Psychological Safety in the Workplace with Stephan Wiedner EP 10

Psychological Safety in the Workplace with Stephan Wiedner EP: 10

Stephan Wiedner is a psychological safety expert whose career has focused on developing sustainable high performance leaders, teams, and organizations.

Stephan has developed a unique perspective on psychological safety by designing innovative and evidence-based training, building technology to help leaders and managers master their interpersonal skills, and leading a research study supervised by Harvard professor Amy C. Edmondson.

His passion for unleashing the collective potential of people has led him to co-found:
👉 Noomii.com, the web’s largest network of independent life coaches
👉 Skillsetter.com, the deliberate practice platform for interpersonal skills
👉 Zarango.com, the psychological safety training experts

Stephan has been a guest speaker for ACETech CEO Roundtables, Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, Building Psychological Strength Podcast, and many other audiences interested in psychology, business, and technology.

His writing has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other popular publications. Stephan is married with two children and enjoys spending quality time in the outdoors, hiking, biking, camping, and reading.

Stephan’s Book Recommendation 📚
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth
https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247

Connect with Stephan here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swiedner/
Website:
https://zarango.com/
https://orgs.noomii.com/


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If you have any questions about today's podcast or want to get in touch, send me a message or book a call here https://businessgrowthmindset.com/

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Transcript

0:13

Hello and welcome, Chris lossy. I'm your host of the Business Growth Mindset podcast. And today I have a special guest in Stephen wiener. Stephen is a psychological safety expert whose career has focused on developing sustainable high performance leaders, teams and organizations. His passion for unleashing the collective potential of people has led him to co found mimmi.com The web's largest network of independent life coaches and skill set or don't come the deliberate practice platform for interpersonal skills as well as zero rango.com. The psychological safety training experts seven has been a guest speaker of a C tech CEO roundtables, Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, building psychology, strength podcast, and many other audiences interested in psychology, business, and technology. His writing has been featured in Forbes entrepreneur and other popular publications. Stephen is married with two children and enjoys spending quality time in the outdoors, hiking, biking, camping, and reading. Let's get on with the show. Welcome to another episode of the Business Growth Mindset Podcast Series Three. I'm your host, Christian loboc. And I'm incredibly excited to welcome all the way from Canada. My guest, Stephen Wiener, who is also who is the CEO of noemi.com and zangaro.com. Stephen, welcome. Christian, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure, Mike, it is such an honor to to meet you. First, I just can't believe it's the hand and the camera, and to me, but more importantly, thank you for making the time to join us. You'll be pleased to know that this morning, I got the update, we are ranked in the top 100 podcasts. In Australia right now. I got an update this morning. And I sat there I was like, wow, that just blew me away. I wasn't expecting to be back in the interview the 100. I think we're in position 62. And I thought that was really cool. You come in and out of it quite regularly, we in the US, we tend to pop in and out of that. So it's for a little old podcast on, on all things cool about people. We're really chuffed, and we can't do that without our amazing listeners. So thank you to all of our listeners who support us and inspire us. And and hopefully you're going to inspire them today by sharing a little bit about your story. So, Stephen, why don't we get started. And I want to ask you straight up to tell the audience and to tell me just a little bit about you. But from the perspective of where you've come from, and where you are today. Thank you for the question. Congratulations, by the way on cracking the top 100. And, yeah, no pressure, jeez. I feel like I really have to provide some amazing wisdom. So I'll do my best. Let's put it that way. And I'll start by my early years, my formative years in elementary school, high school, etc. So all throughout those early days, I did exceedingly well in school, I was good at art, I was good at science, I was good at sports. Everything came really easy to me. And of course, I grew up in a small town. So it wasn't like a stiff competition, if you will. But what did I know? Everything came easy to me. And I got a lot of positive reinforcement along those lines. So whether it was my athletic coaches or my teachers saying, Wow, you're really, really gifted, you're really talented, etc, etc. And then what happened is I applied to go to university and I got into University and an engineering program at UBC, which is the big university in British Columbia, Canada, in the city of Vancouver, and there's a fake at the time. 38,000 students, and these are all a students, right? You can't go to university without being at the top of your class sort of thing. And suddenly I struggled in my first year because I wasn't suddenly the top performer without even trying. And it was a significant adjustment for me there to suddenly realize I'm having a hard time and I fast forward a few years I struggled through and I ended up readjusting and I ended up choosing a different specialization in university and graduated and went worked, et cetera, et cetera. Fast forward a few years. And I read this book by Angela Duckworth called Grit, you're probably familiar with it. And then many listeners, I would hope, are very familiar with it too. Well, what caught my attention in that book is this one chapter about, I think, what she called them. Something fragile. I can't remember, remember, right off the top my head. But the idea is, there's, they were looking at West Point. And all of these students that were applying and getting into West Point, and in their first two weeks, they have this incredible onboarding process where it's just grueling. And they have the best applicants across the country. And lo and behold, out of those top 500, a certain percentage of them fail out of that first two week intensive period, right? And they didn't know how do we determine which of those folks get through and which of them don't, they're all a plus students. And it turned out that there's a group of those individuals that are applying for and getting into West Point for whom life is easy. Education is easy, sports is easy, everything is easy for them there, they just have a nice