The leader is the #1 factor in determining organizational success. If you want to become an effective leader, you have three objectives: First, learn to lead yourself. Then, learn how to unlock the full potential of your team. Finally, build a business where culture is your competitive advantage and innovation is the status quo.
Watch the Latest Episode
Latest Episode |
July 10, 2024
EQ & Social Regard: Do you actually care about your team?
If we don't account for the fundamental beliefs a person has about themselves and others, we can easily promote, support, and encourage leaders with manipulative tendencies. Emotional intelligence frameworks that can’t account for the motivation and intent side of influence are broken from the get-go.
EQ: Your Delivery System
In this episode, hosts Tim and Junior discuss why leaders and managers are obligated to improve their interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, and how to get started.
The Experience Leader: How to Outpace Commoditization in the 21st Century
In this episode of The Leader Factor, hosts Tim and Junior put a new spin on Joseph Pine's 1998 article, The Experience Economy. They draw parallels between an economy's differentiation and commoditization cycle and how a leader's skills can become commoditized over time.
How to Build Challenger Safety
Can you be candid about change at work? Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better. It allows us to feel safe to challenge the status quo without retaliation or the risk of damaging our personal standing or reputation.
How to Build Contributor Safety
Contributor safety satisfies the basic human need to make a difference and offer meaningful contributions. When we create contributor safety for others, we empower them with autonomy, guidance, and encouragement in exchange for effort and results.
How to Build Learner Safety
We can either cultivate or crush, nurture or neglect, stimulate or stifle learner safety, the second stage of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. When we have learner safety we feel safe as we ask questions, give and receive feedback, experiment, and admit when we don’t know.
How to Build Inclusion Safety
This episode is the first in a four-part series on How to Build The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. Listen in as hosts Junior and Timothy R. Clark share in-depth insights into the thinking behind the 4 Stages framework.
Video Episodes
EQ & Social Regard: Do you actually care about your team?
If we don't account for the fundamental beliefs a person has about themselves and others, we can easily promote, support, and encourage leaders with manipulative tendencies. Emotional intelligence frameworks that can’t account for the motivation and intent side of influence are broken from the get-go.
EQ: Your Delivery System
In this episode, hosts Tim and Junior discuss why leaders and managers are obligated to improve their interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, and how to get started. If you're a manager and you're moving from direct to indirect contribution, if your primary job, purpose, and stewardship is to contribute indirectly through other people, then you have to improve your delivery system. There’s no other option.
The Experience Leader: How to Outpace Commoditization in the 21st Century
In this episode of The Leader Factor, hosts Tim and Junior put a new spin on Joseph Pine's 1998 article, The Experience Economy. They draw parallels between an economy's differentiation and commoditization cycle and how a leader's skills can become commoditized over time.
How to Build Challenger Safety
Can you be candid about change at work? Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better. It allows us to feel safe to challenge the status quo without retaliation or the risk of damaging our personal standing or reputation. As the highest level of psychological safety, it matches the increased vulnerability and personal risk associated with challenging the status quo.
How to Build Contributor Safety
Can you create value for your team? Contributor safety satisfies the basic human need to make a difference and offer meaningful contributions. When we create contributor safety for others, we empower them with autonomy, guidance, and encouragement in exchange for effort and results.
How to Build Learner Safety
We can either cultivate or crush, nurture or neglect, stimulate or stifle learner safety, the second stage of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. When we have learner safety we feel safe as we ask questions, give and receive feedback, experiment, and admit when we don’t know. Listen in as hosts Tim and Junior discuss how to build Stage 2: Learner Safety individually, on a team, and in an organization.
How to Build Inclusion Safety
This episode is the first in a four-part series on How to Build The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. Listen in as hosts Junior and Timothy R. Clark, author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety book, share in-depth insights into the thinking behind the 4 Stages framework. The episode covers the history behind psychological safety as a concept, what psychological safety is not, and how to activate the power of diversity through inclusion.
The Coaching and Accountability Matrix
In this final episode of the Micro-coaching and Accountability series, Tim and Junior take the previous two frameworks, The Coaching Continuum and The Three Levels of Accountability, and put them together into the ultimate diagnostic tool for leaders. Think of this matrix as a model to operationalize coaching on a dynamic team. Your objective? To transfer critical thinking and ownership and increase your team's capacity through coaching.
The 3 Levels of Accountability
How do we become accountable to the unenforceable, ourselves? Here’s another diagnostic tool that you can use to determine where your people work currently, and where they want to be. The 3 Levels of Accountability illustrate the relationship between autonomy and accountability and help us set our sights on the ultimate goal: Outcome-level accountability.
The Coaching Continuum
In this first episode of a 3-part series on Micro-coaching and Accountability, Tim and Junior introduce us to The Coaching Continuum, a framework that can be used to identify coaching patterns in leaders. It runs from “Tell” on one side to “Ask” on the other.
