How to Craft a “Speak Up” Culture

LinkedIn: [00:00:00] Linkedin presents.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:12] So why do we stay silent when we know things aren't right? And how can leaders spark truth-telling in turbulent times? How do we foster environments that make it feel safer and worthwhile for people to voice opinions or issues? In today's SPARKED Hot Take episode, I'm joined by speaker and author of Speak-Up Culture: When Leaders Truly Listen, People Step Up, Stephen Shedletzky. Stephen, or Shed, as most folks call him, is a leadership coach and advisor who helps leaders make it safe and worth it for people to speak up. And over the years, he's taken on roles like chief of staff, lead igniter and head of brand experience training development. He's led a global team of speakers and facilitators, as well as hundreds of his own keynotes, workshops and team and leadership development programs. And together we tackle why people don't speak up the often devastating impact of staying quiet, both on ourselves and on others, and what we can do to change that, especially in the world of organizations. And shed explains why psychological safety alone isn't enough. We also need courage and to know our voice matters. He offers insights on changing culture and reducing fear just enough while raising the stakes so people take the risk to contribute. We dig into questions like how do leaders reward truth-telling even when it's hard to hear? Why must inclusion of diverse views? Be centered? And we talk about the behaviors that encourage participation at all levels and how to have constructive dialogue, not just top-down criticism. Imagine work cultures where speaking up is welcomed, not just tolerated.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:52] Where complex issues are explored from all sides with open-minded curiosity, not closed minded certainty, Shed provides a blueprint to get there where we can all feel more activated and SPARKED. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:19] So I am so excited to be diving into a topic today with a friend of mine, Shed! So you've taken on this interesting topic that I think is becoming more and more relevant in culture, in the world and in business, and that is the notion of speaking up. I remember years ago having a conversation with somebody who ended up being assigned to take command of a nuclear submarine, and it was very dominance and follow direction oriented culture. And he shared this story with me of how that culture literally nearly grounded a nuclear sub, because nobody was willing to speak up to controvert the orders that were being given. And this is not something that's gone away. This is something that we see in so many aspects, especially of business these days. You dive into it and you really deconstruct it. What are we actually talking about when we're talking about speaking up and how do we build culture around that? And how do we actually operationalize this in the context of business and leadership? But in your new book, you start out with an interesting anecdote, which I think a lot of people heard this story more publicly, but maybe didn't really understand what was going on underneath the surface. Take us into that.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:03:33] So first of all, thank you for having me, Jonathan, a delight to be in this conversation with you. So yeah, the case of the Boeing 737 Max is an interesting one. I mean, where I go in the book after the case is the impact of pressure on our decision-making and our ethics. And so in the context of Boeing, at that time, there was a lot of pressure. There was pressure in the competitive landscape of the of the competition with Airbus and then neck and neck race that they had been in for market share in the 90s and beyond to, to present day. And Boeing was falling behind in the commercial airspace. And so they had clients of theirs in American Airlines and Southwest Airlines being like, get us a better new plane. We need to update this plane called the 737, which is like the Honda Accord of the of the sky. I mean, everyone flies 737 in fact, Southwest Airlines, their entire fleet are 737s. And there hadn't been a really substantial or meaningful update to that plane since 1967, when it was first built. And so there was pressure from customers that they were going to jump ship and go to Airbus. And so Boeing felt pressure to create a plane on a fast timeline. And instead of starting fresh and actually building a brand new plane to replace the old 737, they gave it a bit of a facelift and they put on newer, larger engines, change the aerodynamics of that plane, and then had way too much demand.