318. The Last 8% Culture Map: High Care, High Accountability with Bill Benjamin

Your culture isn’t what you say in calm moments. It’s what your team experiences when tension rises, deadlines slip, and someone has to tell the truth.

We sit down with returning guest Bill Benjamin, co-author of The Last 8%, to move from individual stress behaviors to the bigger question leaders wrestle with: what happens to your culture when things get hard? Bill shares a simple, powerful way to diagnose any team culture using two dimensions that decide everything people do under pressure: courage and connection. We unpack what it looks like when courage shows up without care (transactional, results-first, often unsustainable) and when care shows up without courage (the “family” vibe that can quietly breed frustration, slow decisions, and protect underperformance). We also name the fear-based culture many people recognize and the real costs of silence.

From there, we focus on the target: high care with high accountability. We talk about why connection comes before courage, how leaders can create psychological safety without lowering standards, and how to handle the last 8% moments that define trust. You’ll also get highly practical tools for leadership communication, including a two-step feedback approach that reduces defensiveness, helps you stay specific, and ensures the hard message actually lands. We close on why culture is the operating system for strategy, execution, engagement, and retention.

If this helps you see your team more clearly, subscribe, share the episode with one person who needs it, and leave a review with the quadrant you think your culture lives in today.

🌐 Connect with Bill:
• Website: https://ihhp.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-benjamin-12b671/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bill.benjamin/

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What happens to your culture when things get hard, do people speak up, or do they stay silent? Do they lean into the discomfort, or do they avoid it? Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, Is your culture built on real courage and connection or just surface level harmony, because here's the reality, culture isn't defined in the easy moments. It's defined in the moments of pressure, tension and truth. In today's episode, I welcome back Bill Benjamin for a powerful follow up conversation that builds on his work around the last 8% in our first conversation, we explored what happens inside of us, under pressure, individually, the emotional reactions that either cause us to mess up or avoid what really needs to be said. But today, we take it a step further. We explore how those individual behaviors don't just impact us, they shape the culture around us. Bill introduces a powerful way to think about culture through two critical dimensions, courage and connection. Too much courage without connection, you create a harsh, transactional environment. Too much connection without courage and you create comfort without accountability. This is a conversation about truth, trust and what it really takes to create an environment where people can speak up, take risks and do their best work. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. Have a special treat for you today, we have a return guest from Episode 305 we have Bill Benjamin, the co author of an upcoming book called The Last 8% now if you haven't heard that episode, I do encourage you to go back and listen to it, but I'll give you the quick summary now to set the scene for what we're about to talk about, Bill's done deep research on the difference between high performance teams and high performance cultures compared to the rest of us, and this concept called the last 8% comes up in multiple ways. So what do the last 8% do differently? In the previous episode, we spoke a lot about the individual, the individual leader, or even the individual contributor, and some of their behaviors that lead to the culture in a last 8% organization, or, more importantly, what happens with the rest of us? We spoke about what happens in moments of stress, those high stress situations. Are you the type of leader that's a make a Messer, where you have an emotional reaction and you are wrapped, or are you an avoider? And Bill's research shows that we're about 1/3 2/3 between these two, and sometimes it switches, depending on where we are in the organization or even you individually. One day you might be an avoider. The next day you might get emotionally hijacked and you're a make a Messer and you're exploding. So we spoke a lot about what you can do to have little pattern interrupts that if you find yourself in these situations, if you find yourself avoiding when you should be leaning in, or you find yourself exploding when you should be sitting back and listening, what you can do to do this, he gave us a model called SOS stop oxygenate and seek information to help you calm down the emotional nervous system and to stay calm but not avoid the situation. So really great practical tips, and I really encourage you to go back and listen to episode 305 you can do it after this episode. You don't have to go back there. Now the two are going to work together. One of the key ones was in the last 8% avoiding the last 8% of what needed to be said. So you might have had the courage to start the conversation, but did you have the courage to say what really needed to be said? And this is a big difference between these high performance cultures and the rest of us. I'll just call it that for the moment. Now, in that episode, we spent a lot of time talking about the individuals and the individual behavior, but it was leading up to something bigger, which is what Bill calls the last 8% culture map. Now this is the organizational view of the same concepts, and it's and it's quite multifaceted, and there's going to be a lot into this, so we need to get into it. So Bill, without any further ado, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for coming back and sharing your time and your wisdom with us.

Bill Benjamin: 4:45

Thank you for having me back. I'm excited. And by the way, what a great summary. I actually wish I could bring you to all my keynotes. And I'll say, and to summarize, here's Mick.

Mick Spiers: 4:55

Well, thank you,

Bill Benjamin: 4:56

Because you do such a great job. And for those that haven't heard the three, OH. Five episode, I thought Mick did one of the one of the best interviews I've ever had, in terms of, you know how he approached it. So thank you. Great to be back.

Mick Spiers: 5:10

Thank you, Bill. Really greatly appreciate it, and thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate it. Help us now do this connection. So we're going to go from the individual through to the collective. What does this last 8% culture map look like?

