David Burkus: Building Psychological Safety and High-Performing Teams

Discover the keys to mastering business and personal growth with renowned organizational psychologist and best-selling author, David Burkus. In our discussion, we delve into team dynamics, where David's expertise sheds light on creating shared understanding, bridging individual roles, and fostering collective intelligence.

Dr. David Burkus is not only a skilled researcher but also an inspiring communicator, known for his five award-winning books on business and leadership, translated into numerous languages. Since 2017, he has consistently ranked among the world's top business thought leaders, with his insights featured in prestigious publications like the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times.

Key Takeaways:

1. Practical Applications: David breaks down social science insights into actionable strategies, offering tools for tangible success.
2. Empathy and Decision-making: Explore how empathy influences decision-making and personal growth. David emphasizes the transformative power of empathy in leadership.
3. Psychological Safety: Discover why cultivating trust and respect within teams is pivotal. David shares strategies for fostering open communication and a positive team culture.

Tune in to unlock your team's full potential and embark on a journey of growth and success.

David Burkus links:

• Website: https://davidburkus.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdavidburkus
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidBurkus 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidburkus 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidburkus/ 

Hi, I'm your podcast host Keita Demming: Author, Advisor, Thought Partner & Coach.

I'm an award-winning educator and coach with a PhD in Adult Education and Workplace Learning who works to transform companies into places that are idea-driven and people-centered.

At The Covenant Group, I design training programs and coach entrepreneurs and business leaders to meet their strategic goals and build their businesses.

In my book, Strategy to Action: Run Your Business Without It Running You, I introduce an effective and straightforward tool to elevate your skills as a business professional and navigate the corporate world. The book offers practical insights on transforming strategies into tangible results.

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Transcript

David Burkus: 0:00

Pretty much everybody would agree authenticity matters. But everybody will also agree I don't want you crying over how a date went in the all hands meeting on Monday morning in the conference room. Right Like there's times and places for that.

Keita Demming: 0:19

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Keita Demming, where I explore how do we have people become better people in business and better business people. Today's guest is a five-time best-selling author, renowned public speaker and educator. His name is David Berkus and he's written many books that I've been influenced by, and I felt like he was one of the first people I needed to get onto this show. In this episode, we dive into all kinds of things related to how do we help people become better business people and better people in business. I hope you enjoyed today's episode because it's packed full of lots of learning. If you like this podcast series, please sign up for my mailing list at KeithAdhammingcom or check out my new book, strategy to Action, and I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with David Berkus. I have folks who have no idea who you are. Can you just share a little bit about yourself?

David Burkus: 1:17

Yeah, I mean we could go all sorts of places with that, but they're probably most interested in on a professional side. So I'm an organizational psychologist by training. I'm a writer and speaker by passion. I like to say I try and help leaders and teams do their best work ever, and do that using insights from all sorts of social science, and try and get those good ideas and turn them into practical application, because it's the application piece that seems to be most missing.

Keita Demming: 1:42

So, david, the purpose of this podcast is to help people do two things to become better people in business and to become better business people. Can you give us a couple insights recently in your work of how you're helping people be better people in business?

David Burkus: 1:59

Yeah, that's interesting. First of all, that's a great spin and great phrase. I like that. I like that.

Keita Demming: 2:06

You know, I think Took me years to find it.

David Burkus: 2:08

So yeah, yeah no, I like it. I like it. You know. There's a couple ideas we explore in this new book that I wrote Best Team Ever around.

David Burkus: 2:18

I use this term common understanding, that teams need to have common understanding, and I had to invent that term to you know, because you nerd out on the science just like I do. I had to invent that term to be a sort of a catch-all between what we might call role clarity, which is a common OB term from hundreds of years ago, but then also Anita Williams-Wooley and the idea of collective intelligence, that teams work best when there's conversational turn taking and people have high social sensitivity, etc. And so if I'm thinking about how does somebody become a better person in business, that's probably the best piece of advice or insight I would give them, which is that in order to make the best decisions, in order to give people the best experience of working with you and what have you, your goal ought to be to have some level of empathy for them. It's not about fighting for your idea to be right. It's about understanding everybody's idea and knowing that if you hold space for that, you'll make the best decision, whether it ends up being your idea or not.

