0:10

Welcome to another episode of At the Table with

0:12

Patrick Lynchoni where everything we talk about is related

0:14

to organizational health and the world of work. I'm

0:17

your host, Pat Lynchoni, joined by Karen sitting

0:19

next to me who didn't open my binder.

0:21

That's okay. I should be able to do

0:23

that by now. Matt, who's producing. See, I'm

0:25

doing this all in different order. And then

0:27

Cody, Tracy and Bo, who are all doing

0:30

fantastic. Cody, what's

0:32

the topic today? Well, Pat,

0:34

this is the 221st episode

0:36

and you mispronounce your

0:38

own last name on the last

0:40

intro and then didn't remember what

0:42

the intro is on this episode.

0:44

So we're crushing it. The

0:47

episode title is uncomfortable safety.

0:50

Yes. And they're like, how did you mispronounce

0:52

your own last name? I was Patrick Lynchoni.

0:54

I think something like that. Anyway, yes, we're

0:57

going to talk about uncomfortable

0:59

safety. And this came about because

1:01

the whole concept last week, somebody

1:03

mentioned the idea of psychological safety

1:05

because there's an author who

1:08

wrote a book about this and we were

1:10

like psychological safety and all of us kind of winced

1:12

like, wow, what does that mean? And it sounded like

1:14

something coming out of a college campus today. Like I

1:16

don't feel safe. And actually it

1:18

was not what we thought it was. And

1:22

Tracy did some research and realized that people have

1:24

been talking about psychological safety for years, right, Tracy? Yeah,

1:26

I went back and it looks like I'm

1:29

not sure if this is true. Carl Rogers

1:31

maybe coined the term, although I did see

1:34

that Edgar Shine was involved in some research

1:36

around it as well. So it's been

1:38

around since the 50s. There's some debate

1:41

as to whether Beau Johnson came up with it. He

1:43

claims that he was one. Some

1:45

people are saying that. Yeah.

1:48

But whatever the case, this

1:50

term actually has a really profound meaning,

1:52

one that we talk about a lot, but it kind

1:54

of got co-opted by people

1:57

saying, Oh, people have to feel comfortable

1:59

all the time. The time and always have my

2:01

arm. That always agreed with and it's actually the

2:03

opposite of that. And so we want to talk about

2:05

that. I don't know how long this is going to be, but we think it's

2:07

important. It. Is critical to create

2:09

psychological safety in your organization. It

2:12

really is, But that doesn't mean it's not

2:14

going to be uncomfortable or involve some a

2:16

risk. In fact, what it is that people

2:18

should be safe enough to deal with that

2:21

and feel okay about that. But

2:23

what you wanna say? I just wanted

2:25

to hear you put more explain more

2:27

the difference between comfort. And. Safety.

2:31

right? right? Comfort.

2:33

Is not something that were promised at all.

2:35

And in an organization, a healthy organization is

2:38

going to be uncomfortable. Sometimes you're going after

2:40

the right kind of conversations you're going to

2:42

get disagreed with. You know though, you're not

2:44

going to be attacks and undermined and discarded.

2:47

See. You're going to be respected. you know, truth

2:49

and dignity or really important in an organization, But

2:51

that does not mean people are going always agree

2:54

with you or that your feelings might not get

2:56

a little bit hurt when somebody points out that.

2:58

Something. You believe is not necessarily true

3:01

or they don't think it is. So

3:03

we talk about the importance of healthy

3:05

conflict. Well that's. Something

3:07

that doesn't happen a lot in

3:09

society these days because people like

3:11

that makes me feel unsafe. What? actually,

3:13

if there's trust and it's vulnerability base

3:16

trust? Then. You can

3:18

go into that and have conflict and feel safe in

3:20

the midst of it, but he still make it. You.

3:22

Know. Ideologically. Punched in

3:24

the nose, but you know you can deal with that. The.

3:27

I love that distinction both between comfort

3:30

and safety and the idea of words.

3:32

You get a safety check right before

3:34

you're about to skydive or bungie jump.