Bill Benjamin: 5:26

Yeah, and let me, let me give a little bit of introduction to you know, how we came up with this, or why we for many years, we've done individual development, individual contributor development, individual leader development, and that's hugely impactful. What we know from the research, and we came across this about seven or eight years ago, is that in order for someone to show up and perform a certain function or behavior with a certain attitude, which is what businesses need, there's two elements to it. One is the individual capabilities and attitudes. That's about 50% the other 50% is the environment, the culture they're in. So if you want to create a culture where people speak up, but senior leaders are shooting their ideas down in meetings, they're going to be a lot less likely to speak up. So our work starts at the individual level, and then now we've added this whole work at the team and the culture level, and a couple of myths that I like to dispel before introducing the Culture Map is, one is that culture is established by creating a set of values and putting them on a wall and hoping that everyone and sending people coasters and little mugs and hoping everyone behaves that way. And there's nothing wrong with having values. You wonder what the goal post is, but where culture really exists is in the difficult moments, because of the cortisol effect, which is that when there's tension, when there's pressure, when there's conflict, our cortisol gets released, which causes memories to sear in. So we remember what someone was doing in that tough what we call last 8% moment, we don't remember what anyone was doing the 92% of moments when everyone was getting along and everyone was you know, so people don't always show up in alignment with the values when they're under pressure. So that's really where culture exists, is in those tough last 8% moments. So that's one myth, is you need both the values, but you also need the tools and the skills and the culture where people can show up in line with those values in the tough moments.

Mick Spiers: 7:25

Yeah, really good. Bill. So key lesson there already that our culture is not directly connected to the office wall plaque that says that this is the way we behave. It's the micro moments of the actions that happen in those high cortisol moments. And that's the and you mentioned this in the in Episode 305, by the way, these are the memories that are lasting. Memories the 92% of the time when everything is smooth sailing, people almost don't remember any of that, but they remember the moments of high pressure cooker when the boss exploded in that meeting or and now coming to the actions reinforcing the values, it's you use the Speak Up culture as a great example. I have a story that I share often here, Bill that that if you want to create a speak up culture, you have to celebrate and reward every time someone speaks up, even if you don't agree with them, you have to listen to them. You have to thank them, even if it's the stupidest idea you've ever heard. If you say, oh, Bill, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard, do you think that person's ever going to speak up again, let alone anyone else that heard that conversation? So it's in these micro moments, whether the culture is what you want or not want.

Bill Benjamin: 8:39

Yeah, and the other behavior that's more of an avoidance behavior that really sets the tone of the culture, is when the boss doesn't deal with under performers or toxic behaviors. And we've all been guilty of that, that is so hard. I've been guilty of allowing either an under performer or someone who's performing, but leaving bodies in their wake to go unaddressed, that affects the whole team. That sends a signal about what's okay and what's not and so, yeah, so it's, it's those moments that establish the culture, not just the values on the wall. So that's, that's one myth. Another myth is that culture exists across an organization. It actually does exist on individual teams, that is where the fundamental unit of culture is. That's why you we've worked with hospitals where they're performing the same function on two floors, but they have completely different cultures, depending on the leader, depending on, you know, what the last thing, or some moments they've been through, what's in, what's been established as norms of behavior. So the good news about that is that each of your people on these calls that are managers or leaders of teams. That means you can own the culture on your team. You don't have to wait for the CEO or the VP of HR to do something you now. You can have a culture around you that's not functional, but you can be like the umbrella for your team, where you have a high performing team, even though there is an high performance around. You, and that actually allows you to stand out. So I think that really gives, you, know, gives folks agency about the impact they can have for the culture of their own teams.

Mick Spiers: 10:09

Oh, I love this, Bill. This is a loud and clear message for us all to hear. And I've come across two things here Bill in my career. One is the almost victim mindset of what could I do? I'm just a middle manager or a team leader. What could I do? That's just the way things are around here, a little bit of acceptance, without taking accountability and ownership of your own area. And I'm going to say that. Even worse, I'm going to say when the team leader and the manager gets involved in the kind of the blame culture, or the or the rubbishing the culture around here, of they start dissing the the environment and saying, Oh, this bloody place, etc, well, that's it's your job to help fix it, and it's in your control.

Bill Benjamin: 10:57

Or the avoidance culture, where they're just like, oh, I can't do anything about that. I can't deal with that. You know, I'm not going to give feedback to my peer, you know, who's having an impact on my team. So it's both that make a mess and avoidance behaviors.

Mick Spiers: 11:11

Yeah, interesting. Yeah.

Bill Benjamin: 11:12

So culture exists on teams. Now, when we work with an organization and we do our culture system, we start with the very senior team and we cascade it throughout the whole organization. So you can be intentional and have a culture that's more homogeneous across but that's when you know. That's when that's done intentionally, and it starts with us in your team. But if you're not, you know, if you're not the CEO of the company, that doesn't mean you can't influence culture, both in your team and the teams around you. So that's, that's the second myth. The third and final myth is that culture is mostly about empathy and connection and engagement, and, you know, making people happy, and that's important, right? There's going to be a shortage of good people for the jobs you have. So, you know, you need engagement, you need retention, but it's only half of what makes a culture high performing. So we talked about one half being connection. That's the psychological safety, that's the people feel valued. They have a voice, they're happy to be there. The second though, is courage, some of the stuff we've talked about, that willingness to step in, have a tough conversation, make a tough decision, take a risk. And I didn't talk about that as much last time, but the last 8% isn't only about tough conversations, although that's the thing that most people have the felt need for, like, oh my god, I have to have this conversation. Help me. But it's also about taking risks, taking on new projects, trying new things, to be innovative. It's about making tough decisions, not the easy decision, but the one where people aren't going to be happier, they're not going to like you. But you know what's the right decision. So this whole idea of courage is much broader than just stepping into conversations.

Mick Spiers: 12:54

Yeah, we're really good.

Bill Benjamin: 12:56

So those are the two key pillars of a high performance culture that actually build our culture map.

