High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 443: How to Create a Thriving Culture

Episode Date: July 10, 2021

Several years ago, Google undertook a massive two-year study on high-performing teams, calling it “Project Aristotle.” They sought to answer the question “What makes a high performing team?”��After conducting over 200 interviews, they surprisingly found a top ingredient for high-performing teams was psychological safety—in fact, it was the most important ingredient in high-performing teams. Today on the podcast, we talk about how we can apply this idea to building a thriving culture at work, home, or any other place we lead.   Quote of the Week: “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.” Tom Watson, CEO of IBM    Power Phrase of the Week:” I see failure and mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow.” 

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Checking in with Cinder Kampoff today, we're talking about how to create a thriving

culture. Cinder, you usually start with a quote for us. This is a quote by Tom Watson, the former CEO of IBM. He said, if you want to succeed, double your failure rate. And then how does that translate into an example for us today to start with? So a few years ago, Google took on this massive two-year study where they were looking at high performing teams. And Lisa, they called it Project Aristotle. And they were asking this question, like what makes a high performing team? And so after 200 interviews, they found that the top ingredient was actually something called psychological safety.

And that's what we're talking about today is they found it was the most important ingredient in high-performing teams. And we're talking about how we can apply it to build a thriving culture at work or at home or for a coach of a sport or any other place that we lead. So what do you exactly mean by psychological safety? So it's a person's belief that they can take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed or that they're going to be punished. And people at work, so employees at work who experience psychological safety actually feel comfortable trying new things and asking questions and admitting mistakes. And all of this can lead to more creativity and innovation. Whereas those who maybe don't feel psychologically safe, they might feel like they're going to be rejected or punished

or embarrassed when they speak up. And so why is that so important when we think about developing thriving cultures? So there is a professor and researcher from Harvard Business School. Her name is Dr. Amy Edmondson, and she actually coined this term psychological safety. And what she found is that she was, again, studying high-performing teams, and she found that those that were the highest performing actually made more mistakes. You'd think it was the opposite. They made fewer mistakes, but they made more mistakes. The biggest factor was they admitted their mistakes and shared the mistakes as something they could learn and grow from within the organization. So it's a really important part about building thriving cultures is how we're

responding to these mistakes. And so I kind of see this as you're either the leader or you're the maybe employee or follower of. And so are we talking mainly to leaders today? We're talking about the leaders, but we can also as, you know, if we don't feel like we're a leader, we can help build this culture of failing fast within our organization, within our team. And what I mean by that is kind of failure can be really misleading. Sometimes we think that, you know, mistakes are not failure. But the way I kind of think about it is mistakes are not failure as long as we're learning from them and we're growing from them and responding to them in an open way. And one of my teams that I work with, Lisa, actually rewards failure. And they give a trophy to a person or team that actually makes the biggest mistakes in a time

period of a particular project. So really their goal is to fail fast. Like the more that they fail, the quicker they can get to their outcome. That totally makes sense though. The innovation that comes with being creative and trying things where if you don't feel psychologically safe, maybe you'll just do the same thing over and over because you know that you did it last time,

you didn't get in trouble. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't take risks. Right, right. And you can learn from those risks. So, Cinder, do you have a final point for us? Yeah, I would say, you know, today, consider how you can help other people fail faster and make it okay to fail.

And if you don't feel like, you know, this idea of psychological safety and failing faster as part of your organization, maybe you start a conversation about it. But the key is, is to really help your team embrace failure and not, you know, punish someone when they fail and make sure that you're not just rewarding those that succeed. Can you summarize today for us? So today we talked about creating psychological safety in a culture that you're a part of or that you lead. And this is important because ultimately, psychological safety leads to higher performance where people feel comfortable trying new things,

asking questions, admitting mistakes. And this can help us see that mistakes are not failure and that we can respond to them in a powerful and a positive way. Cinder, what is our power phrase this week? I see failure and mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. I like it. Learning and creating a thriving culture. Cindra, how do we get in touch with you or learn more about what it is you do or maybe get your book Beyond Grit?

Absolutely. So I coach executives and athletes. And you can find more information at DrCindra. so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. And my book Beyond Grit is over there. You can learn more about this topic in that book. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week.

So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.