Psychological safety in the age of AI

Drew: How do you build psychologically safe teams? And how do you, uh, in the world especially, we've talked about world of AI, right? The whole landscape is changing. Teams are trying to adapt quickly and figure out what do we do. A lot of folks are kind of afraid, right, of the things that are happening.

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Drew: Hey folks, it's Drew. Another episode of the Building Great Experiences podcast. With me today, I've got my friend Ellie Helbert. Um, we, uh, worked formerly at, uh, the same employer, uh, years ago and, and met and connected through a mutual friend. She's the founder, uh, and principal of an organization called Impact Advisory Services. Um, we've had some really great conversations, um, about things like change experience and creating, uh, psychological safety within teams. So I'm super excited today. Talk about it. But Ellie, welcome to the show.

Ellie Holbert: Thank you for having me, Drew.

Drew: Yeah, for sure. Um, so, uh, a bit of a different, uh, background here for folks listening. Um, it's freezing cold in D.C. where Ellie is and Charlotte where I am. So we're doing a remote podcast, uh, from home. Um, but we still wanted to make it happen and share these ideas with you all. Um, Ellie, I always like to start with origin stories. Just kind of give folks a little bit about you and background. So maybe share like how you got into this and how you got started.

Ellie Holbert: Absolutely, I would love to. So, as Drew mentioned, I'm Ellie Holbert. I'm the founder and principal consultant of MPACT Advisory Services. And in my role at Mpact, I partner with executives, usually CEOs and CHROs or CPOs, just leaders in the people and culture space, specifically with the goal of creating high performing teams in remote and dispersed environments. And in terms of my origin story, I come from about a decade of experience in management consulting. And during my time as a management consultant, I have seen organizations invest heavily in new tools, new technologies, hoping that those would solve their biggest problems, but unfortunately falling short on impact. And my experience was that the missing piece was thinking about the human system that was required to unlock that performance. You could think about the roles, the processes, the structure, the architecture, and the leadership behaviors as well that are needed to create a high performing team that can actually capitalize on the value of an investment. And so actors seeing this pattern play out again and again, I developed a playbook for creating high performing teams, found that it worked regardless of industry and business size, and also led to just incredibly engaged, excited, passionate, Teams doing the work that they love to do. And then on a personal note, I became a mom about two years ago, which was unexpectedly, incredibly empowering. And I felt like after bringing my child into the world and surviving the newborn days, I felt that I saw what I was truly capable of for the first time. I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and that really gave me the bravery and the boldness to say, I'm not going to do this someday. I want to do it now. So my daughter can see a mom who is empowered and living her dream the whole way through.

Drew: Beautiful. I love it. Um, yeah, being a parent is probably the best thing ever. I have. Yeah, I was. I was sharing with Ellie before we got on. I've got two kids and we have a third one on the way. And definitely the kind of having other humans that are reliant on you kind of gives you another level of empathy and understanding for folks. Right.

Ellie Holbert: Um, parallels as well with business ownership of just, you know, learning to surrender, putting in your best work, but not being so attached to the outcome. It's. It's incredible the way that it prepared me to be a business owner that I didn't expect.

Drew: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, and it's a good segue because I think, um, you know, our topic today is discussing. So I'd love your perspective on how, um, important this is now. Maybe, um, what you're seeing in the, uh, industry and just in general, about how people are handling this and where you think this is going to be going from here.

Ellie Holbert: Yes, absolutely. I would say in general, right now, what I am seeing largely among executive leadership is essentially a need to recognize at a deeper level the level of fear and anxiety that people are operating in every day. And why does that matter? It matters because that has a tremendous impact on business outcomes. So if you'll indulge me in a little bit of neuroscience, uh, my background is in psychology. We know from neuroscience that moving through fear and anxiety is so important to create our best, boldest work. Specifically, because when we are in a state of fear or anxiety, our amygdala, the lizard part of the brain that's responsible for fight or flight, that is where we operate from. And the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for strategy, decision making, our personality, even that essentially goes offline. Our brain, just the wiring goes right to the amygdala instead. And so when we are operating in a place of fear and anxiety, we miss out on our higher level thinking. Our strategy, our ability to innovate creatively, problem Solve. And believe it or not, I'm seeing a lot of businesses that are showing the effects of that thinking in their behaviors. Their fear of informed risk taking or their desire to operate from a place of self protection or employees not feeling that they can share honest feedback that's necessary for the health of the business simply because the water line has gone far too high. And there are so many reasons for this. But what you mentioned with AI, I do see this coming into play specifically in organizations where there is not a baseline decent level of psychological safety. That waterline is getting too high too quickly and it's not coming back down. So we need to think more thoughtfully about how do we create consistent, effective signals of psychological safety to our people to help them lower that water line, get that prefrontal cortex back online and get people back to doing the amazing work that they do best.

