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Rethink Culture is the podcast that shines the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture. Virtually all of the business leaders who make headlines today do so because of their company performance. Yet, the people and the culture of a company is at least as important as its performance. It's time that we shine the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture and are putting people and culture at the forefront.
Andreas: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome to another episode of Rethink Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on leaders of businesses people love to work for. My name is Andreas Konstantinou. I'm your host, and I'm also a micromanager turned servant leader who developed a personal passion for workplace culture. At Rethink Culture we're on a mission to help 1 million businesses build a healthier, more fulfilling workplace culture. And we do that by helping you manage or measure and manage your culture. Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Helen Sanderson to the podcast and Helen is based out of the UK. She's a founder of Wellbeing Teams, and that is an organization of, that practices self-management and provides home care service in the UK. She is also TEDx speaker on self-management. She won the Guardian Business Award for HR in recruitment with no HR team, and that says a lot. And she was recognized for her contribution to health and care with an MBE and as a coach she currently supports other organizations to improve the wellbeing and autonomy and psychological safety in their business and in her personal life she is a Community Gin-preneur, as she calls herself, which means she's a co-founder of a gin company that donates the profits back to the village of Rhosneigr in Wales. And she's also to play the ukulele. And we have a common cause with Helen. And as she was telling me, she believes the workplace is lonely and miserable for lots of people. And I, also believe this is something we need to change. Very welcome. With that long intro to the Rethink Culture podcast, Helen.
Helen: Thank you. I'm really pleased to be here. Thank you very much.
Andreas: So, tell us a little bit about Wellbeing Teams to start with. And I'm also curious on what led you to create Wellbeing Teams.
Helen: Thank you. I've been a consultant in health and care for most of my work, and I've had a team around me, both here and in the States and in Australia. And my dad died sadly when he was 53, very, very young. And as I was approaching my 50th birthday, I asked myself if I only had three years left, like my dad, would I be happy still doing what I'm doing now? And before that, I'd been part of, Seth Godin's altMBA, which was quite a pivotal learning experience for me a while ago. And one of the people that I met there is a fabulous woman called Susan Basterfield. So we would have conversations every week, and she recommended books to me before Christmas. There's a word for it, Andreas, it's a word that means people who buy more books that they can possibly read in a lifetime. And I'm one of those people. So she recommended one of the books, and it was Reinventing Organizations, and I bought that and started to read it. And it was a jaw dropping experience for me, as it has been for lots and lots of other people. Here was somebody articulating what I thought and believed that couldn't express myself. So I worked with my team, and we moved to being a self-managed team, which meant I gave up the role of being CEO. I gave up being mum to everybody. We moved towards more adult-to-adult relationships. So when I had that moment as I was approaching my 50th birthday, I thought, what if I got skin in the game big time? What if we could demonstrate that all the things we've been teaching people as consultants, you could actually do in the real world, which of course is what we believe. But we'd never put it in practice. So that led to starting Wellbeing Teams massively inspired by Buurtzorg in the Netherlands, doing equivalent work. We set up our first teams in Wigan, supported by another organization called Making Space, and after four years we were across the country. We supported, I think we had about 12 or 15 teams going at that time. We were working into the pandemic as well. But what we really learned is to have really innovative providers, we were a new provider, you need really innovative commissioners and that at that time was not present in the UK. And that meant that ultimately, we couldn't continue, after four years. So a massive period of learning. In the UK, the regulators are called the Care Quality Commission, and we were the first organization in adult social care to be inspected by them. And the highest rated inspection you can get is rated outstanding, and you're rated across four measures. And one of the measures is well-led. So we were delighted to be rated outstanding by CQC. Only 4% of providers in the first year are able to do that. We got outstanding for well led and we have no managers at all. We had coaches and I must admit, I was holding my breath to see whether CQC could embrace a different way of working without managers and still recognize that there's leadership there, but it's leader to leader. It's everybody is a leader rather than a manager in a bureaucratic way.
Andreas: Right. And Helen. What led you to that work in the first place? Caring for people. Being in the health and care business. Was there something in your childhood or someone who influenced you to take that path in your life?
