S02E10 Psychological Safety with AI | Lisa Hull | Wired for Wonder

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms at Mintmobile. Do Foreign welcome to Wired for Wonder where we speak to the architects of the future of work leaders using AI to dismantle the old grind and rebuild work around what actually drives results. I'm Lori Kirkland and today I've got someone who turned a private equity mandate to adopt AI into an 899% increase in DEI outcomes and 84,000 in recovered working hours in under a year. Lisa Hull is the VP of People and Culture at worksoft, a PE backed enterprise software company with teams spanning us, UK and India. She's an ICF certified executive coach who has spent her career at the intersection of talent development and organizational change, and she has a track record of showing up at exactly the moment a company is being asked to move faster than its people who are ready to move. Her superpower is not the technology. It's knowing that the technology doesn't land unless the people do first. At her previous company, when the PE firm pushed AI adoption, Lisa didn't start with tools. She started with fear. She partnered with the CISO to build policy and training that addressed what employees were actually worried about, framed AI as a path to job evolution rather than job elimination, and created small group sessions where leaders shared openly how they were using it. The results were measurable and fast, and she ended up on a panel at the PE firm talking about what she did. What she's here to talk about with us today is the thing that made all of it possible, psychological safety. Not as a soft concept, but as the actual operating condition that determines whether your AI strategy works or quietly falls apart. Welcome to the show, Lisa. Thank you. Well, it's great to have you here. And I think it's so interesting that you're at a PE firm, right, Because PE firms are definitely not, at least from a stereotype perspective, are not thought of as the people who adopt, you know, the human lens or the human point of view. And when you led through, when you, when they pushed you for AI adoption and you didn't Lead with the tools, you led with fear. Walk me through that decision and kind of where your thinking was or you know, just what you're seeing in the organization that told you that was the right place to start. Yeah, so when we were starting to think about AI and it was very new at the time, this was a couple years ago, it was very new. It was all in the market that this is going to replace jobs, this is going to come in and it's going to replace all these lower level jobs and these skill sets that people were really clinging to and didn't really see the brighter light of how it could become an inefficient tool to really draw them forward. And so that was really the thought of this really shouldn't be scary. We all went through change with many things in the past like Covid really changed the workforce and how we moved along. And this was just another time where the workforce was going to be going through a significant change in how we operated and doing business. And when we think about talent and how it's going to be impacted. And so we thought about it from a standpoint of we could really use this to move people along in an efficient way. When you're under pe, there's everybody's wearing so many different hats. You may have one job title, but your title does not define what you actually do in a day. And that is really important to understand. When you think about how can AI become more efficient in a day to day work. When it comes to talent in the workforce that you're looking at, and that's the approach that we really started to think about is how can we make this job and everyday work easier for our people if they really learn that this isn't something to fear, this is something that we can help you understand. I can become more efficient if I learn how to utilize this in a good way, in a safe way, that's going to help me be more just better at my job every day. It's going to help me give some space to work on other things, things that maybe not getting to not getting focused that I want to, especially with some administrative tasks that are redundant, that you can really utilize AI to make yourself more efficient every day. And so when we thought about it from that lens, it was shouldn't it be scary? Let's think about it of how can we actually use this to be like a really good superpower tool to move us versus a hindrance of something that's going to draw us back. And that's the lens that we Took and we took it from an approach of it's not going to replace your job, it may replace a skill that you have, but how can you learn that so that you are ahead of the game and then what do you do with that time afterwards? Now that, that's, now that you're utilizing that, how do we start to think about upskilling talent and letting them do other things? Right? Like that was really important too of not just now you have time. What do you do with that time now? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's a real problem that's in the marketplace, right. People either have, there's, you know, everybody has fear. There's no one out there who doesn't have fear of do they know more than I do? Do I know enough? Right? Like, is it gonna, you know, become alive and eat me? Right. I mean there's funny, funny things out there in the marketplace. But I think you're tapping on something that is a really big topic for leaders which is like, hey, how you know, you, you do have to not only set the tactical goal of you need to start playing with AI or you need to, we're going to use this particular piece of software, but you're also rebuilding a whole lot of work to kind of clean up the way technology had been done in the past. That gave us limitations that are going away. And so my question for you on that is Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for doll dollars a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate, first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms. @mintmobile.com were the other leaders bought in to the psychological safety? Were they okay with let's make this more human. And you know, did you have, did you have any like, you