David Burkus: 3:19

But a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people get frustrated with their coworkers and colleagues and clients and what have you? Because they're not. It's stupid stuff too, like they're not using email the same way we would use email. They write them too long, or they write them too short, or they send them too late at night, or what have you Like. We live in a world where people are going to work to their preferences and you're not going to change that. What you can do is be okay with it, understand it, create space for those differences and then an amazing thing happens, which is you end up being better business person as well, because you're making better decisions, you're seeing more perspectives, you're less shocked by changes in the environment, etc.

Keita Demming: 3:55

Let's double click on that for a second. Do you have a story that kind of fleshes that out for us?

David Burkus: 4:00

Yeah, I think probably one of the. I wouldn't say it's a direct business story, right.

Keita Demming: 4:07

It doesn't matter.

David Burkus: 4:08

Yeah, one of the stories we cover in depth in the book is the story of Valerie Kondo's field. In my opinion, valerie Kondo's field, who is the head coach of the UCLA women's gymnastics team for about 20 years and, in my opinion, the greatest collegiate head coach of all time, any sport and I realize those are fighting words and people who listen to this podcast are going to like tweet at me, right, but the reason, if you look at her stats, her stats are incredible Seven national titles, 19 conference championships, etc. But what I think is amazing about her is that she wasn't a gymnast herself, couldn't do a cartwheel, couldn't teach you to do a cartwheel. She was a choreographer at first and then, when a couple of different things happened, she was asked unexpectedly to be the head coach of UCLA and she did what a lot of people do and what I hate, but what a lot of people do when they're in that new leadership role, which is you look for examples of successful leaders who are talking about themselves and what they do and you don't realize how much survivorship bias that those stories have. Right that it's usually like CEO memoirs are all super narcissistic CEOs who think they're amazing, right, nobody writes a memoir about how many times they failed at the business and all the lessons learned. In her case, what that meant like was copying successful gymnastics coaches in the past.

David Burkus: 5:28

At the time that she became head coach, the number one coach in the United States probably in North America was a guy named Bella Corolli, who was a brutal person. Like his idea. His facility was called the ranch, but really it was the factory right. We'll never run out of little girls who dream of being Olympic gymnasts, so we can treat them however we want, tell them how to wear their hair, where to stand, how to address us, what to eat, plan out their whole schedule, etc. And so she sought to copy that level of just brutal. Here's all of my constructive criticism. I'm focused on execution, execution, execution, execution. And it didn't work. And for two years they did worse than before she took over as head coach, and it wasn't until her team had an intervention with her. I'm like where did this version of you come from? We hate it. We like the old version of you.

David Burkus: 6:13

That was much more empathetic, that was much more understanding. And you can't you're head coach, you can't just say, okay, well, I care about you, do whatever you want. You still have to emphasize clarity. And she came up with a really cool rule, which is that they would be all business in the gym and in the gym space, only talking about performance and execution and training etc. But then she made spaces outside of the gym for them to be personal. She started having dinners at her home. She started saying, if you come to me in the office, we're not going to talk about the gym, we're going to talk about your personal life, etc.

David Burkus: 6:43

And bringing back what we might call the empathy piece to it. And surprise, surprise, the team actually started winning. They felt more supportive. It was easier to get feedback across. Right? These two things are not opposites, right? You can't give someone clear, specific performance feedback if they don't believe you care. And that was her problem. As she was doing all of the clear, specific performance feedback, nobody believed she cared, so she had to ramp up that empathy side to win them back over. Then they won and they won and they won.

David Burkus: 7:12

Now, unfortunately, the other thing they found out in her tenure, one of her athletes, kyla Ross, was the first person to go public that she had been abused by Larry Nasser, the monster who sexually abused. What we found out later was 200 plus athletes, most of whom at the Corolli Ranch, at the ranch of that other head coach. But she only found that out and Kyla Ross only came public with it because Ms Val Valerie Condosfield had created enough of a space for that empathy, where this person felt safe to finally talk about that trauma that obviously had been very, very personal but was also blocking her performance right. And so we know about all of this because she built that empathy side. These two things are interdependent. You can't have clarity without empathy. You can't have performance until you understand the person.

Keita Demming: 7:55

All right, lots and lots of things to double click on there that you just talked about. We're clicking a lot.

David Burkus: 8:00

We're double clicking a lot right now.