Helen: I started off my career as an occupational therapist. I think really, I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't think I was smart enough to do that. And part of me probably didn't want to work all the hours that I know that doctors have to have to work. So occupational therapy felt like a kind of middle ground there. And part of me is creative and wants to make things etcetera. And occupational therapy appealed to me because of that. But I was only 18 months into the role when I got quite frustrated with the boundaries of having to work in health in a particular way. So I moved from health to adult social care, and I've also worked into the in the charity sector. So I think my drive is essentially for social justice. So we really only work in health and social care. And that's where my passion is. But now it's recognizing as, as you said in the introduction that most of us spend more time at work and with people that we work with than we do with our families or partners of friends. And if the relationships and the culture in work isn't great isn’t a place where you can thrive. The like the epic amount of loneliness in the workplace and most of us associate loneliness stereotypically with older people living by themselves. But that's not true. It's also really present in the workplace, and misery is present in the workplace as well. So if I could shift the dial on anything, it would be, how can we make sure that disabled and older people, and anybody who needs care, has as much choice and control over their life as possible, but how can we in workplaces have that kind of choice and control and autonomy in the workplace? And in social care where we're working, we had a completely different view about relationships, the relationship between the person receiving support and the person delivering support. And we would talk about relationship-based care and in organizations, I think relationship-based support for each other and focus on relationships in the workplace is really critical, critically important. So I see the relationship between both of those, how we support people to have the best ones they can in that community, and how we support colleagues and teams to do their best work in the workplace.
Andreas: So I know you're a practitioner, and you are very, very practical in your thinking. You have a set of frameworks you use and they're all very actionable. Which is, I was, as I was telling you before, it's not something I find often like people talk about, you know, the principle of wellbeing and psychological safety and autonomy and all of these things. But you actually have, a deck of, solutions, actionable frameworks that you use. And I want to go through some of those. But before that. Is this for everyone and, and does this, every business, and does this require a leap of faith, or is it small incremental changes you need to make?
Helen: What a brilliant question. So, after Wellbeing Teams, we worked with several organizations that wanted to move to self-management, and that's like a big leap. It sort of changes the psychological contract for people who've come into the workplace. Because you will have come into the workplace, believing that you'll have a manager who tell you what to do. And that's often likely to be a parent child relationship. But moving towards self-management requires adult to adult relationships, so completely different. So one of the things that we learned to pay attention to right at the beginning of Wellbeing Teams, is something that we call value-based recruitment. That makes it really clear that you're coming into a workplace that that has a very different way of working. So I think starting recruitment is critical. Now, my belief is that every team and every organization can work towards greater autonomy in the team and greater psychological safety. So wherever you are on the spectrum of, you know, zero psychological safety, zero autonomy, you can move towards greater. And I think that is for every team and every organization. And I also think that we need to rethink wellbeing because actually, if you look at what Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says about wellbeing and health in the workplace, he says it's two things. It's social connection. So what are your relationships like with your colleagues? And it's autonomy. It's not whether yoga is available in the workplace. It's not all the other practices that people are adopting thinking this is what you can do for wellbeing. It's much more fundamental than that, it's what are the relationships that you have with the people around you, making sure there's nothing like bullying and harassment. But have you got psychological safety? That means you can thrive and be your whole self at work and what autonomy do you have over the way you work and how you work? So those are for me, and research backs that up, the two pillars of wellbeing, which is not typically how we see it.
Andreas: So I want to dive into some of your frameworks and thinking. So team agreements is one. What? What are they and how do they work?