natural base of talent from which they grow. And when they suddenly are encounters really challenging environments, they don't have the resilience to continue to grow, and adapt, and learn and all that sort of stuff. And so that was me, when I read that I'm like, Oh, my goodness, yeah, that was me, because I was getting all this reinforcement that you're talented, and you're gifted, et cetera, et cetera. And that was a tough pill to swallow, when I suddenly wasn't the top of my class, easily, just like that with a snap of my fingers. And so that forced me to really learn about psychology and learn about resilience. And I really dove into positive psychology there at the end of the 90s, early 2000s, when it first kind of became a thing. And so here I am, you know, X number of years later, I don't know if I want to say how many years that is Christian, but you get the idea. I've I've spent the last 15 or so years in the world of coaching, human resource development, leadership, development, training, etc. Also, so it's another you, you just, you know, you could relate to something that Angela had had written in grit. And grit is an outstanding book on resilience. And you and I actually talk a lot about resilience, I wrote an entire series called Full Metal Jacket. Metal, obviously spelt differently. But you know, there's this entire generation. And I don't think it's just these incredibly high achievers, like yourself and others. I think there's an entire generation that doesn't actually understand resilience. You know, we had deep challenges with, you know, with the baby boomers, for example, who, you know, probably grew up a little too resilient, unloved, right. And then they obviously over loved and sheltered. And now we're facing this next era have total entitlement. And when they can't get their own way we have, you know, all these work, people, we have all these people that are just coming out, and the minority groups really screaming. So we see these transitions. And it's interesting, though you date them back. But Stephen, what's your point of view on on how do we make the next generation more resilient? What would have? What are the things we need to teach our children, for example, or business leaders for that matter, right, young, emerging business leaders? What are some of the things that we can teach them? Well, it's an appropriate question. I have two teenage kids at home. So I have a 16 year old and a 13 year old daughter, so 16 year old son, a 13 year old daughter, so I'm right in the heart of this very question. As as my children are aging, and we're approaching them fleeing the nest, right? So have I'm asking myself, have I prepared my children for the eventual exit that they'll be taking? And what more can I be doing? It's very palpable. For me, I just want to share that. And, you know, the first thing I would say is, put your children in environments where they can fail. That is probably the first thing that we can do. So it's not about teaching them anything. It's about giving them challenges wherein they will fail and have them learn from that. Because I was reminded of that recently watching a clip on Netflix about an individual I can't remember his name. He's a rock climber, and he rocked what it's, I think it's called the wall and he free climbed this crazy, you know, I'm not much of a climber. So I don't know all of the terminology. So forgive me there. And when he was telling about his life story, his dad took him on these crazy hikes and climbs when he was four or five, six years old. So by the time he was eight, he encountered all sorts of troubles in North Korea. So all sorts of challenges that he had to overcome. Whereas I think we as parents, we want to make it as easy as possible for our kids, maybe not all parents, but certainly I think there's a good amount of us parents that can relate to that wanting to give our kids as much comfort and ease as possible. And yet we need to put them in environments where they're going to fail, where they're not going to be the best. And they're going to learn. Right, I absolutely love that. Stephen. I think that is, that is brilliant. And then I think also, a lot of my listeners, if not all of them, know that I'm proud failing forward, person. So having endured a tremendous amount of failure in my life and some very public and huge resilience along the way. It says, that is really good advice, then. And you know, what I love about that advice is not just for children. I think there's there's some deep intelligence in that in that statement, you know, put people in environments where they can fail, don't set them up for failure, or put them in environments where they have the opportunity to fail and see how they go. It's no different to, you know, someone once said to me, Christian, I can't believe you threw your two year old daughter into the swimming pool. Like, I'm standing right next to her. I mean, the water, right? Like she's either going to sink or swim. And let me tell you, somebody survival of the fittest says that they go to swim, they're not going to seek. And so you know, I'm there. That's essentially how we taught our children to swim, we have a pool at home. And I think pool swimming pools are one of the scariest things on the planet, because so many children drown. And a lot of it is because they've never been taught to freefall in the water from a very early age. And, you know, interestingly enough, you know, I grew up in Europe, and swimming was the sport that I did, as as a junior, between that and football or soccer. Because I grew up in Europe. So the reality of it is, you just got thrown in the water in your water bank. But I still have a huge fear of my children ever going in the pool, even though they're excellent swimmers. Surely, because it's such a dangerous habitat. But give them the opportunity to fail. And then encourage them to grow. Encourage them to learn. And yeah, my daughter, for example, is just the biggest fish. she could, she could be in the water when it's six degrees. And it's like lavender, what are you doing? It's freezing. Ah, I love the water, Baba, oh, my God, he's just too cute. By the way, my kids are the other end of your, your 16 and 13 year old, my son is seven and my daughter is going to be five in a month. So that's why getting parenting advices is great, because it's not my strength. But I have to work very hard at it. And I love it. But Stephen, that is a really good golden nugget. And I really appreciate you sharing that. Tell us a little bit, you've told us a little bit about you. But share a little bit about numi.com and zango.com. And then just tell me the story of how you got there. But more. I'd like to know the why behind those companies. Because I think there's a really neat story around psychological safety that you might want to share with us. So yeah, back to you. Yeah, great. Yeah, that's a great question. So I appreciate you. Trying to bring out the best and what I can offer your audience with your great question so that our company so I say our