Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:02:18: Defining trust and the trust equation
00:04:58: Why we care about trust
00:06:36: What a high-trust team is and isn't
00:10:28: Mistake moments
00:11:23: How fear inhibits the high-trust team
00:14:21: Five ideas for action…
00:14:31: … 1: practical vs emotional trust
00:19:11: … 2: mistake moments
00:22:47: … 3: red-table talks
00:26:02: … 4: execution vs experimentation
00:29:35: … 5: curious questions
00:32:25: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and share some ideas for action and some tools to try out that we hope will help you, and to be honest us, to navigate our Squiggly Career with that bit more confidence, clarity and control.

Helen Tupper: And a quick reminder before we get started on today's topic, that you can always sign up for PodMail, so that you never miss out on our latest episodes or resources.  We send out a weekly email that comes out first thing on a Tuesday.  It has our PodSheet that you can download that's good for reflection and taking action, it has the PodNotes that are a good swipeable summary, useful to share with teams, and any other resources that we think might be helpful, connected to the topic of the week.  The link for that is in the description, and if you ever can't find it, you can just email us, helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com.

Sarah Ellis: This week, we're talking about high-trust teams.  So, back in 2020, which does feel like a lifetime ago now, I had a brilliant conversation with Amy Edmonson, and Amy Edmonson is a researcher and a professor who's really pioneered this idea of psychological safety, and that's episode 151. 

So, some of you might already know about psychological safety, maybe it's even something you talk about in your organisations, or through the work that you do; and so today, we wanted to really talk about this idea of high trust, which is connected to, but not exactly the same as, psychological safety; and also reflect a little bit on how the last two years might have impacted the trust that we have across our teams, and some really practical ideas for action about how we can continue to create trust, because it's one of those things that you have to continually commit to; it doesn't just happen, then we've ticked the box, unfortunately.  Like all the best things, we have to keep working on them.

Helen Tupper: And I think, because so much changes at work, particularly the last couple of years, that even when you might have felt you had a high-trust team, pre-pandemic, actually I think a lot of the changes in the way that we're working, the fact that you might be working with people that you never actually met in person yet, all of that stuff creates some complexity, and it means we just have to keep investing and focusing on trust.  So, let's do what trust is and why we need to focus on it, and then we're going to get into what it looks like and how you can build trust in your teams. 

When we're talking about trust in our organisations, we define it as, "A team where there is trust and respect, and that people feel comfortable to be themselves".  I also found a trust equation that I quite liked, because I quite like the science bit, "This is the science bit"!  I don't know if it is that science-y.  But it's that, "Credibility plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self-orientation equals trust".  Let's just unpack that a little bit.

So credibility, the extent to which people feel that you have the ability to do your job; reliability, the extent to which people feel that you show up to do your job; and intimacy, how close people feel to you.  That's the first bit, adding all those things up.  Then it's divided by self-orientation.  So, the idea here is for a high-trust team, you don't want people to be too selfish, you want people to be slightly selfless.  It's team first really that helps to create high-trust teams, and it's those things coming together that result in how much trust is there at the moment.  Sarah, what is your perspective on credibility plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self-orientation equals trust?

Sarah Ellis: I think for me, it's probably not something I would remember, to be honest, and I do find that some of those words don't connect that well with me in terms of everyday, simple, straightforward language that we might use in the work that we do.  So, when you say intimacy, for example, I suppose I think maybe that means how connected we are, or the closeness or the quality of our relationship.  So, I find that a good starting point to then think, "What's the 'so what?' or what does that mean for me in my world, or probably in my words?"

I think that's one of the things that I'd really encourage people to do, is think about maybe what's your trust equation in your team or in your organisation; because, when I looked at this definition initially, I thought, "I'm not sure, it doesn't make sense to me immediately".  But then, when I started to explore each of the words in my own way, like for me, reliability is, "Do you say what you're going to do?" as simple as that, and that's how I would describe that.  And then I think the answer to that is either yes, no, or probably for most of us, sometimes!  But it's interesting to know that that's one of the things that contributes to trust.  So, I find it a useful starting point, but probably not an answer in itself.