Helen: Thank you. So, I'm a big fan of Brené Brown. I'm actually one of her trainers, and she says, “clear is kind” and it's absolutely critical for team members to know what's okay and what's not okay in how we show up together, our behaviours, for example. So, for example, when you’re recruited, you're recruited for, a particular role. So the questions that you'll get asked in interview will be around your experience that demonstrates you can do that role. You're rarely, rarely asked about what your experience is with psychological safety or how you show up at work, or how you manage interpersonal problems in the workplace. So the work that we're doing now is introducing team agreements, which is a set of statements that are co-created by the team based on each individual's personal experience and their experience in the team. And they are behavioural statements. So, for example, one might be, that if we have, that we talk to each other, not about each other, and if we have an issue, we talk directly to the person. Now, you might have that as a team agreement. But what we've also learned is two things. How they're constructed. So how you develop them in the first place. But then even more importantly how you implement them. So in terms of how you develop them. So if we were doing them together and we were in a team, we'd start off by looking at your work history. So I'd invite you to consider three of what you might describe the most prominent roles in your life and ask you what worked about each of those roles and what didn't work about those roles, and then say, what team agreement would you like to suggest to your colleagues, which would mean that what has gone well for you in your previous roles are more likely to turn up in this team, and what hasn't worked well for you in previous roles is less likely to work in this team. So if one of your negative experiences or more difficult experiences in team work might have been being micromanaged, in, in the team, and I mentioned that because you introduced that so beautifully at the beginning of the podcast, then it would be what team agreement would make it less likely that you would feel micromanaged by your manager or others in the team, and you might come up with some suggested ways of working around that. So we start off with your history, and then we start off with what's going on for you now. So one of the things that I hope we'll get to talk about is, is bringing your whole self to work and practices like one-page profiles that describe that. So if you already had a one-page profile, one of the sections would be the support section which says what helps you do your best work here? So for me, I'm a big-time obsessive. So if you're going to be late for a meeting with me, please let me know before you are late, kind of thing or, or at least ten minutes after the meeting, so things like that. So you might then have a team agreement that says we start and finish our meetings on time, and if we're going to be late for an appointment with each other, we let people know beforehand or as soon as possible. So that might be a team agreement. So what helps me do my best work in this team, from my current experience and what would help me from my previous experience. So that's the individual element to co-creating team agreements. And then brave is what's working and not working for us in a team now. And what team agreements might want to build on what's working for us or change what's not working. So you come up with a statement, of 6 to 10 team agreements, which we then check to make sure they're behavioural terms that they're words that your family would recognize, not jargon that is used just in your industry. But then we do two really significant things. On a scale of 1 to 10, looking at these draft team agreements, how committed are you to personally delivering them? So if we were doing them again, Andreas, and you said a seven, I'd say, okay, what would take that to an eight and would do whatever tweaking would be necessary to get them to an eight. So we get everybody to eight, 9 or 10. But then even more significant is how committed are you to supporting your colleagues to deliver team agreements. And that might include challenging each other when they're not being delivered. And then it's how do we implement them. So one of the things that I say is what the team leader does in the first three months after establishing team agreements, will determine whether they make a difference or not. So two of the ways that we do this, I think are really significant, is what gets talked about in supervision or one to ones sends a message about what's really important. So if you're not talking about team agreements in one to ones, you're probably not giving them the attention they deserve. So again, if I was in, a supervisor relationship with you, Andreas, I'd be saying which team agreement have you found really easy to fulfil over the last month? And which team agreement has been more challenging and why? And what action might support you to do even better with the team agreement that feels challenging over the next month. And in team meetings, we would practice team agreements, so living them. So back to the example that I gave you before of we talk to each other, not about each other. We might have a scenario that says, okay, Andreas, let's imagine you are making yourself a coffee. You're in a room that's your new coffee area with other team members. You can hear two team members talking about another team member and it sounds disrespectful. What do you do? So if we're in a team together, we might ask everybody in the team what you do in that situation. So you might say nothing because I'd feel like I was eavesdropping and that would feel really uncomfortable. Another team member might say, I'd tell the manager because it's their job to do that kind of thing, not us. Another team member might say, I don't know. I feel pretty scared, and I wouldn't know what to do. So we'd hear everybody's responses and then we say, what would we agree together is the best way to address that situation for truly living our team agreements. So it might be that you might say something like, I can hear you talking, and the tone sounds like it might be being disrespectful about another team member, which is outside of what we've agreed together in our team agreements. Could we have a conversation about that? So we practice what would be an authentic and courageous conversation to have with each other in relation to that team agreement? And I think that that's that is two things. If I'm in that situation, I might feel bolder to say something and if the kind I’m the kind of person that might slip into that behaviour, I might be less likely to do it, because I might be more aware that I'll be called out for it. So it's not just having a great set of team agreements, it's how they're implemented.
Andreas: What is some of the mistakes you've seen leaders making that have sort of encouraged you to continue your work and find meaning in your work?
Helen: Thank you. Specifically in team agreements?
Andreas: Well any anything.