Audio Episodes
Redefining Intelligence
This week, we're talking about intelligence. Most people have a view of intelligence that's not just wrong, but damaging. Our conception of intelligence affects our goal choice and the intensity of our efforts. It affects how we perceive ourselves and our potential. In the episode, Tim and Junior discuss how intelligence is more like athleticism. They emphasize the importance of adopting a growth mindset and choose Carol Dweck's definition of intelligence, the intersection of motivation, ability, and effort, as the most helpful definition a leader can adopt on their leadership journey.
The Resilience Cycle: Disturbance, Adaptation, and Recovery
This week, Tim and Junior outline the resilience cycle, which, similar to patterns we see in ecology, consists of disturbance, adaptation, and recovery. They share 5 practical ways to become more resilient as a leader, including spreading out, leaning on positive emotions, developing effective coping mechanisms, adopting a growth mindset, and seeking strong social support.
The Dangers of Contingent Self-Esteem
This week, our hosts navigate through an extensive amount of research literature to come to some conclusions on self-esteem and how to approach it. When we rely on external factors to determine our self-esteem, we open ourselves up to dangerous perspectives. This kind of contingent self-esteem can lead to chronic insecurity in leaders, which gets in the way of their ability to lead effectively and can have detrimental effects on individuals and organizations. In the episode, Tim and Junior suggest three ways to develop a healthier sense of self-worth and tell us which definition of self-esteem they think works best.
Leadership is an Invitation
Have you ever thought about leadership as an invitation? If your goal is to improve and make a positive impact, then leadership will be an inevitable part of your journey. The job to be done, then, is to recognize and accept the invitations that come your way. These could be invitations to grow, help others, or even sometimes, to fail. Tim and Junior make one thing clear, choosing leadership over comfort and contentment is the ultimate call to adventure.
Do Little Things For a Long Time
This week, Tim and Junior are talking about the importance of doing the little things for a long time. Why? Because leaders sweat the small stuff. They know that over time, focusing on the little things plays a key part in sustaining goals, maintaining a sense of control, building momentum, and recognizing improvement.
The Two Leadership Failure Patterns
Tim and Junior talk about the two primary failure patterns in leadership, incompetence and corruption. Effective leaders are leaders with high competence and high moral character. A deficiency in one or the other leaves us susceptible to poor choices, values, and influence on our leadership journey. As part of the episode, our host outlined four different types of leaders. Are you the apprentice, the accomplice, the villain, or the hero?
3D Interviews: 10 Questions That Aren't Cliche
We're talking about interview questions this week. Why? Because poor interview protocols are dangerous and inefficient. They decrease your chances of finding the right person to join your team. During the episode, Tim and Junior highlight the limitations of traditional interviews and give you 10 unique interview questions to help you improve your 3D interviewing skills. Some of these questions are kind of unconventional. But the concepts should help you create a more engaging and effective interview experience that will land you hires that you love.
What Employees Need from Leaders in Uncertain Times
In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior sit down to talk about leading through uncertainty. The content from this episode comes from Dr. Clark’s most recent Harvard Business Review publication, an article entitled What Employees Need from Leaders in Uncertain Times. In the episode, they explore the impact of uncertainty on individuals and organizations and share four practical strategies for effectively leading teams through uncertain times.
5 Subtle Signs of Leadership Potential
We can all agree that identifying potential leaders is a crucial part of organizational success. But, too often, leaders are promoted purely for their technical ability. What would happen if organizations put equal weight on cultural competence in their promotion criteria? In this episode, we're talking about just that. Listen in as our hosts, Tim and Junior, discuss the question: What are the subtle signs that someone will make it in leadership?
The 6 Domains of Emotional Intelligence: Believe, Know, and Do
This week, our hosts Tim and Junior are talking about the limitations of a traditional, four-competency emotional intelligence model. Why? Because LeaderFactor’s private emotional intelligence assessment, EQindex™, is now publicly available! This assessment, and its Leadership 360 version, is based on a 6 domain, 30 skill model that measures what we believe, what we know, and what we do as we interact with others. If you’re wanting to know what the future of emotional intelligence looks like in 2024, this would be the episode to listen to.
What Do You Do With a Toxic Leader?
In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Junior and Dr. Tim Clark discuss a daunting but important question: What do you do with a toxic leader? Too often, organizations will either do nothing or wait too long to react to evidence of harmful leadership. But toxic cultures can't and won't heal themselves. And the remedy largely depends on the kind of leader you're dealing with. Listen in as Tim and Junior explore the characteristics of toxic leaders, the consequences of toxic behavior, and the role of culture in creating, maintaining or preventing toxicity. You'll learn how to distinguish between an actively toxic and passively complicit leader, and discover how to hold your leaders culturally accountable for their behavior.