Mick Spiers: 13:03

Okay, all right. So what I'm hearing so far, Bill, so really good. First of all that the culture is not created by putting nice words on the office wall plaque. It's, it's created in those key moments, those high stress moments, and it comes from these are not your words, but I'm going to play back what I'm taking from it. Bill it comes from what we celebrate and reward. It also comes from what we tolerate and accept. If we tolerate under performance, if we tolerate toxic behavior, it starts to set the culture. Okay? The second part is it's not the CEO's job. It's down to the individual team, which I think is a very powerful moment for everyone.

Bill Benjamin: 13:46

It is. So the CEO needs to model, yeah, and so, you know, where we've impacted a culture of entire organization, it did start with the CEO. However, if you're three levels down from the CEO, and you don't have an ability to influence that. That doesn't mean it's time to give up. That means, you know, focus on what you can control, which is your team in your area.

Mick Spiers: 14:07

Very good. That's the message I want the leaders to take away. Is, don't step back this. You're part of this. You lean in. That's what I meant by that. And then the third one, I'll just use my own words here and say it's not about creating a pillow environment where everyone feels loved and it's a family. And I know this is going to come up as we go through the Culture Map. It's also about courage, and courage is not just the courageous conversations. It's courage to be decisive and make hard decisions that need to be made, and it's about taking risks, because if you don't take a risk, you You never reap the benefit of an opportunity?

Bill Benjamin: 14:43

Great, absolutely, you're right on. So we took those two key pillars, connection and courage, and we created a four by four map. So I want you to imagine, you know, a map where on the left axis, the upright axis is courage, and on the bottom axis is connection. And by the way, this. Is all summarized, and there's and there's a picture of this in our Harvard Business Review article titled The secret to high performing teams. And so maybe we can even, you know, at the end, let people know where to go find that. We go to HBr to find that. But so I want you to think of a culture then that's in the upper left quadrant out of these four quadrants. So it's high courage, but low connection. That's a transactional culture. That's a culture where results matter over relationships. It's more of a make a mess blame environment, like you talked about, right? It's more toxic. Behaviors are tolerated, you know? And it's a high stress and high anxiety environment. It can get results in the short term, but it's not sustainable over the long term, because people become disengaged. People start they start to stop giving feedback, they stop feeling important and valued and and so it's feels like, if we just, you know, get on everyone and tell them what to do, that can work for a short period of time, but it doesn't last over the long term. So that's the top left is transactional.

Mick Spiers: 16:05

Yeah, really good. I think a number of us have been in organizations like that, and I love what you said about the temporal aspect of that is one of the challenges here, Bill. Let's double down on this one for a second before we go to the others. One of the challenges here is you can get the short term results, yes, and I can imagine this can start becoming a bit addictive, or even, what's the word I'm looking for, because the results are coming. People go, oh, we just have to sprint one more time. We just have to like and before you know it, they're not breaking the pattern, because it was from a results point of view. It was working in the short term. So they keep on going. How do you break that pattern?

Bill Benjamin: 16:48

So it comes to really awareness with like anything. So it comes to assessing, and that's part of our culture system is we do have an assessment and identifying, you know, the areas where that's happening, which teams, which areas, and what are the specific behaviors that are leading to that, and then creating a norm on a team that says, okay, when there's a missed deadline, when there's, you know, a change to, you know, a proposal, here's how we're going to handle that. You know, we're not going to yell at people. We're not going to so that you actually start to create a team charter that says, because one of the things people worry about is when you move away from transactional and add connection, it feels like, oh, but then we have to lose performance, then we have to lower our expectations. That is not the case. This is about both. You can have a very high performing team that's also high in connection, high in care, high in empathy and trust. And in fact, that's actually what sustains performance. The way you shift a transactional culture is to identify it and then identify behaviors that are leading to it being transactional, and add in some of the more high connection by high care behaviors.

Mick Spiers: 18:03

Yeah, really good. Okay, so high courage, low connection, will lead to a transactional situation where results are more important than people and more important than relationships. Might work for a while, but it'll foster potentially toxic environments where I'm going to say people will burn out, people will leave. It won't work in the long term.

Bill Benjamin: 18:24

Or worse, they burn out and don't leave. But they're just, I mean, the engagement numbers. I mean, Gallup just came up with survey. The engagement numbers are awful. I think 27% of employees are engaged and 17% are actively disengaged. Oh, yeah. I mean that's, that's what that environment leads to. Okay, so let's think about the bottom right hand side, where it's high connection, but it's low courage. That's a family culture, and you use that term earlier, that's a nice culture, but people are unwilling to do hard things. By the way, 16% of teams in our research are in transactional 38% the highest percent are in family. So this is, this is the most common, and it tends to be more of an avoidance culture. You don't want to set people. You want people to like you. That there is high care. We see a lot of this in health care. We see a lot of this in the Midwest. And Midwest, nice, you know, Canadian. I'm a Canadian. We have Canadian nice, but you see it and anywhere. And so the other thing, everything that happens is, is decision making gets slowed down, because you have to include everyone, and everyone has to be happy. And there's nothing wrong with consensus decision making, but taken too far, it really slows things down. So it's it's a culture where, you know, people feel engaged and they're happy, but under performance isn't being dealt with. Feedback isn't being given. The challenge of innovation slows down because people aren't challenging the status quo. They're not taking risks to trying new ideas. So it's safe, but it's not high performance, not we like to say, because some of our. Clients, they'll stand up and say, Oh, we have a we're like a family. We say, you're not a family. You don't fire your lowest performing kid you might want to some days. And so, you know, it's not enough to be family.