Helen: So in team agreements, the worst thing you can do is agree them and then ignore them. And that actually I think has a negative impact on, on trust. But I come from, I think a similar place to you of, of being the kind of person that would naturally be a micromanager because I want things to be different, to be done well, etcetera. And as I said to you in our conversations, I felt like I was mum in the team. So I had things in every pie. People came to me with their problems. I'd try and sort them out, but I'd feel ultimately responsible for everything. So the challenges that I see other managers doing, are exactly the ones that I've done myself, which is trying to be everything to everybody, trying to be in control of everything, trying to engineer everything. So, I think stepping back from that, it would be can we pay as much attention to the relationships between people and how we want that to be, as described in team agreements, and make sure we're really focusing on that? Can we support each other to bring our whole selves to work, which of course embraces diversity and inclusion. But is a way that we can all show up as our best authentic selves and go as far as how do I want to grow and develop in the workplace? What opportunities can I seek or be provided that helps me stretch my growing edge and develop? And you won't be surprised to hear we have practices around that as well. But I think one of the dangers is people can sometimes think you can either really focus on psychological safety or you can focus on autonomy and getting the job done. But I think both are equally important. So can we use practices like confirmation practices to help people reflect on how well are you doing in delivering your role, and where do you want to improve and grow, as well as how well are we showing up with each other in relationship and supporting each other to do our best work?
Andreas: Tell us more. What's a confirmation practice?
Helen: Oh, this, this was mind blowing for me. Developed by Andy Brogan from Easier Inc, and it's a way of, again, shifting from that parent and child mentality that in supervision or one to ones, the expectation is your manager gives you feedback on how you're doing and tells you how they want you to improve versus I reflect on how I think I'm doing. I give myself a score of 1 to 5 on each of those and my manager or my line manager coaches me to come up with an action myself about how I want to improve in my role. So a lot of what I've been doing is taking job descriptions. So I don't know if this is your experience, but for lots of people, they haven't looked at their job description since they took the role. Their job might look very different to how they're working here, and they're only used if there's a dispute. If there's an HR issue. So if you're not using your job description to know how well you're doing your role, what are you using? So what I've been doing is taking people's job descriptions and deconstructing them into roles. And each role has got a role name, the purpose of the role that links back to the purpose of the team or the organization. What you'd see me doing on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to deliver that role. And what does good look like? And can you imagine what it would be like if these were part of recruitment, that not only do I have a long list of what the job is, but it's what would I actually be doing? What would you see me doing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to deliver this role? And what does good look like? So I think we could see a golden thread from recruitment. This is what you're recruited to do. Induction. We make sure we train and support you to deliver each of those roles really, really well. And operation is checking that you are confident delivering these roles. And we've seen you delivering these roles. And then 1 to 1 is how do you continue to get better at delivering each of those roles. So it's a... So you might have 6 to 8 statements that if we were doing one to ones together now Andreas, I'd be saying we do a feeling check in. So you tell me how you feel. And then I'd invite you to spend five minutes rating yourself. It only takes five minutes rating yourself 1 to 5 on each of your roles. And then I'd say to you, which role do you want to focus on? This is often the one with the low score and you might say my operational management performance around reporting. And I say, what did you score yourself? You might say two. And I'd say, why did you score yourself like that? And how does it feel? You might say, it feels really frustrating because I'm not reaching the targets that I really want to reach. Then we talk about who else this matters to. So you might say senior managers and my colleagues. What would success look like from their perspective? They'd be getting their reports on time with the amount of detail they need. What was successful like from your perspective? And you tell me that. And then what are your ideas about actions you could take forward to improve your score from 2 to 3 next time, or even more? And you would say, well, I've got three ideas so this this and this. Which idea do you want to take forward? You'd say, what your idea is. What could get in the way? You would think about that and say, possibly this. What support do you need from your team or others, and how can you ask for it? And then, you know, how can you share your action with your team? And honestly, all of that takes 20 minutes. So after 20 minutes you would have a clear, smart action, that would take you closer to the role that you didn't think you were doing your best at, which is completely different to me saying, Andreas, I'm worried about this because your reports aren't being in time. I'd like you to improve that. And the next time we meet, will you do that? Utterly, utterly different. So that's what confirmation practices are. But not only can use them for your role, you can use about team agreements. So if your team has team agreements, what we simply do is take a we statement from team agreements, for example, we talk directly to each other if there's an issue. So it'd be, I talk directly to my colleagues if we've got an issue not about them. And again, if you were my manager and you were doing team agreements, confirmation practices, you'd say, Helen, look at your team agreements, please write yourself a 1 to 5, and then let's look at the one you want to work on. And I might say, and then you'd say, which one have you scored yourself lowest on that you want to work on today? And I might say, it's talking directly to people because I had a situation last week and I dodged a courageous conversation, which I should have had because I felt anxious about it. And then we go through exactly the same process. What are our ideas for getting better at it? And I would say I, I need to practice using compassionate communication in that situation. I've got a colleague who's not the person I need to have the conversation with, who I think I can practice with. My action is to set up a 20-minute session with her to practice using compassionate communication around that situation. I'll keep it anonymous, and then I'm going to make an appointment to speak to this person next week as well and be brave enough to have that conversation.