Drew: Yeah, uh, man, love it and agree. I was a part of this business, um, accelerator about a year and a half ago and one of the things that they talked about this idea of like being above the line or being the below the line, kind of similar to what you were talking about. Basically when you're operating in this mode of fight or flight, right, uh, your amygdala is triggered and you're kind of not operating in your, as your best self or whatever. Um, it affects everything, right? It affects your ability to think creatively, it affects your ability to innovate, it affects your ability to communicate and kind of collaborate with other people. And so yeah, I think there's a lot of work to be done, especially now more than ever around, uh, just like teaching people how to, how to kind of internal internally kind of reduce the stress level. Right? And the reality is like it's stressful and there's crazy things happening. Um, but like teaching your teams and equipping your teams to be able to like know how to process that stuff. And then secondly, um, as leaders to set a really good example for the team to say, hey, this is it is okay. Like you know, you're not going to get in trouble for making a mistake. It actually, there's a lot of science around creating uh, an environment where it's, it's safe to fail or it's not, you're not going to get in, you know, in trouble. Um, you actually have a much higher rate of um, innovation because people are willing to experiment and test and learn. Um, and I think companies are gonna have to figure that out now. They're gonna have to change their incentive models. They're gonna have to change their priorities. They're gonna change their, um, approach to, you know, basically everything in their business. And it, I think it starts first with what you were talking about.

Ellie Holbert: Yeah, absolutely. It's so true. And the good news is we can address this at the micro level and the macro level as well. So the individual behaviors that we can use to address this, we can understand our own stress management strategies. Like you said, the stress and fear, it's not necessarily going anywhere. And that's not really the goal either. It's how do we move through it somewhat quickly to get back to taking, informed risk taking and feel more secure so that we can share our knowledge, share our mistakes with one another. And then we can also address it from a team and organizational level, specifically by reducing ambiguity wherever we can. We can't get rid of all ambiguity. That's not necessarily the goal. But we can certainly be more clear about roles, expectations of one another, the definition of done, our processes, how we communicate with one another, what do we expect of our leaders. There are so many things that we can do to add clarity and reduce ambiguity so that as a team, we are not put in the position of consistently navigating a system by bumping up against the barriers. We kind of know the path and we can execute on it. And the teams that I have seen that address that head on, they are able to create those psychologically safe, high performing cultures. And I love what you said as well about sharing mistakes. I will go in and assess organizations in terms of the health and effectiveness of their most critical teams. And I am amazed at how often I see the same expensive mistakes being made time and time again within the same team across different teams. That is often a great indicator that there is a need to more intentionally develop psychological safety. And when you do that, you will see shared learning, cross functional learning. People are informing one another about their mistakes for the benefit of the whole system. And not only does it create a better working environment for all and more excitement and innovation, but there can be incredible financial benefits with taking that work seriously as well.

Drew: Yeah. Um, are you familiar with the concept of high agency? I'm sure you've probably seen it pop up. Yeah. So, um, I've written about this on my newsletter and it's come up on the show a couple times before. But I think that that is like the value or the benefit of enabling your people to feel safe psychologically starts to create more high agency team members. Right. And especially if you're kind of empowering them and equipping them to think in that way, um, there's this really great, it's like a little meme of a guy who is on the beach, um, who, you know, like I guess shipwrecks. And there's wood and stuff scattered across the, the island. And um, there's one guy makes like, forms the wood into say, help and the other person takes the wood and makes a raft and gets off the island. Right. And um, I think that right now it's so important that every leader, uh, thinks about how to help their team become those high agency people. Because, you know, bad things will happen and stressful situations are going to happen probably more frequently than before. And so if you're able to give your team the space to kind of test and learn and experiment and then I uh, think build an incentive structure that is driving people to be more high agency, like rewarding the people who are, who are taking risks. Right. You're going to have much better outcomes because it's not. People aren't stuck in um, this like fight or flight fear mode, not willing to take risks, not willing to make bets, not willing to try stuff, not willing to experiment and learn. And you end up in like, you know, why is my company failing right now? Why are we not adapting? Well, it's like, well, you, because you're at the individual level, you're not creating this environment that people can do that. You know what I mean?