Helen Tupper: I like your response to that, as I agree, because I think it invites conversation, which I think with all this stuff on trust, I think it is all about inviting conversation and not letting any one opinion dominate stuff.  So, work out maybe what that looks like for you, and we'll put that definition as well in the PodSheet so you can have a look at it.

But in terms of the why we should care, there are lots of stats and percentages that show that trust makes a massive difference.  The shortcut is that a high-trust team is a high-performing team.  People are less stressed, 74% less stressed apparently; millennials are 22 times more likely to work for companies with high-trust cultures, and they perform two times better than the general market.  So, high-trust teams result in high-performing teams, and ultimately high-performing businesses as well.

Sarah Ellis: And if you are interested in almost the business case behind high-trust teams and psychological safety specifically, there are loads of really good free resources, which Google have made available.  So, if you google Google, which is a funny sentence to say, but I think the website is re:Work, and we'll put the link to that in the show notes as well; and that's just a really good summary of almost a big experiment that Google did looking at which are their high-performing teams, and then they rewound from that to try to figure out why, so what do those high-performing teams have in common?

It was really interesting that they found there were lots of things that they didn't have in common, lots of things that were different.  But the one thing that was consistent across every team was that they'd got this psychological safety.  So, when I'm doing workshops on high-trust teams, I always describe it as, "I see a high-trust team as an input to get to the output of high performance", and I think that sometimes we skip the input and go straight to, "We want a high-performing team, because who doesn't want to be part of a high-performing team, and what organisation doesn't want high-performing teams?"  I think, if that's what you want in terms of your output, you've got to start with trust first.

So, I've spent quite a lot of time reading and researching about high-trust teams and psychological safety, and I find it really helpful to think about what a high-trust team is and what it isn't, just to make sure that we are maybe challenging any assumptions we might have about what a high-trust team looks like, and just being really clear on what we're aiming for, what's the job to do here.  So, I thought I'd just run through some of these just to see if it's helpful for you.

So, it is a team that has high care and high challenge; what it isn't is a team that's always comfortable, harmonious and where everybody is just nice all the time.  I mean, that does sound good to me, as an introvert who doesn't like conflict, but I also know from experience those high-trust teams, there's high care and there's high challenge.  It links, I think, really nicely to Kim Scott's work on Radical Candor, where again she talks about this environment of high care, "You can care personally and challenge directly".  I think you see that and you observe that in high-trust teams.

It is a team that makes mistakes, and then they talk about them and learn from them; it isn't about hiding mistakes.  I think one of the challenges sometimes is thinking, in a high-trust team, you make less mistakes; not necessarily.  The big difference actually is that everyone makes mistakes, because we're all human.  In a high-trust team, those mistakes are talked about and the learning from those mistakes is shared, and that's what doesn't happen in a low-trust team.

It is about belonging, so a team where everyone can feel like they belong, they can be themselves, you're not having to pretend to be anything you're not, or having to put on a persona every day at work; and it isn't about sameness, a team where everyone sounds the same, looks the same, comes from the same background.  It's not about being, and I heard this phrase the other week, which I really liked, "It's not about being a career chameleon", where everyone feels like they have to have the same stripes or the same spots all the time.

It is about speaking up, so in a high-trust team, people speak up, they share risks, issues, challenges, and they ask for help.  These are all the sorts of behaviours that you will see all of the time.  It might feel awkward, or it might feel difficult.  You might be three-quarters of the way through a project and you realise something isn't right, or there's going to be a problem in about a week's time.  In a high-trust team, those conversations, as hard as they are, are had; they're openly discussed.  In a high-trust team, people of every level ask for help.  You always notice in high-trust teams that the leaders ask for help.  You see these behaviours in everyone in the team, not just in certain pockets of the team. 