The Leadership Journey Part Three: Leads the Business
In the final installment of our Leadership Journey series, we delve into the intricacies of Leading the Business with Dr. Tim Clark and Junior. This episode uncovers the transition leaders must undergo from tactical to strategic thinking, focusing on optimizing the whole while preparing for the future.
The Leadership Journey Part Two: Leads the Team
Tim and Junior continue their Leadership Journey series by diving into part two on leading teams. They discuss the challenges leaders face when transitioning from individual contributor to managing others.
The Leadership Journey Part One: Leads Self
Today, Tim and Junior kickoff a three-part series on the leadership journey: Leading yourself, leading the team, and leading the business. Today's episode is focused on leading yourself. Tim and Junior emphasize taking personal accountability and ownership of your own development. You'll hear insights on cultivating wellness, self-awareness, and a growth mindset. Tim and Junior also share their personal learning habits from consuming quality information across multiple mediums to embracing curiosity.
Can You Have Too Much Psychological Safety?
In today's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior discuss a question brought up in a recent Harvard Business Review article, which is, can you have too much psychological safety? The article suggested that excessive amounts of psychological safety could undermine accountability and performance. Tim and Junior share their perspective, pushing back on some of the misconceptions about what psychological safety really is and what it really means.
How to Challenge the Status Quo (Pt.2)
In this two-part series, Tim and Junior discuss practical steps for effectively challenging the status quo. Innovation requires some dissent and deviation from the norm, but challenging the status quo can be difficult since it often feels personal. Today they cover the final 5 tips including bringing credibility, knowing your boss, framing dissent as exploration, and using data to support your case.
How to Challenge the Status Quo (Pt. 1)
In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior tackle a common organizational-wide dilemma, how do you effectively challenge the status quo? Questioning the prevailing mindset is tricky business. While innovation requires deviation from the norm, pushing for change often feels like a personal confrontation rather than an objective debate. So in this episode, Tim and Junior will provide concrete actual advice for skillfully and safely challenging the status quo, whether you lack formal authority or you find yourself at odds with the entrenched stakeholders.
2023 Psychological Safety Year In Review
This special year in review episode of Culture by Design features hosts Tim and Junior interviewing members of the LeaderFactor team. They get unique perspectives on psychological safety trends and insights from 2023 based on interactions with clients. Guests include Jillian (Marketing), Ryan (Technology), Kelsea (Sales), and Alex (Client Success).
The 5 Alignment Questions
In this episode, Tim and Junior introduce five simple but powerful questions to align teams and get everyone on the same page. They explain why alignment is critical yet often neglected, review the high cost of misalignment, and provide a practical framework to drive shared understanding and commitment among team members.
Transferring Ownership and Critical Thinking as a Leader
Tim and Junior dive into the critical leadership skills of accountability and critical thinking. They discuss why these competencies are important, explain the vital interrelationship between accountability and critical thinking, and share thoughts on how we can effectively build these skills in ourselves while also transferring them to others.
How to Improve Emotional Intelligence
In this episode, Tim and Junior conclude their series on emotional intelligence (EQ) by discussing practical ways to improve it. They explain that EQ is a learnable skill that requires deliberate practice focused on improving behaviors. The key is consistently gathering feedback, monitoring your progress, and making incremental improvements over time.
The Causal Chain Between Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Safety
In this episode, Tim and Junior delve into what they term the 'core logic'—a vital exploration of how EQ is not just an individual trait but the cornerstone of collective team intelligence. As they unpack the causal chain, they reveal how EQ is the linchpin in cultivating a safe space for vulnerability, ultimately steering both personal growth and organizational success.
Emotional Intelligence and The Experience Economy
Today, we'll continue the discussion on EQ by answering the question, why is emotional intelligence central to competitive advantage? Be sure to check the show notes for links to all relevant resources related to this episode, including a link to learn about EQ Index, our proprietary EQ assessment that we will be making publicly available for individuals and teams early next year.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
This week we're kicking off a new series on emotional intelligence. Our approach to EQ is different. There’s the mainstream idea of EQ, and then there’s ours and this episode will give you an inside look into how you can make EQ practical and actionable for the individuals and teams you work with.
Psychological Safety: From Theory to Practice
Here at LeaderFactor, we're all about helping our clients take the theories behind psychological safety and culture and turn them into actual practice inside their organizations. Our goal is to make our content and frameworks as actual as possible, and that's what this episode is all about. We've taken some recent favorite practical moments from Tim and Junior and compiled them together. We'll have three segments from a few different episodes, each ranging from 10-15 minutes.