Ellie Holbert: Absolutely. I think you put it perfectly. And there are two sides of that. One is creating the environment, shaping the environment, and then taking personal responsibility for the shadow that we cast. So when we look at creating that environment, it really is on the leaders to designate, uh, the guardrails to identify what is acceptable. Risk taking, what is too far, making mistakes in front of clients, is that something we tolerate in our organization? Some yes, some no, for very different valid reasons. So it's really up to the leader to identify the appropriate level of risk taking and to name the specific observable behaviors that they want to see in the organization. Because when we say risk taking bold action, that can mean different things to different people. So making the invisible visible and understood is really helpful to help everyone understand the rules of engagement and what will be rewarded. And then when we look at the leadership behaviors, I very often will work with executives to improve their sense of emotional regulation for themselves. Specifically this concept of casting the shadow. So often as leaders, we might not necessarily be aware of people constantly scanning our nonverbal indicators for signs of displeasure or frustration and then self censoring or self protecting because we are perceived to feel a certain way. And those skills are not typically taught in business school. Those are not typically taught in many places. So I will often work with executives on coming up with the right emotional regulation and self management skills for themselves so that of course they may be frustrated or feel embarrassed if someone makes a certain mistake. That's very understandable. But we want to find a way to contain and manage those very human responses so that it doesn't bleed out into the team because they will consistently be looking for signs that they are safe or are not safe. And we want to really protect that environment.

Drew: Yeah. Um, speaking just from first hand personal experience, um, during COVID right. It was a very interesting time. And uh, my former employer invested in personal, um, executive coaching for me. And it was extremely helpful because to your point, like I, as the kind of leader I was running a practice, if I was stressed or emotionally dysregulated, as you said, um, the team could feel it. Right. Like, even if it was through, you know, a zoom call or teams call, people could kind of sense that, oh, uh, Drew's, you know, Drew's off today. And so it was really valuable for me to take the time to learn some sort of tips and tricks to manage my own, kind of like, you know, regulate myself, um, as well as teaching, uh, my team how to do that too, like my leadership team. Um, so I can't emphasize enough everything you just said. It's extremely valuable as a, as an executive because if you're kind of leading a group of people, people are looking at you, they're, they're modeling after your behavior, right? They're saying like, oh, this is what it's like to be like us, like our team. This is how we function or our company. Right. And, um, if you're, you know, acting crazy or not regulating or not, you know, managing stress well, then probably other people are going to start to respond and react the same. Because we, you know, humans, as, as intelligence physicians, we are, we're still pretty primal, tribal, you know, organic, uh, beings with emotions and, and there's still a lot of need to kind of think through those, um, pieces. Um, I'd love to. So you're, you're, um, you're obviously you meet with all executives. This is like, you know, your expertise. Who's, who's doing this? Well, right now, like, what are some individuals or companies or teams that you would say are like a, a beacon of, of hope, uh, if you will, or, or someone to reference and look to, um, for inspiration.

Ellie Holbert: Yes, absolutely. So One of my favorite examples here, in terms of a business that has created structures that directly create continuous improvement and psychological safety, is actually Pixar. They're very well known for the system they use called the brain trust, which is a peer feedback model with no hierarchy. They focus feedback on the work, not the person, and they normalize the failure, the messy iteration, the learning. They have a mantra, all our movies stink at first, which I think is just fantastic. It kind of sets the expectation, um, of giving feedback to one another and where quality should be when you enter the process. So Pixar, they're known for giving feedback that's very direct, it's very honest, but it's communicated with respect. It's not personalized. And within that setting, everyone is encouraged to speak up, regardless of their title or their position. And the Brain Trust is really renowned and documented and well written about in terms of how to create structure around designating a space for a very honest, psychologically safe exchange of information and feedback. You don't even need to do something. So formally though, I would say for most organizations, I recommend that they look at what is the behavior that they're incentivizing on purpose or accidentally, and then coming up with one forum for continuous improvement. Improvement. So in terms of the behavior that they may be incentivizing, when I come in and assess an organization and support an executive team, I look at what is their career development framework, their promotion process, their hiring materials. I like to look at end of year reviews and understand are they incentivizing individualistic behaviors or collective behaviors? Because if we want to see exceptional performance, we need to intentionally incentivize collective behaviors. So you can think about performance metrics hitting a target. Do you measure that on the team level for success or the individual level? If you measure it either way, that will have, um, implications for how much people collaborate with one another. And I've seen systems where, to give a specific example, I was advising one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States on this specific topic. They established metrics, thinking that it would create fairness and consistency in the organization. They ended up incentivizing individualistic metrics. And so there was an internal customer that needed equipment sent, and that equipment was taking a long time. The person feared being dinged for that metric. And so they would just cancel the ticket entirely and open a new one so that their average ticket time was on track. But that meant the internal customer went all the back, all the way back to the beginning of the process. So I give that example to say it's amazing to me the ways that organizations and accidentally incentivize the exact opposite behaviors that they want to see. I would recommend looking there and then designating one forum for continuous improvement and innovation. It could be like Pixar's brain trust. It could be a simple retrospective internally on a team or a retrospective on a cross functional team. But find a forum where you carve out time and that time is intentionally spent on sharing candid feedback delivered with respect to one another for the betterment of the work.

