14. No Fear, No Filter: Building a Team That Tells You the Truth

14. No Fear, No Filter: Building a Team That Tells You the Truth

A Curious Space: Psychological Safety Season finale In this episode, Kate and Maddie explore psychological safety: what it actually means, why most people get it wrong, and the specific leadership behaviours that create it. Drawing on Amy Edmondson's book The Fearless Organisation, they make the case that psychological safety is not about comfort, being nice, or avoiding conflict. It is the belief that your work environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. And it lives at team level, which means any leader can create it, regardless of what the wider organisation is doing. What you'll hear in this episode: Why psychological safety is not the same as comfort or harmony, and why falsely harmonious teams can have very low safety. The neuroscience behind fear: what actually happens in your brain when you do not feel safe, and why even brilliant, experienced people will stay silent. How Google's Project Aristotle found psychological safety to be the single biggest factor in high-performing teams, and why Edmondson describes it as "taking the brakes off." The real cost of not having it, from the Volkswagen emissions scandal to the Pan Am disaster, and what those examples reveal about the weight of hierarchy. Edmondson's three-part framework for building psychological safety as a leader: 1. Set the stage. Frame the work in a way that normalises failure, makes clear that input is needed, and gives people permission to speak honestly. Kate shares how reframing a feedback question from "what could Kate do better?" to "what advice do you have for Kate?" changed everything she got back. 2. Invite participation. Ask questions you genuinely do not know the answer to. Build structures that make contribution normal, from brain trusts (Pixar) to failure-sharing lunches. 3. Respond productively. Appreciate honesty even when the news is bad. Reward effort and learning, not just success. And yes, still hold people accountable when behaviour crosses a clear line: dealing with genuine violations actually increases safety for everyone else. Practical takeaways for leaders: Name your own part in what went wrong before asking others to do the same. Try an aspirational question in your next team meeting. Rather than asking what has gone wrong, ask: "What is stopping this being as good as we want it to be?" or "What am I not seeing here?" Use the "what's your 2%?" prompt to make shared accountability feel manageable. Everyone can admit 2%. Experiment with the pre-mortem: assume the project has failed, then explore why. It surfaces risks early, and it is a gift for natural catastrophisers. Ask directly: "What is one thing I could do to help the team feel safer taking risks?" Referenced in this episode: The Fearless Organisation by Amy Edmondson Google's Project Aristotle Pixar's Brain Trust Patrick Lencioni on vulnerability-based trust Nancy Kline's Time to Think Carol Dweck's growth mindset research Wells Fargo and the Volkswagen emissions scandal as case studies in the cost of low safety A note from Kate and Maddie: This is the last episode before a summer break. Season three launches in September and will focus entirely on leadership. If you have taken something from this series, we would love to hear from you: hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com   About the Hosts Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com [https://www.goodideasagency.com/]) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF. Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com [https://www.madfoxgroup.com/]). Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell. Join us next time as we enter a curious space.

