The Leader Factor

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior dive into what it means to create cultural accountability in an organization. Our definition of culture is the way we interact. At an individual level, cultural accountability is being accountable for the way you behave and interact with others. High performing organizations have high cultural accountability. As always, we move from theor...

How are you measuring your organization's culture? In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior are discussing just that. This is a fantastic episode for individuals who really care about being cultural architects and being practitioners in their roles, not just theorists. Tim and Junior will dive into the fundamentals of culture, the different ways we measure culture today, and what metri...

In this episode, Tim and Junior discuss how high-performing teams are formed and maintained. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams, and high-performing teams have patterns. Although there are many patterns, Tim and Junior will focus on a core four in this episode, including how high-performing teams (1) connect, how they (2) improve their skills, how they (3) v...

Today's episode is the final part of our four-part series on the change management principle, behave until you believe. This is our final episode in the series, and it's on challenger safety in practice. Tim and Junior will discuss why innovation requires deviation, why an environment of high challenger safety is not the default, and they'll give you practical behaviors for you to put challenger s...

During this episode of Culture by Design, we're continuing our four­-part series on the change management  principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and, this week, Tim and Junior tackle Stage Three: Contributor Safety. During the episode, they'll discuss our innate need to make a difference, the...

Today's lesson: Beware the Tyranny of Your Expertise Key Points: Expertise is a double edged sword. On one side, it’s knowledge, it's useful, and it’s leverage. On the other side, you can become insulated and you can lose touch with context. "The danger of the expert is that he often becomes a prisoner of his own expertise." -Peter Drucker. There is no field of knowledge that is static or complete...

Today's episode is part two of our four-part series on the Change Management Principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and focus on the key principles and behaviors that will help you foster an environment of high psychological safety. This week, Tim and Junior talk about what learner safety is, t...

Today's lesson: The 21st century requires Mission-type or mission-command orders Key Points: Mission-type orders include a clear statement of the superior commander's intent and state each unit's tasks in terms of operational effects to be achieved rather than specific commands. A mission-type order only works when your junior officers have the capability to do the job, including the critical and...

In today's episode, we're kicking off a new four-part series on the Change Management Principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and focus on the key principles and behaviors that will help you foster an environment of high psychological safety. To kick off this series, Tim and Junior will talk abo...

Today's lesson: Excavate Your Talents Key Points: The National Endowment for the Arts tells us that the average person possesses 500-700 different skills and abilities. Yet, Gallup tells us that only 10% of people are able to identify their natural talents. Everyone has special gifts, talents, and aptitudes– areas where their potential ability is two or three standard deviations from the mean. The...

In this episode of Culture by Design, we're talking about building a culture where employees feel free to speak up. This episode comes to you from an article Tim published recently on HBR with the same title. You can't just speak a speak-up culture into existence. Doing so in the absence of psychological safety is actually an abdication of leadership and an admission of failure. Tim and Junior tal...

Today's lesson: Use Minimum Necessary Intervention to Liberate Talent Key Points: One of the hardest things for leaders to learn is when to be more or less directive, when to tighten down and when to loosen up. Too little intervention and you’re an absentee landlord. Too much, and you’re micromanaging. As humans we yearn for autonomy in our contribution. We want to create, we want to affect realit...

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior discuss The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety in a way you might not expect. Using social exchange theory, they'll do a deeper dive to add some color to The 4 Stages model and give you additional tools and frames to use when you look at psychological safety. What is social exchange theory? (01:47) According to social exchange theory, peopl...

Today's lesson: Adversity is an Opportunity for Beauty Key Points: There’s tremendous incentive to make things as easy as possible but adversity is a constant. "The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of li...

Psychological safety has been found to be the number one variable in team performance, and in recent episodes we've discussed the most important variable for psychological safety was the leader of the team. As a manager, as a leader of people, you either lead the way or you get in the way. Much of what dictates whether you're leading the way or getting in the way is the way in which you integrate...

Today's lesson: Proximity Prevents Hostility Key Points: "There’s a lot of hatred, prejudice, discrimination, and contention between and among people who don’t really even know each other. Humans tend to fear difference, especially at a distance." -James Baldwin 1963 “Many of our society's greatest problems are created by people who don’t feel seen and heard.” -David Brooks “Prejudice and ethnic s...

Today Tim and Junior will be discussing coaching and accountability. These are two of the most important tactical levers a leader has and they always go together. If we do these things well, we’ll be able to effectively transfer two things to our people: 1) Critical thinking and 2) Ownership. In this conversation, Tim and Junior will reference the coaching and accountability matrix created by Dr....

Today's lesson: Urgency is a Catalyst, Seldom A Sustainer Key Points: Urgency is good, but only in doses. If we rely consistently on urgency, what do we get? Stress, poor decision-making, and decreased creativity. Urgency has a short shelf-life, it relies heavily on emotion and that emotion dissipates, so in the long run you should rely on vision and discipline to keep you going over a long period...

In today's episode Tim and Junior define culture and explain the three levels at which it lives. They explain the most important level of culture: the micro-culture & the single most important variable for influencing psychological safety on a team. Today's conversations includes a peek into some of our survey data that’s brand new coming out of LeaderFactor’s Psychological Safety Survey Tools...

Today's lesson: Mistakes Are Not the Exception, They Are the Expectation Key Points: Do we want more mistakes, or fewer mistakes? We want the right kind of mistakes. We need to distinguish between an operating environment and a test or experimental environment. It’s the difference between practice and the game. Each time we make a mistake, we learn about a cause and effect relationship. We learn w...

What happens when you don't have psychological safety, and how does it affect your bottom line? In this episode of the Culture by Design podcast, Tim and Junior share some of the research behind the need for psychological safety at work. You can't fully understand these costs and not walk away with a renewed conviction to foster an environment of psychological safety. Our suggestion? Take this dat...

Today's lesson: Leaders Get Paid for Judgment Key Points: Judgment is the correct application of your expertise but just because you’re an expert doesn’t mean you have good judgment. Quality judgment is a skill that must be developed. Not everyone is born with it. We can think about the decision making process the same way we think about physical production. If the quality of your raw materials an...

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior explain The Ladder of Vulnerability. We all experience vulnerability at work differently, and you have a ladder of vulnerability that's unique to you. This episode, and the online resources available to accompany it, will make it easier for you to talk about vulnerability at work. With these tools, you can change the conversation around v...

Today's lesson: Become an Agile, Self-directed Learner Key Points: The biggest barrier to learning today is not access, it’s motivation. Many individuals stop learning when they get out of school or they don’t have outside requirements, external expectations, or a structured learning environment. Many people stop learning even though it’s an innate need and desire. The solution? Make learning comp...

In this episode of Culture by Design, we're finishing up our Character and Competence series with the final episode. And if you've been with us each week, thank you. This has been an impactful few weeks where we've discussed topics including integrity, humility, accountability, courage, learning, change, judgment, and finally today, we cover the fourth cornerstone of competence, vision. Tim and Ju...