Drew: I, um, well, first of all, I love Pixar. Uh, in another life I would have 1000% worked at Pixar. I think growing uh, up and watching Toy Story and things like that, it was such a beacon of creativity, innovation. Um, also love the. Steve Jobs obviously was involved at a pivotal point there and then John Lasseter is kind of carried them forward. There's a lot of great. I can't, yeah, I could, I could nerd out on Pixar. But one of the things that I can hear some folks that I, you know, I know listen to the show saying is like, well, we're not Pixar. Like what, you know, uh, we're mid sized company, 300 people, like, we can't afford to, um, to, to, to leverage these sort of techniques, which isn't necessarily true, but I think I could, I could definitely hear like folks who are kind of like, well, they're like, you know, multi billion dollar company. They've got all the resources, they've got the whatever, like and truly like, arguably Pixar was kind of built on this culture from the get go. Right. They started out in this kind of more creative, innovative sort of space and fostered that culture and start if you're in a company that maybe doesn't have that at the root. Curious, um, to hear your perspective on what executives can start to do to move the ship. Like if they're on a Titanic and they want to start to move them in the direction of something more like Pixar, like what are some of the practical ways that they might be able to do that?

Ellie Holbert: There's so much that you can do and you can do this on your own without external support or you can bring in external support. And I'm actually advising an organization right now, a company that's exactly that size and these principles are still working for them very beautifully. So in terms of what you can do when you're at that business size, facing those challenges, I would say please do not take the basics for granted. Gallup found that only 47% of employees can confidently explain what they are supposed to do in their job. So that means on average there's a 50, 50 chance that any individual in an organization doesn't really know what they're supposed to do. So foundational, so basic. I work with organizations to simply clarify roles and responsibilities. That's always a part of the process. And by that I mean defining what every single individual is there to do. They should be able to name that. But individuals on a team, cross functional team, they should be able to name what everybody else is there to do as well. And I actually have yet to assess a team where from the beginning of me coming in, everyone can name what everybody is there to do. It has not happened a single time. So we are overlooking a lot of very basic foundational pieces that are free to work on. So define roles and responsibilities, make sure everybody knows what they're there to do and what everybody is, uh, excuse me, what everybody else is there to do as well. The second thing I would add is defining what good looks like. Having a very clear definition of done, having a crisp understanding of when work is handed off from one team to another. What is the expectation in terms of what that work looks like? Really clarifying the North Star of what you are building together can be very beneficial as well. And then the third practical practice I would say is set aside time for a retrospective and a team effectiveness assessment. I run team effectiveness assessments all the time. You can absolutely do this for yourself. You would want to look at what is the health and effectiveness of the team in terms of clarity of roles and responsibilities, clarity on definition of done, leadership behavior, psychological safety. You can create your own measures, your own metrics, your own surveys. It's very doable. But I would say dedicate time to assess the effectiveness and the health of your teams internally and create a forum for continuous improvement like a retrospective or a continuous innovation challenge. You can do all of those on your own. And I know that I shouldn't say this, but you really don't need a consultant to come in and teach you how to do that. That being said, if you are navigating tricky leadership dynamics, that is when I do recommend bringing in external support because it can be a bit exposing to do this work. And often I find that organizations are not doing some of these foundational elements because there is an anticipation of some kind of leadership dynamic disruption. And so in those examples, I do think that having external support provides your people with a bit of political cover. It's just a bit Smoother for all involved. But there are absolutely ways to do this on your own and you can benefit from these principles regardless of the size of your organization.