Creating Cultural Accountability
In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior dive into what it means to create cultural accountability in an organization. Our definition of culture is the way we interact. At an individual level, cultural accountability is being accountable for the way you behave and interact with others. High performing organizations have high cultural accountability. As always, we move from theory into practice, and Tim and Junior share tons of practical and actionable examples to help increase cultural accountability in yourself and in your organization.
How to Measure Culture
How are you measuring your organization's culture? In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior are discussing just that. This is a fantastic episode for individuals who really care about being cultural architects and being practitioners in their roles, not just theorists. Tim and Junior will dive into the fundamentals of culture, the different ways we measure culture today, and which metrics give you the most actionable and practical insights on how to improve your culture.
The Patterns of High-Performing Teams
In this episode, Tim and Junior discuss how high-performing teams are formed and maintained. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams, and high-performing teams have patterns. Although there are many patterns, Tim and Junior will focus on a core four in this episode, including how high-performing teams (1) connect, how they (2) improve their skills, how they (3) view transparency and autonomy and how they (4) continuously seek innovation.
Challenger Safety in Practice
Today's episode is the final part of our four-part series on the change management principle, behave until you believe. This is our final episode in the series, and it's on challenger safety in practice. Tim and Junior will discuss why innovation requires deviation, why an environment of high challenger safety is not the default, and they'll give you practical behaviors for you to put challenger safety into practice.
Contributor Safety in Practice
During this episode of Culture by Design, we're continuing our four-part series on the change management principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and, this week, Tim and Junior tackle Stage Three: Contributor Safety. During the episode, they'll discuss our innate need to make a difference, the relationship between autonomy and accountability, and relevant examples and behaviors that will help you put contributor safety into actual practice.
Beware the Tyranny of Your Expertise
Expertise is a double edged sword. On one side, it’s knowledge, it's useful, and it’s leverage. On the other side, you can become insulated and you can lose touch with context. "The danger of the expert is that he often becomes a prisoner of his own expertise." -Peter Drucker. There is no field of knowledge that is static or complete. Nothing is in a state of true equilibrium, so if you don’t move with the unfolding of knowledge in your field of expertise, you become increasingly obsolete and irrelevant.
Learner Safety in Practice
Today's episode is part two of our four-part series on the Change Management Principle, Behave Until You Believe. This week, Tim and Junior talk about what learner safety is, the two domains of learning, why learning is error-driven, and their top 3 picks from the 4 Stages Behavioral Guide as actions we can take to “Behave Until we Believe” in Stage 2 Learner Safety.
Mission Type Orders
Mission-type orders include a clear statement of the superior commander's intent and state each unit's tasks in terms of operational effects to be achieved rather than specific commands. A mission-type order only works when your junior officers have the capability to do the job, including the critical and strategic thinking capability. If they don’t, the mission-type order is more dangerous than a static “command order.”
Inclusion Safety in Practice
To kick off this series, Tim and Junior will talk about what it means to behave until you believe as a principle, behaviors and environments that foster inclusion safety, the difference between bonding and bridging, and give you specific, real ways to create an environment of inclusion.
Excavate Your Talents
Everyone has special gifts, talents, and aptitudes– areas where their potential ability is two or three standard deviations from the mean. The problem is, many of us can’t see them because they are not obvious. No one comes with a list of their talents.
Building a Culture Where Employees Feel Free to Speak Up
You can't just speak a speak-up culture into existence. Doing so in the absence of psychological safety is actually an abdication of leadership and an admission of failure. Tim and Junior talk about the four separations presented in Tim's article that create the conditions to give all employees a voice and motivate them to use it. They are: (1) separate worth from worthiness, (2) separate loyalty from agreement, (3) separate status from opinion, and (4) separate permission from adoption.
Use Minimum Necessary Intervention to Liberate Talent
One of the hardest things for leaders to learn is when to be more or less directive, when to tighten down and when to loosen up. Too little intervention and you’re an absentee landlord. Too much, and you’re micromanaging. As humans we yearn for autonomy in our contribution. We want to create, we want to affect reality in a way that is uniquely ours and in order to do this, we need room.
The Social Exchanges of Psychological Safety
In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior discuss The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety in a way you might not expect. Using social exchange theory, they'll do a deeper dive to add some color to The 4 Stages model and give you additional tools and frames to use when you look at psychological safety.
Adversity is an Opportunity for Beauty
There’s tremendous incentive to make things as easy as possible but adversity is a constant. Take five minutes and ask yourself, name 3 people you consider to be beautiful people. Not in looks but in character. Why those three names? What characterizes their experience? Have they had easy lives?
Psychological Safety for Managers
Psychological safety has been found to be the number one variable in team performance, and in recent episodes we've discussed the most important variable for psychological safety was the leader of the team. As a manager, as a leader of people, you either lead the way or you get in the way. Much of what dictates whether you're leading the way or getting in the way is the way in which you integrate or don't integrate psychological safety into your work.