know, challenges that you had to face in getting the other leaders aligned with that as well? I think that's an interesting question when you think about what is a, what is a leader and where does it come from and where would that fear lie? Because it wasn't at the executive level. They understood it, they saw how it could hit the subjectives, they saw how it can move Things along where I saw it in leaders and where the fear came in was frontline leaders of really the people that were dealing with individual contributors every day. And we're having those conversations on a day to day because it was more around how did they frame that conversation? Because they are not making those strategic business objectives that are moving the business along, they're executing. But then they're also managing the individual contributors who are fearing for their job their day to day. Like what are they doing? Like how is this going to impact them every day? So it was that frontline managers that I really had to start to talk to to help them first understand what are you hearing, what is coming up, what is bubbling up. And then like let's start bringing the message. So that one, you're empowered with the information you need in order to have those conversations. And you also have the tools and resources to go have those conversations. But it also enabled like the executive team, they needed to do a better job of how to have those conversations with those frontline leaders to make sure that they could also go to them and be the advocates for their teams as well whenever there was stuff that's coming up. Because there can be a little bit of a disconnect. So I think it depends on the leader of where it's coming from in some of those cases and some of the teams specifically. I mean, and that's so interesting, right? Because really with AI and all the changes you mentioned Covid, right, Like we're just in a changing time and we've kind of moved from the leader said to do this to I actually have to lead differently as an executive. Right. Like I have to communicate. I have to say change is happening. I have to say I don't know where we're going. We just know that this is the direction and we still have to hit all of our corporate goals, right. That is a different mindset that not every leader themselves are really great at coaching their own frontline leaders. Right. Did you have to do work with any individual teams or did you feel like it was more of on one off cases, right, where you had to like maybe talk with somebody who specifically had fear. But did you, did you see it as like a general conversation or did you feel like you had to do one on one work with different leaders? So I approached it a little differently because sometimes when HR especially rolls out things like this, it can become a lot of noise and not a lot of. There's not a lot that gets heard. So it was all about who was saying the message. And making sure it got heard, both directions. And so what I would do is I would have the executives go talk to the individual contributors and small groups and really have those conversations, have the conversations cross functionally and listen to them, listen to what was going on because. And they would bring the information back to me. We would disseminate. We would really think through, like, what is going on, have better, deeper conversations. However, me talking to them, me pushing what would be seen as an HR agenda is not going to land. It's not going to land as, like, this is safe. My boss supports this. This is moving the business along. It feels like an HR initiative at that point, and it's not. We have to reframe it as this is a leadership moving the business along to meet business objectives. And you have to do that collectively or it's not going to work. Right. HR is there to support and to be an advocate and help with the tools and provide for you and give you the coaching that you need to move that along. But you have to have the right leaders in place to have the conversations or you're just going to get stuck. You're going to get stuck. You're going to be in analysis paralysis, kind of moving things along or not. Yeah, I mean, I think you're tapping on something real. Right. Like, we're moving in the age of, from, like, individual performance and my silo or my department to it is about collective intelligence, because not any one person or any one department can move fast enough with as much changes coming. Right. So I like that idea of, right, it has to be everybody. It has to be bigger than kind of the I and we. Right. Like, it has to be much more of a collective intelligence across the organization. Did you have any examples of, like, maybe give us some context of, you know, now that you are starting to implement and you're seeing the changes and you're talking to the frontline people. What are. What are some, you know, what are some problems that are coming up that you hadn't anticipated or that are, you know, just opening up new possibilities? That you're like, holy cow, we have to think about this. And we didn't have to think about before. Do you have any stories you could share with us? So I think one of the interesting things that I found when we were really rolling this out was that people were struggling with, how do I find time to go learn about AI? How do I find time to go learn? Okay, now you've told me that this tool could really help me move along or become more efficient. And here's how I can do that. But, like, what does that mean for me and how do I go do that? Right? And so that was often a lot of the hard pieces of just giving people the time. So we had to make sure that we were doing that as well. But one interesting thing that we did within our team in HR is we really needed a, like a chat box. Like, we needed some sort of solution that was feeding people information on question answers. However, we were not as technically advanced as some other people to go build something like that. So we were like, how do we, how do we go figure this out, right? Like, how do we start to figure out how do you even build a chatbot through AI? Like, that is just like an anomaly that we just don't often have to tackle. And so we ended up finding somebody internally who was very excited about doing AI and exploring different things. And we partnered with him to really think about, like, how could we do this? And then he helped us build out the scripting, put it into our system, and then helped us manage it from a different way, which was really nice that it was organic. It was completely done inside. Was it great? Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Did it require a lot of us going back and refining and updating the learning model? Pretty much every quarter we had to go update the learning model on new things. But it was an interesting experience where we actually got to have to go solve a techno, like a technological problem that we just do not know how to solve and go find the people to help us. And luckily we were able to get him to agree to like, give us the bandwidth to go do it, which was. It's hard whenever you're already, you're already feeling strapped for not having enough hours in the day, but you see the impact in the business and being able to do that. I mean, that's so interesting because it's, it brings up one of the things. I've been in tech for a long time, you know, 25 years, but it's the. My favorite thing about AI is you actually are freeing yourselves from the tech team. The tech team is not going away. They got way bigger things to be, you know, more critical things to be thinking about. But it's, it's really shortening the time to solutions because it's learning to think with AI where you can say, hey, can you help me go to ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini and say, hey, can you help me figure out how I built this for myself? And you don't have to have any technical background which is like, all of a sudden it's putting a lot of power in your own hands. Right. Are you seeing that? Yeah, I use it all the time and I've been utilizing with my team of, like, we're a small team, we have to get a lot of things done. And so, like, how do you start to use it in a way that you. You have to be thinking outside the box when it comes to AI as well. Right. So one of the things I had to think about, as we just don't have a lot of tools, is like, how do we start to parse some letters with some information, but keep it in a safe way of not putting the information into the tool? But how does it, how does it feed me the information where I can do it on my laptop? That's easier? And so, like, I had it help me write Python code in order to create letters individually off of some data that I had so that, like, I could not do it into a tool that was going to, like, actually reveal information to anywhere that's all stored on my laptop that I can just delete later. So it's like, how do you start to think outside the box and ask the right questions to get things done in a very creative way? But I've used it for that. I've used it for just building out some good frameworks for my team to build repeatable processes on, which in the past had taken so long to really sit down and think through these matrices. And it's just so much faster if you can really identify the problem and be able to prompt it correctly. And then you can make changes and adjustments so fast now and updates and roll them out. I use it so much to just really help speed on my time now, and I have for the last several years of really getting things done in a quick and efficient manner. And it's. It's all about making sure you're not revealing information that you shouldn't be putting in the wrong data, but utilizing it in a way that can help reinforce what you're trying to get done in a very efficient way. Which, which is a fine line to tow sometimes, but you can, I think, once you've done it for a few times, it. It gets a little easier with repeated processes. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. And man, that feels good to get that stuff done, doesn't it? On your own? Definitely. Very much so. I mean that's what's kind of fun about it is that it's like, yes, you're changing what you're doing and I don't know why. As humans we say, oh, we don't like change when that's one of our core characteristics, right. We're like literally wired for evolution into better community. But it's interesting because it opens up possibility and opportunities that you're like, wait a minute, I don't have to spend six months trying to get this whole group into my concise, you know, to, to get out of my head what's going on and get everybody in agreement. You're like, wait a minute, I can go and get an idea to some sort of visual, some sort of prototype, some sort of letter, right? Whatever it is you're doing to be able to move the conversation so much faster and you get to do it yourself so you get the credit for your thinking. Right? Like it's, it's pretty fun, right? Yeah, it definitely is. It's definitely is. And I think there's so many tools that are coming out now that are, you know, all the tools are getting broadened and there's so many fun ways that you can use them now. It's just fun to even just play around with them. I was showing someone on my team something pretty interesting this week that he'd never thought about doing like a project in Claude before. And so I showed him how to do that, how you could really utilize the tools in there with adding files and the instructions to really add, you know, and state time and efficiencies on a repeated process that you're doing quite often to just have it stored in there and make it a little bit more streamlined and so you're not having to reset up the chat every single time it's for you store. And he's like, I never even knew that was an option. And so it's just also sharing knowledge and continuing to have the conversations with each other of like, hey, I found this out. It's such a great tool for me. It really moved the needle along for me. Like let's, let's talk about what I did this week or what I learned. Like that's always fun too. I do that with my friends too. And not just at work, just. Just fun things we, we've learned and things we're exploring. Right. It's, it's such a new fun way to kind of think outside the box and try and explore some new things. Or like you find something in your personal life or your work life and you're like, oh my God. That just eliminated 15 hours of me fretting to go do X for a task that was really only 30 minutes probably anyways to do it. But I spent so much time because it was so painful for me. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, wait a minute. This is actually kind of fun. I don't have to know how to do it. Ask me the questions to, you know, to walk me through this process. Oh, okay. You know, it just feels like it's opening up a whole lot of possibilities even when circumstances don't change. Right. Like if all of the things are the same, it's helping shift for me anyways. It's helping shift the thinking. And to let me see, like, oh wait, I had looked at it with these barriers that I didn't even realize were there and all of a sudden AI is helping, helping dissolve those so I can can see bigger. Which does make people feel more safe. Right. To go back to the psychological safety side of stuff, there's. There's ways to ease the your own pain because you might hate doing something that no one else thinks about twice. Right. What kinds of things are you seeing within the organization where people are sharing some of their wins about, you know, tasks or things that they're doing that you're like, huh, I didn't even know anyone cared about that. Has anything been interesting to you? So some of it I think is. Is interesting is more around like how we've explore different things. Like when I did it for L and D, we were creating, you know, content from scratch. And that takes a really long time to really frame out like what is the content. And then you have to go and build the whole thing. Especially when you're building like a week long type of like boot camp or workshop type thing. And so that was really interesting to kind of think of like how, how can we actually use this to our advantage to really streamline this to make this a lot faster. And what we did was, I think it was, it was the person who worked for me in L and D was actually went and found out like copilot can actually create all these slides for us. And here's how we do it. And I was just blown away when he showed me how to do it. And this was a couple of years ago and it was still fairly new at the time. And it's such an expansion now on how fast things are and how much more robust it is. And it's just, it's so amazing how quickly you can get those things done. And I just, I love when people come to me and they're like so excited about like, look what I figured out, you know, Like, I figured this out and it's really impactful for me in my day to day. And I love hearing those stories of how it's moving them along and how they're very excited about what they learned and what they explored and how they took a risk. Really. Like, right. There's also a point of like, you have to be a little bit vulnerable to not only take that risk of like trying it, but then also talking about it. But if you don't talk about it, somebody else doesn't know that, hey, this could also help them out too. This could also be an advantage. It's like funny how the technology is really bringing up a lot about just the human identity overall, right? Like, it is a mirror to why did we do things like that? Or wait a minute, we had this, it was so secure that this was the process and then now I found the short way to do it and actually none of those steps really did matter in the first place. Right. Like, it's, it's, it's bringing, I would say, some real truths that require, like you said, some vulnerability to be like, oh, I can see how that is actually the same thing. And both of those situations are true with the same circumstances. Right? Like, it's kind of bringing out imagination, creativity, contribution from people to be like, I can solve my own problem again. Right? Like, I get to like really think about how I make my job better so I get to contribute to work. Are you seeing stuff like that? Yeah, I definitely do. The one thing I find interesting though, specifically, I use Claude quite a bit and I find like, Claude is the nicest non person person to talk you up all the time. And so I'm like, it's always. I do love it. Oh, great. Like I, I love it, but I find myself having to go, okay, I need you to be honest with me, don't be nice to me and actually like, tell me the real reality of what I'm asking you sometimes, which I think is just kind of funny. Now we're having to think through like, you Also have to kind of stop and think back of like, okay, what is this really telling me? And like, oh, my. Interpreting this so you're not thinking too much into it. Also, like, there. There still has to be that litmus of like, this rings true. This doesn't ring true. And I need to parse this out and I need to move forward with these pieces. But, um, so when I think about it from that perspective, I'm always stopping and taking a pause of going, hmm, does. What do I really need to take out of this? And what do I need to move forward here? And then what. Maybe. Maybe you need to table. Or maybe wasn't really what I was trying to get to or wasn't the right flavor of what I was looking for at the end of the day. Because sometimes you're looking for a hard truth, and it sometimes is a little bit too nice to you to really give you the direct feedback that you're really looking for. Sometimes that you need. It's kind of toning our BS detectors is what I feel like. Um, I feel like there's times where I'm like, that is total. That is. That does not resonate with me. Give me two alternative versions. Because that doesn't feel like it's really truthful or. And then. And then your right cloud will come back and be like, you're right. I'm sorry, that wasn't fully representative of the whole scenario. And you're like, thank you. And then, you know, but that's where you kind of get the fun. It is like. Like becoming aware of the other patterns of. Right. How you interact with other people too, because, you know, how do you. Nice. You don't. You don't have to nicely say it to Claude, but, you know, like, how do you say it to be like, okay, I want you to acknowledge this and still get to where I need you to get to without getting too emotionally hung up on it. I think there's like, some. Some natural good practice here for humans of, like, getting sharper with communication when communicating with any of the LLMs. Yeah, definitely. I