Mick Spiers: 20:16

Yeah, okay, all right. So very good. I think there's a lot of organizations that fall into this and the avoidance. I'm not surprised to hear you say that there's also this kind of we spoke about in the last interview, the need for love and belonging and the need to want to be liked, and all this kind of stuff may be pervaded in here, I'm going to throw something to you and say in the transactional we spoke about, toxicity might take over, and that will lead to a lot of disengagement. When I hear you talk about the family culture, I'm then imagining the word frustration, right? So it might, on the surface, it might feel really nice. It's a warm, cuddly pillow environment, like I said, and everyone's treated nicely and all that kind of stuff. But what I'm wondering whether it whether the subculture that festers here is frustration, frustration at the indecisiveness, frustration at the lack of management, of underperformance, the frustration that things aren't getting done because people aren't making decisions, taking risks or taking actions so frustration pervades.

Bill Benjamin: 21:22

Absolutely that is so observant. And typically it's the frustration of your high performers, of your change agents, of your innovators. So absolutely, family culture can also lose people because they get frustrated. Colin Powell has a great quote. He says, you know, not addressing under performers. You know, the main thing that does is demotivate your high performers, right? Not only do you not address their performance measures, but you demotivate your high performers. So absolutely, great. Great observation.

Mick Spiers: 21:51

Okay, excellent. All right, so where do we go from here, Bill?

Bill Benjamin: 21:54

All right, so bottom left then is low connection and low courage. That's a fear based culture, that's a little bit of your older archetypal command and control culture. It's my way or the highway. People walking on eggshells, afraid to speak up, afraid to try new things. Fortunately, we don't see as much of that today. That's 12% of cultures, and by the way, we just had new numbers. So if my numbers don't add up to 100 I apologize. So we don't see it much of fear based although a lot of people tell me, I've been in a fear based culture. So it does exist, if you're doing the math, if I if I did the math right, 67% of cultures are in those three quadrants that are not high performing. Now the ultimate goal is to be in the upper right hand quadrant, where it's both high connection and high courage, which is characterized by high care and high accountability, that idea that both can exist together, and we say that connection comes before courage. Because, Mick, if you're going to give me feedback about something, and I know you have my best interest in mind, and I trust you and respect you, I'm way more open to it than if I don't know where you're coming from. And last time you criticized me in a meeting. So when there's that connection that actually unlocks this high risk, high feed, but feedback, rich environment that creates innovation and smart risk taking.

Mick Spiers: 23:29

Yeah, the feedback one's an interesting one to start on Bill and and I'm going to use the word care and feedback. And it doesn't always go together. And when someone is receiving feedback. If they feel like they're under attack, that the person's attacking them, all they're going to do is get defensive. But if they feel like the person cares about them, and I'm not lovey dovey family, but cares about them enough to have the courageous conversation with them, and the feeling like the feedback has the intent of helping me. The feedback has the intent that this person's got my back. They're not attacking me. They've got my back. They're trying to draw to my attention something that I need to address to do a better job. Then it's a different conversation. How does that do with you?

Bill Benjamin: 24:16

Absolutely, that's why, when space connection comes before courage, and it's actually that that connection, that care, that unlocks the high performance and the high courage, even as a leader, if you make a decision, let's say somebody's really advocating for something, a project they really believe in, and you're going to say, no, they're much more likely to accept that, not undermine you, not go away and complain Again if they if you have a high connection, they felt heard. They know you respect them. Because, you know Stephen Jobs said, if you want everybody happy all the time, they'll become a leader sell ice cream. Because you can't always keep everyone happy. And as a leader, and it isn't you have to have a tough conversation, but you also have to make the decisions that sometimes. Sometimes people don't agree with and aren't happy with and they will be way more likely to follow you and support you. You know they don't agree with you if you have that connection first.

Mick Spiers: 25:10

Yeah, really, I've got a saying I use sometimes, Bill, I'll just test it with you, that that people can quite often understand and accept a decision that's contrary to the one that they wanted, as long as they felt like they understood the rationale of the decision. But what I'm hearing from now is it needs to start with the connection that we get each other. First, that you feel seen, you feel heard, you feel valued. And then when I say when I listen to you, let's say we're making a crucial decision, and I've truly listened to you, and you've gone, Mick, I think we need to turn left. And I've I've listened to all of the different variables, and I've decided to turn right. If I've got a good connection with you, I can have a conversation with you that says, Bill, I really did hear you. Thank you for your input. I really appreciate it. We're going to turn right, and here's why?

Bill Benjamin: 26:02

Yes, because imagine somebody makes a decision you don't agree with, but they never really listen. You didn't feel like they ever really listened to you or heard your rationale or respected your opinion. You're like, Okay, well, you say you're going right. You got your reasons, but you didn't listen to me. So the two really do go hand in hand. I think one of the things that people really struggle with in terms of listening to someone's point of view is they feel like if I'm going to be high care or empathetic, it means I have to agree with them. That is not what care and empathy are about. It's about listening and understanding, because they might have something to say that helps to change your mind or gives or helps with input, but even if you completely disagree with them, they still want to feel heard and understood and but you don't have to agree with them. You can still say no, by the way, that is a last 8% kind of decision and conversation all in one that a lot of people struggle with, is saying no to someone because they'll be disappointed, they'll be unhappy, they won't like you in that moment. And we all want to be like and we don't want to make people unhappy, and so that whole area of saying. But unfortunately, people sometimes think, if I'm going to hear someone's point of view, then I have to agree with them, which is not the case.