Proximity Prevents Hostility
"There’s a lot of hatred, prejudice, discrimination, and contention between and among people who don’t really even know each other. Humans tend to fear difference, especially at a distance." -James Baldwin 1963 “Many of our society's greatest problems are created by people who don’t feel seen and heard.” -David Brooks “
The Coaching and Accountability Matrix
Today Tim and Junior will be discussing coaching and accountability. These are two of the most important tactical levers a leader has and they always go together. If we do these things well, we’ll be able to effectively transfer two things to our people: 1) Critical thinking and 2) Ownership. In this conversation, Tim and Junior will reference the coaching and accountability matrix created by Dr. Clark which we have included below.
Urgency is a Catalyst, Seldom A Sustainer
Urgency is good, but only in doses. If we rely consistently on urgency, what do we get? Stress, poor decision-making, and decreased creativity. Urgency has a short shelf-life, it relies heavily on emotion and that emotion dissipates, so in the long run you should rely on vision and discipline to keep you going over a long period of time.
Micro Cultures & The Single Most Important Variable for Psychological Safety
In today's episode Tim and Junior define culture and explain the three levels at which it lives. They explain the most important level of culture: the micro-culture & the single most important variable for influencing psychological safety on a team. Today's conversations includes a peek into some of our survey data that’s brand new coming out of LeaderFactor’s Psychological Safety Survey Tools.
Mistakes Are Not the Exception, They Are the Expectation
We need to distinguish between an operating environment and a test or experimental environment. It’s the difference between practice and the game. Each time we make a mistake, we learn about a cause and effect relationship. We learn what causes what. We learn what doesn’t work.
Violations of Psychological Safety and Their Costs
What happens when you don't have psychological safety, and how does it affect your bottom line? In this episode of the Culture by Design podcast, Tim and Junior share some of the research behind the need for psychological safety at work.
Leaders Get Paid for Judgment
Judgment is the correct application of your expertise but just because you’re an expert doesn’t mean you have good judgment. Quality judgment is a skill that must be developed. Not everyone is born with it.
The Ladder of Vulnerability
In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior explain The Ladder of Vulnerability. We all experience vulnerability at work differently, and you have a ladder of vulnerability that's unique to you. This episode, and the online resources available to accompany it, will make it easier for you to talk about vulnerability at work. With these tools, you can change the conversation around vulnerability by providing a more practical, data-driven approach.
Become an Agile, Self-directed Learner
The biggest barrier to learning today is not access, it’s motivation. Many people stop learning even though it’s an innate need and desire. The solution? Make learning completely your responsibility and avoid learning welfare like the plague.
Vision: Investing in the Future
Tim and Junior will discuss vision as it relates to leadership and personal development. It's to see what doesn't exist, to see what others can't, and to see potential and possibility in yourself, in others, and in the organization.
Leadership Makes it Harder to Get to Reality
When you step into a formal leadership role, you face a built-in obstacle: you have to work harder to stay in reality. Why? Because now there’s a power differential. Honesty and candor comes with risk; it can be dangerous. You get less feedback and it’s filtered.
Judgment: Making Decisions as a Leader
If decisions are the primary output of any leader, then improving decision-making is a crucial part of becoming a better leader. The two define and frame the concept, and then share practical ways to improve judgment as a learnable skill.
You Will Grow Based on What You Demand of Yourself
Today's lesson: You will grow based on what you demand of yourself. Today's key action: Write down an area of your life that's falling or has fallen into equilibrium in which you should demand more of yourself. Then go and do whatever might be appropriate to improve
Change: Building Resilient Organizations & People
In this episode, we're continuing our Leading with Character and Competence series with a discussion on the second cornerstone of competence, change. Change always requires the performance of additional work and the absorption of additional stress. It's a gateway competency in the 21st century. Sometimes we choose it, and sometimes it chooses us.
Learning: Maintaining Your Competitive Advantage
Tim and Junior discuss what it means to be an agile self-directed learner, why it's important to learn at or above the speed of change, and how to keep yourself competitive and relevant in an increasingly fast-paced, changing environment.
Courage & Your Leadership to Management Ratio
In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior talk about courage as a leadership trait. Courage is a characteristic you need if you want to take risks, innovate, and progress. It's the biggest difference between managers and leaders.
Accountability - Owning Your Outcomes
In today's episode, Tim and Junior continue the "Leading with Character and Competence" series by discussing the third cornerstone of character: accountability. Great leaders love accountability. They are not afraid of transparency and take ownership of their actions and outcomes. Their high levels of accountability help them avoid blame, denial, or excuses.