It isn't about silence or hiding the truth or being scared of sharing bad news or asking questions.  So, in a low-trust team, no news is bad news.  It's that thing of going, "If you're not hearing these things, it's not because they're not happening.  People will see issues or risks or need help, it's just that you don't know about it.  That's the real challenge".

So, I find that a really useful exercise, and there might be even more there that we've not thought about, so let us know if you've got any other ideas.  But I just think having a shared understanding across your team, if this is something you want to work on, on what it is and what it isn't is really useful, because then you can start to get really practical.

Helen Tupper: It makes me think a little bit about how our team's evolved in lots of ways over the last couple of years, because we've grown an awful lot, but I think some of those things, like learning from mistakes, when you might have been together more often, you might have talked about it in, I don't know, team meetings, there would have been a slightly more casual environment to talk about them.  But because the way that meetings are at the moment, and so much is done remotely and everyone is back-to-back meetings, I think you have to really make time and make a place for things like sharing mistakes.

So, Sarah recently initiated mistake moments on our Teams channel for our team, so that everybody has a space in the week to share if you've made a mistake.  And the idea is, you don't wait for a meeting, you do it then and there.  And I think there are certain things, like the speaking up, we'll give you some ideas for how you can do that shortly, or the learning from mistakes, that I think you have to think, "What does this look like in a team where we are majority working remotely, or working hybrid?"  We can't rely on this happening just when we come together in person, we have to put some new things in place that we can have those different factors that Sarah talked about, but in a virtual environment too.

There's a really good article that we'll link to as well, specifically on that point around trust, psychological safety and virtual teams, that Dr Tomas Chamorro Premuzic, a previous podcast guest, and Amy Edmonson, a previous podcast guest, have written for Harvard Business Review, and it really just gives you that specific focus, so we'll share that with you.

Sarah Ellis: So, having said all of that, I always think it's really interesting to think about, "What gets in the way?" because these high-trust teams sound like great places to be.  You're getting high performance, all of these behaviours, you're learning together, everyone's being themselves; so, why is every team not a high-trust team?  In a singular word, the answer to that is fear. 

Fear is one of those thing where it's a very, very big barrier for us all personally, because it activates the part of the brain called the amygdala, the section that's responsible for detecting threats.  And that fear gets in the way of learning, and it stops us from doing all of those things that I described.  It stops us speaking up, asking for help, making a mistake, because the consequences of doing that feel too scary.  Essentially, we're too nervous about, "Well, what might be the response to doing those things?"

So perhaps, for example, and I think some of this can feel quite rational and very understandable, so perhaps you previously have spoken up or asked for help and you didn't get the help you needed, or you spoke up and then you got shut down; so, perhaps that fear comes from, "Well, I tried to do this before", and maybe it didn't go very well.  So, it feels safer to look after ourselves and protect ourselves and not do those things.  Or perhaps you don't see other people doing it.

When I think about making mistakes and talking about mistakes, I've worked in lots of teams and organisations where I very rarely even heard the word "mistake".  So, if people are not talking about mistakes and culturally, there's just not the environment where that's part of how you understand the work that you do, it takes a lot of confidence and bravery to be the person saying, "I have made a mistake, and this is what I learnt and I want to share it with you all so that we can all learn".

So, this fear, whether it is a real fear, or just fear of what could happen or what might happen, often described as interpersonal fear, is massive.  It takes a lot to almost tip our brains and balance our brains in that other direction to be fearless.  I often think it's like this scale of going from being fearful to fearless, and that doesn't happen overnight, I think that happens in lots and lots of small increments.  And there are things that you can definitely do individually, but I think today we are talking about high-trust teams, so I think as we're going through the ideas for action, for me this is most effective and useful where it's things that you do together.

Yes, you can think about, well how can you create more trust; but I think this needs to be not the job of one person, not the job of a manager or a leader, or not the job of the team and not the manager and leader; I think this has got to be something where everyone agrees, "This is important, and what are we going to do about it; what does this look like for us?"

Helen Tupper: So, we've got five practical ideas for action now, that you can start individually; but as Sarah said, this is important that you do it collectively so that you can build that trust within the team. 