Mick Spiers: 27:13

I had one yesterday. This is so this is so funny listening to you. I had one yesterday that went wrong, and I know where it went wrong now, but I think it also comes in framing that original conversation. When you are seeking inputs and you're making people feel seen, heard and valued. So the one I had yesterday, I had engaged with this person about a decision I was going to make, and they gave me the contrary. They didn't agree with the decision, but I did hear them. I did take their opinion, and then I acted and went in a certain direction. And this was about a week ago. Then yesterday, they said to me, you asked my permission, and then did it anyway. Hear that word, permission. I didn't ask their permission. I was just looking for their insights, and what am I missing here and all this kind of stuff. But they interpreted it as you asked my permission, and you did it anyway. So I know that I didn't frame correctly that first conversation. How does that sit with you, Bill?

Bill Benjamin: 28:16

Totally. Totally makes sense. I mean that whole framing how we set up these conversations. And we have a whole kind of protocol in our, you know, in our training and in our book that we're writing on how to approach a difficult conversation in a skillful way. And so that whole how it's framed is a critical part of it.

Mick Spiers: 28:37

Yeah, and to set some context here, this person's a peer, not a team member. I went and asked a peer for for input on something they wanted me to I'll just use the same metaphor. They wanted me to turn left, and all evidence told me I should turn right. They said you asked my permission, and then you turned right. So yeah, but I didn't frame I didn't frame it properly.

Bill Benjamin: 28:59

And you brought up a really great point, because for a lot of people, the dealing with my boss and dealing with my employees. I mean, yes, they can mess that up sometimes, but it's clear that the PDI, the power distance indicator, right where it can get way more complicated is with peers, because you don't have authority over them, but they don't have authority over you. So you know, you're trying to collaborate. You're trying to come to mutual decisions. You don't want to have to go to your boss because you think they're wrong, or you don't want to get that involved. And so that whole how you influence. Many last paper spend conversations are about influencing without authority. And so that's another whole area where, when you are in an upper right hand quadrant culture. There is much more cross feedback and acceptance and listening to feedback, and, you know, negotiating and, you know, working things out across, not just up and down.

Mick Spiers: 29:54

Right. Really good. Now, there's at least four things I want to unpack here, one at a time, Bill. So let's. Let's go with one, which is you said connection before courage. If someone's listening to this and they're going, Yeah, I've tried a bit of this. I've tried the courage. I've tried they've dabbled, etc, and it hasn't landed, how do they start with what you said, connection before courage?

Bill Benjamin: 30:18

I mean, that could literally be the conversation. It could be, hey, you know, I'm trying to lead this team to be a high performing team, and, you know, we've had some challenges, and I feel like part of the problem is we don't know each other that well. We don't understand I'd like to get to know you a little bit better, and it doesn't mean you have to talk about, you know, their butterfly collection, if you don't like butterflies or it's not having to have that personal connection. But what are some of the challenges you're facing? What are some of the things you're most passionate about here at work? Like, it can be about work, so you can literally say to someone, let's take 15 minutes and just get to know each other a little bit and try to create that connection. But it can be framed in the frame of, you know, and I have a job to do, and I want to be able to do it well while I'm working with you.

Mick Spiers: 31:02

I'm going to say that that conversation could end up being a microcosm of connection and courage as well. By the way, just listening to you there, if you're trying to build a connection with someone that gets to know them better, and you might have worked with them already for a few years, and you feel like you don't know them as well as you should. I'm going to put something to you, Bill, and this is something is something I've studied in in coaching and psychology, is that in that first conversation, when you're resetting something that they've never you've never asked them that question before or whatever, they won't have the courage in the first sentence to tell you what their real challenge is so you need to set the environment and that they are going to build the courage to tell you what's really on their mind, and it's going to be built in little micro moments in that conversation as to how you react to the first thing they say. So they'll start with something relatively small. This is a late last 8% concept as well. So they might be deeply worried about something, and they've never been able to tell you about it, but in that first conversation, they're not going to hit the last 8% in the first sentence.

Bill Benjamin: 32:09

Yeah, they don't want to struggle. They don't want to look weak.

Mick Spiers: 32:12

Yeah, right.

Bill Benjamin: 32:13

Yeah. They don't want to use it against them. And one of the things we really recommended, there's a whole chapter in the book about this, but it's actually starting with vulnerability. Vulnerability is so disarming, and it leads to other people, then being able to be vulnerable. A lot of people think vulnerability is weakness. It's not. It's actually takes

Mick Spiers: 32:30

then I'm going to say, even then, they will start courage to say, Gosh, I'm struggling on this project. You know, I'm not feeling like I'm bringing enough to it, like, I want to both to work together to figure this out. So, like, that little bit of vulnerability can really open up that with something small, and subconsciously they're subtly testing you. You're going to share something that's not good news, but it's minor on the scheme of things, just to see how you react. And if you react in a calm and helpful way, they'll go, Oh, okay.

Bill Benjamin: 33:21

You validate, you listen, you maybe even ask some more questions. Get them talking even more. Again, there's anything people struggle with is they think this means, oh, I'm going to have to agree or give in. That's not what that is. It's about. Can you really listen? Can they really feel heard and understood? Can you validate and then maybe you come back and say, Okay, well, based on what you're telling me, I'm thinking, we can approach it this way, you know, like and so you're trying to build the bridge from both sides, not just launch from your side. We have this model of building a bridge where most people start from their side of the bridge, you know, and where we're saying, get to the other side of the bridge, start from their perspective, right? Learn a little bit more about them and try to build the bridge back. Doesn't mean you have to agree with them or give in, though.