3:36

You know you don't get a safety

3:38

check when you get into a room

3:41

full of beanbags. you know besides chairs

3:43

or something like this the going with

3:45

already safe enough and I think flights

3:47

what is really implied in this or

3:50

think what people need to hear more

3:52

of his that building teams as hard

3:54

and difficult and requires a lot of

3:56

emotionally from people. And the idea

3:58

is not to make it. Can I

4:00

make the environment sterile? It's actually

4:03

to fortify people's ability to be

4:05

in a risky environment and feel

4:07

safe. So that phrase does make

4:09

it sound like oh, let's not,

4:11

let's let's have a pillow five

4:13

vs. saying a record in the

4:15

middle of something that's pretty difficult.

4:17

And even in the midst of

4:19

something that's difficult, you're going feel

4:21

safe and secure because we can

4:23

learn how to and visible rameses

4:25

as I ultimately thus distrust invulnerability.

4:28

Right? And there's risk involved. And that's

4:30

because there's risk involved in anything that's

4:32

innovative or a breakthrough for are successful.

4:35

You have to take risks and if

4:37

we think we're gonna get what we

4:39

want without risking without the risk of

4:41

getting injured a little bit or have

4:43

our feelings hurt a little bit are

4:46

being uncomfortable What We're never going to

4:48

accomplish anything. But. What we are not at

4:50

risk of his been. Discarded. Or.

4:53

Or. Or wounded on purpose just for the

4:55

sake of doing. One

4:58

of my favorite book Summary reading by Victor

5:00

Frankl called Man's Search For Meaning. And

5:03

the backstory to Viktor Frankl as he

5:05

survived the holocaust he was in four

5:07

different concentration camps. And. Then he wrote

5:09

a book about his observations of how and

5:11

why did people survivor to make this interesting

5:14

observation. As a therapist that he says

5:16

people are coming to you as a therapist I'm

5:18

obviously paraphrasing here. They're coming to you as a

5:20

therapist because there's some tension in their life. And

5:23

what you feel like you ought to do. Is. Help

5:25

the tension go away. But. Actually what

5:27

your role as has to help them face the

5:29

tension. And. Part I think sometimes

5:31

as leaders we think oh, people

5:33

are feeling uncomfortable, there's change happening,

5:36

or they're getting feedback and they

5:38

feel that tension. And what

5:40

we wanted to sometimes us to try to

5:42

make the pain go away but actually what

5:44

great leaders can do is we can actually

5:46

help people say that tension with tension is

5:48

what creates meaning in our life. There's

5:50

always going to be tension on were pursuing something

5:52

that's. Worth. Chasing were chasing a

5:54

mission about something that matters to our

5:56

company or to us personally. And so.

5:59

i just getting at is the

6:02

anytime that you're choosing to chase

6:04

something significant, it's going to be

6:06

uncomfortable, right? It's you're leaving the

6:08

confines of what feels like safe

6:10

and predictable. And that's what leaders

6:12

do is we call people

6:14

to lean into to chase

6:17

things that mean more

6:19

to us than our comfort. Right.

6:22

And that is critical today in a

6:24

world where it's so weird that we're

6:26

so averse to discomfort. And

6:28

as a result of that, it seems like it's everywhere. But

6:31

we're trying to artificially remove that from people's

6:33

lives. And you know, when you think

6:35

about this, I think conflict is at the

6:38

center of this in many ways. And

6:41

we have a world where people don't actually get

6:43

together and disagree very much. I don't know, I

6:45

don't see it like real good debate anymore on

6:48

television, I don't see it in among most people

6:50

I know. But what we do see is people

6:52

avoiding that and then being really harsh on

6:55

the outside. And so I think a great

6:57

company has to reject that. It has to

6:59

say we are going to have be really

7:01

uncomfortable and feel safe in the midst of

7:03

that. And we're going to take risks

7:05

and fall down and get bruised a little bit.

7:07

But it's not going to be life threatening. And as

7:09

a result of that, we'll get stronger and stronger. This

7:12

woman, Amy Edmondson, wrote a book called The Fearless

7:14

Organization. That's one of the places where this came from.