Drew: Yeah, super great. Um, have you ever read Culture Code by Dan Coyle? Yeah. Such a fantastic book. Yeah, um, he has another book, Talent Code and then he um, had a book come out like not too long ago called the Culture Playbook. It's kind of like more practical. Um, I constantly reference those books. Like I, I, I definitely, I'm like a Dan Coyle fanatic. But um, two of the things you just said that kind of reminded me of concepts in that, in that book was um, he talks about in the um, uh, the Navy SEALs, they have this idea of like an after action review aar and basically immediately following a mission they, the first thing they do is like debrief and kind of like um, it's very focused uh, on, I think you said it a little bit ago, this idea of the work. Like what? Not like it wasn't the person's fault. Like if something went wrong, it's like, okay, there was a system problem or you know, a challenge that we, we didn't foresee. And it's, it's a really great exercise to start getting into. It's like essentially like a retro on um, different types of work. And what's interesting is uh, so like my team, we do retros after every project, but we also do like midpoint retros to kind of help us check, you know, change directories. And then we also do these aars after like key meetings with clients. I used to be previous a couple of years ago I was in a in house role and um, in house teams don't necessarily build in like retros into their workflow. It's, it's kind of like a almost um, like an afterthought. Like, oh, we could have done a retro on this thing. And so I definitely recommend to your point, like it's a really low hanging fruit. Just like start adding like introducing a retro type concept into your conversation. And then the other thing you, you said, um, which I think is, is really cool is this idea that um, roles and responsibilities, like it seems so elementary and foundational. But that's like, I see the same thing like the amount of times where you talk to teams and there's not a clear definition of like the racy, you know, like responsible, accountable, consultant, informed, like who, who's really responsible for doing the thing. And it ends up creating like, I call it the missed high five. Like people keep missing high Fives because they don't know like what's my role in relation to this other person's role and what are our kind of like overlapping responsibilities or distinct responsibilities. And to your point, like those two things I think will resolve a lot of pain. In addition to more of the macro level, like leaders should definitely get training on how to um, regulate emotionally and then uh, continue to create the incentive structures that drive the right behavior. Right. That it's like, hey, we win as a team, not you win as an individual. Right. Like some of those things are super important. But yeah, I love it. I think. Totally, totally agree.

Ellie Holbert: Yeah. It's amazing to me how the things that are so foundational are typically the exact things that are overlooked because we assume that it's just too foundational to really pay attention to. But I would say as well, um, it really brings into play the important importance of psychological safety because in a psychologically unsafe environment we would expect that system to self solution and self heal. Essentially people would be able to say, hey, I'm very unclear on this, or you know, I, I'm not actually even sure what my role is here. Can you help me understand that? So there's a moment of vulnerability and emotional exposure that is necessary to get the information needed for a team to be clear on their objectives and their roles. And if you don't have that psychologically safe environment, people will self protect and avoid admitting that ignorance. And so I think if you are running into that, it's a great sign that there may be some opportunities to look at psychological safety, um, on a more consistent basis. But truly, like you said, if every team took the time to make sure everyone's clear on roles, uh, the world would be a different place. And it's very simple. You can create a mentimeter anonymously, have everyone vote, scale from 1 to 5. How confident are they in terms of their role on the team? Bring it up in a meeting, have everyone vote in real time and see where you land. That's how I typically advise clients do it. And it works really well.

Drew: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Uh, the mentimeter if, for folks listening, if you've never heard of it, it's great. You go to mentimeter.com and they've got a lot of really cool tools you can use for real time feedback and meetings and sessions and stuff. But yeah, agreed. Um, so, um, I'm a big proponent of like make. We've already given a lot of really practical advice on like how to, how to um, start doing these things. But I You consult a lot of executives. What are the like top three to five things that you always tell folks? Like if you don't, if you do nothing else, like do these three, you know, three things that'd be. I'd love to hear that. Um, I'm sure folks listening to would as well.