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:05:09] And so safety and quality standards  were being put to the side just to get planes out. There was, you know, backlogs from vendors who couldn't keep up and providing parts for the folks on the factory floor to actually make these planes. There were instances where dozens of half made planes were sitting in the employee parking lot, like it was not a good scene in Renton, Washington, where these planes are made. And so that's sort of the the context. And they they put these planes into the sky that aren't aerodynamically sound, ended up making a system called the MCAs to sort of compensate for the awkward aerodynamics of this plane so it wouldn't stall, but then neglected to tell the pilots, neglected to truly tell the FAA. And they put this plane into the sky where people at that company and the most notable person is Ed Pearson, who's a retired senior manager, spoke up saying, this is not a safe plane. I wouldn't put my family on this plane. What are we doing sending this out into the skies? And it wasn't until two planes went down and killed 346 people with a Lion Air plane in the Ethiopian Airlines plane that went down, that finally that plane was grounded and for good reason. It's back in the sky. And though there's a bit more training that's been done and and a bit more transparency, I'm still not convinced. And I try to avoid flying that plane still.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:33] I mean, there's so much to deconstruct there. But you know, at the end of the day, you know, you're talking about a massive company with a long history in a hypercompetitive environment and producing something that seems on the outside to be like a successful, a fantastic new product and a new offering. So it actually increases the level of stress within the organization, because now they've actually have to deliver on demand, which seemingly outstrips what they thought it was going to be. And that creates a lot of potentially crushing pressure within the context of like, how do we actually make these things and make them in a way that's safe? And then as you described, you have this one guy who realizes something's not right here and he has an ethical sort of like Constitution that says. I need to actually say something about this. Like this is not okay. Former military. And he's like, there's a way that we're supposed to be doing things. And he speaks up and he speaks up, and he's not just within the company, but then within the governing authorities. And still nothing happens until finally he just decides I need to actually kind of like, take this to the press, like we need to make this really big and public to let people know what's going on. So this is one fascinating example and tragic example and a lot of different ways. But there's a variation of this that goes on across so many companies, so many cultures, so many industries, maybe like the lower stakes, but on a day-to-day basis and teams and projects, what's happening here, because you have this one guy who makes the decision to speak up, but then we have millions of others well-intended, smart, you know, like ethical or people who don't, who basically sit there and stay silent. So what's going on within organizations and leadership and culture that makes people say, there's a thing that I want to say, and I think it's important to say, yet I don't feel like I can or I will?

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:08:27] Great question. So a few things to unpack. So one is Ed Pearson was one guy, but there were many folks who spoke up in that company. And because Ed Pearson publicly whistle blew in US Congress, he's very fine speaking about it. But there were countless people that I interviewed who spoke up internally at Boeing, and nothing happened. And they haven't revealed their identity. So just to say that out loud that it wasn't just one guy, there was a larger institutional issue. The other thing to highlight is, you know, it's important to study cases like health care, like law enforcement, like military, like aerospace, like submarines, health care, these contexts where if you make a mistake, the the cost is the ultimate cost, life and death. But we also know from Gallup and the National Institute of Health and UKG that our relationship with our boss has more of an impact on our health and well-being than that of our relationship with our family doctor and that of our therapist. And the impact of that relationship is at par with the relationship that we have with our life partner. And we felt this, Jonathan, when we've worked with bosses that are wonderful, they literally make our lives, our career, our health and well-being physically and emotionally better. And the opposite holds true as well. And so this isn't only reserved to contexts where the ramifications of errors can be life, life and death. The very role of leadership is high stakes because it's either a life-feeding or life-depleting line of work. It matters a lot now to answer your question head-on, what's happening where folks might have something to say, but they're choosing to bite their lip or remain silent.