7:16

And I've not read the book yet. But the

7:18

premise that Tracy you saw in that

7:21

was that it really does come from

7:23

vulnerability based trust. You know, you want

7:25

an organization that's not afraid to

7:28

enter into the scrape with one

7:30

another. And it seems counterintuitive and

7:32

countercultural today. But it's it is

7:34

and always has been really important, I think.

7:38

So tell me about if

7:40

a leader is accidentally

7:42

over valuing this this misconstrued idea

7:44

of psychological safety, what would that

7:46

look like? A leader who is,

7:48

you know, we say the way

7:50

phrase over indexing or over valuing or thinking, Oh,

7:53

it's my job to make sure everybody feels

7:55

safe. What would that look like in an organization?

7:57

Well, we would call that artificial harmony. Which

8:00

is ugly artificial harmony is when people go to

8:02

meetings and they see each other in the hallway

8:04

and always smiling and nodding and agreeing with one

8:07

another and what you find is an organization that

8:09

has that artificial harmony the parking lot or in

8:11

the stairwell talking about each other. End

8:13

and that's that's really bad what we wanna

8:16

see is. Organizations getting away

8:18

from artificial harmony and moving to a place where

8:20

they're having all the productive conflict they should have

8:22

like hey let's disagree about this and talk about

8:24

it and the thing is

8:26

if you do that. You're

8:29

gonna step over the line sometimes and you're gonna

8:31

piss people off you're gonna have people get hurt

8:33

a little bit and you can recover from that.

8:36

And that's alright but if you never risk

8:38

having to recover from that you're gonna stay

8:40

over there at artificial harmony and create an

8:42

organization where everybody smiling and nodding and those

8:44

are poisonous I mean we've all worked in

8:46

them. And it's not

8:48

fun it's not fun to go

8:51

stand in a kitchen Tracy you and Karen and

8:53

I can relate to this we work to the

8:55

company once together where you go into the

8:57

kitchen and you stand there and you. You

8:59

forced a smile on your face and sing

9:01

happy birthday to somebody every week with a

9:03

cake but there that you never wanna be

9:05

around them cuz you're not allowed to actually

9:07

disagree with them or talk about anything and

9:09

no it's just gross. And so

9:11

we need to ask ourselves do we

9:14

have any of that artificial harmony in our organizations

9:16

are we protecting people. From

9:18

being just people people from being uncomfortable

9:22

and if so we need to actually create

9:24

safety to be uncomfortable and to do that

9:26

you gotta kind of do a

9:29

little exposure therapy and try it. It

9:32

almost feels like the differences are

9:34

you focused on creating an environment that

9:37

is safe like a bubble wrap environment

9:39

that is safe or you focused on

9:41

creating relationships that are anti fragile like

9:44

that hey we have enough trust that.

9:47

On the I mean we talked so much about

9:49

conflict on the other side of conflict are the

9:51

best ideas and refined ideas and

9:53

people getting on board with those ideas and

9:56

and if your idea of creating a safe

9:59

environment. is to eliminate conflict,

10:01

you're going to undermine what it

10:03

means to be a cohesive, effective

10:05

team. But if your

10:07

investment in psychological safety or

10:09

vulnerability-based trust is so

10:12

that we can have relationships that are

10:14

not fragile, where it's

10:16

about the people saying, even when we

10:18

disagree on the other side of the

10:20

disagreement, I know that you have

10:22

my back and I have yours, and that we're in

10:25

pursuit of the best idea. And

10:27

I think that is like,

10:29

you're totally right, Pat, I think that there are companies

10:31

right now who are, and teams and leaders who are

10:33

misconstruing that and thinking, I have to

10:35

create the safest space versus

10:39

relationships that are not fragile. Yeah,

10:41

you know, it makes me think about innovation.