Ellie Holbert: Yes. So I think at the team level, I covered the, the retrospectives, the role clarity as well, and the definition of done. I would say the three things at the exact executive level, one of them would be, and this is going to sound a little woo woo, please go there with me. It's very effective. Developing a sense of self awareness, of knowing in your body what is the sign that you have become disregulated? Is it a tightness in your chest? Is it clenching in your jaw? Is it your heart rate increasing? Understand when your prefrontal cortex has gone offline and your amygdala has taken over, there are signals in your body that will tell you when that has happened. Please develop the self awareness of picking up on when that switch has occurred. So I would say self awareness of when you've gone into fight or flight and you've left the strategy mode. And then emotional regulation skills to cool down your nervous system. Support your prefrontal cortex coming back online. This is different for everybody. Some people use meditation, essential oils. It's very personal. Personal, I would say, um, in terms of what universally works for everybody, it's activating the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the component of our nervous system that tells our body we are safe, we have made it past the lion we were running away from. It's time to calm down. And you can do this. A very easy way is to take large inhales and hold them at the top of your inhale. That will activate what's called your vagus nerve. And that vagus nerve tells your body that it's safe. So if you can take large deep breaths, hold them at the top of your inhale for four seconds, you will tell your body to calm down. So those two things, understanding when you've become dysregulated, finding the right method for you to become regulated. If you implement those consistently over time, you will be amazed at the difference that you will see. And then the third thing I would say is consistently ask your people for feedback, both in terms of your performance in your role, but their experience in the organization as well. It will take consistency over time for people to begin to share feedback with you. I, uh, typically don't see people provide feedback Unless a leader asks them maybe seven times or more. So please send signals out to your people that you want their feedback. And when they give you feedback, even if it's hard to hear, leverage those regulation strategies, cool down your nervous system and please take the feedback to heart because it took a great deal of bravery to give that feedback to you.

Drew: Those are, yeah, uh, really, really good. I, I've heard of uh, or I've practiced some of those things like the um, calming kind of take a minute, take a breath. It's, it's interesting how often simple things like that, like, just like being like, hey, I need to just sit and breathe for a second, you know, and just to reset as well as um, recognizing, recognizing when you're, when your nervous system is kind of overwhelmed or when you're in a state of fight or flight, um, it takes a little practice. And to your point, some I, I can, I can hear certain friends of mine being like, this is a little woo woo man. But um, I, uh, have gone through those practices myself and it is very helpful for sure.

Ellie Holbert: I'll tell you, it's okay if people think it's woo woo. They don't have to think otherwise for it to still work for them. You can think this is very strange and still do it and still have it work. And the reason why I recommend these practices almost universally is that when I go in and I'm assessing the health and effectiveness of an organization, I'm supporting an executive team and improving their most critical team's performance. We will do an organizational history review to understand what is the context here. What are the series of events or decisions or issues that led to these challenges in collaboration or underperformance? Universally there are moments in time where something happened where trust broke down. And in most of those examples, it was a moment of emotional dysregulation from someone very influential in the organization and the cascade of effects was significant. People stopped sharing information with that person because they feared the reaction they would receive, or they did not trust that that leader could hear tough information and still be regulated and carry on as the team needed them to. So the reason why I advise this, I mean I don't mind the woo woo stuff by any means, but it's, that's not actually why I advise it. I uh, advise it because I've seen that the root cause of so many issues in organization comes from breakdowns in trust. And those breakdowns in trust often happen when people become disregulated and act outside of who they want to be. As Leaders.

Drew: Muted. Yeah, I, I One of the things I've been thinking about just through this conversation and also things I've pondered related to this is, um, this is like I'm going to go, I'm a little go off, off the deep end maybe. Um, uh, we've talked about AI and one of the things that's kind of fascinating to me is this concept of like AI as a collaborator or AI is a kind of a advisor. And I've been thinking about this, making something like this for myself, like an agent that can help, like when I'm having these like feelings, I can kind of be like, hey, help me kind of walk through some steps or give me some coaching, some feedback. I'm curious if you've seen anybody do anything like that or if you, you know, if you've made something like that. Because I think that there's a lot of times where, um, people are scared to share with another person. Like they're, they're maybe like it's personal, right? Like they don't want to open up to their whole deepest, darkest secrets of why they feel the way that they feel or maybe things that have happened in their past that have kind of caused them to have this fear response, but maybe they feel more comfortable putting in a chatgpt or clot or whatever. Um, anyway, m very curious to hear your opinion. I know that's a little bit off the path a bit, but I think it's just fascinating to think about ways to help leaders feel comfortable and team members feel comfortable to kind of get coaching without having to open up to their, you know, their whole backstory.

Ellie Holbert: So true. And I think you highlighted a real need in the market, which is the immediate support and also for it to be someone that's not connected to an organization. And I think that's why it's, it's very challenging to work on this internally with people that are connected within that same human system and why executive coaches and advisors are so beneficial. But like you said, if someone's in a place where they don't want to go into the whole backstory or they really are very activated, they need to cool down immediately. They can't wait to get their coach or advisor on the phone. I think it's a great option to use AI for that. I have several clients that use AI for that and actually, believe it or not, I have created a GPT of myself as an executive advisor so that my clients, if they're in a pinch and I, uh, can't get on the phone immediately they can go to this GPT. It's loaded with all of these insights and all of this guidance that I provide and they have something there that's quickly available to support them. Some would say that that is a risky strategy because some advisors and coaches worry that they undermine their effectiveness or, you know, make it more attainable for people to get support outside of them. But I want my clients to have support in every possible way that they can. I don't want to be a dependency on their ability to self regulate and improve over time. So I think that it's actually that our clients are entitled to any support possible that we can provide to them. And in this day and age, I am so happy that a tool exists where it's a little robot me and they can talk to it whenever they need. So all of that to say, you're so spot on with that idea. It's something that I use.