Andreas: So it changes the relationship from your manager telling you this is the areas you need to work on. This is your performance based on my superior judgment to helping you be more self-critical. I hear there that, you know, before you would feel psychologically unsafe and guarded, like, you know, Brené Brown uses this 10-ton shield analogy, so you have your shield upfront and, probably either confront the manager on the spot or maybe later, after the end of the workday with your family and say, you know, they told me this and this and that, and they don't understand X, Y, and Z, but it completely changes that into a, into a relationship. And, and, and forces the person to be critical about themselves in a way that they feel safe about.
Helen: Yes. And I think I'd probably use the term self-reflective. So I can reflect on how well I think I'm doing. Because actually, when I was managed, when I was an occupational therapist and managed by a head occupational therapist, I would work very hard to game the system because I knew how she felt about me would determine whether I was successful and whether I'd be promoted or not. So I would work very hard to make sure I was seen in a good light by her and maintain that. So this is completely different because I'm reflecting on how well I'm doing, and I'm not doing it in a way to just to impress you. And research also about goal setting says that people are much more ambitious setting their own goals than they are their manager or somebody else giving them a goal. So it enables me to reflect on the whole of my work, my roles and how I'm doing. But also, if you're seeing something that I'm not, you know, outside of the so the one to ones that I have are usually an hour and a half once a month and the first half an hour is confirmation practices. And then the second hour the question I ask you is what's getting in the way of you doing your best work? Now that might be something to do with your wellbeing. You might be saying, you know, the last month my sleep has been awful. I've been coming to work tired, and I know that's stopping me being as sharp as I usually am. So it's completely appropriate that we might have a conversation about what sleep strategies could you start looking at. Or you might say, what's getting in the way of me doing my best work is I don't feel quite as skilled as I need to be in managing this situation in a team meeting, and I want to practice doing that, or I'm feeling utterly overwhelmed with emails, and I want to look at strategies for reducing the number of emails that I get. So it could be that, or I could say to you, I'm curious about what you're noticing about my performance and where you think I could be even better. So it doesn't rule out somebody who's in different role to you giving you feedback. But it starts with, how do I think I'm doing? And then it's what do I think is getting in the way of me thriving and being the best team member I could possibly be?
Andreas: So, someone listening to us, working in a large organization. Is this something they can apply to their team, is this something they need to go to HR for? Is this something that they go to the CEO for? How actionable is this in the organization?
Helen: Well, the wonderful thing about this is if you're a team leader, you, I imagine you would have the autonomy to implement this without having to ask for anybody else's permission. So, you can develop team agreements in, 3 to 4 hours. So one way of doing them is if you have the capacity to take the team away for a half a day, you could do it that way. Or you could dedicate 20 minutes in a team meeting for 4 or 5 team meetings to get started with team agreements that way. If you're already doing one to ones with people, you could introduce team agreements in the way that I talked to you about before, either talking about scenarios or asking about what's getting in the way of them fulfilling their team agreements. So you have probably the autonomy to talk, to introduce other things into one to ones or supervisions. And I'm sure you can get hold of the job descriptions of your colleagues and put those into roles and work with your colleagues that way. So I think, the approaches that I've talked about, roles and confirmation practices and team agreements and confirmation practices, I'd be surprised if there's any team leader who doesn't have the autonomy to move in that direction. However, I'm often asked by senior HR people to say, and this happened in the NHS recently, to say if I wanted to roll this out across the NHS trust that I work for, could I do that by the end of next year? And I say yes, but not in a let's do a training program and put everybody through it, because that won't work. I do the very radical thing, Andreas, and I don't know what you think about this. I say, let's start with you and your team. So let's start with you as a leader and the HR team, and let's spend four months, implementing role-based confirmation practices with your colleagues, introducing team agreements, looking at confirmation practices in one to ones, and looking at scenarios for team agreements in team meetings. Because after four months, you'll be able to talk from personal experience about what it's like to do role based confirmation practices, the difference you've made in your role as a result of that, how your team is embracing or challenged by team agreements, and how you're implementing them, and then assuming that your colleagues have direct reports working to them, it's then how we support your colleagues to implement team agreements and role based confirmation practices with their reports. Given that they can talk from experience, and they can talk in one to ones about how that's going. So I know we've talked about top-down change being a bad, awful thing, but I think this is a way that top-down change demonstrates leadership and authenticity. And you only invite people to do what you've done yourself.