because I have a business partner. So the two of us we've been working together for quite a few years now, as I mentioned almost 15 plus years. And we, I think had a shared interest in three things. There's we've always been interested in psychology, interested in business, and also interested in technology, and how those things fit together. And so our original concept was to have two people coach each other because we thought, Gosh, this thing called coaching, how do we make it more accessible and more available to as many people as possible. So that's what we started because really the kernel of truth or what we're really aiming for is on unleashing people's potential, because we know that technology is abound, and it's growing, we're using more and more of it. And we are constantly asking ourselves the question, what do we as humans do really well, because there's some things that humans for which humans are not going to be replaced. You know, if you don't know stuff envelopes for living, you're probably not in, you know, probably not working anymore, because there's machines that do that kind of thing. Right. But there's certain things that are fundamentally human that humans do well, that computers cannot do well, and replace. And so and I think that's the part that was really of interest to us is and where those two things overlap the software, technology and the human part, and how do we unleash the best of what humans can do. So that's, that's the reason why we have a coaching company. That's the reason why we have a training company. And we also have another company called Skill Center, which is a software company that we built to help people practice and learn interpersonal skills, because it ain't going away, we're still going to have to talk to each other. It's, it's not going away. No, and then, you know, again, really resonating with what you're saying. And I think the audience will be resonating with that, too, I often tell our clients, you know, we need to invest in our people. Because it doesn't matter what industry you're in. And I've got large engineering firms, and I'm chairman of their companies, to hospitals. And, you know, I said, doesn't matter how much we automate. Human capital will always be required. Right. So at some point, and particularly in the industries where you are customer facing, I don't think we teach. I don't think we actually teach people enough on how to communicate, I remember, I remember when I went back to university to do my MBA, and I'll never forget, everyone was petrified of presentations. So you know, an examination by presenting. And I found it really disturbing, because I'm just saying, I mean, you're all doing MBA, and you're all petrified of doing a presentation, or working in groups. have thought to myself, there's something seriously wrong with all these people, like, you know, what, and I mean, everyone then kind of realized, but Christian, you're like, naturally a presenter. So for you, this is easy. And I said, well, then come and work in my group. If you're struggling, come work, do your group assignment with me. And I'll never forget my, my teaching faculty, professors, or sentry. You're taking these kids on a journey. I'm like, kids, these guys are older than me. Right? I said, I just look old. But the irony was, it was being able to teach them not to have these fears. And to overcome their fears. A lot of it is around the growth mindset. And the you guys do some development work in that area, I write about that topic. But in I found it really fascinating stuff that people struggle with at that level. And I'm thinking you're going to be future leaders. So I think absolutely, there is a market for what you guys are doing. On all those levels from the software business to the other business. Yeah. Now, did I read some? Sorry, good. Well, yeah, I would just want to add a point there, Christian, I think this is really important, salient point to articulate clearly for the audience here. And that, that is the intentionality behind improving interpersonal skills, because you mentioned these folks that were perhaps terrified of being in front of a group or giving a public speech or even working in a group. Well, the reality is, I think we often think about communication skills or leadership skills as something that you have, and I don't write or that person has it, that person doesn't. And so we have a fixed mindset around that particular set of skills. And so what we've tried to do with our training through the Rango, is come up with training that articulates what those specific skills are, we're trying to take, quote, unquote, soft skills, and make them hard, make them concrete, make them clear and observable. Because if you look at, for example, learning how to play the piano, I think we can all understand that you're not going to get good at playing the piano by reading a book. Or you're not going to get great at playing the piano by listening to a podcast of people talking about playing the piano, or people playing the piano. Right. So why do we fill up our See our bags with leadership books that they, you know, when we're walking through the airport? Or why is it that we watch or listen to podcasts or, or watch TED talks or what have you, all those things are great. Um, don't get me wrong, don't stop listening to the podcast, because, you know, I'm trying to put down podcasts not at all podcasts are useful information, books are useful information, but you have to practice the skills, you have to spend time practicing. And that requires, first of all, recognizing that your skills as a leader, your communication skills as a manager can be improved. And that's the growth mindset. Right. So 100% Yeah. And And what's really interesting, there is, practice makes perfect. You know, Jim Collins sums up that, you know, luck favors the persistent, right? They're all saying the same thing. If you don't, proceed, persist with something and practice and fail forward. You know, like, I had this conversation with my son recently, you know, we are wanting him to play the piano. And I said, I said it in our house, I said, Why are we pushing him to play the piano? Like, if anyone ever told me to do something I didn't want to do, I never would have done it. And Leonardo did quite well, and never practiced. He has he has my G. Right. Whereas a child, you're kind of blessed that you're able to do so many things that you don't practice, right. And so I looked at it, I said, You know what, I'm going to cancel piano. He looked at me with shock, horror. Why is it because you don't practice and you're actually not getting any better. And here's what my teacher thinks I'm doing. Okay. I said, Imagine what you could do if you practiced. And that's when the truth came. Because I don't want to play the piano, like, I just don't like it. And and when we got to where I said, So what do you want, because I want to see. And so he now is seven, and every Tuesday morning, he is in the school choir. And he loves it. He comes home, and he's singing