10:43

And the most innovative cultures are the ones

10:46

where people are, they feel

10:48

comfortable taking risks, being unsafe, you

10:50

know, and that's where good

10:53

ideas come from. And cultures, countries,

10:55

companies, where people do not want

10:57

to have that when they're protecting,

10:59

they're keeping away from the guardrails there and

11:01

they're trying to stay right down the middle, they

11:03

rarely innovate new things. And I just wonder what

11:06

the state of innovation is going to be here

11:08

in the West, in the United States, we've had

11:10

less good, healthy conflict over these

11:12

last five years. And I wonder

11:14

if that's going to, I guess that's

11:16

going to play out in less innovation,

11:19

because I think that's at the heart of

11:22

coming up with new ideas is having the

11:24

courage to, you know, counter the

11:26

narrative and disagree and argue. You

11:29

know, I don't want to get too philosophical

11:31

here. But there is a, there

11:34

is a book out called The Comfort

11:36

Crisis. And, you know, one of the,

11:38

one of the ideas behind

11:40

that book is, we've now arrived to

11:42

a era of humanity where

11:44

we are not forced into discomfort,

11:47

like I kind of find it comical

11:49

that so many people are getting infrared

11:52

saunas and cold tubs in

11:54

their house, when that just used to be like

11:56

you didn't have hot water and it was hot

11:58

outside and you didn't have air conditioning. condition. You

12:00

know, like we used to what was

12:02

natural for us as human beings to be

12:05

uncomfortable. We have now designed

12:07

an environment where we actually

12:09

have to go pursue discomfort, you

12:12

know, like we can set the AC

12:14

to whatever temperature we want. It's actually

12:16

better for our bodies to have experienced

12:18

some cold temperatures, you know, like not

12:21

just cold showers, but like the generation before that

12:23

or before that or before that, that's like you're,

12:26

you know, you're, you're showering in a, in a

12:28

river or a lake or something like that. You

12:30

know what I mean? So it is so interesting

12:32

that as a species, we have arrived

12:34

to this and then it, it

12:37

is natural that at business we've actually

12:39

gotten there too, where we have

12:41

sort of come to a space

12:44

where we have to actively pursue

12:46

something that is anti-cultural, like that,

12:48

that we have to go seek

12:50

out conflict. We have to seek out

12:52

being vulnerable and, and uncomfortable.

12:54

And I think that's sort of interesting.

12:56

Maybe that's too philosophical and maybe I

12:59

also kind of do want a sauna in my house,

13:01

but, but I

13:04

think that we were forced to do a lot of

13:06

that before where now we have to actively seek it

13:08

out. Yeah. I don't think it's too philosophical because I

13:10

think like we live in a society where people will

13:12

almost pay other people to make them uncomfortable, which

13:14

is crazy. And I think one of the

13:16

reasons why there is such a market for organizational

13:19

consultants is because

13:21

you almost have to bring somebody in who's going

13:23

to push you to do what probably 20,

13:26

30, 40 years ago, people kind of did on their own because things were a little

13:28

bit, a little bit more comfortable

13:30

doing that. And, and, and, you know, maybe that

13:32

pendulum will swing and come back the other way.

13:34

And, and it's probably hard to prevent this because

13:36

comfort makes people want to be more comfortable and

13:38

want to be more comfortable. And yet I just

13:40

saw a survey the other day that said people

13:43

in the United States are less happy. And

13:46

I don't know exactly what this is than they have been in years.

13:49

And, and I really do think

13:51

that sometimes not

13:54

having emotional and

13:56

inter interrelational and even physical

13:58

challenges. leaves people

14:00

feeling more afraid and less happy than they

14:02

were when they had to mix things up

14:04

a bit. Patrick Shepherd

14:07

I'm wondering if, how do we make

14:10

this practical? How does somebody walk away

14:12

and say, okay, I don't want to

14:14

create the anti-fragile organization or team that

14:16

I'm part of or that I'm leading.

14:19

What do we do to lean into safety

14:21

without going so far to say that we

14:24

have to make sure everybody is comfortable? What

14:27

would you say to somebody to do? I

14:29

think that we need to celebrate failure

14:31

and discomfort more. And I think, and Karen

14:33

just wrote me a note that said, whose

14:35

job is it to create the right kind

14:38

of psychological safety? And I think it's got to come

14:40

from the top and they got to be, I want

14:42

to see more people mixing it up. I want to

14:44

see them trying things. I want to see people being

14:47

a little less comfortable and I want to reward

14:49

them for that. Because if

14:51

we don't do that, people will

14:54

congregate in that place of the

14:56

wrong kind of safety. And if the

14:58

leaders of the team aren't actually doing that, so I

15:01

guess I would say if somebody is listening to this,

15:03

are you having difficult, uncomfortable conversations

15:05

on your team? Tracy

15:08

and I had a very uncomfortable, difficult conversation today.