13. Culture Room 101: Four Things We're Banishing From Workplace Culture

Culture Room 101: Four Things We're Banishing From Workplace Culture Episode Summary In this bridge episode between seasons, Kate and Maddie borrow the format from the BBC show Room 101 (itself borrowed from Orwell's 1984) to make the case for banishing pieces of organisational culture orthodoxy for good. One host argues for getting rid of something, the other plays devil's advocate, and together they decide whether it goes in the room. Up for debate this episode: the feedback sandwich, describing your organisational culture as a family, using an annual away day as a substitute for the deeper work of culture change, and the phrase "let's take this offline."  In This Episode 1. The feedback sandwich, and why cushioning developmental feedback between two positives tends to backfire in one of two directions. 2. Describing organisational culture as a family, and the blurred boundaries and unrealistic expectations this can create. 3. Away days used as a one-off fix, and the difference between an away day that supports ongoing culture work and one that replaces it. 4. The phrase "let's take this offline," and how it can shut down the productive conflict a team actually needs. Key Concepts & Thinkers * The feedback sandwich: examined as conflict avoidance dressed up as kindness, and the cost of treating positive feedback as separate from developmental feedback. * Hellinger's systemic thinking: referenced on the flow of love in organisations, and why this doesn't require the family metaphor to exist. * Away days as a sticking plaster: distinguishing genuine, sustained culture work from a single annual event expected to do all the work. * Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment: referenced on writing clear questions for meeting agendas and checking back against what a meeting was actually there to do. * Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team: referenced on the avoidance of productive conflict, and how "let's take this offline" can be a symptom of this. Reflection Questions * When you give feedback, are you managing the other person's experience, or your own discomfort with the conversation? * Does your organisation describe itself as a family? What expectations does that create, and what happens when reality doesn't match them? * Think about your last away day. Was it part of an ongoing plan, or a stand-alone event hoping to fix something in a day? * How often does "let's take this offline" come up in your meetings, and what is it usually protecting people from? About the Hosts Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com [https://www.goodideasagency.com]) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF. Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com [https://www.madfoxgroup.com]). Get in Touch Got something you think belongs in Room 101? Or want to defend something we've banished? Email us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com [hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com] or visit www.acuriousspacepodcast.com [http://www.acuriousspacepodcast.com] to join the conversation.   Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell.

12. Culture Clinic: The One Person You Can't Afford to Lose

In this episode of A Curious Space, Kate and Maddy open up the Culture Clinic for the first time, responding to a letter from a listener we are calling Rowan. Rowan runs a business where two years of deliberate culture-building is being undermined by one person: a commercial director who brings in more revenue than anyone else and makes working life harder for almost everyone around them.   The question Rowan is sitting with is one that will be familiar to many leaders: can I afford to lose this person? Kate and Maddy turn that question around. Have you properly costed what it is to keep them?   What we cover in this episode The tension between visible and invisible costs in organisations, and why the financial impact of difficult behaviour rarely makes it onto a balance sheet.   Research by Pearson and Porath (2005) on workplace incivility, including findings that 50% of people lose significant work time managing around a difficult colleague, 70% vent outside the organisation, and one in eight eventually leave.   Why tolerating behaviour sends a louder signal than any values statement.   How to approach a genuinely different kind of conversation with a high performer whose behaviour is causing damage, one that is curious about what is driving it rather than just addressing the symptom.   The role of reward structures and performance expectations in either reinforcing or shifting the problem.   What support for this kind of conversation can look like, including for the leader having it.   Research referenced Pearson, C. and Porath, C. (2005). On the nature, consequences and remedies of workplace incivility: No time for "nice"? Think again. Academy of Management Perspectives, 19(1), 7-18.   About the hosts Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com [http://www.goodideasagency.com/]) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF. Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations, who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com [http://www.madfoxgroup.com/]).   Listen and connect Find all episodes of A Curious Space at www.acuriousspacepodcast.com [https://www.acuriousspacepodcast.com].   Get in touch with a cultural conundrum, a question, or to find out how Kate and Maddy can support your organisation: hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com [hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com].   Credits A Curious Space is produced by Tim Fox with music by Richard Flindell.