the song that he looked like memorized in your annual practice and that and so now I've been turning around, say, so see what you're doing now? And he goes, what I'm seeing, I said, No, you're practicing. I said, you memorize over and over that repetition. He just looked at me, he was like, You tricked me. I said, No, I didn't trick you. On your own. And it's so funny. The reason why I'm using my children, I learned a lot from my children. I'm sure Stephen, you've done too. And you still are, because they're so receptive to learning. You know, and, and they and they break down things really simplistically, right? Adults, on the other hand, overcomplicate everything. And it's, it's so challenging, you're I know, I'm in a very blessed position, as probably you are, I hand pick who I want to work with, right? So I know, when I first started my career, I have that luxury. But every industry I've been in over time, I've been able to get to a point where I had people I want to work with, even when I started restaurants and bars, you know, it was sorry, we booked like, it's like, here are parameters, this is how you come in. And that ability to say no, and that ability to to have the right people in your life makes a big difference to to your learning. And I always say to people, and they now want to get your perspective on this. You know, I always said, if you are Jim Rohn, and actually says this, it's all delayed, Jim Rohn, you're the sum of the five people that you hang around with most of the time. And that to me applies to also how you learn, you know, if you are around people that are not interested in learning, or with the wrong group of people that are not engaging in the practices that you will engage you, you will not succeed. Right? Yes, you might be the one in a million that we read about in a magazine one day, and you know, I'm a bit over listening to all the, you know, on the one in a million, or the one in a billion person, you know, the next day unicorn I hear about, you know, it's like, come on. That's, that's not our economies and driven by the unicorns. The economy is driven by the mum and dad businesses that, you know, at the ground level, they were driven by, you know, the leaders that are the middle manager that should be aspiring has the talents and ability and growth mindset to go over and beyond. So, what's your thinking around that with your experience? Well, my experience is that, like you said, Your son was spending time singing and you're saying, Hey, you're proud To sing, and you, he had the luxury of practicing, and it didn't feel like practice, right? It just it felt great. He enjoyed the practice. And I think a lot of the most gifted athletes, for example, they're gifted not because they're gifted at the sport, but they're gifted at being able to spend time practicing the sport, grinding away, repeating over and over again. And I think there's one other piece that I want to add there, which is, I've spent quite a bit of time on a piano myself, and I've barely gotten past chopsticks, but I can I can play mean set of chopsticks, you know, but I'm not I'm not getting better i because so it's purely spending time doing something is not enough. I want to make a distinction between practicing and deliberate practice. So lots of people run every day, or, you know, three times a week, four times a week, that's great fitness, you should definitely do that don't stop, are they getting faster at their 5k 10k, half marathon marathon runs? Probably not. They're staying healthy. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But they're not necessarily applying the principles of deliberate practice to get faster, better, stronger, etc. So what are some of those core principles that I think people want to be mindful of, it's not just spending time, but spending time on the edge of your ability, because the more you spend on your edge of ability, the more that edge grows and expands. So I think that's really key that is very, there's another golden nugget for people. I mean, you want to use the word deliberate or intentional, but either way, practice has to be deliberate or intentional, you need to be very focused, I mean, you know, I, as an ex professional athlete, that makes sense to me, and I look back at you know, even now, when I'm talking to you, I'm reflecting back at how we used to train 25 years ago, or 2023 years ago, compared to how they train now, like science has really made it intentional, right, you know, it's like, okay, when I was around, we were just starting to learn about HRT train, you know, to get your your speed up as a rugby player, it was all about speed over those 510 meters, you know, really explosive, you know, like a slug 100 meter sprinter. You know, we didn't care about what the outcome was after 50 meters, right? In the in the in the in the front row? It was how quickly could you get off the line over those 1010 meters, because those 10 meters was the breakthrough, to then get the ball rolling out. And so it was all about this explosive power. So training in the gym, was around a lot of leg lifting. But you know, I now look at the guys that train and I'm thinking wouldn't have been cool to have done is a parametric training. Right? You know, where were they using all these other techniques for jumping? That does impacts the same ability on your spring? So, you know, I always say to young people today, you have got it all laid out for you. Yeah, and now we, you know, with with Google, where you can basically go and watch a YouTube video on almost anything. The question is, and the problem is, make sure you're listening to the right person. And I think that's also the part of being intentional and deliberate around practice, is you can be taught by completing Bozo, right? Which is not going to help you at all. If anything, you can make life worse. So you've got to be really cautious as to who you engage with. But to get us back on track, Stephen, in terms of love where this conversation is gone, but a lot of our listeners love to know about challenges and failure. So I want to ask you a question. What's the biggest challenge that you're facing in your role? Or in your business right now? And how you tackling? Yeah, so one of the biggest challenges I'm facing right now is that we're developed, we've developed psychological safety based training. And the focus of that training is all around helping people with interpersonal skills. And I've been out talking to tons of people about this. And the challenge that I'm facing is that there's so many different markets to go after, and so many different verticals, and everybody has slightly different needs. And so I don't want to be I want to build a scalable service and a business that I can have maximum impact, right? And, and being able to have really tight product market fit is where I'm going to work. Because I want to make sure that I can serve one audience, go deep with it, help them really customize everything towards that audience and then move on. So I guess a little bit of it