Keita Demming: 8:01

Let's click. Let's click the most important thing I want to say for last, I think. But I want to get your perspective on authenticity. So I struggle with that concept as a black male. People tell me to be authentic and I have to code, switch and stuff. But there's a cool little piece of authenticity conversation there that I think we could double click on a little bit. Any thoughts around that On that buzzword?

David Burkus: 8:28

yeah, yeah, I don't. So obviously, if you're not watching the video feed of this, you recognize that I'm a middle-aged white male right.

Keita Demming: 8:36

Pretty much the opposite of me.

David Burkus: 8:37

Right, yeah, pretty much the opposite. Same age, same age, right. Right, Take the personal bias into this. I don't know that I actually agree with authenticity at work. Like when I was teaching in business school, what I would tell students is that I want you to be your authentic self in a work environment or a job interview, et cetera, but I want you to be your authentic first date self. Like that's what I would tell people. Like what's that version? That's still true to who you are, but isn't like, because sometimes I think we use authenticity as an excuse to just be a jerk. Well, that's just how I am. Like. No, you can treat people better than so. It depends on who your authentic self is.

David Burkus: 9:18

I'm much more interested from a leadership standpoint. I'm much more interested in vulnerability in leadership than in authenticity. Right, and again, not deal-breaking levels of vulnerability. You don't need to like, oh David says, be vulnerable. So I'm gonna go tell my team that I feel like my parents never loved me. Like you know, not that right. But admitting when you don't know, admitting what those weaknesses you have on the job are right, those can go a long way into making it feel safe for your people to be a little bit more authentic too. I do not think we're ever gonna be in a situation where, being at work, people feel they're as authentic as they are around their family and their closest friends, and I'm okay with that. I would like people to be more authentic than they probably are right now.

Keita Demming: 10:00

So where that question came from was in the example you gave, where she went to kind of try to copy somebody else's approach and then people were like where's you that we like, where's that empathetic person? So that's kind of what I was picking up on. What do you think was the magic there in terms of showing up on her authentic self and the discipline and following this old school?

David Burkus: 10:24

Well, I think two things. I think the first is in Ms Val's specific case. She got really lucky in that most people are university athletes for four to five years and she was a terrible head coach for two. But that also meant that there were people still on the team who remembered what she was like before, and so there were people who, either out of frustration or for some other reason, felt safe enough or felt urgent enough to speak up and say we saw you before. We want you to go back to who you are, right. So in that case I think she got really, really lucky.

David Burkus: 10:55

Not all leaders get that level of people taking a risk to confront them and their leadership style right. So I think that's one. And then I think creating the sort of two separate spaces is a huge bonus for this right, Because, like I said, this idea of, like first date authenticity right, we want you to be authentic, but we don't. Pretty much everybody would agree. Authenticity matters, but everybody will also agree I don't want you crying over how a date went in the all hands meeting on Monday morning in the conference room, right, Like there's times and places for that, and I think leaders have to create more space and be more vulnerable and be more authentic and get more into sort of personal than ever before.

David Burkus: 11:41

You know, whether that's because of COVID, blending work in life or increases in mental health issues at work and things like that, we still have to hold space for that more than ever before. But I think the genius of Valerie Condos fields is sometimes that's a different space. Right, we have specific places where you may not feel safe being fully authentic in a conference room with everyone. But maybe you will in my office with the door closed, right, or maybe you don't even feel that safe enough yet. But if you know that I care and that I am available, that still helps more than just always trying to be quote unquote professional all of the time.

Keita Demming: 12:14

The second thing I picked up on was this idea of I have to know that you care, like. This is something around teaching Like a child needs to know that you care for them and you love them before they're prepared to learn from you. Yeah, that piece around care is an interesting dovetail or conversation to have within the workplace about how does actually caring for your clients, their customers, people and your stakeholders, how does that make you a better person in business and a better business person? Well, I mean.

David Burkus: 12:43

I suppose the first thing I'd say is like why would you want to if you don't? You know what I mean. Why would someone want to be in leadership if they didn't? Why would you want to scale a business to the point where you take on the responsibility of having multiple employees if you didn't right To make more money?

Keita Demming: 13:06

That was about to say you have to start by caring, the reason to be like I care about making more money, but I don't care about you. And then there's a good argument around not a good argument, but there's an argument around, which you do really well talking about purpose and business, right? Yeah so, and there's a really good argument around starting to look at all stakeholders versus just shareholders, right, so there's also a lot of that, yeah.