Andreas: Absolutely. And I love the passion that the passion and energy and like the stream of energy you have when you talk about all of that. Because it's not just your work I, I'm sure the, the impact to the people is very tangible and substantial. And I want to ask about your personal journey, Helen. So, how hard was it for you to let go of the mum role when the, the first time you tried it in your own company?
Helen: Oh well, when I first read Laloux's work, and he talks about the three things that you need for self-management. So, evolutionary purpose... Teal, not self-management. So we wanted to move towards Teal, which requires self-management, evolutionary purpose and bringing your whole self to work. So as a team, we'd been introducing one-page profiles in our work for a long time. So I was going whole self to work, tick, we've already been doing that. Purpose, yeah, we've watched Simon Sinek's TED talk. We all know about purpose. I can quote you our team purpose. So I was going, self-management? You know, how hard could that be? And I thought I thought it was like adding an app onto your iPhone. Here's one extra thing that you can do. But I was so wrong. It was changing the whole operation, operational system. It just changed everything. It was personal development that I was unprepared for, changing the way that I thought about leadership, changing the way I thought that my role and how I showed up at work. It was really, really different and difficult. And we used Holacracy as the model for work. But now, now it's amazing because I, I nobody hints or drops hints about things. We ask directly for what we need and want. We as a team use what's also called nonviolent communication or compassionate communication. So that means we pay attention to what we're feeling and asking for what we need, so our feelings language is really, really important to us. But the downside, Andreas, that makes me really intolerant, I don't think I should say this, but things like I get really frustrated and intolerant with people who don't ask directly for what they need, who beat around the bush and hint and drop hints. I just want to say, no, no, please just ask me for what is you need from me or I can help you with so. So it has changed everything about my interpersonal relationships. Not just at work but at home as well. And now, although, you know, I joke that it makes me more intolerant, it makes me more empathetic as well. So, so one of the things that we've been learning in, you know, both in Brené's work and in compassionate communication is empathy guessing and trying to spot what people need and making suggestions and checking out whether that's right or not. Whereas as an occupational therapist, you know, I went into OT because I like to fix things and I like to help people, you know, change their lives and stuff. So my natural default when I hear something is to, you know, I can help with that, I can fix that. I can give you an advice. And I know from Brené's work that's an empathy mess. So, so for you to say, I feel really frustrated about x, y and z, what I would have said is, why don't you try this, this and this and what I've done in my life is this and that might help you. Instead, I'd go, that sounds awful. I can tell how frustrating, how frustrating you feel. And you also look a bit down as well. I'm wondering if you need, you know, to look at solutions now, or you just need to offload what's going to work best for you. It's a completely different way of showing it with my colleagues, showing up in my personal relationships as well. So it's changed me as a person, in how I am in my relationships and how I think about my, my development and growth. And I think my, my deepest ambition for work is that it's a place where we don't just have wellbeing, you know, but we have wellbeing in it's true sense, great social connections, great relationships. It's not lonely anymore. It's not miserable. That we support each other and challenge each other. But it's also a place of personal growth and development in the workplace, and that we go to work to grow and evolve as humans, as well as deliver a great service to other people.