The first one is all about understanding and exploring the difference between practical and emotional trust.  So, practical trust are things like, "Do people trust you to show up on time?  Do people trust you to get work done?  Do people trust you to meet the deadlines that have been set?" basically that point around reliability that we mentioned earlier in that trust equation.  Whereas, the emotional factors are more like, "Do people feel respected by you?  Do people feel like you listen to them?  Do people feel supported by you, understood, that you care about them and their career?  Have they got a sense of bond and belonging with you?", those sorts of factors.

I think the point here is to understand your perception of what this might look like in the team right now, so I might be like, "I think I show up on time, I think I get work done, I think people feel heard by me", but actually to openly explore that with other people.  And I almost see this as a pie chart, where the ideal is 50/50; you have a balance between the practical aspects of trust and the emotional aspects, and that you may draw your own pie chart with, "What do I think this looks like for me today?"  So, I would imagine for me today, that our team maybe feel that they've got some of that emotional trust with me.  I would hope that people feel like I hear them, I hope! 

But maybe they feel like they've got a bit less of that practical trust, because maybe I overcommit, or I take too much on, or I'm not transparent about the deadlines I'm working to.  So, I'd almost imagine that I'm a bit off-balance at the moment, emotional's higher than practical, but that would give me a really good, tangible way to talk to the team about, if I was trying to get to balance, what I need to do differently, so you had equal levels of practical and emotional trust with me.  So, it's a bit of a self-assessment, but that could also start a team conversation about those two aspects; what do you think, Sarah?

Sarah Ellis: So, when you first shared this with me, I found it quite confronting, I think because my assumption had been, "We have really high levels of trust across our team at Amazing If.  We know this stuff and if we don't practise what we preach, there's a problem".  But a bit like you, I think my default had been to understand trust from an emotional perspective, "Do I feel like people can be themselves?  Do I hope that we all listen to each other?" all those things which are really important.  And exactly as you said, I think we do those really well.

I then put myself in the shoes of other people in our team and thought, "What would their experience of me be, in terms of getting work done at the point that they need it done, or meeting their deadlines?" because we're all interdependent and we all rely on each other to get things done.  And I was thinking, "I don't think it would be that great", and actually I was like, "That's so interesting", because I could imagine people would probably feel quite uncertain sometimes about whether I was going to do something or not.  You can justify all those things, because there's lots of work on, but often people don't see lots of that, and do we then communicate when maybe we're not going to be able to do those things, or does it just happen?

So, one of the things that you and I were talking about, even before starting recording today was, I think this idea of practical versus emotional trust gives you a way of talking about trust as a team.  Because I think then, I might still not be able to get the work done, so that still might be the reality, so someone else in our team might think, "I need Sarah to do this work by this point".  Now I think what might happen is I would just think, "Well, that might be urgent for that person, but I've got something more urgent", so I balance all those priorities in my own mind, but without necessarily talking to anybody else about them.

It makes you start to think about how important transparency is, in terms of transparency of communication, transparency in terms of priorities, what's happening when, so that everybody has that understanding of, "Well, if you're not going to meet a deadline, let someone know and let someone know why not", because then I suspect actually the trust doesn't diminish.  I mean, if you never do anything ever, you've probably got a problem.  But also, if you're never talking about these things, then probably your trust might go down a bit, but people might not really understand why not.

I think it just gives you a different way of thinking about trust, because I'd completely gone to the emotional side, and I'd not even thought about some of those practical things.  It kind of stopped me in my tracks a bit and thought, "I could be diminishing our trust as a team with some of my actions and my behaviours at the moment", so I've got some work to do basically!

So, idea for action two, which Helen mentioned briefly already in the podcast, is this idea of mistakes.  And you might be like me, you might have been in lots of organisations where people don't really talk about mistakes, and you don't have to use the word "mistake".  So, if that really doesn't work for you, or just doesn't feel right in your culture, it's just about where things just don't go to plan, where something is wrong, because everyone does make mistakes all of the time, and the very important point is the second thing, "What did I learn and what did we learn?"  So, there's more than just you, what did you learn from making that mistake?  It's how can we then share that, so that we increase our collective knowledge and understanding, so we're growing together, not individually.