11. Time to Think: How to help your team do deeper, better thinking

Throughout season one of A Curious Space, one name kept coming up: Nancy Kline. Whether we were talking about culture, trust, conflict or storytelling, her framework, the Thinking Environment, kept appearing in the background. So in this post-season deep dive, we decided to give it the conversation it has always deserved. This episode is a proper exploration of Kline's work: where it comes from, what the ten principles actually are, and how both of us use them in our day-to-day work with teams and individuals. What is the Thinking Environment? The Thinking Environment is built on a simple but powerful premise: the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. And the quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking. Kline identified ten principles that, when present, create the conditions for people to think at their best. We walk through all ten in this episode: 1. Attention: genuinely focused, uninterrupted listening 2. Equality: every person's thinking is welcome and valued 3. Ease: creating the internal spaciousness to think rather than react 4. Encouragement: keeping thinking moving, even when it is uncomfortable 5. Appreciation: acknowledging the thinking, not just the outcome 6. Feelings: making space for emotion as part of the thinking process 7. Information: ensuring people have what they need to think clearly 8. Diversity: actively seeking different perspectives as a source of richness 9. Place: recognising that physical environment shapes thinking 10. Incisive questions: questions that remove the assumptions blocking deeper thought What we talk about We discuss why interruption is so costly (people are interrupted on average every eleven seconds, and the anticipation of it alone changes how we think), how equality in a meeting is not just about who speaks but about the conditions given to each person to think, and why ease is a performance consideration, not a wellbeing one. We also get into the two techniques we both reach for most: thinking rounds and thinking pairs. Rounds give every voice in the room the same quality of space, with no interruption and no right of reply, surfacing perspectives that rarely make it into open discussion. Thinking pairs offer uninterrupted time to think out loud with someone whose entire job is to hold attention. The only follow-up question available is: what more do you think, feel or want to say? Maddy shares her experience of working with a regular thinking partner over the past year, and what that quality of listening has made possible. We also talk practically: how to use rounds to open and close team sessions, why starting with a question about what is going well changes the quality of what follows, and the single simplest change you can make to your next team meeting today: rewrite your agenda headings as questions. Recommended reading Nancy Kline, Time to Think (1999) Nancy Kline, More Time to Think (2009) Kline narrates the audiobook of More Time to Think herself, and having trained with her, Maddy particularly recommends this as a way into the work.   About the hosts Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com [http://www.goodideasagency.com]) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF. Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations, who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com [http://www.madfoxgroup.com]). Get in touch Questions, reflections, or things you would like us to explore further? We would love to hear from you. Write to us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com [hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com] or visit www.acuriousspacepodcast.com [http://www.acuriousspacepodcast.com] Thank you as always to our producer Tim Fox and to Richard Flindell for the music.

10. Culture Under Pressure

Season one comes to a close with perhaps the most timely question we have explored this series: what actually happens to organisations when the pressure is on? In this episode, Kate Nicholroy and Maddie Fox look at the research behind threat rigidity, a well-documented pattern where individuals and systems under stress narrow their thinking, restrict communication, and default to familiar behaviour at precisely the moment when more expansive responses are needed. It is predictable, it is biological, and it is entirely possible to prepare for. Drawing on real examples from the COVID era and beyond, including the better.com mass layoffs, the Marriott response, the Wells Fargo accounts scandal, and the LEGO turnaround, Kate and Maddy explore the difference between organisations that come through sustained and acute pressure with their culture intact and those that don't. The answer is rarely strategy alone. It is almost always the quality of the humanity that leaders choose to maintain under pressure, and the degree to which open, curious, above-the-line practices have been built into organisational life before the crisis arrives. In this episode: Threat rigidity: what it is, where it comes from, and how it shows up in individuals and organisations Why pressure narrows thinking at the neurological level, and what that means for leadership teams The contrast between the better.com Zoom layoffs and Arne Sorenson's Marriott response Wells Fargo, rule beating, and why removing people from a broken system does not fix the system Lego's early 2000s turnaround and the practice of leading at eye level Practical tools: naming what is happening in the room, somatic awareness, above-the-line practice, and the seventh generation question Resources mentioned: Staw, Sandelands and Dutton on threat rigidity Arne Sorenson's March 2020 video to Marriott staff (available publicly online) better.com CEO Zoom call, December 2021 (available publicly online) Donella Meadows on rule beating and systems traps "If You Aspire to Be a Great Leader, Be Present," Harvard Business Review Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Embodied Leadership (available on Audible via Sounds True) About the hosts Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com [http://www.goodideasagency.com]) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF. Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations, who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com [http://www.madfoxgroup.com]). Connect with us: We would love to know what has landed for you across season one, and what you would like us to explore in season two. Email us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com [hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com] or find us at www.acuriousspacepodcast.com [http://www.acuriousspacepodcast.com] Many thanks to Tim Fox for producing the show, and to Richard Flindell for the music throughout.