David Burkus: 13:31

I mean, I totally agree, it's possible. I'm just baffled by the existence of those people. Right, 4% of the population are sociopaths. They exist. I can't deny that they exist. I'm just part of the 96%. And so, for everything I just said in the last 10 minutes about empathy, I have a really hard time empathizing with sociopaths. I can't get my head, can't understand their head.

David Burkus: 13:52

So that'd be the first thing, right Is, why do you want to do this if you don't?

David Burkus: 13:58

But the second thing is just like, even if you don't, maybe I can convince you that understanding more about that person's work, preferences, the context they're working, what they're dealing with in other spheres of their life, that's still going to help you tailor your feedback to them better than if you don't.

David Burkus: 14:17

If you just say, here's what I need you to do, and I'm only I care about you doing it, you may not be speaking their language, as it were, giving them the feedback in a way they can receive, and so you're going to be less effective anyway. Now that's a very utilitarian approach to it. So, again, I'm sort of baffled at like why you would want to do it if you don't. But I do recognize maybe it's 4% of your audience, although I hope it's 0% of your audience. But if it is that that's what it is right. Just like you were saying, with teaching in a child, the child that's know they care, but the teacher also has to care, right, because otherwise they're not going to find that thing to latch onto to be able to speak to that child and teach that child, and so the performance of them as a teacher will suffer as well.

Keita Demming: 15:01

And then the final piece I just wanted to touch on in that whole. This came from just your opening story, which is amazing the importance of psychological safety, because I know you talk about it in the upcoming book. I don't know how you can write about teaming or teams without talking about psychological safety.

David Burkus: 15:20

And it's weird to me to think we ever even tried talking about this before. Amy Edmondson Right.

Keita Demming: 15:25

And it's actually not Amy, it's Edward, ed, what's his name. And he was her supervisor. His friends come and it does not.

David Burkus: 15:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but she's more popularized she's right, right, right, for sure, for sure for sure.

Keita Demming: 15:41

So talk to us a little bit about the psychological safety piece in this conversation.

David Burkus: 15:47

Yeah, I think there's a difference here, because we've been talking very soft empathy and vulnerability and authenticity. There's a misconception here often that when we're talking about that, we're also talking about creating safe spaces, creating places where maybe you're never going to hear from ideas that disagree with you, etc. That's not what psychological safety is. First of all, I don't actually believe in safe spaces. I believe there are safe people, but I think it's impossible to make a space safe. It's just about teaching people how to treat each other so that we feel safe, but that's a whole other monologue. We can do all of our podcasts on that.

David Burkus: 16:23

Psychological safety, if you use Edmundson's definition, is a climate of mutual trust and respect where people feel it's safe for interpersonal risk-taking. There's a lot of things that fall under that phrase. Risk-taking, speaking up because you disagree is a risk. Therefore, when people feel psychologically safe, you're actually going to hear more disagreements and presumably more opinions that you disagree with, but you'll hear it respectfully. When people feel like something they want to share a crazy idea that just might work but is different from your idea that's an interpersonal risk. When people admit they failed and that they messed up and here's what I learned from that mess up. That's an interpersonal risk, and so this isn't an environment where everyone gets along because everyone thinks alike. It's an environment where nobody thinks alike, but everybody gets along, right, right.

Keita Demming: 17:10

I love that nobody thinks alike, but everybody gets along. I love that phrasing.

David Burkus: 17:15

All right, let's switch to the Well. It's not as good as people in business and great business people, but it's the best I can do on short notice.

Keita Demming: 17:22

All right, so let's switch to the. How does your work connect to getting people to be better business people, if at all, to even venture into that? Does your work get into that space at all?

David Burkus: 17:33

Yeah, so, yes, obviously I wouldn't do. It is the short answer. I think there's two. So I look at in the new set of work, the new book. We talked about psychological safety. I already talked about common understanding.

David Burkus: 17:46

There's a third element called pro-social purpose, and I look at all three of those as the elements of a great team culture, not organizational culture. I actually think what my biggest lesson from the pandemic I mean I learned a lot of different stuff, but as it pertains to this conversation is that I think the concept of company culture is actually kind of bogus. Now, obviously it exists and you can measure engagement and things at a company-wide level, but if you ever work with organizations and really dive into that data, you see massive variances based on team, and so I think team culture is what really drives engagement, performance, and the differences between a high-performing organization or not is whether or not people at all levels have a solid or are skilled at building a solid team culture, and that will lead to increases in performance, right, and increases in performance will lead to your business operating at a much higher level, right. So I know it sounds soft, but the truth is, and this comes from research around, like Boris Groesberg at Harvard around performance. Performance is a team sport. You think maybe.