As Helen described, I think if you hope this is going to happen, you're really relying on people having space in their days to talk about this and share these.  And initially, through the work that we do, we had tried having something called "mistake meetings", where once a month, you have a mistake meeting, everyone brings to that meeting one mistake they've made and what did they learn, and that feels very specific and purposeful, which is really good in terms of a meeting. 

But when we experimented with that, we found that also felt too formal, and often you can't remember, because you've often had to move on from those mistakes, or you've already fixed them.  So for us, it didn't feel in the moment enough to actually really be as useful as we would like it to be.  So, we now do mistake moments, and the idea with mistake moments is that day, if you can, you just go onto Teams, we always do the header, "mistake moments", and it could just be two sentences.  It could just be, "Today, I made this mistake, and here's what I learnt and this is maybe what I would do differently next time".  I think we've only probably be doing it for about two or three months now, but I'm getting more and more used to, every time I make a mistake, just thinking, "Oh, that's a mistake moment". 

So, in my mind, I've now got a way of interpreting what's happening and I've now got a bit of a default.  It's become a bit of a ritual and a habit to think, when you make a mistake, not only do you need to fix the mistake, but it's a mistake moment that I share with the team.  So, that has really worked for us.

Helen Tupper: I think it's quite a reframe actually, because I previously would have gone, if I'd made a mistake, my first thing probably would have been to get a bit annoyed at myself, "Oh, I can't believe I've forgotten that.  I can't believe I sent that email.  I can't believe I missed that deadline", that kind of thing.  Whereas now, I do go, "That's annoying, Helen, that you've done it", but then I think, "Okay, I should share this with the team, because it will stop other people making the mistake, and also often there's a bit of empathy in there as well, when people reply to it; there's a lot of understanding and empathy.

Now, I have a different default response to making a mistake than I did beforehand, and I think it's much more positive, now that we've got that place to share them.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's funny, isn't it?  Mistakes stop being something where you beat yourself up, and start being something where you learn and get support.  And that is actually quite a different experience, and I really wish I'd done this earlier in my career, because I was definitely somebody who made a mistake, and I would squirrel away, try and fix it, and not ask for help; because I do think that making mistakes is also very linked to one of the other behaviours in high-trust teams, which is asking for help.

I think, again, when you get more used to talking about these things, now when I make a mistake, probably my first thought is, "Who might be able to help me [or] how do I share this is a way where we could fix it together?" rather than feeling like I have to hide it, because of that point about if you're fearful, you hide your mistakes; if you're fearless, you talk about them and you ask for help.

Helen Tupper: So, our third idea for action is called "red-table talks", and this is actually borrowed from Jada Pinkett, so if you're going to borrow anything, take it from a Hollywood superstar!  But it's all about the idea of having a tough conversation, which is an important part of psychological safety, is that people feel okay to have those tough conversations; but a way of creating a space to do it regularly as a team.

So, the idea of the red table is that it's a table; actually, I think the way that she does it is she brings her daughter and her mother together, and they talk about social and cultural topics that might be tough to discuss, race and gender and violence, and all kinds of different things.  The point is that there's a regular space to have that conversation; that people choose to be involved, so you don't force anyone to be part of a red-table talk; but you might curate the topics, you might say, "What feels like a tough topic that we need to table for conversation?"  Make sure that you have a diverse group of people in the room, because that's part of this, that you're inviting people with different experiences and perspectives. 

If you're the person who's maybe put that red-table talk on, it's not all about your voice.  You're really there to invite other people's opinions, to make sure that people feel included, to see if people have got different perspectives or experiences, and there doesn't necessarily have to be an actionable outcome.  So, it's not like, "Here are ten ways that we are going to fix gender diversity in the company tomorrow", it's not that; it's so that people feel heard and so that they know that there is a place for them to have a conversation that might be of concern to them, but they didn't quite know how to have it.  

If you don't have that time and that space, then people have these topics they want to talk about, but they get frustrated, they feel like they've not been heard, they feel maybe that they don't have any inclusion or belonging, so it's just having the discussions, having the time to do it, and maybe borrowing that idea.  I know MVF, this came into my mind, because Andrea Pattico, who's the Chief People Officer for a company called MVF, that we've referenced in our TED Talk, they have these red-table talks, and it's an organisation I really admire for how they drive inclusion and belonging, and just discussion in the company; I think it's really powerful.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I find that so interesting and almost, in some ways for us, I think both of us, anti-intuitive, because I would always think, "What's the action?"  Because we are both very like that, I like the idea of experimenting with something where there isn't the pressure to say, "This is about actions and outcomes and outputs", which lots of things that we do are that way.  This is more about space and time to think and time to talk, and that intentional idea of going, "We are going to take on the tricky topics".

If you take on those tricky topics, that are probably going to feel uncomfortable, you generally also get more used to having uncomfortable conversations, where you're expressing a point of view where you think, "This might be different to someone else sitting opposite me or next to me or across from me on Zoom", whatever it might be.  I think we should have a go with this.  I think this will be really, really interesting.

Helen Tupper: I think it would.  And I think you'd be in a conversation and we'd go, "This feels like a red-table topic", once you've got that brand and that moment in a week, you'd be like, "Let's put that on the table.  I feel like you'd really start to use it as language in a team.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so interesting.  And if anybody listening has a go at doing them, let us know how you get on, and we'll have a go too and let you know as well.

So, our fourth idea for action is about the difference between execution and experimentation, and I've used that word "experiment" a few times already today.  Where I think this is particularly helpful is around the idea of risk.  So, in high-trust teams, people understand what risk looks like, what risk means, and what risks are okay and encouraged, and also what risks are not okay.  So, Helen sometimes says to me, "Will it sink the ship?"  That's often her question of going, "How risky does this feel?"  Or, "How big a hole in the ship is this going to put?" because very rarely does something sink the ship, but we have done some things at times where you're like, "Water might start coming in", to keep the analogy going!

When I work with teams on doing workshops in this area on high-trust teams, this is often the one that I think people find quite tricky, because risk means very different things in different sectors, in different industries, and different types of teams.  So, I think back to this point about talking transparently, you've got to be very clear about, "When we say risk, what do we mean?" 

You might choose to not use the word risk, but also really openly agreeing where your work sits on an execution-to-experimentation scale, because I suspect that within all of our jobs pretty much, there are some projects or tasks or things that we are working on that are maybe very, very close to the experimentation side of the scale, which then means that gives you, by labelling them in that way, it gives you more freedom, it gives you probably a bit more autonomy, you can try stuff out, probably a bit less fear of failure.

Whereas, if we have agreed, if Helen and I have said, "This really feels like an execution project or task", where you're trying to get as much right first time as you possibly can, that's okay too, because those things do exist.  But again, you probably behave in a different way, you support each other in a different way, and we have been doing this at Amazing If a lot more over the last 12 months.  You might have heard us talk about this before, about being very clear about where we are experimenting. 

I don't know whether you agree, Helen, but you feel very differently about those projects.  You have more of a, "Well, let's just try it out, let's see".

Helen Tupper: And permission to fail.  I always feel like when we do an experiment, I kind of go, "Well, this might not work, and that's okay", because it's not about succeeding all the time, it's about learning from it.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  And you often, I think, then have a more open conversation about, "What are the risks associated with that experiment?"  So, "If this experiment fails and if something is an experiment, one of the outcomes is, it could fail and that's absolutely okay, if this fails does that feel okay?" and you might not love it, no one likes failing, and that might not be what you're hoping for.  But I think for everything that we do, where we're like, "That's an experiment.  If it fails, I might still be disappointed", but they'll always be something you can learn, and it is okay for that thing to fail.