15:10

It only lasted about 15 minutes, but it was

15:13

really good. And as a result of that, we

15:15

got through something and it got clear. But

15:18

let me tell you, even though

15:20

we promote this stuff,

15:22

my nature is to try to avoid it. And

15:25

so I think leaders should listen to this

15:27

and say, do we encourage,

15:29

reward, and allow people to

15:32

have uncomfortable conversations? Or

15:34

are we feeding into the cultural narrative

15:36

that says, let's make it easy for

15:38

people to avoid being disagreed with or

15:41

being pushed out of their comfort zone? So

15:43

I think it's so many times after these

15:45

podcasts, I think it's go back and have

15:47

this conversation with your team and you will

15:49

figure out what your organization needs to do.

15:52

I think that the willingness to be uncomfortable

15:54

probably needs to be like a permission to

15:56

play value in most organizations that want to

15:58

be healthy. can't go

16:00

there and be disagreed with and speak your

16:02

peace and be okay with that, then

16:05

that might be a limiting factor in

16:07

your ability to contribute here. I

16:10

think many organizations can have that conversation. You

16:12

can probably go through your leaders or your

16:14

key employees and say, are these people really

16:17

willing to be uncomfortable or do they feel

16:19

like we owe it to them to

16:21

make them safe? Because

16:23

if that's the case, you are going

16:25

to hamper your ability to be innovative

16:27

and to have good, healthy conflict and

16:30

then really bad things happen. All

16:34

right. That it? Okay. So

16:36

we are going to have an unpaid ad right now. You

16:39

know, it's interesting because I know this service

16:41

has been around for a long time, but I

16:43

didn't really realize it. I've never used it

16:46

and I'm going to make a case for it. We talked about in

16:48

a couple of podcasts ago about the car

16:50

rental business. We talked about hurts and some of the

16:52

problems they had. Every time I fly,

16:54

I'm coming through the airport and I'm

16:56

thinking, man, I would pay somebody to

16:59

pick me up right here at the curb or to make

17:01

it easy to get my car. Why do

17:03

I have to get on a bus and then a train and then

17:05

a boat and swim under the current to get

17:07

to the rental car place only to be waiting

17:09

for two hours while somebody refinances their home in

17:11

the checkout line ahead of me? I don't get

17:14

it. I don't know how this works. Somebody reminded

17:16

me that there's this service called Turo, T-U-R-O. They're

17:18

not paying us for this. I'm going

17:20

to try it. Evidently, it's like

17:22

Airbnb for cars where you book this

17:24

something and somebody will meet you at

17:26

the curb or they'll park it right

17:28

there where you're going to

17:31

be. I'm sure that there's unions of

17:33

the rental car places that are hating

17:35

these folks, but wow, to think that

17:37

somebody innovated enough to give what we

17:39

need and that is an easy way

17:41

to get an automobile without having to

17:43

jump through hoops. There's

17:45

a company, I guess, is it Turo? I think that's

17:47

right, Turo. I'm going to give it a

17:49

shot. I'm going to do my unpaid ad for them. I'll let

17:51

you know how it goes. We've used

17:53

it. They're great. We love it. If

17:56

you have kids, they sometimes have car seats in there for you. Great

18:00

service. How, Cody, Karen, how did you not

18:02

tell me about this? I

18:04

am just shocked. That didn't feel

18:06

safe. Yes. Yes. Very

18:09

good, Beau. Again,

18:14

once again, I think Beau invented the whole

18:16

idea of psychological safety years before

18:18

his birth. And we appreciate that, Beau. All

18:21

right. Hey, everybody. We appreciate you too. Thanks

18:23

for joining us on the At the Table podcast. We'll talk to you next

18:25

time. We'll

18:31

be right back.