Humility - The Final Stage of Confidence
In today's episode, we're continuing our leadership series on leading with character and competence with a discussion on the second cornerstone of character: humility. Humility is a performance accelerator; it allows you to develop, grow, and progress faster. It's the culminating stage of a leader's emotional and psychological development, and it's also one of the most difficult character traits to cultivate. This is a unique episode that will leave you with insights on humility that you haven't considered, which you can use to improve your leadership today.
Integrity - Are you for sale?
In today's episode, we're continuing our Leading with Character & Competence series with a discussion about integrity. Integrity is the first cornerstone of character and is about being honest, trustworthy, and reliable. It's about doing the right thing even when it's difficult. Integrity is key to building trust and credibility, which are essential for effective leadership.
Leading with Character & Competence: The Core & The Crust
At LeaderFactor, we view leadership as an applied discipline. It’s a learnable skill. It’s something that you can improve with good information and a lot of effort. Leadership is a factor in every decision and every outcome. Character and competence are two big pieces of leadership that will frame everything that follows.
Pt.2 Beyond the Office: Psychological Safety in Personal Relationships
Tim and Junior will pick it up right where they left off and start by discussing contributor safety as it relates to our personal lives. They will continue with practical examples, and you’ll even get introduced to the LIVE model, an acronym to help you recognize and reward vulnerability around you. If you missed last week’s episode, you may consider starting there, because this conversation begins right where that one ends.
Beyond the Office: Psychological Safety in Personal Relationships
We all have relationships we wish to improve. The concepts behind The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™ can help us improve our relationships both at work and beyond the office into our everyday lives. This week Tim and Junior will get personal and discuss how recognizing and rewarding the vulnerable acts of others can make a positive impact everyone around us. This is part one in a two part mini series on this topic.
Navigating Cultural Differences: The Key to Psychological Safety in Global Teams
In today's episode, Tim and Junior dive into the world of cross-cultural communication and explore the importance of understanding cultural differences. From nonverbal communication to attitudes towards conflict and time orientation, they examine how cultural dimensions impact our behavior and interactions with others. Join them for an episode full of practical tips for developing intercultural competence and improving your effectiveness in a globalized world.
Psychological Safety in Healthcare
In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior discuss the importance of psychological safety in healthcare. They highlight the significant issue of medical errors in the industry and propose creating a culture of rewarded vulnerability to overcome the fear of speaking up. They also discuss the barriers to psychological safety in healthcare and the ultimate impact of psychological safety, which is to improve patient outcomes and reduce preventable medical errors, ultimately saving lives.
The Human Side of Layoffs: How Companies Can Prioritize People and Culture Amidst Uncertainty
The goal of this episode is to explore how organizations can navigate through these difficult decisions and prioritize people and culture. If you haven't been affected by a layoff yet, chances are you'll eventually find yourself affected by one. You may avoid one, or maybe even run one. In any of those cases, today's discussion will help you.
The Catastrophic Consequences of a "Nice" Culture
In this episode, Tim and Junior will discuss the catastrophic consequences of a "nice" culture. The intention behind cultivating a nice culture is often genuine. Leaders believe they are doing a good thing that will motivate people and create inclusion. However, it often has the opposite effect, resulting in a lack of honest communication, intellectual bravery, innovation, and accountability.
Why Psychological Safety Is Impossible Without Emotional Intelligence
In today's episode, Tim and Junior will also talk about Why Psychological Safety is Impossible Without Emotional Intelligence and the connection between these two important concepts. Emotional intelligence or EQ, as we define it, is your ability to interact effectively with other humans. It's your delivery system. This is a practical episode full of practical tips on how to improve your emotional intelligence and your interactions in general.
How to Promote Psychological Safety as an Early Adopter
What do you do if you want to bring psychological safety to your organization, but don't find yourself in a position of authority? Or if you do have some authority, how do you approach the topic of psychological safety with your teams and others who are not as familiar with the concept? In this weeks episode Tim and Junior will help you gain a better understanding of change management and cultural transformation.
10 Misleading Leadership Theories
Leadership is not an ethereal concept. It’s not as cinematic as you might think. It is about one simple and profoundly human thing--Influence. In this episode Tim and Junior breakdown 10 misleading leadership theories and how to avoid them.
Two Leadership Failure Patterns: Paternalism and Exploitation
In this episode Tim and Junior introduce the two leadership failure patterns found in The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™ model - paternalism and exploitation. This is a very practical episode for managers and leaders but applies to anyone working with other humans.
The 5 Functions of Leadership
In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior explain the 5 Functions of Leadership, originally created to provide a job description for a CEO. When you're an executive leader, nothing is your job and everything is your job. Delegated authority is hard to find success in, but this episode will help you better understand how to be effective in any leadership role.
Achieving Physical Safety Through Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is the key to creating a safer workplace where employees can bring up concerns and problems before they become disasters. This week Tim and Junior explore the link between psychological safety and physical safety for organizations where lives are on the line.