Drew: Yeah. Well, I feel like, um, it's people who are kind of afraid. You go back to the fear and change everything. Uh, being in the professional services space, like one of the things I've heard a lot of folks say is like, I'm scared that my job is going to be obsolete. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, people aren't gonna need me to coach them or consult them anymore, advise them. I think that if you flip it and you say, hey, these tools are sort of a, um, a stepping stone towards more of the consultative advisory type stuff, it makes a lot of sense, right, Because a lot of folks are maybe, um, scared or unwilling or uncomfortable with the idea of having like a coach or a consultant kind of help them. Right? Maybe that's like, well, I'm not, I'm not sure I'm gonna get the value. I'm not sure that someone's gonna help me through this process. But if it's like, hey, you can use these tools and it helps you get, you know, 50% of the way there, 60% of the way there, invariably what's gonna happen is they're gonna say, well now I want to go the full 100%. And that's where having people kind of hold your hand and guide you through it is, is great. So I think actually people who kind of adapt their attitude to what you just said, right, like create the tools, make it easy for people and then it's a stair step towards, you know, having more deeper, focused conversation, you know, because I, I do believe this stuff requires like real human conversation and relationships to be effective. But there is the um, what's the. In the door? You know, doorway into letting people kind of feel comfortable because they may not want to. It is a little scary to be like, oh, this is somewhat kind of like counseling. Like, there's like a level of. Of, you know, um, be like, oh, you're kind. We're kind of unpacking some stuff that I don't really want to unpack. Right. And. Or, you know, perhaps somebody just. They don't really feel like, oh, uh, this is like my work space. Like, I don't really talk about anything that is personal here. And so you could, you could have that stepping stone.

Ellie Holbert: Absolutely. It's a tool in the toolkit. It's a tool in the toolkit. And it's also possible to work on these things even if you're not in a place of really wanting to go too deep or it's just not. It would not serve you well to go too, too deep. That's when I would say lean into the somatics of this, the nervous system regulation, understanding the signals your body is telling you. You can understand that at a deeper level and come up with strategies to manage with it without having to go too, too deep, deep into the messy stuff if that's not where you are right now. Um, but also, you brought up an interesting point about how valuable it is to basically have a conversation with someone that can say, yes, I've been there, I've done this too. I know what to do with AI it's such an incredible thought partner. But I often encourage people that are afraid of AI replacing them. AI could never replace your experience, your compassion, and the guidance that you can offer as a wayfinder who has already been there before. And so if you're concerned about losing out on your competitive edge because of a technical reason or technical acumen, lean into the human side of this. Really lean into, where have you been in your journey? What guidance can you offer that's informed through real experience and expertise? Because there were. There will always be a need for that. People, always. Executives, I should say, and leaders and teams. They will always look for people that have been there before and can guide them with that lived experience. And that's something you will always have, no matter what happens with AI yeah,

Drew: it's tying this back to the theme of the show, building great experiences. I think, um, the people side, the experiential side, is going to become increasingly more important and critical. Like what we're talking about right now, I think will become the work. Right. Like, the work will become less of the tactical moving stuff around and emails and all these things, like those things are going to continue to be handled. Right? Um, I don't know if you're familiar with, uh, well, the name has changed a couple times, but there's um, claudebot that became Multbot, that now became openclaw. It's this like AI assistant that lives on a computer and kind of does all these things for you. And it's one of the first glimpses I think everybody's had into what's possible with AI. Like it can send emails on your behalf and schedule things for you. It's essentially you're like executive, executive assistant in a box. And so you think about like, uh, the world of work. As we continue to go down this path, what will become more important and difficult is the like, people stuff like how, you know, how to marshal your team towards a common goal and outcome, how to create psychological safety within your team so that people work together better and solve, you know, increasingly more complex problems. Um, how do you uh, foster, you know, strong relationship with your customers and create a great experience for them. Like those things are going to become the more meaty problems that we're all going to be having to think about. And so I think the folks that are investing in us now are going to be very successful in the future because they're going to be ahead of the curve. There's a lot of people who aren't even thinking about this stuff right now, but they're thinking about, oh, how do I automate this thing, this workflow? And you're like, well that's good, you should do that. But also like, what's the next thing on the horizon that you need to be investing in?