David Burkus: 18:52

Oh, in order to be a better business person, I'm scaling my business and I just need to hire greater talent. Talent's great, but it's the culture of the team and the resources you can provide that talent that turns talent into actual results, and so you have to kind of take responsibility for that. And as soon as you grow a business to where you are not the only leader in the organization, it becomes incumbent upon you to teach the other leaders how to grow a culture on their specific team, not your whole organization. I might give you some slack and say the number's closer to like two dozen people or so. I don't have an exact number, but certainly you can't build a business to 100-person-plus or 1,000-person-plus organization without caring about how culture drives performance on an individual and team level.

Keita Demming: 19:37

I love that analogy. Can we talk a little bit about the pro-social piece and how that ties into let's call it performance?

David Burkus: 19:47

for today. Yeah, so pro-social purpose is kind of Well, it's a term I made up, to be totally honest with you, and it's a term I made up by sort of stealing two different ideas right, which is that there's a great. For the last 10 years or so, there's a growing body of research around pro-social motivation, which is usually looked at an individual level Adam Grant and others, francesca Geno and others really studying this idea that people want to do work. People want to do work that matters and are much more motivated and more likely to succeed when they know their work matters. But people define mattering as who they can see is affected by their work.

David Burkus: 20:26

So it's not just about sort of regurgitating the why, the mission statement, the vision statement, the whatever it's being seen and reminded on a regular basis that what we're asking you to do, the tasks that we're asking you to do, are in service of specific people. And when you get that, you get a much higher level of motivation. It also sort of works in this concept from Muzufur Sharif and others about the concept of a superordinate goal. When you can tell a team this is who is helped by our work and enforce why we're working so hard, the team actually gets bonded a bit more too, because they see that they're working for something bigger than themselves and that they need to be interdependent to do it right, and then that then kind of drives to performance. So this isn't about just sort of like writing a sexy mission statement that we have something to put on a plaque in the office no one ever goes to anymore. It's much more about often the missing piece on people's individual motivation. We might have the perfect compensation and incentive scheme and then we find out that that's leveling off in terms of creating engagement and motivation and, when that happens, purpose specifically, who is probably the next best thing to look at?

Keita Demming: 21:35

Yeah, let's get an example of that. So what's a real, tangible example of that?

David Burkus: 21:39

My favorite one in the world and I know you know it is, and I talk about it in the TEDx talk is KPMG from 2014 to about 2020 or so I don't. It's funny. I like to think of organizational success stories as like pre-COVID, post-covid, like if you had a great story and then it fell apart and you no longer do whatever I think was an amazing program. I don't hold that against you anymore because I'm like, look, dude, that was a crazy time and I don't hold it against you. But in 2014 specifically, kpmg had faced exactly what I was talking about. We tried to increase engagement and performance, we did changes to the incentive comp system and flexibility and work, and I pulled all the levers that we traditionally pull, or that consultants tell us to pull, and our gains leveled off. And we still weren't where we wanted to be in terms of engagement and motivation and what have you. And so they did something really cool. They did a two-phase project and the first one I like to think of as more standard of what we try, which is that sort of corporate propaganda campaign, right. So they did this thing that called the we Shape History campaign, and the idea was that we're almost a hundred year old organization and we've been involved in pivotal moments in history and we'll tell you about them so you can see you're part of an organization that's doing things that matter. So they told stories about how KPMG helped the US join the Allies in World War II through this thing called the Len Lease Act and all of the money and logistics that were involved in that. They talked about how they were involved in rectifying or reconciling disputes around the Iran hostage crisis in 1981. I almost said Iran Contra affair. That's a totally different situation. They talked about how KPMG auditors were the ones that certified the election in Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1992, how KPMG helped with 9-11 and clean up and recovery efforts and insurance contracts. They told all these cool stories about how the work that KPMG organization-wide was doing mattered and that's great and it moved the needle a little bit right. But that's a great example of, again, that top-level, high-level, catch-all motivation or purpose that's not felt individually right and it's not felt by seeing specific people.