is focused like finding the focus of the one narrow, tight market servicing it And then moving on, we often talk about the bowling pin strategy, where you want to identify what's that first pin, knock it down, then move on to the second pin, because I think the death of any company is trying to do too much, and being too broad in their focus. So I'm trying to apply that principle to us. And what's interesting with a lot of the individuals that I talked to, they're coming through our original business NUMMI, which is all about coaching. And so they're wanting coaching. And so I'm, you know, I'm asking them about what their issues are. And there's all sorts of a variety of different issues. And we tend to get everything from, you know, consumer packaged goods, companies, to biotech to everything and everything in between. And so for me, trying to figure out what is even pro sports, like, where do we want to go to work? Because the needs of say, a pro sports organization is different from a hospital, which is different from an engineering firm. Absolutely. So the question then for you is, which market? Do you see the greatest opportunity to create the most impact? Right, that's, you know, that, to me, that's thinking makes most sense. Sounds easy. In theory, and but in practice, it's actually quite difficult. But when you're speaking, the words intentional and deliberate, came to mind from a previous conversation. And then you said, Yes, I need to have a narrow focus. Chet Holmes, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Chet Holmes, he wrote The Ultimate Sales Machine. But Chet story about when he worked for Warren Buffett's business partner in the magazine, really resonated when you were saying that where he actually forged the idea, or the concept of the dream, 100 I did a podcast on this. Russell Brunson has taken the whole collective to another level, in simplifying it for, for the many, as opposed to the one one. But, you know, I urge you to, you know, if you've read that, go back, refresh yourself. But there's a lot of really good in narrowing down the market. But I always love to look at the market, that's going to a give me the greatest impact. And who I could serve, because, you know, I'm in a very different position than most people, I have a very diverse advisory background. And, but at the same time, it's all business. So you know, I'm a specialist in business, but across a lot of diverse, and so that took me a while to understand that, and, and also be able to communicate that to various people. So, Stephen, I think that's, you know, that's that's the hardest part. No, I agree. It's a big challenge for people. But there's some really good opportunities. I'm a big believer in always before engaging a consultant or someone to work with us. I always go and have a look at the masters that came before. And I was because I believe success or failure leaves clues. So it's a really good opportunity to go back and, and review those. What should I ask me? That I don't know enough to ask. The question I, I would look at maybe the question is, what is at the core of psychological safety? We touched on psychological safety, but we haven't in Avenue and really answered that question of what is psychological safety? So what? What is at the core of psychological safety? Okay, so what is the core of psychological safety? Well, first, let's answer what psychological safety is for those who don't know. So psychological safety, as defined by Amy Edmondson who's the thought leader, Harvard Prof. done lots of research 25 years plus of research around this concept. She defined psychological safety as the belief that within your team or within your work environment, you can speak up say what's on your mind, express concerns, admit even admit mistakes without the fear of reprimand. So you, you feel safe and being able to speak up basically. And, and so that's what it is. And it's proven to be highly correlated with high performance teams. And Google probably did the most famous study most maybe many some many of your listeners, I don't know how many bow I'm sure some have heard of Project Aristotle. That's Google's project where they, they analyze the psychological safety and what makes a high performance team. And so When we look at everything around psychological safety, what is like sort of at the kernel, the core of psychological safety, and ultimately, the way I see it is, it's that it's a collection of it's a sum total of all of the communication that occurred up until now. So if you're a member of a team, your degree of psychological safety that you're going to feel has everything to do with the all of the little communications that have occurred every day, it's how someone says hello in the morning, and how they say goodbye at the end of the day, and everything in between. and, and the degree to which you feel psychologically safe will differ in different environments. So if you're in your team, maybe it's one way, if you're in a different team, you might feel a different way. And I think we can all relate to having that feeling of a really positive experience on a team. And that's, that's what it feels like when you feel like you can be yourself, show up, give it your best contribute, and be heard and understood and appreciated. So that's where we go to work in our training is to help and support leaders and managers and team members, to be able to have those conversations that foster psychological safety, and create psychological safety on an ongoing basis. Because it ebbs and flows. You don't, it's not like, Yay, we got it, and we stuck it on the shelf. We bought psychological safety, everybody, it's right here. It's not like that, right? It comes and goes. That is that is it's great. So many people have that philosophy of I bought it, it's on the shelf. And I like I really like that there's stuff in there, it's really good golden nuggets, that I've actually really enjoyed it put me a big smile on my face. It's so it's so I was I have the coolest gig in the world. In my job in my life, my family, but also the ability to be able to interview really neat people and, and I learned so much from just listening to the quirks. And and that was another one. I mean, I'm making notes. So I keep writing down like Ryan made notes for myself, a for the show notes. But more importantly, because they are the things that are appealing to me. Thank you for sharing that. I also heard a lot of Brene Brown in the words that you're using. So and I'm sure a lot of listeners, were thinking the same thing. It's like, you know, gotta show up. You got to be brave. And let's say on my right is Brene Brown coming out. So it's fantastic. And and look, it's great that we're having more of these discussions and, you know, look, moving on from there, then. Let's talk a little bit about failure. What's your biggest failure? And what did you learn from that experience? Maybe we can tie in some of the stuff that we've talked about. Oh, I've had a lot of failures. I think the biggest failure? Yeah, I mean, I guess it's all how you frame it. When we first started up new meet. We made all the all the mistakes you could imagine. And the main thing, our main approach was, okay, let's create this system where any two people coach each other. And when we brainstorm and discuss different features, we immediately thought we need that. That's core. And so we spent it, you know, in retrospect with 2020 perspective, we spent way too much time and money building something that we didn't know if people want it. And, you know, I had the really good fortune, I think it was in 2007. Eric Ries came to Vancouver. And this is Eric Ries, before he wrote the startup, the Lean Startup lean startup. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was a nascent idea. And there was I think, 22 people maybe in this tiny little workshop, it was, you know, come for beers after work kind of thing. It was 630 at night. And I hear he was with a flip chart drawing stuff on it's and okay, here's the waterfall approach. You know, you spent all this time and resources and you build something that nobody wants. Well, here's a different approach, the agile approach and now we've heard so much about Agile and Lean and, and all that but this was this was mind blowing when I first heard it and we made all the mistakes, spent way too much time and money building something that nobody wanted. And so we had once we launched, we had to really go go to work to pivot and and find something that we could actually make money on. I think we were it was also coupled with the, at the time. Remember, there's a mid 2000s 2007 2008, you had things like YouTube absolutely blowing up, and what was their revenue model? They didn't really they were burning money. And Facebook was burning money and all these companies were burning money. And so we just thought, well, let's just burn money, I guess. That's such not such a good approach when you when you have a niche product. You learn from it, right? 100%. And what I'm what I'm hearing is that not only not only did you have that failure experience, but while you were failing, you were still going out and learning. And it was through your strong desire for self development to be better, right to believe that you know, your talents and skills can be can be taught. Having that growth mindset led you to that little workshop. And little did you know that that little workshop would go on to sell 4 million copies of a book and change out the people. I mean, I use, I use a lean canvas in our 90 day sprints program, and and I've actually advanced the Lean Canvas to being a opportunity or problem solving tool for existing businesses every 90 days, because it's now essentially design thing. Right? So yeah, and some people, a lot of people don't know how to think strategically. In fact, I would argue that majority of the human population don't understand strategic thinking. It's why there's been so many great books written about it. But the books are so great that no one understands. Right? Because exactly like you said, you're reading they sit on the shelf, you don't practice it, because there's so many who don't get the opportunity to strategically whereas I disagree. I think everyone can think strategically every single day. Because what is strategic thinking? For Stephen? It's, it's the thinking before the plan, you know, and what does that Lean Canvas afford you to do? To do exactly that thinking before the plan and what comes before a plan, right? Is the thinking, or what comes after a plan the execution? The problem is everybody wants to race to execution, because everybody's got a great idea. But you know, I always say to people, you know, ideas are like assholes. Everyone's got one. Right. So at the end of the day, you know, your idea may not be any better. But also, like you said, you spend so much time building a product that you don't even know that your customers want, you know, I make my 79 venture and all that stuff at. And I can assure you that I the first 20 were quite successful, believe it or not, I was very lucky. Because I was very clear about being a businessman or an entrepreneur. And I had a nice show, I knew how to go after it. It was when I started diversifying that I thought I was the gift, right of starting ventures, that I learned some really harsh lessons and why because I started building products. I wanted, not products that consumers wanted. And I started losing and I lost catastrophically. And I failed. So I was one of those people that didn't understand the philosophy of fail quickly fail often. Right? And, you know, surprisingly, I was very blessed. I became the entrepreneurial resident at a sandstone University, where I was able to bring all of those learnings and you know, there was a lot of people questioning, you know, how has he been appointed the inaugural entrepreneur residence? You know what, yeah, he's not majorly successful. He's not an Elon Musk. Elon Musk is one of those one in a billion people. Right? And we raised $189 million in 11 months. And I sat back and I said, That's exactly why everybody chose me, because I knew exactly how to teach people how to fail first. Right? And then you use Jim Collins, Jim Collins has philosophies a lot. Which is first who then what? You know. And so the startups that came into the incubator was like, I've got this amazing product. I said, but no one wants it. Or what do you mean? No. And once I said, if you asked anybody, and these people would look at me that hate on me. And the smart ones would come back. It's actually we've just gone out and done some metric testing. You're right. No one likes our product. How do we fix it? Let's Okay, let's have a look at what's good about your product. Let's go and ask a whole bunch of people what they like. And then let's get rid of everything that I don't like. And instead of having 15 different moving parts, let's have one that they all love. And it's it this goes back to your point, Stephen. Stephen, Stephen, I don't know why keep wanting to say expecting breeding. It was like it. Stephen, Stephen. Stephen. You know, going back to your point about the problem, the biggest problem that you're facing right now, it's, it's apply that Lean Canvas philosophy to it, you know. And, and so I really love that share about, you know, what you found, I think it's so relevant to anyone listening, I think it's relevant to any new listeners, you know, don't go out and build products that you don't even know customers want. Instead, go out and solve problems that exist and my philosophy around startups is go out and solve the biggest problem that everybody wants solved. And a really good example of a startup that's done that is combat, mentally Perkins and our partners, you know, Australian unicorn, phenomenal story, you know, not everyone's a graphic designer. And so that went out and built this platform. Now, the platform has gotten a little crazy, because now everybody thinks they're a graphic designer, if they know how to use Canva. And that's not true, right. But Canva is