Ellie Holbert: Right. It's so true. And the thing is too, when you lean into this type of work, you unlock value all across your organization that is sitting there untapped that you are already paying for right now. I've seen this happen time and time again in my work where it's leaders focus so much on, you know, um, I would say leaders focus so much on performing very effectively in their role as it is defined for them. It's really about unlocking everybody around you to perform as effectively as they can. And that's when we see that exceptional performance at scale. And I can give a specific case study. I supported an organization that had a brand new team that was responsible for one of the most high visibility, very well funded, um, initiatives within this organization. Several million customers depended on this organization and this team. There was no role, clarity, it was very challenging. Everybody was new to the organization. The team was not set up for success and they were scoring about 2.4 out of 5 in terms of their average team effectiveness score. I took this team through eight weeks of, like we said, the fundamentals, role, clarity, leadership behaviors, ways of working, even just getting to know each other better as people. That was something that the team wanted. So we created basically a work design for how the team would work with one another. Eight weeks later, this team scored an average of 4.8 out of 5 in terms of their team effectiveness scores. And they kept that up for over two years. And what is wild to me is this unlocked so much value within the talent that was already there. They accelerated their Delivery timeline by 6 months. They achieved 0% regrettable turnover for 18 months. Vendors supporting this team, 11x their revenue because of the exceptional performance and the C suite actually funded this team at 20% more than what was in, even requested because they had become known as the high performing team in the entire enterprise of thousands of employees. So that's one very real example of something I actually saw with my own eyes. When you don't take the foundational fundamentals for granted, you lean in. Add that clarity, shape the behavior, the culture, the psychological safety that you want to see, that team of 12 people unlocked 4.5 million million of added value across an 18 month period. So from the people and culture standpoint, I love this work in and of itself for, for what it is. When we look at the value this work can enable, I am consistently shocked every single time by the scale of value that I see through this work.

Drew: I love that case study. That's pretty compelling. Um, well, this has been a amazing conversation. I really appreciate you being on the show. Um, you know, a couple things that I've kind of taken away from this discussion is, is one like just a, it just reinforces and reminds me of like how important it is to invest in this work. Even myself. Like building a company, building a team. It's easy, like even being a practitioner of this to forget, like, oh yeah, I need to, you know, let's make sure that roles and responsibilities are clear, right? Let's make sure that we're, we're doing the retro or the kind of like debrief after the conversation to make sure we're like improving. Let's continue to structure our incentives in a way that drive these behaviors. Um, and I think like, you know, I'm just personal anecdote. Um, one of the big core beliefs that I have is this Idea that, um, if you focus on the right inputs, the score will take care of itself. And I think companies often are fixated on the outputs. They're fixated on the revenue, the sales numbers, they're fixated on the efficiency numbers. And it's kind of like you have to focus on the leading indicators, not the lagging indicators. Right. And a lot of what we're talking about is it companies kind of squirm a little bit. You're like, well, we can't really measure these intangible woo woo things that, um, you know, it's like we don't, we can't show the correlation or causation between like this and revenue or sales. But there is like, if you focus on measurement here, this will happen. It's like, it's inevitable. Um, but companies just have to like, make it a priority and focus on the leading indicators, not the lagging indicators. Um, so, Ellie, uh, where can folks find you online?

Ellie Holbert: Yes, come find me on LinkedIn. I'm Ellie Holbert. I also have an assessment that touches on so many of these concepts that we discussed. It's called the team Effectiveness Assessment. It's complimentary. You receive immediate insights on where your team is performing well, where they may benefit from further team architecture to perform at their best. I would be happy to share that with you, Drew, for the show notes. So take the team effectiveness assessment, get some insights on how your team is doing, and I'm happy to connect with those that take the assessment for a complimentary strategy session as well. But thank you so much for having me, Drew. This has been such a great conversation.

Drew: Yeah, thanks for, thanks for being on the show and yeah, uh, we'll drop that in the show notes for listeners, folks. You can find me online. As Ellie mentioned, LinkedIn, um, very active there. I also have a weekly newsletter, M and you can find all that on drewbirdick.com um, thanks again, Ellie. Appreciate you being on the show.

Ellie Holbert: Thank you, Drew. Thanks for having me, like, comment and subscribe.