David Burkus: 23:42

And so phase two was brilliant because it did. It was this thing called the 10,000 Stories Challenge, which was essentially like great. For the last six months we've been telling you how in the past we've done great work. Now you tell us for the next six months how you're doing great work. And they created a system where you could submit answers to what do you do at KPMG in a way that is essentially they were asking who is served, what do you do and how does it help others. And they even created this cool thing where the previous campaign had a bunch of motivational posters and they created an app internally where people could design their own version of the motivational posters from phase one right.

David Burkus: 24:19

And so the idea here. They call it 10,000 Stories Challenge and the goal was to get 10,000 stories within six months. Well, they got 10,000 stories within just a couple of weeks and at about three month mark they cut the program short because they got 42,000 stories. Now, at the time, only 30,000 people worked for the firm right, which you and I are teachers. You know exactly what that means Extra credit. Some people went for extra credit.

Keita Demming: 24:43

But they're also KPMG employees. They've been getting extra credit.

David Burkus: 24:46

Right, right, yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. They used to do an extra credit their whole life. And the thing that I think is most interesting is that, yes, at a company-wide level, it moved the needle on engagement and performance. They moved to become the top of the big poor accounting firms and their list of great places to work and all that sort of thing. The coolest thing is when they did the annual engagement survey the next year, they did what I always say I love to do, which is they started splitting the data at a team-wide level and they snuck a question in that year and they asked people how well does your manager communicate purpose to the team? In other words, like, how well did your manager take seriously everything we've been doing over the last year? And when you look at the data on purpose teams versus non-purpose teams, it's crazy, right, it's like three times the number of people agree with a statement.

David Burkus: 25:39

I rarely think about looking for a new job, right, which is to say, in the non-purpose teams, the one where the manager, the leader, didn't take it seriously, like 75% of employees said, yeah, I think about looking for new work every once in a while, right, you had like double the number of people saying KPMG is a great place to work and I feel the work that I do makes an impact, etc.

David Burkus: 25:56

So the engagement level again wasn't company-wide. It happens at a specific team level to see how well the team leader or the team as a whole took seriously this mental exercise of answering that question who is served by the work that you do? And when you translate that engagement data into the performance data, you see the same thing. Right, and this is part of again, this was done before the pandemic. But this is part of why I argue that overarching point that you've got to take seriously every individual team on your company and not just look at what the overall averages for engagement and performance are, because the problems usually aren't at the organizational level, they're at specific team levels. There are specific, like pockets of cancer and specific pockets of amazingness which is really not the right word to use opposite cancer, but I'm going to go with it anyway and you've got to look at those specific pockets and deal with them each in turn.

Keita Demming: 26:48

So what in the last couple since you and I last talk I don't even know if it was probably pre just sometimes in the pandemic, but what was an aha moment or something that you're taking with you in the last couple months that you're like you know what this is really changed my thinking lately.

David Burkus: 27:06

Yeah, I mean, in a way, we've sort of hit on a few of them already, right. So one was that idea that company culture, thinking about it just at a company level and leaving it alone at the team level, is totally bogus. Another was really that idea. I think the thing I learned most is we'll go even bigger than organizations.

David Burkus: 27:29

Societal wide is just how important that concept of psychological safety is for societies and for people.

David Burkus: 27:37

I mean, there are so many different examples and I'm not going to go specific here, even though you're going to ask me to double click, but I'm not going to because it's going to make people hate me.

David Burkus: 27:44

But there's so many specific examples of how divisive we got in North America particularly the United States where I am, but in North America over everything related to the pandemic and all the social issues that were going on, etc. And I think part of the reason for that is that when we set ourselves apart, when we isolated ourselves more, it became simultaneously harder to get your voice heard in the overall public square and easier to get it heard by people who already agree with you. And so we just went exponentially up in the divisiveness scale because we weren't talking to each other anymore why? Fundamentally, that's a psychological safety issue and we can point to again. I'm not going to mention specific ones because you'll get hate mail and then you'll forward it to me and then we'll both feel like crap. But you can point to so many different corporate failures or oops moments or all the stuff that stem from the idea that, like someone on some side of the issue didn't feel safe to speak up about this and that's why you charged blindly down the road.

Keita Demming: 28:44

I think there's an important distinction to make there and I believe I agree with you. So I think what happened which is what made it worse is that in the silos in a group, people had psychological safety there to say whatever they wanted. Let's say they had safety there. Once you cross somewhere else, then they didn't feel like they have psychological safety, so they went back to their groups. Exactly that's the issue. So I think that's a distinction that is really important to make in this conversation and I that's just double clickers. I'm going to go yeah.

David Burkus: 29:15

Yeah, exactly Right, we got. We got really, really good at arguing with people who already agree with us against a phantom opponent because no one was willing to actually talk to the phantom opponent. You know what I mean.

Keita Demming: 29:32

Amazing David, I'm going to start to think about closing off this session and I love, always love, love conversations with you, but I'm going to ask you sort of coaching question that I've been really loving lately. Okay, which is where you seeking comfort when you should be seeking discomfort?

David Burkus: 29:49

Huh, Um, you know. So a significant part of my job relies on creating content, right? So I don't? I don't do any kind of, I don't have a sales force behind me, I don't do any kind of outbound like please hire me to speak or run a training thing for your workshop. I just I just create content and then trust that people will read it and flock to me, and I probably I don't know that I've changed the rhythm or the method of how I'm making that content for like two years, partly because I feel like I've got it dialed in. But that also, now that you make me think about it, makes me feel like that also means I haven't, I haven't conducted an experiment in at least the last 18 months, etc. And I probably should start that again.

Keita Demming: 30:39

That makes sense, it's awesome and do you have a favorite quote today? I know you have many. What's your favorite quote today?

David Burkus: 30:48

Oh, I have far too many quotes, but most of the time when people put me on the spot like that, I always go back to and you'll appreciate this because you and I are a very similar mind on a lot of this I always go back to. I'm a huge fan of W Edwards Deming and the quote in God we Trust. All others bring data. Yes, that's right, and the funny part is that that comes to my mind after we've had this great conversation about creating safety and making space and empathy and understanding people's feelings, etc. Feelings are great. Feelings are even better when there's data to back up to. That feeling is justified, right, Right, it's amazing.

Keita Demming: 31:25

And I think you've already covered this today, but do you have any ideas that are particularly inspiring you recently?

David Burkus: 31:31

Yeah, so I've been diving into you know, I heard about it, but like most things, I get excited about an idea. I buy the book and then it takes me a year to get around to reading it. But I've been really diving into Lydie Klotz's research around subtraction, so he has this whole book. I think it's actually called Subtraction. But it's essentially this idea that when we're looking to make improvements in life, we almost always look at things we're supposed to add instead of stepping back and looking at what we should subtract. Right, and that's really triggered a lot of thinking in me about like, ok, what do I need to cut off? Maybe cut off in order to make room for being able to do more of something, but just that idea that sometimes improvement is actually chipping away at stuff, not adding to it, so I don't need to do more or I don't need to do new. I need to figure out what's not working and cut it loose.

Keita Demming: 32:18

That is a basic concept in any of our programs that we do. So if any of your clients my clients are listening to this, double click or not, it's what you need to take off your plate versus what do you want to add on your plate. Yeah, david, how do folks find you after this conversation? Where can they find you?

David Burkus: 32:34

The easiest thing to do would be to go to this website. Google type David Berkes in B-U-R-K-U-S. You can actually type that into any search on wherever you want. If you want to connect on LinkedIn, great Search for me there. If you want to find the website great, go there. I'm pretty much everywhere. We even started TikTok. That's the one new experiment we did, but we did it like 18 months ago, so it was time for a new one. We even post content on TikTok now, I say we because I don't have that app on my phone, but the person who does a lot of video for me. We still post content. We interact with people through the website there Awesome.

Keita Demming: 33:09

All right For folks. Thank you for joining me and this was yet another exciting conversation with another thought leader who was helping us explore the two concepts that are of great interest to me right now how do we come better people in business and how do we come better business people? Go me next time when I interview yet another thought leader or entrepreneur who to help us explore these two questions. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for listening to conversations with Keter Deming. Over the years, I've learned that few things will impact or improve your life more than improving your strategies and having better conversations with people you wish to serve. If you like today's guest and the idea is shared, please like, follow and provide a review wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also visit my website, sign up for my newsletter and learn about the release of my upcoming book, and I'll follow you to the next episode, where we'll be in conversation with someone who will help you become a better business person and a better person in business. See you next time.