Mick Spiers: 34:03

Okay, all right, very good. So in this connection, we're getting to know each other a little bit more. We're getting to show them that they are seen, heard and valued. We're showing them that we've got their back, that we're that we're here for them, and we're trying to build that connection. And now I'm going to say that we're doing we're setting the scene for two things. Once we have that connection, we're able to take more courageous decisions with them, etc, etc, but we're also giving them the license to be more courageous and speak up and tell us the last 8% that they've been holding back.

Bill Benjamin: 34:37

Yeah. That psychological safety, where they feel safe to speak up.

Mick Spiers: 34:41

Absolutely. You're really good. Okay, so number one, connection versus courage, connection before the character. Okay. The next one I want to talk about then is the three chapters of things that we've been talking about. Bill, so it's going to be, it's going to be feedback, risk taking and decisiveness. Let's go to the feedback. One. So feedback is one of those avoidance ones. Absolutely, I think it's a very common thing. But what tips do you have for people that do want to give feedback with high accountability and high care, where it doesn't turn like the easy thing for it to turn is it turns into a high care pillow conversation, and you avoid what really needed to be said, versus high accountability. Jerk, no care. How do we get this right?

Bill Benjamin: 35:28

Here's the advice. It's two meetings. What do I mean by it's two meetings? Most people, when they go to give feedback, like they genuinely care, they prepare and they think about it, they wake that, stay up at night, and they finally get in, and they're a little anxious, and they launch in, okay, well, you did this, and you need to do this. We need this. We're making statements. The other person's like, oh my god, they're deer in headlights and a trigger and they're defending. You want to be curious in meeting one, then speak up in meeting two. So in an ideal where it literally is two different meetings, you've got some feedback to give to somebody, but before you do, you're going to meet with them and hear their point of view. Tell me what's going on in the project. Tell me what your thoughts are. And here's the amazing thing, sometimes, when you do that, people know they know they've messed up. They're oh my gosh, I'm struggling with this, and I'd like to be better at it, and they're giving the feedback to themselves, and you never have to right, because they're self diagnosing. So that doesn't always happen, but that can happen. Secondly, when you do that, sometimes you learn something you didn't know. Oh, I didn't realize your colleague was the one that didn't meet the deadline that caused you to do it. So sometimes you learn something you didn't know. And third, you get them talking first, where they feel heard and they feel listened to. And if you can, you literally say, okay, you've I've really heard you. You've given me lots to think about. I'd like to schedule our next meeting. Talk about it further, and maybe it's later in the day, or maybe this is next day, so that they create some space. You get to go and think about it. You get to plan based on new information you might have learned. And then in the second meeting is when you speak up. And I'll get to that in a moment. What does that speak up look like? Now, there may be times when it's physically not realistic to have two separate physical meetings. It needs to be done in one meeting, but you still want to think about it in your mind, like you're having two meetings. The first meeting I'm going to have in this one meeting is going to be listening and being curious. Then I'm going to get to giving the feedback. Now, one of the things that to be careful about, because people do this is, if you have half an hour, don't spend 25 minutes on meeting one and then leave yourself five minutes for and then you drop the you know, you drop it on them, and then you have to leave. So, I mean, make sure there's an abundant amount of time for both. Okay, so before I get to meeting two, any questions or thoughts on that, before I get to the idea of meeting two.

Mick Spiers: 37:59

I think even that first frame is really powerful, which is that to think of it as two meetings. So it either is physically two meetings or think of it as two chapters of the same meeting, very, very intentionally. And what I'm taking away is like, if we go in without meeting one, and we go and I know we're going to talk about meeting two in a second, but if we go straight to almost like an aggressive pose, the person's going to get defensive, and they're not going to receive anything.

Bill Benjamin: 38:31

A lot of times it happens because, because we're a little nervous we've been thinking about this.

Mick Spiers: 38:31

It could be.

Bill Benjamin: 38:31

We're worried about their reaction, and ironically, our worry about their reaction, crazy reaction us that makes it more likely that they're going to react negative. You know, so and part of that second meeting, we calmed down a little bit. We've been listening and so we can show up more skillfully.

Mick Spiers: 38:47

I still had a couple more things on meeting one. So then what I loved about the curiosity, what I loved about the curiosity is it's going to lower that defensiveness all together and get them in a different frame. You're going to test their self awareness, because they might already know, and they might be struggling with it, and they need, they need help, and you are going to find out new information if you're truly listening. And now you've now you've set a completely different frame to then the, you know, the all meat go straight in and go bill, you've been a jerk lately. That's not going to help anyone, right?

Bill Benjamin: 39:24

You're messing up on this project. I need you to get better.

Mick Spiers: 39:27

Yeah, that doesn't help anyone. Okay, sorry, okay. Conversation two?

Bill Benjamin: 39:31

Okay, now, first of all, conversation two, go back to Episode 305, and listen to the SOS, because you got to put your oxygen mask on first. You got to manage yourself. You got to make sure you show up. And you might be a little anxious and nervous, but if you're too anxious and nervous, you're going to trigger them. So number one, do your self care? Okay? Number two, plan the conversation. I think most people know that don't just go in. So in the plan, you want to do a couple things. You. One is, you want to clarify a positive intention for the conversation. I am giving you this feedback because I think you could be one of my top performers. I'm going to share this with you because I want us to have a great working relationship. What or I want this project to be successful like whatever it is, so that, because if you just start launching, all their negative beliefs come up over there, I'm in trouble. They're not happy with me, they don't like me. They're trying to get me in trouble. They're criticizing me. So you share a positive intention, which calms their emotional system down. Oh, I'm safe. Mick has my best interest in mind now I can hear so start with a positive intention.