would definitely use that lens when you're looking at it too, of really thinking through what is it saying and. And interpret it. You kind of have to take yourself out of it if. How you're interpreting it as a third person too, reading it. Because sometimes you may see things like, oh, that reads nice. But if you. If you really try to step out of it, it may ring passive aggressive or it may ring like, deflective or something else, and you really need to pause and think about how is somebody who's not involved and maybe like if it's a conversation or an email, how would they read this if they had no context? Right. And so I think there's sometimes that needs to happen a little bit more. I get, I get a lot of stuff from like oh this was obviously AI and they were all the way. So just taking those pauses and making sure it is also just displaying those emotional contexts that you're also wanting to pass forward I think is also the lens we need to be thinking about and not relying on it too much of that. It is, it is our voice, it is what we want. Because it's really not. It's. It's its voice. Whichever tool you're using. I'm sure we, we do have those built in, you know, just guardrails for ourselves to. It's a tool to help support us, but it is not us and it's not doing our job. It is helping support us. I don't see that. But I mean we know the fear is out there, right? So if you. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this but anyone can get the same premium wireless for 15amonth plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to middle Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate, first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms. @mintmobile.com Everybody has fear, right? It's just there. But if you were to give advice to leaders on three ways to address fear, you know, moving through the fear of AI. What like three human skills. Would you give advice to other leaders to say this is where you should be, you know, this is what I would, I would love or this is what I'd recommend you work on right now. In this time of change. Yeah. So in this time of change, when I think about leaders and how I talk to them about just talking to their teams, first of all, being open to the conversation, not directing the message, being open to what people are interested in. This doesn't always have to be a work conversation either, right? There is other things that are interested in people out there and sometimes it's how you open the door to conversation, work and work and how it affects your job can sometimes feel Like a risk to have a conversation about. But when you're talking about like, hey, this is how I use this to make a meal plan at home that is not as risky. So it's thinking about where you're talking about it and how you're having those conversations, not making them feel like it is a risk or a potential area. I also think there can be a lot of pressure. And what does that pressure look like and how does it impact the employee or the person on your team? You need to think about what is that pressure actually doing for them? What is the outcome you're actually trying to get to? At the end of the day, you're trying to move the business along to meet your business objectives. How does that actually transpire with AI, Right? Like is that the end all goal or is that the support system that you really need to make that adjustment? So I would think through those things. I also think leaders need to pause and really look at other places in the business and what they're doing and be open minded to learning from others within the functions, other functions in general of how are they using it. I think it was really eye opening at my last company when they really started to see how far HR had gone in AI and that we were leading the charge in AI transformation and impact to our function across the board. And when they paused and really started to see all the impacts we were having, both from not just a metric standpoint, but also like a financial ROI standpoint of how we're doing things and how we're measuring it. People don't often think of HR as being that leader in technology and making changes like that, but we actually can. And so it's just pausing to making sure you're seeing everybody in the business, everybody in all their functions, making sure that they do have a voice and a seat at the table. Don't dismiss them because you think that's not a technological function. They don't know what they don't know. They don't have that insight. That's not true. Just being open to having the conversations, giving them the floor and realizing that they also are innovative. They're also making some creative pathways to make changes in the business too. I love that everybody has intellectual capital about your company. Like don't dismiss it before you. Like that they don't. Right. Like they can probably. Each person can help really solve the area that they know about probably better than anyone else. So use that and have them help, you know, think with AI to help, help do that. Well, Lisa, you are so Insightful. And it's nice having someone, right. Who has gone through the transformation from the HR perspective, which is also a trend that we're seeing in Marketplace today. We're seeing a lot of chief AI officers in churros combining forces. Because this isn't just a technology upgrade. This is a human upgrade. You know, this, this next phase that we are in now with AI. So I love to hear your perspective. If the audience wanted to get in touch with you or ask you, you know, just make some connection with you. Where should we send them? Most likely to my LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to get connected with me. It's just my name, LinkedIn. Okay, well, good. Well, thank you so much for being on the show and for being so open about, you know, sharing the, the things that you've gone through, some of the lessons you've learned, and then just your advice for leaders who are embracing a change and right now are looking at the psychological safety within their organizations. Thank you for being on the show, Lisa. You appreciate it. Take care. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone. Paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com.