1: “You know that pitcher?”
The question was asked by one of the coaches of the Johnson City (Tennessee) Cardinals, the St. Louis Cardinals major league baseball team’s lowest-level minor-league club.
The Cardinals are “renowned for their culture and their ability to develop young players into big-league talent,” Daniel Coyle writes in his book The Culture Code. [Note: as a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, it pains me to share that sentence. But it’s true…]
The minor team was riding on a bus to their next game. The coach pointed to the television on which the big-league team was playing.
“Three years ago,” he observed, “he was sitting right in that seat where you are.”
The players looked up at the television at Trevor Rosenthal, one of the team’s dominant young stars who had pitched in the prior year’s World Series.
“That’s all he said,” Daniel writes. It wasn’t much—it took about five seconds to deliver.
“But it was powerful because it connected the dots between where the players were and where they were headed.”
2: Yesterday, we looked at three tactics we, as leaders, can utilize to create psychological safety, a critical component of world-class workplace cultures.
Tactic one: Spotlight our Fallibility Early On
Tactic two: Capitalize on Threshold Moments
Tactic three: Avoid Giving Sandwich Feedback
“Building safety isn’t the kind of skill you can learn in a robotic, paint-by-numbers sort of way,” Daniel notes. “It’s a fluid, improvisational skill—sort of like learning to pass a soccer ball to a teammate during a game.”
What the Cardinals’ coach did above is an example of Tactic Four: Preview Future Connection. Daniel notes that this tactic involves “sneak-previewing future relationships, “making small but telling connections between now and a vision of the future.
3: Here are eight additional actions we can take to create a great place to work.
Tactic five: Overcommunicate our Listening
“When I visited the successful cultures,” Daniel writes, “I kept seeing the same expression on the faces of listeners. It looked like this: head tilted slightly forward, eyes unblinking, and eyebrows arched up. . .
“The only sound they made was a steady stream of affirmations—yes, uh-huh, gotcha—that encouraged the speaker to keep going, to give them more.”
Good listeners don’t interrupt. Then, when the other person is finished talking, they ask follow-up questions to draw people out further: “What do you mean by that?” and “Could you tell me more about this?”
Tactic six: Embrace the Messenger
“One of the most vital moments for creating safety is when a group shares bad news or gives tough feedback,” Daniel observes.
When someone gives their unvarnished opinion, it’s not enough to tolerate the difficult news. As leaders, we must embrace it.
We not only don’t “shoot the messenger,” Harvard professor Amy Edmondson says, we “have to hug the messenger and let them know how much we need that feedback.
“That way we can be sure that they feel safe enough to tell us the truth next time.”
Tactic seven: Overdo Thank-Yous
Daniel spent four years researching and investigating eight of the world’s most successful groups, including a special-ops military unit, an inner-city school, a professional basketball team, a movie studio, a comedy troupe, and a gang of jewel thieves.
What did he learn?
“When you enter highly successful cultures, the number of thank-yous you hear seems slightly over the top,” he observes.
“At the end of each basketball season, for example, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich takes each star player aside and thanks them for allowing him to coach them.
“Those are his exact words: ‘Thank you for allowing me to coach you.’ “
It’s all about constantly affirming the relationship.
There’s abundant research that shows the effectiveness of expressing gratitude.
In one study by Adam Grant and Francesco Gino, people “were asked to help a fictitious student named ‘Eric’ write a cover letter for a job application,” Daniel writes.
Afterward, half of the participants received a thankful response from Eric; half received a neutral response.
Then, they received a request for help from “Steve,” a different student.
“Those who had received thanks from Eric chose to help Steve more than twice as often as those who had received the neutral response,” Daniel notes.
“In other words, a small thank-you caused people to behave far more generously to a completely different person.”
Daniel’s conclusion? “Thank-yous aren’t only expressions of gratitude; they’re crucial belonging cues that generate a contagious sense of safety, connection, and motivation.”
As leaders, we are wise to express our gratitude constantly at all levels of the organization, especially to those on the front line.
Tactic eight: Be Painstaking in the Hiring Process
Deciding who to hire is one of the important signals any group sends.
Most of the great cultures Daniel studied “have built lengthy, demanding processes that seek to assess fit, contribution (through deep background research and extensive interactions with a large number of people in the group), and performance (increasingly measured by tests),” he observes.
Some groups, like Zappos, take it up to another level: After training is complete, they offer the trainees a $2,000 bonus if they quit. About 10 percent of trainees take the offer.
Tactic nine: Eliminate Bad Apples
Great workplace cultures have a very low tolerance for bad apple behavior .
“The leaders of the New Zealand All-Blacks, the rugby squad that ranks as one of the most successful teams on the planet,” Daniel writes, “achieve this through a rule that simply states ‘No Dickheads.’
“It’s simple, and that’s why it’s effective.”
Tactic ten: Make Sure Everyone Has a Voice
Sounds simple. But achieving this goal doesn’t just happen.
Successful groups use simple mechanisms that encourage, spotlight, and value full-group contribution,” Daniel notes.
One idea: No meeting can end without everyone sharing something.
Another idea is to schedule regular reviews of recent work where anyone can offer their opinion.
Yet another approach is to create regular gatherings with leadership where people are encouraged to ask questions and raise issues, no matter how controversial they might be.
When U.S. Navy Captain Michael Abrashoff took command of the USS Benfold in 1997, the ship was ranked at the bottom of the navy’s performance scores.
What did he do?
He interviewed all of the ship’s 310 sailors for thirty minutes each. Which took six weeks to complete.
Michael asked each sailor three questions:
A: What do you like most about the Benfold?
B: What do you like least?
C: What would you change if you were captain?
Whenever he received a suggestion he felt could be implemented immediately; he would announce it over the ship’s intercom, crediting the sailor with the idea.
“Over the next three years,” Daniel writes, “on the strength of this and other measures (which are detailed in Mike’s book It’s Your Ship), the Benfold rose to become one of the navy’s highest-ranked ships.”
Tactic eleven: Pick Up Trash
“Back in the mid-1960s,” Daniel notes, “UCLA’s men’s basketball team was in the midst of one of the most successful eras in sports history, winning ten titles in twelve years.”
The team’s student manager noticed something unusual: John Wooden, the team’s renowned head coach, regularly picked up trash in the locker room.
“Here was a man who had already won three national championships,” the student manager said, “a man who was already enshrined in the Hall of Fame as a player, a man who had created and was in the middle of a dynasty–bending down and picking up scraps from the locker room floor.”
From McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc to legendary Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, many leaders are known to do the same.
“The leaders of the All-Blacks rugby team have formalized this habit into a team value called ‘sweeping the sheds,’ “Daniel shares.
“Their leaders do the menial work, cleaning and tidying the locker rooms—and along the way vividly model the team’s ethic of togetherness and teamwork.”
Daniel labels this practice “Muscular humility.”
It is a mindset. “Picking up trash is one example, but the same kinds of behaviors exist around allocating parking places (egalitarian, with no special spots reserved for leaders), picking up checks at meals (the leaders do it every time), and providing for equity in salaries, particularly for start-ups.
“These actions are powerful not just because they are moral or generous but also because they send a larger signal: We are all in this together.”
Tactic twelve: Embrace Fun:
“This obvious one is still worth mentioning,” Daniel writes, “because laughter is not just laughter; it’s the most fundamental sign of safety and connection.”
More tomorrow!
______________________
Reflection: How might I become an agent for creating psychological safety at my workplace and in my family?
Action: Do it.