What Psychological Safety is Not
In this episode Tim and Junior discuss the seven misconceptions surrounding psychological safety. Some organizations and some leaders dismiss psychological safety because they believe that it means a whole host of things, that it doesn't mean. So they dismiss it and they ignore it. When helping leaders understand the topic of psychological safety, defining what psychological safety is not can be just as helpful as defining what it is.
How a CEO Can Create Psychological Safety in the Room
There’s a power dynamic in every room. If you’re the CEO and you’re in the room, you control that dynamic. Positional power is consolidated in your hands, and what you say and do can draw people out or make them recoil with anxiety and fear. In this weeks episode Tim and Junior discuss 10 ways CEO's can create higher levels of psychological safety in the room.
(Pt.5) How Mental Health and Wellness is Driving Demand for Psychological Safety
This episode is part five in our five part series on "What's Driving Demand for Psychological Safety". When individuals feel psychologically safe at work, they are more likely to report positive mental health outcomes such as increased job satisfaction, higher levels of well-being, and lower levels of stress and burnout.
(Pt.4) The Impact of Psychological Safety on Engagement and Retention
This episode is part four in our five part series on "What's Causing Demand for Psychological Safety." Tim and Junior dive into the data behind the great resignation and the link between workplace culture and employee retention.
(Pt.3) Competitiveness and Innovation
This week's episode is part three of our five part series on "What's Driving Demand for Psychological Safety". Tim and Junior discuss why the need for innovation sparking demand for psychological safety and how innovation is just as much cultural as it is technical.
(Pt.2) Exclusion and Social Injustice
This weeks episode is part two in our five part series on "What's Driving Demand for Psychological Safety". Tim and Junior sit down to discuss exclusion and social injustice as a driving force for psychological safety and ask each of us to consider our own behavior patterns as it relates to fostering cultures of inclusion.
What's Driving the Demand for Psychological Safety?
It's a new year and we're kicking things off with a five part series on the forces driving demand for psychological safety. Today's episode will kick off the series and give us an overview of where we've been, where we are, and introduce the key drivers. In the following episodes of this series, Tim and Junior discuss exclusion and social injustice, and innovation, engagement and retention, mental health and wellness. Each of these paths lead back to the need and the demand for higher levels of psychological safety.
How to Bridge from Diversity to Inclusion
In this podcast Tim and Junior discuss the importance of bridging the gap between diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Diversity alone is not enough, and true progress comes from creating a culture of inclusion. To do that we must "cross the lines of natural affinity," or find common ground and build relationships with coworkers who may be different from ourselves.
The Intersection Between Diversity, Inclusion, and Innovation
In this episode, Tim and Junior discuss the intersection between diversity, inclusion, and innovation. We need diversity but cannot unlock the benefits of our differences without inclusion. When we have a diverse and inclusive environment innovation follows. Moving from diversity to inclusion is a journey from awareness to action, and many organizations stop at awareness, believing that it will lead to behavioral change. Sustainable behavioral change requires a commitment rather than just compliance.
Agile Doesn't Work Without Psychological Safety
On this week’s episode of the Culture by Design podcast, Tim and Junior break down one of Tim’s recent articles entitled Agile Doesn’t Work Without Psychological Safety. They explain why the failure patterns in Agile are inherently cultural, and how to fix them.
Why Some Leaders Are Afraid of Psychological Safety
During this week’s episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior dissect the two kinds of leaders who shy away from psychological safety: those who feed on title and status, and those who try to hide their incompetence. They encourage healthy introspection as a tool to avoid becoming one of those leaders yourself. Are you a business leader looking to introduce psychological safety into your organization? Crack yourself open with this enlightening episode.
Hiring, Firing & Promotion with Psychological Safety
As an HR leader you have to make a lot of the tough calls. We don’t envy you, but we’re here to help. In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior recap LeaderFactor's latest webinar. Can you really know who will help or hurt your company culture from just an interview? Is psychological safety a big enough deal to cause someone to lose their job? And why should cultural impact be considered in the promotion process? Listen and find out.
Where Great Culture Starts
On this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior explain the theory behind the name of the podcast. Their claim? Culture is inevitable, and whether yours is a bad one or a good one is up to you.
Navigating Vulnerability at Work
This week's episode is a team favorite, and is definitely worth the listen. Tim and Junior talk about why the workplace is a vulnerable place, what vulnerability is, and why actively rewarding vulnerability matters. Whether you're motivated by making others around you feel comfortable at work, or you want to improve team performance, you should model and reward acts of vulnerability across The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety.
How to Create a Deeply Inclusive Culture
Back by popular demand, this week's episode of Culture by Design comes from a webinar published in May 2021. Tim and Junior discuss some of the hard questions, like: Why do humans exclude each other? How do humans justify excluding each other? What is a junk theory of superiority? How do we create a deeply inclusive culture through psychological safety?