Mick Spiers: 40:37

Yeah, really good. So I've got your back. I want to give you this feedback, because I believe in you and I want to see you knock it out of the park. Is different to Bill, I got to talk to you about blah, blah, blah, right? So, yeah, very good.

Bill Benjamin: 40:49

Yeah, yeah. If it's a behavioral issue, you have to be specific about behaviors. You can't say, oh, people think you're rude. You have to stop being rude. What do you mean? I'm rude. Who said I'm rude? You have to be okay in the meeting. When you interrupted Jane, she would have felt, you know, or you interrupted me, I felt. And by the way, as much as you can, you make it the I feel statements, right, the I I experienced this. So you want to not Oh, Jane told me this. Well, when Jane doesn't, so you want to make it about your own observations as much as possible. And you want to be specific about behaviors so that the person can maybe acknowledge, okay, you know, I can maybe see where when I didn't step up and say something that affected the team, you know. So it isn't just about, you know, the make a mess behaviors. You also want to coach people who are avoiding so be specific about the behaviors.

Mick Spiers: 41:44

Yeah, really good. Clear is kind on this one, and if we're not specific, it doesn't help, right? So you've been a jerk lately. Doesn't help anyone in Friday's sales meeting. You interrupted Sally three times when she was trying to share this data, and the impact was this.

Bill Benjamin: 42:02

And right, and then tie it into impact exactly, tie it into the impact, and then tie it back to how it will be positive for them if they then changed the behavior, or they hit the deadline, or not. I need you, because I'm on the line for this. It's like, no, how's that going to benefit them? So then you tie it into, how does it benefit them to change their behavior or take something on that you need, or have them deliver something so you tie it in a positive benefit. The final thing in the preparation is you need to be clear about what's the last 8% that you need to say, no matter what their reaction is because you could do all the right things to set this up for success, and they still might shut down or react negatively or get defensive. And what you can't do is then say, Oh, I guess that I won't step in. I guess I'll I'll soft pedal it. I'll sugarcoat it. You got to be clear going in. I have to let the person know that if they can't improve on meeting this deadline, that's going to have an impact on their whatever performance review or like you have to be clear about what you're going to say in that meeting and not leave the meeting without saying it.

Mick Spiers: 43:13

I think I'm hearing two things there, Bill, if I can, right? So I love that you're doing all of this in the preparation. You're not doing it on the spot. And then the two things I love that you've been clear about, what is that last 8% that I'm going to say, no matter what, it's almost like a contracting with yourself so that you don't backpedal or water it down at the key moment. But number two, the underpin there is almost preparing yourself of and this is part of the fear, by the way, but you have to prepare for this. What if? What if they cry, what if they disengage? What if they get aggressive? Make a contract with yourself as to what you're going to do in each of those situations and and it is different. So this is one that people fear. Bill, so what do we do if they cry? What do I do if they disengage? What do we do if they get aggressive?

Bill Benjamin: 44:04

Absolutely, and that, I mean, it's, it's rare when you handle it skillfully in the way of our saying, it happens a lot less, and it might be a lot less intense, but it absolutely can, can still happen, and that's what I'm saying. You've got to let go of how their reaction influences what you're going to, you know, share.

Mick Spiers: 44:22

Yeah, good, okay. All right, excellent. All right. So we, we've covered a lot on feedback. I just want to add one that's important to me, Bill, and I'm testing it with you, but it's also one that I believe in. I also believe in the closing of any feedback situation, that there needs to be an agreement on what was just said, right? And there's too many times where I hear of to use your term. Last 8% conversations that on the surface went okay, but both parties walk away with a different understanding of what just happened. So if we don't summarize at the end, and my tip on this one is to get the other person to sum. Our eyes, if they can, I say, what if we just agreed? Or what was your biggest takeaway from our conversation today? Something like that for them to say in their words, so that they don't walk off. I think you, you said something similar to this last time, Bill that you feel like, Oh, phew. I finally said what I had I was off my chest. I got it off my chest, but the other person walks away going, Oh, boss thinks I'm doing a great job because it didn't land. So you got to make sure. With a confirmation at the end, you need to close the loop to make sure it landed. How does that sit with you?

Bill Benjamin: 45:35

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that was the second last thing I was going to say, is that summarizing, and I love your point of try to get the other person to summarize, if it comes down to you, by the way, if you want to learn summer, if you want to learn summarizing skills, listen to a Mick Spiers podcast, because he has this amazing ability to summarize all the way along. You really do a great, great, great job of that.

Mick Spiers: 45:59

Okay, all right, brilliant. So we've covered one of the three. Let's put the other two together, because they somewhat go hand in hand.

Bill Benjamin: 46:07

One more thing, just, just the final thing is, don't assume that that was the only meeting you're going to have about this. I mean, unless it was the person, yeah, I totally agree. And I'm doing this, and it was easy, but it's like, schedule the next meeting. Let's talk again next week about this. Because they've had time to process it. They want to talk to their family. They talk to their peer there. So schedule a follow up meeting. These aren't, you know, magic bullets, where people suddenly completely change because you had one conversation. Schedule the next meeting.

Mick Spiers: 46:36

Excellent. All right. Love it. Bill, okay, so we're covered feedback. I'm going to throw the other two together. Even though they're not identical, there's some commonality between them, and that is a last 8% culture of high courage, high connection when it comes to risk taking and decision making. How do we lean into that bill?