Andreas: I'm reading this book by Charles Duhigg, Super Communicators, which is about how, I mean the magic and power of communication. And part of that is listening. And he says it's important when you talk to a person to ask either the person or yourself the following question, does that person want to be hugged? Does that person want to be heard? Does that person want to be helped? So do they want a solution? Do they want to be hugged? So just emotional support or heard, which is, it's a social kind of, context and conversation. And he says we need to be very mindful. And myself like being an engineer in my head, I'm jumping always to help others. And I do this with my wife a lot. And, you know, she often wants emotional support or, just she wants to be heard and nothing else. But it's a great question to ask when you're listening. What does the other person really, really need?
Helen: Yes. And that's the essence of nonviolent communication or compassionate communication. And it's not that we're arrogant enough to know what the person needs, but we can make a guess and check out. So sometimes... I'm the, the mother of three daughters and sometimes one of them will say oh mama, I've had such a miserable time kind of thing. And I can say, well, that sounds really awful. Do you just want to offload it to me? Or do you want us to come up with solutions together? Well, how can I help? Rather than going for straight to solutions kind of thing. So ask, checking out with people, what's the most helpful thing I can do right now? I think is beautiful. Rather than assuming that we know.
Andreas: Helen, as we're closing, towards the end of the podcast, what do you think leaders who are not intentional about the wellbeing or the autonomy of their entrepreneur, of their employees, what do they think to rethink? What do they need to rethink?
Helen: I think, the big thing that I'm now focusing on is we all know health and safety at work is really, really important. You will be trained on it the minute you join a job. There will be all sorts of metrics to make sure it's in place. I think psychological safety needs to have the same degree of importance in the workplace as we have applied to health and safety in the workplace. So can we do two things? Can we pay attention and support each other to do our best work in relation to our roles? And can we create team cultures that embrace psychological safety? But can we do both? And that means we interview for both. We support each other with both. We look at both in supervisions rather than psychological safety or how we show up together being an afterthought or the icing on the cake. So can we do both of those things with equal passion and intensity?
Andreas: Have you seen a case where an organization has changed its culture, wellbeing, autonomy and so on, psychological safety, but in a bottom-up way that teams discover a better way of doing things?
Helen: I think it can be done team by team. And I don't think it has to be bottom up necessarily. But for example, any team leader who's listening to this can give this a go. I am deeply sceptical about whole organizational cultural transformation programs. I think it's a team leader level that the difference can be made. But I also know about the termite effect that if you like, 80% of teams are working this, of course, you know, that's going to then become the dominant culture in the organization. So I think it's an invitation to team leaders to work this way. So yes, I've seen team leaders transform the culture of their teams by investing some of these practices and paying attention to psychological safety.
Andreas: And, Helen, what's a book, and I know you read a lot of books, as you said, so, I completely sympathize or completely resonate with that, I also am a bookworm, what book did you read, or you think more of us should be reading?
Helen: I think I'd have to go back to Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, because it paints a vivid picture of what could be possible and gets into the detail of saying, what would be different for HR, if we were thinking about this way. So it's both detailed and inspirational. But the book that I'm rereading for the fifth or sixth time at the moment is Martha Beck's Integrity, which for me is the sort of personal development element of this. So my work would still be Frederic Laloux's Reinventing Organizations. But the book that's inspiring me to grow and develop and talk about radical honesty is that. And of course, there's Amy Edmondson and all the fabulous books around psychological safety. But those are the two that are at the top of my head this morning.
Andreas: Wonderful. Where can people find out more about you and your work, Helen?
Helen: Ooh, thank you. I'd invite people to directly email me. So I'm at helen@helensandersonassociates.co.uk. That would be the best. Or come and find me on LinkedIn and message me there, that would be wonderful. Thank you.
Andreas: Wonderful. Helen, thank you for, all of your, your insights and actionable frameworks and I would say all of the work and love you've put into your work to transform teams and organizations. I hope many more people hear your message and put your frameworks into practice. I'm definitely curious and want to, pick your brains, so to speak, on that after this recording. To everyone who's been listening, thank you for being with us for these 40 or so minutes and giving us your undivided attention. If you enjoyed listening to the podcast as much as I did here talking with Helen, please give us a five-star rating and tell your friends about us, because that will help me, that will help the podcast. That will help more people become more conscious about, leadership and building healthier workplaces. If you want to learn more about measuring your workplace culture so you can manage it, you can always visit RethinkCulture.co and, keep leading, keep building healthier and happier workplaces for you and especially for those around you. Take care.