Leadership lessons from my journey in building a culture of psychological safety. 2022 was the year on how not to do it!

Leadership Lessons Learned From 2022.

I made leadership mistakes, so you don’t have to! These are my biggest “lessons learned” from last year.

On a positive note, I always prioritize time to reflect on what’s working or not, otherwise you stop yourself from getting better. You become stale. Leadership is like art, cooking, and golf, you can never perfect it, you can only get better!?

Every mistake is an opportunity to learn.

When DX Learning reaches its long-term goals, it’s because I as the CEO, made every possible leadership mistake to learn and improve.

My journey towards being a great leader continues evolving as I hone my self-awareness to do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. The more self-aware you are, the shorter the gap between your self-perception and how others perceive you, and the more effective you’ll be.

More about self-awareness in this Forbes article I wrote. Click here.

Through self-awareness, I can take the biggest gaps and close them in 2023 to elevate my leadership to a new level. We all have gaps. Do you know your biggest ones?

The Conversations No Leader Wants to Have

Last year was horrific. While we broke $2million revenue for the first time and became a real business since beginning our journey in April 2015, it came at a monumental cost. I had to let five people go, four in one day, travelling to see each one in Chicago to share the sad news. That day will forever be etched in my long-term memory as the “day of days”.

I had to look five amazing people in the face and have THAT conversation that anyone who cares about people hates having.

“I have to let you go.”

With only 11 people in the team, that was nearly half the employees. What’s worse, is we didn’t let one person go during 2020 when revenue went to $0 for six months after COVID-19. I did everything in my power to keep the team intact during the most difficult period financially. Two years later I had no choice but to re-think the business model. If I did nothing, we were going bankrupt and I had no more strings to pull.

So how did it come to that? Spoiler alert. My leadership. Or lack of it.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

I say this all the time. I teach it. I believe it and I thought we had it. I truly thought we’d built a high-performing psychologically safe ?team that would break down doors to support our vision to wipe out bad leadership.

We left our November 2021 team offsite with so much energy, enthusiasm, and confidence. I personally felt this was the first time in DX’s short history we had the right vision, and people in the right seats, with a plan to get shit done. We openly talked about blockers of the past and areas that needed to improve. We were ready for lift off. Check this blog out for the euphoria we were in.

Look at those smiles. I believed. We all believed it. It was Ted Lasso esq.

Come June 2022, those smiles gloomed and none of what we said we would do got done. The list of to-dos was unchanged since November. We were going backwards. It was still the Alex Show, and I was working harder than ever to fill the cracks left by the team. It hurt me mentally as I was sacrificing what I treasure the most; being present for my wife and kids.

In May last year I had a mental breakdown on my way to work. More on that here.This was the first wake-up call that things weren’t good. As I started to look at the business and the people with a lens of “we can’t continue like this”, big cracks appeared. That led to the fateful “day of days” where I drove across Chicago to bear the bad news.

Why We Were Failing…

In a heartfelt conversation with a team member a few weeks after, when I found myself emotionally compromised, I said,

“This culture stuff is bullshit."

We worked hard to create a psychologically safe culture and an organization worth working for, and we did not perform, and the results did not come. I am working longer and harder than I ever have. Culture does not eat strategy for breakfast. This is waste of time.”

Their quick reply…

“Alex, we didn’t have a great culture. It was a nice culture. Everyone felt safe because you’re a “nice” guy. But we rarely challenged each other. We didn’t create the right culture. There were no performance standards. There was no accountability.”

Ouch. Their comments got me thinking. A lot. There’s the importance of feedback. The importance of perspective. You can talk to yourself all day. That’s internal self-awareness. But you must talk to others and get their perspective. External self-awareness is where the money’s at.

In one quick conversation with a close, trusted, team member, I saw where it all went wrong.?

Thanks Tanmay Vora for your amazing work in visualizing important topics for us all to digest and gain insight.

I went back to Amy Edmondson 's research. We’re working on building a psychologically safe culture at DX. Our business is all about creating psychologically safe places for others through effective inclusive leadership training.

How did we get into such a mess? Go figure. It was me! Through my actions, or inaction, we were not a true psychologically safe workplace. ?

A 2017 report?found that if organizations increase psychological safety, it makes employees more engaged in their work and can lead to a 12% increase in productivity. Click here for the source.

Their research suggested if you create a safe place, results improve. Well, they didn’t for us. I thought we had a safe place, but as my colleague said, we did but weren’t in the right quadrant of the 2x2.

This 2x2 visually showed me where it all went wrong.

How NOT to Build a Great Culture

Through my actions, we were in the comfort zone. We were vulnerable and open to a degree. More about ourselves as humans, versus the work we were doing. We were nice to each other. But people were not admitting to mistakes of which there were a lot. They weren’t taking ownership of their piece of the pie. They weren’t pushing themselves, or each other to higher standards. In a group setting, no one spoke up about what was important. No one called out the challenges and blind spots that needed to be discussed and fixed.

Alex ended up fixing them, but that’s not a high performing team.

The culture of a team is a mirror of its leadership.

As leader of DX, my behaviors led to low performance standards. I didn’t hold people accountable and let them off the hook for not doing what they promised. I didn’t speak candidly and give regular, constructive feedback.