So I think, as a team, if you're trying to encourage people to take more risks, more initiative, more autonomy, they're things that I hear people describe a lot, you know, "We want people to take more control and feel like they've got the initiative to make things happen", maybe just having these conversations about people's tasks, to-do lists, projects, to be very clear about this, and just see whether that changes behaviour.  Because, certainly in our experience, it's changed our behaviour, and it seems to work quite well in some of the organisations that we work alongside.

Helen Tupper: And, our final idea for action, number five, is all about asking curious questions.  This is a pretty simple idea for action, but it is very, very effective.  If you want to have trust in teams, you need to invite conversation, invite different perspectives, invite discussion; and curious questions are the quickest way that you can do that.  So, here are a few different curious questions that we would recommend you just start adding into your team meetings, the discussions that you're having.  They work in person, they work virtually, they're unlockers really for trust.

The first one, "What might we be missing", or, "What have we not thought about?".  The second one, "What other ideas could we consider?".  And the third one, "Who has a different perspective?".  They are purposely big, and they are purposely open-ended, because they are designed to invite discussion.

Sarah Ellis: And, when you're asking these questions, try and avoid "why" questions.  As we've talked about before, and Tasha Eurich's research shows this, "why" questions can come across as confrontational.  Whereas, the purpose of these questions, remember, is to help people to be fearless rather than fearful.  So, why questions, and I know because I would be someone who would feel like this, if Helen says to me, "Why are we doing this?" or, "Why did you do that?" I'd be like, "Oh, no", and straightaway that fear part of my brain lights up, and all those concerns and those worries and that interpersonal fear is at the forefront of your mind.

Whereas actually, if we ask more "what" questions, or "where" or "how might we" questions, that is much more about approaching people with curiosity and genuine intrigue, and then really listening to the answers.  One of the things I really like, I've re-read Amy Edmonson's book, Fearless Organizations, recently and I really like all the examples of the different questions and cases of these that she talks about in there, and how asking quite a subtly different question, even though you're trying to get to the same outcome, can have a really big impact.  She gives lots of examples in different settings like hospitals, and I just find that so interesting. 

So, I think again, just trying out lots of different questions, and see which ones seem to be the biggest unlockers for you and your team in terms of encouraging people to share risks or challenges or problems, or different points of view.  And I think, if you just start to notice that, then you get more and more used to asking each other these kinds of questions.

Helen Tupper: Let's just summarise those five ideas for action for you.  So, there was practical versus emotional trust, and just assessing what that looks like for you; making time for mistake moments; having red-table talks for those tough topics; exploring execution to experimentation, and what that looks like on a day-to-day basis, individually and as a team; and then, number five, making sure that you ask curious questions.

Sarah Ellis: So, that's everything for our podcast for today.  I did just want to let you know about one report that's coming, and event that we thought might be useful for at least some of our listeners.  So, some of you might be familiar with FutureLearn.  They offer lots of different online courses, loads of skills that you can learn, and their mission is all about transforming access to education, which fits very, very well with our ambition to make careers better for everyone, which is why we're always happy to talk about the work that they do. 

They've got a new report that's released, all about the future of learning, I think it's the second one they've done on this, and we'll link to that report in the show notes, if you fancy having a read.  And if you're someone who perhaps likes to hear reports being brought to life and see them visually, on Wednesday, 30 March, they are doing an event to talk through the different findings of the report.  It's free to join, there's loads of really interesting experts, and us!  I didn't know whether I was like, "Do I just talk about ourselves as one of those interesting experts?"  But we are there as part of it, and people are talking about key trends and skills, and loads of different ideas on learning.

So, we thought it was mentioning, just in case it is relevant for anyone listening today.

Helen Tupper: So, hope you have enjoyed today's episode.  All the links we've mentioned will be in the description, and as I mentioned earlier, you can just email us if you ever can't find anything.  It's helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com.  We will be back with you with another podcast very soon.

Sarah Ellis: Thanks very much for listening, everyone, bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye.