# Thank people for contributing, then seek understanding

- **Episode:** [15](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/15.md) (2022-12-06)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** contribution, understanding, communication
- **Time:** 23:46–31:17 (start 1426s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/15?t=1426](https://truthliesandwork.com/15?t=1426)

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[23:46] Leanne Elliott: So, I think there's another couple of really great takeaways here from Stephan that I just want to expand on a little bit. I think, you know, he said that the first thing is to really, you know, thinking about how you respond to this. If you fly off the handle, if you send out an angry email and copy in every single member of the team, That's not going to foster feelings of psychological safety. So, you really do have to take your ego out of it. You need to decide ahead of time how you're going to respond to various levels of mistake, because the minute you lose your shit, psychological safety just isn't going to work. I think secondly, as Stephan said, if you're not going to do anything with this feedback, with these ideas, suggestions, you are better doing Nothing at all, do not open that can of worms. That is going to, you know, I mean, psychological safety then becomes irrelevant. But in terms of employee engagement and wellbeing, you're just going to have a more negative impact. So, if you're not in the position to ask for this feedback and act on it, and by acting, I'm not saying implement every idea, but respond to every idea, then it's just, it's not going to work
[24:57] Al Elliott: Yeah. I love this, taking your ego out of it. I think that is the key to almost anything in business, whether it's sales, marketing, ideation, leadership, HR, anything like that. Taking your ego out of it is really, really smart. Okay, so hopefully we've made a case for why it's important and why you should be considering this and why you should be implementing it in your, in your organization. So let's get on to some practical stuff. So how do we actually do this?
[25:24] Stephan Wiedner: Yeah, the first thing you wanna do is thank people for contributing and then seek understanding. So as a leader, you wanna make sure that you have your curiosity hat on, if you will. Don't assume you absolutely know what they're trying to say. So sometimes it will be fairly clear, but then other times you might have additional questions, um, or don't assume you know exactly what the person is What we advocate is for managers and leaders to be really curious about what people are contributing, because that makes them really feel heard, right? And understood and appreciated. And if you give people the time of day, they're gonna start to give you more and more information openly, right? Because it's gonna feel more comfortable. They're gonna feel more trust. And that trust is a currency within business, right? The more people trust you because you're willing to listen, And the more they're willing to share and give you insights or information that they're possessing in their, between their two ears
[26:29] Leanne Elliott: I think what I love most about what Stephan said there is, you know, leaders putting on their curious hat, you know, leading with curiosity. And why I like that, I think it's a, one, it's a really common trait within, you know, leaders, particularly owner-led businesses. They're usually very curious. They've usually built their business because of a curiosity of doing doing something differently, or, or, you know, changing how, you know, the status quo. It's that same mentality, you know, how could we do things better? And what I love is that by applying the same mindset that you leverage to build your business, um, you're gonna embrace, um, this, this concept of psychological safety and really help your employees to contribute in the best possible way to Continually, um, you know, push the envelope. So let's bring this, this idea, this concept to life a little bit more, and let's, um, hear from Stephan again
[27:30] Stephan Wiedner: For sure. I think there's many good examples of organizations that do psychological safety well. Um, I can think of one organization that's made it a real top priority for them, and they're in the finance industry. And so what's a priority for them, especially among their investment team, is getting really good information because they make decisions about what companies to invest in. They wanna make sure that even if there's one dissenting voice in a room of a dozen, that that dissenting voice is heard. So they're creating an environment where all of those folks are able to share their information. Now, that's not a simple task. Like, I think the idea of what they want to have, which is complete information for decision-making, is really, really clear. What is hard about it is that these folks, by and large, are looking at investments and making decisions, and they're basically being paid for their knowledge. And so they don't wanna look stupid. They don't wanna look like they're uninformed. They wanna be making decisions on complete information. And so if there's some sort of like, hmm, I'm not so sure, and I'm not even sure how to fully articulate why, But I have an intuition, you know, my sense is this industry operates in this way, and this company's a little bit different than all the other companies in the industry, and here's why. And like, maybe they can't fully articulate why they're thinking, I'm not so sure, I'm a little bit hesitant about this as a buy. They might not say anything. So again, they've been able to put in place some systems and really group norms
[29:11] Al Elliott: Yeah
[29:12] Stephan Wiedner: By setting a certain agenda. Like, so, okay, for these meetings, here's how we're gonna run this meeting. We wanna hear everybody's, you know, top 3 reasons for, top 3 reasons against, and we want you to think about it ahead of time cuz this week we're gonna be reviewing companies A, B, C, and D, right?
[29:27] Leanne Elliott: So they're giving people, they're knowing their tendencies and accommodating the, the agenda of the meeting to allow people to have that time to want to invest the time and energy to I think that's actually a really good approach, to give teams this agenda, this expectation ahead of time, not only for different personalities and thinkers, but also as a way of, you know, saying, we're so committed to this that we are giving you time to come up with why we're wrong about this. It really cements that through. And I think, you know, another way to do it could be, you know, again, you're relying on individuals with that to feel comfortable. Create team meetings where you're asking people to come up with their Or create working groups with a set agenda. You 4 are for this idea, you 4 are against this idea. It doesn't matter how you individually feel. Use the information to come up with the pros and cons as you can see them. Yeah, I think it's a really, really cool technique. And just to pick up on something else that Stephan said there as well, you know, and this sums it up brilliantly, is all of this, everything about gathering data within your organisation on employee engagement, wellbeing, how people are thinking and feeling, is to give you the full information, the full picture you need to make decisions within your business. If you're not quite ready to kind of make this big change within your business and put it all out there, think about doing, asking for some kind of anonymous feedback, or some kind of survey that we've talked about before on the podcast. Sometimes that can be a good place to start, to understand what the current climate is within your business. Um, to then make bolder moves, uh, that Stephan is talking about
[31:13] Al Elliott: So clearly the biggest impact on psychological safety is the leader