People were too comfortable. I picked up the slack. I ended up just doing what needed to be done to pay for salaries. We took on work we shouldn’t have to keep the lights on. I was burnt out and in a bad place. It was just easier to let it all go and not speak up and do it myself. I fell afoul of everything I tell other leaders not to do. The culture of a team is the worst behavior you’re willing to tolerate. I tolerated people not achieving the goals they said they would achieve and doing the things they said they would do. We had great humans. They just weren’t doing great things. It’s not their fault. It was me. In my quest for psychological safety, I got the opposite of what I was looking for. Take this wonderful illustration of one of my favorite books, “fearless organization", by Amy Edmondson.

I wince at the sight of these words from the illustration:

1. It’s not “being nice”. It was all “kumbaya” on the surface. Under the belly, the wheels were coming off, but no one said a word. Silence kills cultures.
2. It was an “anything goes” environment. If goals weren’t reached, there was an excuse, and we’d all go “it’s OK, next week it will get done.” If not, “it’ll work out eventually”, or “Alex will do it”. ?
3. We had pockets of trust. But that created silos and people talking behind others’ backs versus saying what needed to be said in team meetings. That’s the difference between the power of trust and psychological safety. Trust is between two humans. Psychological safety is between a group of humans. You need both. We had pockets of trust, but little group psychological safety.
4. There was a dangerous culture of silence. Factions and subcultures formed, and bad results followed. There were toxic politics that inhibited our ability to collaborate effectively and clients, in some cases, did not get the best of DX.
5. Because I was so in the weeds trying to make ends meet, I wasn’t leading. Not really. I wasn’t creating purpose and demonstrating caring leadership, meaning staff didn’t feel safe as their needs were not met. It was a vicious circle.
6. While I did the hard work of being vulnerable as a human, I didn’t demonstrate openness or candor about the business and people within it. I believe this led to the illusion of success, until the day came when my CFO said something needs to change now or you’re going out of business.

Where Are DX Now?

The good news in all this is that these challenges hurt. I became the leader I work hard to train other leaders NOT to be. Either too nice, or too hard. Caring leadership is about being in that top right quadrant. I am already a better leader.

What changed as a result and how are half as many people managing to achieve way more than we ever did as a team of 11?

1. It’s not just me. Leadership is a two-way street. I make it crystal clear that I expect others to step up and lead. We’re in this together. This isn’t the Alex Show anymore.
2. I shared the 2x2 with the team and we all agreed where we were. We have clarity on where we’re going and where it all went wrong. I was clear that I wouldn’t accept low performance standards again. The goals we decide need to be executed on. We will hold each other accountable to the results we promised. I am hearing more candor and conflict.
3. I am getting my head out of the weeds. The team needs leadership. Caring leadership. I can’t do that if all I am doing, is doing. Leadership needs thinking time. I have more white space in my calendar, and I hired a few people who can lead and take the weight off my shoulders.
4. Weekly 1-on-1’s with each person has resumed, where we set goals for the week and give each other positive and constructive feedback. You’re not allowed to say nothing. Silence killed us once; it won’t kill us again. Feedback is back. That was a huge miss over the last year.
5. We have fewer meetings, but in the meetings, we have we talk about what is important. I ensure everyone has a voice and we talk about what is important.

One team member already admitted that the culture has changed. When I asked what they meant. They said we’ve grown up.

DX was a happy place. It was a great place to work. People genuinely cared for each other. Wonderful people who truly believed in the vision. There were lots of tears when the “day of days” came. They were people I broke bread with, knew their kids, cooked dinner for. Great people with great hearts. But it wasn’t a high performing culture. For a team to be high performing, they need a high performing leader. One who demonstrates caring leadership. More about what that looks like in this article. The hardest part is modelling candor and accountability. That was my Achilles heel. No more.??

Hello, 2023.

We have a purpose and spent an entire day agreeing on it this month. We have a shared understanding of crystal-clear expectations to achieve collective goals. It’s written down everywhere and everyone has three goals that link to the collective goal. I hold people accountable to their promises and we talk openly about where folk are. Mistakes will be made, and we will celebrate them, and learn from them.

I will start leading. I will CARE for my team, providing Clarity, Autonomy, Relationships and Equity?. More about our CARE model, the four essentials of psychological safety to inspire high performing teams, click here.

I did not provide enough clarity to my team in 2022 and gave too much autonomy. Autonomy is a natural strength of mine, but you can’t harness the power of autonomy without clarity and alignment first. It was chaotic, and a lot of “I hope someone else is working on this, it’s not me, but someone must be.”??

Relationships were surface level. As I did not have time to sit down with each team member to gain empathy and give feedback and coaching, due to being in the weeds, we did not have the trust needed for psychological safety to take place.

In 1-on-1s, we chat about goals and how to get there. We decide if they’re green, amber or red. We MUST provide feedback on one positive, and one constructive, behavior from the last week.

So, in Amy’s words: We are embracing her three steps towards psychological safety.

We set the stage through purpose and prioritizing what matters.

We invite participation through creating standard work processes that were not there, leading with curiosity and humility in meetings.

We respond productively through candor, celebrating mistakes and not being assholes!

2023 is already off with a bang. The team is collaborating with purpose, and we’re leaning into healthy conflict for the first time, because I am modelling it. You cannot expect of others what you’re not willing to do yourself.

The culture of a team is a mirror of leadership. What do you expect of others and what are you modelling? Do they correlate? Any variance between the two leads to cultural challenges. That ended up being my 2022. Don’t be me!?

Thanks for listening. What mistake did I make that most resonsted with you? What insight did you take from my learnings? Please share any comments so we can all learn together.

If you found value, please like, share and care. Follow me here on LinkedIn: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/alex-draper/