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:10:11] So when I first started writing this book, I thought that I was simply rebranding psychological safety. I'm a fan of the body of work. I'm a fan of Amy C. Edmondson, who very much puts psychological safety on the map. Amy endorsed the book. She's wonderful. Even Amy herself admits not the best term. She. I heard her in an interview recently, share that she used the term because she had written a paper, and the reviewer of that paper said, oh, you're referring to psychological safety, to which, as a young researcher, whatever's going to get you published, like, great, roll with it. But it's not the best term. It's not so sexy. It doesn't really describe what it is. And the issue that I have with psychological safety is I feel like we put an academic lab coat on a very real and human experience. And so I leaned in to good old Zig Ziglar. People don't buy drills, they buy holes. And if the drill is psychological safety, the hole and what you get is a speak-up culture. But as I delved into the work and the research, my own experience and interviewing others on this phenomena of what allows us to make that choice, to speak up or not, there's actually two axes. There is the is it safe? Is it psychologically safe? But the next question is, is it worth it? Sometimes it feels safe, but it doesn't lead to any meaningful change because of bureaucracy or red tape.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:11:29] Systemic issues that make a change simply too hard or a change in habit. That's that's too hard to surmount as well. And like, how many times do you go back to that dry well before you're like, apathy sets in and I'm done. I feel safe, but it doesn't feel worth it. Ideally, we want it to be both safe and worth it. Of course, we don't want it to be neither safe nor worth it. That's an unhappy marriage of fear and apathy. And I've been there. And that's where we get great resignation and quiet quitting or loud quitting. But the other one, which is so interesting, where Ed Pearson found himself, where it was not safe, but it was worth it. And there are so many of us in that situation within organizations or within societies or within our own families, where we feel something, we see something and we feel the need to say something. Even if it may not be safe or welcome to do it, but we feel connected to the stakes. So that's the phenomena. And and you know, speak up is not an instruction. Speak up is a culture. And when leaders create the environment where it both feels safe enough and worth it to speak up, it isn't without fear. There's always fear. Um, but when it feels safe and worth it, people are more likely to do it. So that's the focus is make it safe. Make it worth it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:46] Yeah. So I want to deconstruct the worth it side a little bit more, because I think there's a lot of nuance in that, you know, what you're describing to me on the surface sounds like stakes, like what are the stakes but built into the way that you're describing. It also is the notion of probability. This is like, you know, this is like the classic expected return formula. You know, where it's like, what is the the the magnitude of the potential outcome, positive or negative? And what is the likelihood of the probability of this happening. You know, so so you've got the stakes in terms of the magnitude like is this life or death. Is it like really important to the success of the company? Is it or the customer that we're serving? But also what I hear you saying is part of the factor in this is sort of like the likelihood that anything is going to happen positive or negative, not just in terms of like that ultimate outcome, but how is it going to feel for me, you know, so if it's high stakes. But I know that if I show up and I say my piece and the probability of anything changing it rounds to zero, then I'm not helping the ultimate person who's going to be affected by that change. But also there's got to be something in us, like there's a self-preservation mode in all of us that says, am I actually putting some of my political currency on the table here in the organization? Could this actually lead to no change but harm me at the same time?

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:14:12] So this is why I harp against the term fearless, like our fearless leader. Like really? Like that's the standard. Because first of all, if you come across a fearless leader, they're destructive, like fear is important. And anyone who has any sense of humanity has fear. Fear is biological and fear is a is a risk modulator. It helps us determine whether to fight flight or freeze, which is an oscillation between fight, fight and flight. But but the point here is, is that great leaders don't eradicate fear. They create less fear to make it easier to take that risk, to speak up and share an idea, share feedback, share an opinion, a concern, a disagreement, or even admit a mistake and the belief when we feel that it's worth it. The belief is that we won't be repeatedly ignored or punished. Right? It's the Andy Stanley quote that leaders who do not listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say. And so leaders make it worth it by folks feeling that my speaking up will lead to some positive outcome. The interesting thing is, it does take a risk and the benefit to the firm or the team or the organization is always bigger than the the the risk to oneself, to relationships, to job, to reputation, to that political capital that, that that you mentioned. The interesting thing that I found is that courage often travels in company.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:15:39] And so it's it's really hard to speak up when you're the only one. It takes a huge amount of risk. Kimberly Young-McLear is a good example of this in the US Coast Guard. She's an openly gay PhD black, and she was unfortunately the target of a ton of harassment. And she spoke up out of survival is how she describes it. She had no choice. As soon as soon as she as she did speak up, tons of people flocked to her who had a similar experience. That is a rare experience. Most of us, though I think the opportunity is to find at least one other, one other person who agrees with you or who sees it the way that you do. So you travel together. We're a community-based species. We're a tribal species. So I had this experience once where individually, a colleague and I, at the same level, saw something happening on our team that we didn't agree with, and we spoke about it. And then it gave us courage that both of us brought it together to the senior leadership team, and it actually went well. So courage travels in company and the leaders among us, whether by title or behavior, feel the fear and use it as data to pursue on.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:48] Yeah. So let's talk about those leaders. Because fundamentally what we're talking about here is we've got to set a tone within an organization or a team or a project, whatever it may be, that lets people feel like like if they see something going on, they will be both safe and it will be worth it. So how when you start to look at how do we actually instill this, how do we cultivate this? You know, and again, and this is part of what you write about, you know we're talking about not just the individual but we're talking about culture too. So there's sort of like there are multiple levels here, but what are some of the big things that we need to be thinking about when we think about like, okay, so maybe you're in a company or you're in leadership or you're starting your own organization and you're like, I don't want this to happen. How do we set the tone? How do we build the principles and the culture around this? How do we train our leaders so that everybody knows like that they are free to actually say what they need to say, when they need to say it. What are some of the touchstones we need to be thinking about here?

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:17:50] So a couple things. One is there's a virtuous cycle of two actions that leaders do. And again, I use the word leadership more on the side of behavior. There's an uppercase leader where you have the title and we expect you to lead. But we all know lowercase leaders who don't have the title, but they show up and lead. And these behaviors are available to all of us, regardless of our rank in a particular organization or in society. The two behaviors are encourage and reward, and it's a virtuous cycle. So one is to have the belief that the voice of the people around me matters, right? You kind of need to have that. If you think that your opinion is the only opinion and the right one, this isn't going to work for you, and you wouldn't have what I would describe as humility. There's more hubris there. And so there needs to be a willingness and a knowledge that the folks around you have value to offer you. You need to create the condition and the container that they feel that it's worth voicing it. So my favorite story on encourage is that of Ben Berman, who's a very senior pilot who has a great safety record. The likelihood that a flight crew flies together more than once is very rare inside of these large commercial organizations. And so Ben Berman, every time before he flies, he says to his crew, I've never flown a perfect flight in. Today is no exception. I need to see what I need to know what you see. He sets the condition that voice is welcome. You can ask open-ended questions. You can use a poll like, hey Jonathan, I'm working on my concise communication.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:19:24] After this conversation, can you give me a rating between 0 to 10 on how clear and concise I was? And if you give me ten, I'm not buying it. Like give me the three or the six. Like come on, work with me here. Right. So creating this condition where you encourage folks to speak up. Now the second and equally if not more important piece is reward. And reward is thank you. That must have taken courage to share. I appreciate it. And particularly when people share things that are hard to hear or bad news, we really have to reward folks, even if it triggers us, even if it sets us back. Because if we punish a messenger, all of a sudden messages stop showing up. So you know there's a sweet spot when it comes to speak up culture. A speak-up culture is not sucking up that's hogging air. And a speak up culture is not a hall pass to be a jerk. If folks are hogging air, then that's a coaching on. What's your intent here and speaking up. And if it's if someone's showing up and being an absolute jerk, you can coach them on the behavior and the impact, but still reward the intent if it is a positive intent. Indeed. But it's those to encourage and then reward are those two fundamental pillars and then it ripples. Because if I speak up with you and it goes, well, guess what? People know if I speak up with you and it doesn't go well, guess what? People know. And that ripples, right?

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:45] That makes a lot of sense. In part, it sounds like what you're also describing, you know, encourage and reward. But but part of that process also is the implication of you're also centering a growth mindset and vulnerability, which whether you are a capital L or a little L, but you somehow like feel like you are leading in an organization modeling that to anybody who might be watching is critically important, because then you're saying it's okay to actually take on this behavior too. Or maybe at some point you rise into the capital leadership position and now, you know, you know like, this isn't the time where we start behaving in a particular way. This we've been trained in this. We've come up from the ground up. You know, part of what you talk about in this context also is like, how can we actually practice this and normalize it by not just making this happen during those critical moments, but weaving it into sort of a regular feedback process?

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:21:41] Totally. And you are speaking to as well, Jonathan, to just culture. I mean, in our cultures, the more influence one has. A whisper is a shout and tiptoes are stomps. Everyone's listening. Everyone's watching. Yeah. So I mean feedback is such a huge tool, both for positive feedback and acknowledgement and encouragement. And keep doing this as well as constructive feedback to help folks grow. My favorite model for feedback because let's face it, one-liners are good for jokes. Not so good when it comes to feedback. You know, for me to say you're lazy, well, that's just going to trigger you for me to say, hey, great job today. You're like, well, what did I do to earn that accolade? Like get specific. So FBI is my favorite as an acronym. And it's also fun to say FBI. And there's a language that we can have around feedback. It stands for feeling behavior impact. The purpose of feedback is to start dialogue. Feedback, though it should be based upon factual events, isn't in fact fact. It's your opinion. And the more senior you are, the more you have to realize that what you're sharing should start dialogue. Because if you're more senior, sometimes it can be delivered and that's it. There's only one side of the story. I'm right.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:22:56] You're wrong. Move on. That's not particularly empowering. So on a positive side, feedback could be hey Jonathan, I feel so engaged based on the preparation you have and these amazing questions. And the impact is I'm game, dude. Anything you want to do, let's do it. Thank you. That's way better than great job. You're like, okay, there are some behaviors I've done here that have had a positive impact. I'll keep doing them similarly. And I'm totally making this up. This did not happen. But I could say, hey Jonathan, I feel really let down and if I'm honest, pretty frustrated by the fact that you were late to three client meetings last week. This didn't happen again. And the impact is, I'm not sure I can trust you with what's on your plate right now. What's going on? This isn't like you dialogue, right? And then you could share what's going on either you had no idea. You didn't think it was a big deal, or maybe you're really struggling. And there's a moment for us as peers or boss and subordinate, whatever it might be, to actually have a real human conversation, to get to the bottom of the root to the behavior so that we can grow and make the next right decision.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:04] Yeah. And I love that frame. And it really, you know, by stepping into it and saying like, this is the whole structure is dialogue. This is not me telling you how it is. And then you going off and trying to figure out, what do I do with that? This is actually this is a starting point for a conversation. It's interesting too, because, you know, you've seen sort of the proliferation of the pips in bigger organizations, especially these days, like performance reviews, where it's like, this is what you need to do to improve because you're kind of on the edge here. Dear friend of mine and a frequent collaborator, Charlie Gilkey, who works with a lot of teams and leadership teams, he's like, you should never actually write one of those or issue one of those as a leader, unless you are also including what your behavior, what your change, what your contribution is going to be to help remedy this situation also, which doesn't often happen, you know, and it's a huge missed opportunity.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:24:59] Yeah, I mean I, I use the equation of or the, the analogy of culture as a pickle jar. So you can take a world-class cucumber that is ethical, hardworking, talented. There is such a thing as a ethical, hardworking, talented cucumber put it in awful pickle brine and it becomes an awful pickle that none of us enjoy. But it's no fault to the cucumber, you know? And so when someone is underperforming, we have to examine the brine that they're in. Maybe they don't have a leader that is suited for them at that moment. Maybe they're in an execution role and they really should be in a strategic role. Right. So I love that that shared accountability of this is my experience of you. But also here's what I think I can take accountability and responsibility for. What do you think. Right. And now isn't the time to go you're wrong or I don't agree or you're punished. You know, it's a it's a human relationship that I think it's so empowering. If a leader says, you know, this is my experience, but also here's how I think I can take ownership here. What else do you think? How how can I be a better leader for you?

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:08] Yeah, I mean, it's showing that they're invested in your growth, which I mean is kind of everything. Like we all mess up. We all need to learn. We all. But to have somebody say, you know, like, okay, we're in a moment here. Like things didn't go right, but like, let's both be invested in figuring out how to how to help them go better moving forward. And that's to me, that's powerful.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:26:31] One of a leader that I support. They've said to me that they get concerned when they stop wanting to give feedback to someone on their team, that for them, feedback is actually a sign that they're invested in their growth versus like the it's just not worth it. I'm not going to see them get better. That's a sign that you're actually giving up. On someone in their potential, which means you're no longer fit to lead that person. So I love that little that little point of view.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:58] Yeah. So when we zoom the lens out here thinking about speak up culture and just the invitation for both us as individuals to step into a place where we feel comfortable and we say what we need to say, and we feel resourced and skilled to do that. And for organizations that culture and leaders to feel like it's important to cultivate this. Like bigger picture here, we're at a really interesting moment in culture where both broadly in society but and also individually and I mean, literally, we're having this conversation, even though it will air later after one of the most disruptive weeks in corporate governance, I think, in modern history, um, with, you know, in the domain of AI and some just head-spinning things that have gone on, I think a lot of people are just kind of like, how are we doing this dance when you broaden the lens and we're talking about speak-up culture here. Yeah. What's the big thing that you want to see happen?

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:27:53] Ooooooo! A friend of mine. You know, because now all of our cultural guidance is the memes we see online. A friend of mine shared an Instagram story yesterday with a bunch of lines that form sticks, and one person said, there's four and the other person said, there's three. And they're both right. Because one way of looking at it with perspective is there's four sticks. Another way of looking at it is there's three gaps. And so I wrote back to him and I said, I see seven that I think in society our human experience is not black and white, right and wrong. It's gray. And it is. And so what I hope to see is more folks willing to have the humility, to be curious, to have the humility, to be open-minded, to ask questions. I mean, where I thought you were going, I thought you were going not to recent stuff. I thought you were going to the larger conflict with Israel and Gaza as well, which is another moment that sure, it isn't a business thing, but it impacts how we show up every single day, you know, and the work that I'm trying to do as a human being right now is staying curious, asking questions, challenging myself, educating myself, and finding more ways to make other people right. So a dear friend of mine, Juliana Tafur, has a documentary called List(e)n where she made this a number of years ago pre-pandemic.

Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky: [00:29:28] And she got three pairs of folks who were all on opposing views of hot topic political issues, abortion rights, gun rights, gun control and immigration. And she asked these folks if they would come on. And they all agreed to to go on this documentary because they thought that they would get to prove to a larger audience whether their point of view was the right point of view. And she facilitated this experience. It was either conversational or with art or something, where each person was given the opportunity to explain why they hold the views that they hold, and what happened to them personally in their lives. To have them view or have them have the belief that they hold to out of the three pairs ended in hugs and tears saying, you haven't fundamentally changed my opinion, but I understand why you hold the view that you hold. That's what we need of we. We live in a day and age of algorithmic polarity, where two folks can see the same exact thing and completely polar ways, and we need to see how it can both be for both b three or B seven. That's really what I hope that this conversation contributes toward is more folks connecting. Because when the human in me sees the human in you, we make progress.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:52] Mm. Yeah. That sounds like a pretty great aspiration to me. It feels a good place for us to wrap up. Shed, always great to be in conversation with you. And for our listening community. Think about this. Think about the ideas. Explore the context, the willingness, the skills, the culture of speaking up when you feel you need to. And if you feel that you're not comfortable doing that right now, start to ask the questions, what's going on here and how might that change? Thanks everyone for tuning in and we will see you here again next week. Take care. Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive. That brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life. Take the time to discover your own personal sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It'll open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. This episode of SPARKED was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Production and editing by Sarah Harney. Special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode.