffered to some degree during the pandemic.

Well, and everyone involuntarily had to cope with change, whatever that meant, from extreme to minor to inconvenience to financial duress. Yes.

And I mean, Project Aristotle 2004 puts psychological safety as the number one determinant. So this is well known. So let me talk about the pendulum swing. I also want to talk about why I called it speak-up culture. So I don't love the term psychological safety. Neither does Amy Edmondson. She fully admits she uses the term, and her term is team psychological safety because it's about a team, not just about an individual. But she herself, she uses the term because there was a reviewer comment of one of her early papers who said, oh, you're talking about psychological safety. To which her response was, oh, all right. If that's what's gonna get me published, let's go with that. Like, it's not a good term.

It's like a bad nickname that you got stuck with or something like that. It just stuck.

Yeah, totally. So it's not sexy. It doesn't describe what it is. So I leaned into good old Zig Ziglar, people don't buy drills, they buy holes. So if the drill is psychological safety, well then the hole is a speak-up culture. That's what you get, right? So let's talk about that. Now, as I dug into it, it's not only psychological safety, it's also impact. So the two questions we ask ourselves before we speak up, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, is, is it safe and is it worth it? Because sometimes it's safe, but it's not, it's not going to lead to any change and apathy sets in. Sometimes it isn't safe, but it's the impact of it is so high. The stakes are so high, like an Ed Pearson at Boeing. He didn't feel safe to speak up. Or a Kimberly Young-McCleer at the US Coast Guard. She spoke up for her own survival around her—

But I see a matrix in that of when it's safe and important enough, because you don't want to be the boy that cried wolf. So it's got to be important enough and safe enough. If not, bad things happen.

Yes. And then, so to your point, it's not just psychological safety that creates a speak-up culture. It's also high accountability. Okay, so, so one of the issues that I think we're getting in with a newer generation in the workforce that, that grew up with mental health days, which is wonderful, but it isn't an excuse to have zero accountability. So yeah, exactly. I just met with a, a major US-based airline who's all run by people of your generation, most of whom are—

oh, hold on, that just Ooh, ow, ow. Okay.

Well, you said you called yourself out as to when you came, you know, started in your career. So that's what I was basing that comment off of, Peter. Come on, come on.

No, no, no. So thank God you didn't okay boomer me because I'm a young fat boomer.

So also Gen Xers and former military male, you know, and to be an effective professional and military, you need to have this attribute card called compartmentalization, which is when you show up and do the job and when bullets are firing, you can't say, I don't feel psychologically safe because then you are dead and the people around you are dead. Right now, Maslow kicks in.

The psychological safety is much higher up the pyramid than bullets flying by my ear, obviously. Yes. Yes.

Right. Yes. Now for the health and wellbeing long-term and to avoid PTSD, we do need to have a place to outlet that. But one of the challenges I think older generations or folks who are better at compartmentalization struggle with those who, who, so for example, there, there's one pilot who's in training and who's bowed out because they need space for their mental health, to which the leader of this pilot training said, that's good and fine, and we support you. But like, what's going on? What do you need? Okay. You need to have some conversations. How long do you think those conversations are going to take? 4 days. Great. Can we expect to have you back at training because we're still operating a business here by Friday? And it's like, yeah, I agree to that. Wonderful. How about let's check, let's check in Thursday midday, just, just, just to ensure you're, you know, so psychological safety isn't without accountability. It's also around boundaries and, and expectations. And I'm far— I love the word agreements rather than accountabilities. I think accountabilities are assigned. Agreements can be shared and mutual.

Well, let me just add to that though. I think one of the secrets to seeing if your thought leadership is great from an enterprise application standpoint is, does it work at an individual level? So psychological safety primarily The marketing around that language has been, ooh, for me, the individual, I, me, me, me want to feel psychologically safe, which is lovely. That's cool. But then the next is team. Like, wow, how cool would it be to be on a team where psychological safety is part of who we are so that we can share, we can be more creative, more innovative, take more risk, be more vulnerable, whatever. And then the ultimate, the vision is, is really, wow, what would it look like if this organization really embraced it. And I think too many thought leaders sort of stop at the individual and sort of play with the team and don't think big enough because where the money is, quite frankly, as a thought leader, is getting an organization to say, we want to be a psychologically safe organization, then go to someone like you and say, hey, Shad, what do you got? Right? Besides the damn book, right? Like, what do you got to help us go through this transformation over the next 18, 24 months so that everyone from retail frontline to senior leadership to whatever feels it, and how would we know it and how would we measure it and what's the business impact?

And one of the challenges is as a human being and a human species, we aren't good at scale. So yeah, this is why it's really easy to think about ourselves. It's very easy to think about the people around us. That's human. But in the same way, Peter Winick, when folks ask me, name an organization who's doing this well, I go, no, I'm not gonna name an organization who's doing this well, because even if they're doing it well today, talk to me in 3 years. You know, Microsoft under Bill Gates, dorky, but quite visionary. Ballmer, toxic and short-term mindset, finite mindset. And now under Satya Nadella, quite infinite-minded. You know, they talk about learn-it-all rather than a know-it-all culture. Like, I like what I'm hearing from Microsoft now.

Even that is a— you're painting with a broad brush. I'm sure even under Bomber, there were probably pockets of exceptions, specific leaders that had psychologically safe environments.

Totally. As well as pockets of the current Microsoft where people don't feel psychologically safe because no organization or leaders are perfect. But absolutely. And yeah, I didn't—

Oops, sorry, go ahead.

Well, I, I didn't answer your question on the work that, that we do, which I'm happy to very, very quickly. So, I mean, I'm a small outfit. It's me, it's one employee and, and some, and some contractors. So I describe our work as high, medium, low touch. So high touch is show up live. That's keynotes, workshops, coaching. Medium touch is the same, but pants are optional. So doing this, and then low touch, which is where scale really lives, which is you know, we don't yet, but we're working on an assessment, online courses, all the things. So yeah, and I'm really big on I don't need to do it all on my own. Where there's partnership, there's partnership, and let's do it together. Why not?

Got it. Cool. Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time and transparency and sharing your story. Good stuff. Wish you the best.

Thank you so much, Peter. Cheers.

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