What is Psychological Safety?
In this week's episode Tim and Junior take a step back from the four-part series on The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety to give listeners a broad overview of psychological safety as a concept, from the history, to the framework, to the patterns and norms of culture as a whole. The content for this episode is based on the debut of The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety, LeaderFactor's newest ebook available now.
Stage Four: Challenger Safety
It's the end of our four-part series on The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, and this week Tim and Junior are talking about the fourth and final stage: challenger safety. What does it take to innovate on dynamic teams? At the end of the day, a lack of innovation is a culture issue, and knowing that is a game-changer. A culture-changer, if you will. Our hosts share their practical tips on how to do just that, and more, in this value-packed series finale.
Stage Three: Contributor Safety
On this week's episode of the Culture by Design podcast, Tim and Junior continue the series with Stage 3: Contributor Safety. Why do we hate being micromanaged? And what does that have to do with psychological safety? This episode is full of moments of introspection where you can ask yourself, do I allow others to create value?
Stage Two: Learner Safety
Stage 2 Learner Safety is is part two in our four part series based on Timothy R. Clark’s book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation. In this episode Timothy R. Clark and Junior Clark answer key questions around how to create a culture where there is both encouragement to learn and engagement in the learning process.
Stage One: Inclusion Safety
In this week on The Leader Factor podcast, Tim and Junior introduce the first episode of a four-part series on The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. This week's topic? Stage One: Inclusion Safety. In this value-packed, hour-long conversation, Tim and Junior dive deep into questions like: How does inclusion relate to diversity and equity? Is interaction the same thing as connection? And what can we do to foster inclusion safety in our cultural spheres?
Invest in Your Well-Being with Melody Wilding
In this week’s episode of the Culture by Design podcast, Timothy R. Clark is joined by Melody Wilding, author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work. As an executive coach, professor of Human Behavior, licensed social worker, and Harvard Business Review contributor, Melody has lots to say about how burnout, ambition, sensitivity and empathy.
Don't Let Hierarchy Stifle Innovation
Today Tim and Junior sit down to discuss Tim’s recent Harvard Business Review article titled “Don’t Let Hierarchy Stifle Innovation.” There are a lot of concepts that Tim wasn’t able to include in his article that are discussed today, including how to improve our interactions, how to unleash bottom-up innovation and the role that hierarchy plays in innovation and execution.
Employee Engagement or Psychological Safety: Which Comes First?
Back by popular demand is another special episode talking about engagement and psychological safety. Tim and Junior talk about which is a lead measure, which is a lag measure, and which is a consequence of the other. This episode comes from a previous webinar recorded in 2021. Give it a listen:
Leaning into Self-Awareness with Caroline von Koenig
In this week’s episode of Culture by Design, Timothy R. Clark is joined by Caroline von Koenig, Fidelity International’s global Wellbeing Lead. They discuss how self-awareness, resilience, and understanding can create cultures that are healthy, inclusive and safe for all types of people. Caroline’s interests in neurodiversity and cultural identity made for a great conversation. Give it a listen:
Be a Human Leader with Lindsay Kaplan
In this week’s episode of Culture by Design, Lindsay Kaplan, head of People Development at Clif Bar joins Timothy R. Clark to talk about anxiety, vulnerability, and what it takes to be a human leader. She advocates for authenticity, empathy, and adaptability as the main characteristics of good leaders and encourages listeners to chase a growth mindset.
Meeting People Where They Are with Bobbye Sweat
In this episode of Culture by Design, Timothy R. Clark is joined by Bobbye Sweat, Director of Diversity and Inclusion for First Command Financial Services in Forth Worth, Texas. Bobbye shares her experiences in seven different industries as she has worked to meet people where they are. She explains that if you really care, you’ll be authentic. That foundation of inclusion makes all the difference.
The Ladder of Vulnerability Panel Discussion
In this episode, we recap our live virtual event where Timothy R. Clark was joined by panelists Rafael Ramos from Coca-Cola FEMSA, Chantal le Roux from Amazon Web Services, Zaineb Haider from Cigna, and Tracey Walker from RSM. Together they discuss their own personal ladders of vulnerability based on the LeaderFactor vulnerability self-assessment.
Own Your Story with Wenche Fredriksen
On this week’s episode of Culture by Design, Timothy R. Clark is joined by Wenche Fredriksen, Senior Vice President Head of Diversity & Inclusion at DNB, Norway’s largest bank with over 10,000 employees. Wenche wears her heart on her sleeve as she tells Tim her story and explains how she found success in failing, being average, and being human. She encourages listeners to bring their full selves to work and advocate for psychological safety in their workplaces.