such a fabulous tool for everyday mom and dad, businesses who can't afford $100 an hour to go and hire a graphic designer. And they can do their social media posts and everything. But very clever, because it filled a huge gap in the market, they already know. I mean, The Biggest Loser has been Adobe. Right? But I think in many ways, I think Adobe has gained because now they've got all these professionals that stick to their product. And now the professionals have gotten smart and are building content for Canva. And sort of saying, hey, mum and dad will build you the base templates. Now the uploadable for Canva. Now you've got your brand. So you know, there's some really cool stuff out there anyway, I can get lost in this all day long. Stephen, if you could turn back time. And talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell them? I would tell them focus on the challenge, not on the results. Say there's a growth mindset right there focus on the challenge, lean into the challenge. And let the results be what the results will be. Because if you focus on just the results, or trying to get positive reinforcement for being the winner or the best, then, you know, you don't take on the hard things in life, and try to take that path of least resistance. Well. That's what I would tell my 18 year old self. I think it's again, exceptionally good wisdom in there. I think that we could talk. We could talk about the why behind that for a very long time. So I may not go and ask you that because I've just realized we've been talking for almost an hour already. One last question before we jump into the five in five. What's the most important thing that you've learned in your life? It's that growth mindset, Christian, you know, my business partner and I, we come across difficult challenges at times. And when we do, we always think and this takes reframing, reframing because often say, oh, man, this is so hard. And then we say, Awesome, that's great. That's good. That's bizarre, because that means not everyone's going to do it. You know, it's a little bit of our competitive advantage, if you will, you know, like hard things are worth doing. Well, that's not true. Not all hard things are worth doing, I suppose. But we try to reframe all the challenges that we face says, Hey, this is good. This is this is really good. So let's just keep going. And yeah, yeah, yeah, reframing is actually a really cool technique for anyone that doesn't actually yet know it, look it up. I use reframing with my children. When we're when we're going through things and learning, but also, if you reframe enough, particularly around growth mindset, like developing a growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset, you can actually becomes subconscious. So one of the things that everybody when they work with someone like me or even members of my team now, we never look at it. We never look at problems right? Problem is actually just a challenge, right? And a challenge is actually an opportunity. And I think that sums up your, your notion of reframing, I was just trying to demonstrate it. So, you know, and then people find that really, I make that sound easy. But that's actually really hard for a lot of people, you know, they wake up in the morning, and for some people waking up is hard. And that might be mental. But it might just be something that, you know, they've just constantly told themselves, waking up sucks, you know, made says, My eyes wake up, the first thing I do is I look at my clock. And I'm, like, you know, wake up. Like, before I was meant to wake up, and it freaks people out my wife, she's always a Christian. You do that now. Like, you know, we've been together, almost 10 years, and you wake up, you don't have an alarm. Your body clock tells you exactly what time, but you wake up, and I noticed sometimes that you look at your watch. And I'm gonna Yeah, I said, Why? Why do you do that? I said, because if it's like, I wake up at five o'clock every morning, right? And if it's 430, I get excited to jump out of bed. If it's four, I'll put my head back on the pillow and get an extra 30 minutes late. But if it's 430, I'm like, Yeah, let's go. Let's go take on the day, you know, and in no matter what challenges I'm facing, I do it with a smile, because I love it. You know, because a challenge is an opportunity. So again, you know that that notion? Is there anything you want to add around reframing that the audience might relate to? Well, the one part I won't guess I wanted to add about the reframing is, is it's not silver lining it. I think we want to make a distinction, right? Because if something bad happens, you can silverline it and still feel like you failed or was a failure. We're not talking about that I think we're talking about reframing is just changing the perspective you have on that thing. And not just sugarcoating it, not just pretending like it's better, but actually legitimately looking at it from a new perspective. One of the things I like to do is put myself in different people's eyes, right? Like, how would Elon Musk look at this problem? Right? Or how would Oprah Winfrey or whoever right, fill in the blank sometimes I also wonder how would my dog look at this? Right? If I'm feeling particularly stressed, how would my dog look at this? Yeah, he would go what's for dinner? So, you know, sometimes when you're taking yourself a little too seriously, it's good to reframe it and remind yourself that maybe you can act like your dog or look at it through the eyes of you know, a snack eating puppy. Stefan, I think there's, there's a lot of truth in that last statement to you know, you take don't take the fun, out of something difficult. You know, like I, for example, a lot of people use humor when they're stressed. And, but that is another really cool technique in that is, you know, don't sugarcoat something, it's real, you know, like, but you've got to accept it. You know, like to me, you know, when we fail, we love in our organization, we fail often and we fail quickly. I will never fail catastrophically ever again. And you know, people say to me are Christian don't say ever said no. I said, because I have systems in place now that do not allow me to fail catastrophically. If a black swan event comes by and wipes me out, that's not failure. That's something as the term suggests a black swan event. It will wipe out a lot of people wait COVID was a black swan event. But what I think is as a lot of great businesses flourished during that time, because they were able to adapt, reframe, deal with adversity and agitation. Yeah, I built the significant businesses during that period. Why because I had my catastrophic failure during the global financial crisis in 2008, and nine were almost everything. So I was already prepared for the economic downside, which then never came, you know, because of all the stimulus and now you know, America, Canada, Canada has been dealing with you guys have been dealing with drought. So you've got you know, canola markets that have, you know, the capitulate and around you. But there are other ways And I think that that's, you know, I looked at so many people struggling during COVID Because they weren't able to go hang on, it's a switch. Yes, we're in this life threatening catastrophic, mega media. Circus. Right. And it doesn't matter what people, you know, opinions on, you know, whether COVID was what it was, or what was it was what it was, we lived it, you know, government shutdown countries. And, you know, we went through all this stuff, but I actually believe that a lot of people came out better. I think that businesses were able to reinvent, you know, you look at businesses that were purely bricks and mortar, and now hybrid. And they allowed the younger people in those organizations to carry them through the older people who were struggling, allow the younger people to have a voice. So I look at all the types of adversities and, and I look at them again as opportunities to, to pivot and change and, and blossom. Your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, to go full circle here, Christian, that was basically what I said at the beginning about parenting, right, put your children in a position where they can fail. And that happened on a global scale with, with the pandemic, and some people thrived, and others couldn't. And it's not necessarily any fault to them. I'm not suggesting that anybody whose business failed during COVID, it was, you know, all their fault and right, that we're not saying that it was, but it was an opportunity for many to reevaluate goal. What are we going to do now? How are we going to deal with this, and, you know, a lot of psychological safety coming back to that concept is built around innovation and how teams interact to solve really complex, challenging problems, because we make good decisions, when we have good information and good information is better when we have everybody contributing. You know, one of the metaphors we were talking about today is like an iceberg, and, and what people are saying is the visible part of the iceberg, and what they're thinking is down below the surface. And what you want to do in an environment of psychological safety is basically have that entire iceberg visible. Now, imagine if the Titanic could see all of the iceberg, right? If you as as as a business operator, you're running the Titanic, and you're floating, you know, you're driving through the sea. And you could see all of the icebergs because all of your people are openly sharing everything that they know. And they're contributing all their ideas, and they're saying, hey, what if we do some hybrid thing? What if we, you know, we can't have people in our restaurant, but what if we deliver to them instead? Right? Think about how different your business could be. Absolutely. And again, as I said, you know, COVID was a black swan event. So we can't, you know, the people that failed, some couldn't, you know, if you were in, you know, there was so many industries that were just wiped out. And, you know, you've got to pick yourself up again and go again, just more intelligently, as Edison has repeatedly reminded us throughout his journey. Alright, so Stephen, we're going to come up to a wrap. So we'd love to finish with the first five in five. Are you ready? I am ready Christian. What makes you feel inspired? Kids? Awesome. What is the best compliment that you've ever received? People have told me that I'm charismatic. Yeah, cool. And if you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be? It would be to elevate your team to generate better results. Best book recommendation fearless organization, by Amy Edmondson. Okay, cool. And then if you could have a billboard with anything on it, what would it be and why? Those are good questions. So all those questions from other people, those last five are like my five favorite questions for you. You're doing awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I've asked that same question myself. So I should have a good answer ready at the ready. Billboard with anything on it. It would be something to the effect of Be your best. Keep going. That's it, you know, do your best and keep going. Never Say Die. Never Say Die. Listening to your life. If you say, Doc, I'm pretty sure that was an energizer battery commercial. Probably. Yeah. Stefan, look, thank you so much for joining us. I am I that, that just went super fast. It was a wonderful conversation. I'm really glad that my team found you. I think there's so many golden nuggets, I mean, that the one that's really resonating with me still is, you know, yes, we talked about from our kids perspective, but it's anyone, you know, put them in an environment where they can fail. You know, we should be encouraging people to push themselves and get out of their comfort zone. I'm excited to see where you guys land in terms of the software business. And and I can't wait to see the journey for both of the other organizations for NUMMI, and as a guard. So rango rango was around. And I think the other thing that really hit home was deliberate practice. And I think the day the things for our audience. And if you've got any final comments for our audience today, before we wrap up the show, I think it's reiterating what I said earlier, you based on that deliberate practice concept, you can learn to play the piano by reading a book so you can improve your interpersonal skills, your leadership skills, by watching YouTube, you got to practice new skills and get some feedback and, and try new things. And that's how you're gonna get better be deliberate about it. get input from people who are experts in that area. And you can improve your interpersonal skills, public speaking skills, communication skills, all of it. Stephen Wiener, thank you so very much for your insight for your time. Thank you to all our listeners, you can be listening to 1000 other podcasts out there yet, you're choosing to listen to this one. And you're planning us in the top 100, which is really cool and amazing. I'm absolutely certain that this episode will inspire people. As I said, even I have left here today. And I have the least five key takeaways that I'm going to put into practice immediately. And I think, Stephen, that's what you really shared with us today is not only your wisdom, but this notion of psychological safety. And more importantly, the real care that you have, that's what I feel when I speak to you is is this real care to change the world? Right and I think that that's really important. I want to thank my team at Business Growth Mindset for putting up with me, and and always making sure that we have exciting guests to join our our top achievers podcast. And for anyone new. Please make sure that you do subscribe, and also change your notification settings because these platforms be at Apple, Spotify. YouTube, the three primaries that we use won't alert you if if you're not if you haven't changed those notification settings. Ladies and gentlemen, until next time, thank you, Stefan. And to all of our listeners live with purpose