Bill Benjamin: 46:57

I mean, we talked about the last 8% it's really the gap between the risk we know we should take and the risk we are taking. Now, sometimes that's a conversation, but sometimes it's I've been offered this new, you know, to be on this project, but I'm not confident. I've been asked to do something, but I don't feel comfortable that I have enough skills, or I know enough applying for a job, like looking at the road and saying, Oh, I don't know. I don't think I have enough. Like I'm not saying, go apply for jobs you're not qualified for. But sometimes we so it's that whole idea of taking risks and putting ourselves out there when it feels uncomfortable and we know when we're not taking the risks we know we should take. And it's about recognizing that and trying to meet that gap between, you know, that 8% gap between what we know we should take and what we are actually taking.

Mick Spiers: 47:47

Yeah, really good. And this is going to show up in different ways of some of the things that we spoke about before, around the frustration, for example, if the risks aren't being taken, or if the decision making is not there, that people get frustrated. They go, why can't they just, why can't we just move on with this? And the like, okay, really good. Bill, all right, you've given us a lot to think about again today. I've just absolutely adored this conversation. The short summary for everyone listening is, this is the Culture Map. We're going to put this in the show notes, the link to the hub Business Review Report, and you can see the picture for yourself and start looking at it more deeply as to what it could mean in your organization. And you will fit. Your organization will fit into these different quadrants somewhere so.

Bill Benjamin: 48:36

Oh, I've let people say we have all four types of cultures with this company.

Mick Spiers: 48:41

At different different times or different teams. Yeah, I can.

Bill Benjamin: 48:44

Different times on different teams.

Mick Spiers: 48:46

And yeah, absolutely. Yeah, good. All right, so if you have high courage and low connection, you're going to have that transactional environment where toxicity can come through. It might work in the short term, results over relationships, but it won't work in the long term. If you've got the lovey dovey pillow environment where there's high connection, low courage, that's a family environment, but it leads to frustration, particularly for your high performers and you, you yourself might get frustrated that you're just not getting things done in low connection and low courage. That's that command and control fear based organization. They do still exist, by the way, Bill, like you said, it might be a smaller percentage now, but this is one where there's a bottleneck in the organization and it's all around a fear based command and control situation. And what we want you all to get towards is this last 8% of high courage, high connection. But the big takeaway here from bill is that it starts with connection. Starts with connection. Have those conversations where you get to know people, where you set the scene. The connection then gives you the license and the environment where you can have the courage. You can have the courage. They can have the courage when. The connection is there, then the connection looks like high accountability, high care. So it's not one or the other, it's both high accountability and high care. And it shows up in feedback, shows up in risk taking, and it shows up in decision making, absolutely.

Bill Benjamin: 50:18

And one, the one thing to add is, and when we do our culture system work is we actually have teams have those conversations about what kind of team they want to be, how they want to handle conflict, how they want to handle and what their agreements are. So that when someone speaks up, it's not, oh, they're just speaking out of turn. It's like, No, we agreed we would share inconvenient truths or challenge the status quo. So there's actually a team discussion and agreement.

Mick Spiers: 50:44

And I love that. What I'm taking away from that bill is it's before the high cortisol moment, not in the moment, not in the moment. It's already too late if it's in the moment. Okay, all right. Really good bill. Now, you've already answered our last four questions that we ask all of our guests, so I'm going to ask you just one more. What's one thing that you would like to see in organizations? One one piece of advice that if someone is listening to this show and they're going, oh shit, yeah, I'm in the top left quadrant, or I'm in the bottom right quadrant, and we're stuck. What's the one thing that you would like to see them do differently?

Bill Benjamin: 51:20

I'd like to see them recognize that culture and leadership. It isn't just a nice to have. It's actually the driver of your strategy. It's the operating system. Jim Voss is CEO of tenneco automotive, 65,000 person automotive maker that we've done a lot of work with, and he's like, Yeah, our culture is our operating system. That's how we get stuff done. That's how we execute and drive results. He's very driven. They're very driven organization, but they do it with this high care kind of high accountability culture. So it's to recognize how important culture and your people are to driving strategies, not one of the other. You have to have both.

Mick Spiers: 51:59

Yeah, I love it. Bill, all right. Well, thank you so much again. You've come back, and you've shared another chunk of your time with us and shared your your wisdom, and you've given us very practical things that we can all recognize in ourself, by the way, and then lean into and take action. Thank you so much.

Bill Benjamin: 52:16

Well, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure. You did such a great job. Thank you.

Mick Spiers: 52:21

Yet another powerful conversation there with Bill Benjamin. So let me ask you, what does your culture actually look like when it's tested, not when things are easy, but when there's pressure, disagreement or something difficult that needs to be said? Do people step forward with courage? Do they feel safe enough to be honest, or do they hold back, avoid and protect themselves? Because one of the biggest takeaways from this conversation is this, great cultures don't choose between care and accountability. They insist on both. And that's not easy. It requires leaders who are willing to go into what Bill calls the last 8% those harder conversations, those uncomfortable moments, those situations where it would be easier to stay silent, but that's where culture is truly shaped. So here's something to reflect on, where might you be over indexing on connection and avoiding the hard conversations, or where might you be leaning too heavily on results without creating the trust and connection people need, because your culture is not what you say it is. It's what your people experience, especially when it matters most. In the next episode, we shift the conversation again. We move from culture to something deeper, what people are actually searching for at work and in life. In my next conversation, I am joined by Anthony sylad. We explore happiness, meaning and why so many leaders are chasing the wrong things. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible? None of this happens without them around here. We believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter, that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app, and if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing you. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage and care.