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My guests for Episode #537 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Caroline Greenlee and Chris Butterworth, two of the three co-authors (with Chris Warner) of the book Why Care: How Thriving Individuals Create Thriving Cultures of Continuous Improvement Within Organizations.
In this conversation, we discuss their experiences and lessons on building cultures of continuous improvement that are rooted in respect, caring, and psychological safety.
Caroline brings rich experience as a Lean and continuous improvement coach, having partnered with organizations across different sectors to develop people and improve performance. Her background spans leadership development, organizational behavior, and a Master's degree in human resources management.
Chris is an award-winning author, international speaker, and a certified Shingo Institute Master-level facilitator and faculty fellow. He has more than 20 years of experience coaching executive teams and helping organizations embed sustainable improvement practices, always with a deep respect for people at the center.
In this episode, we explore topics such as:
- Practical approaches for leaders who want to build sustainable continuous improvement cultures.
- The origin story of Why Care and its message for leaders.
- Why caring cultures matter for both performance and people.
- Lessons from their Shingo Publication Award recognition.
- How psychological safety and respect for people underpin true Lean leadership.
Key Quotes
Caroline Greenlee
- “Lean isn't just about tools or methods — it's about people. If we don't care, we can't expect continuous improvement to last.”
- “Respect for people means creating an environment where they feel safe, supported, and able to contribute. That's when real improvement happens.”
Chris Butterworth
- “Sustainable improvement starts with caring — for people, for culture, and for the impact of our actions. Without that, Lean can't take root.”
- “Psychological safety isn't soft; it's essential. It's what allows people to speak up, share problems, and drive meaningful change.”
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Automated Transcript (Not Guaranteed to be Defect Free)
Mark Graban: Welcome to Lean Blog Interviews. I'm your host, Mark Graban. Today I'm joined by two co-authors of a book, two of the three. They are Caroline Greenlee and Chris Butterworth, along with Chris Warner. They're the authors of the book Why Care, and we're going to be talking about that book and their experiences and lessons for all of us working to build cultures of continuous improvement.
Caroline Greenlee brings rich experience as a lean and continuous improvement coach, having partnered with organizations across different sectors to develop people and improve performance. Her background in lean is strengthened by her work in leadership, learning and development, and organizational behavior, and a master's degree in human resources specializing in management and leadership. So, before I introduce Chris, Caroline, welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Caroline Greenlee: Hi, thank you, Mark. It's lovely to be here.
Mark Graban: And you are joining us from–
Caroline Greenlee: I'm from Northern Ireland, as the accent tends to give away.
Mark Graban: Well, I, yes, I would say I've also learned never to guess. It's better just to ask 'cause you don't want to be wrong with a guest. So we have an international discussion today for an international audience. So thank you, Caroline.
Introducing Chris Butterworth
Mark Graban: And we're also joined by Chris Butterworth. He is an award-winning author, international speaker, and a certified Shingo Institute Master level facilitator and faculty fellow. Chris has spent more than 20 years coaching executive teams and helping organizations embed sustainable improvement practices, always with a deep respect for people at the center of the work. So Chris, thank you for joining us. Where are you dialing in from today?
Chris Butterworth: Thank you, Mark. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm dialing in from the UK.
Mark Graban: All right. And we last, speaking of Shingo, ran into each other at the Shingo conference. That was earlier this year.
Chris Butterworth: Earlier this year. It feels like time flies.
Mark Graban: And hopefully we'll see you back at the conference in 2026.
Chris Butterworth: Yes. We're actually both going to be there doing a workshop on the book.
Mark Graban: And there is some Shingo related news related to the book.
Chris Butterworth: There absolutely is, yeah. We've been honored with a Shingo Publication Award just in the last few weeks, which we're both very pleased about.
Mark Graban: Congratulations. Congratulations to all three of you. Thank you. My copy does not yet have the Shingo seal, that hopefully the publisher will update that and get that out there. But that's great recognition and congratulations again for that.
The Lean Origin Stories
Mark Graban: And before we talk about the book and culture and psychological safety and the human side–the human side of lean. Like it's all, it's really all about humans. But I'm excited we're going to dig into that. I do like to learn before we talk about the origin of the book, individual lean origin stories. Chris, I know a little bit about yours, maybe a more, if you will, traditional manufacturing path into this. Maybe I'll ask you to go first and then we'll hear Caroline's story.
Chris Butterworth: Sure. I, I, I really, a very long time in this field, so I condense it, but I was very lucky to be part of a leadership team at Jaguar Cars that built one of the first, one of the early lean factories in the UK from a greenfield site. And I learned so much in that, it transformed the way I looked at the world, and we had people from Toyota and Honda helping us. And that really kicked off my career in continuous improvement. I then did a three-year part of a three-year research program in applying lean in supply chains. And then I spent 20 odd years in consultancy around the world, helping organizations. And in the last 10 years or so, I've been very much actively involved with the Shingo Institute.
Mark Graban: So we have similar, there are some parallels between you and I, starting in the automotive industry being helped by people from other companies. I didn't have that greenfield opportunity. Ours was the brownest of brown General Motors fields. But I'm curious, just one other question, kind of connecting your background to what you're doing now. Bringing concepts from the auto industry into other settings. I was just curious to hear your general comments about what you've learned from that perspective, changing industries and working more broadly.
Chris Butterworth: Yeah, no, that's a really, really interesting question. I, I, it's a long time since I was in a car factory. And I actually deliberately set myself an ambition to try and understand how to apply the thinking not just in car factories, but also not in manufacturing. So I worked with many organizations in banking and insurance and Ministry of Defense sector and education. Just to really challenge my thinking and understand how this could be applied.
It boiled down to, it's a way of thinking and it doesn't really matter what you're actually doing. And that was the big insight for me. And then that became grounded very much in the Shingo thinking around the behaviors and principles and ideal results requiring ideal behaviors, regardless of what you're actually doing. As my understanding deepened, it shifted from tools to culture.
Mark Graban: Yes. It's often said, yeah, anything we do can be described as a process. And again, everything we do involves people. Which means leadership and psychology as your book covers so well.
Caroline's Path to Lean
Mark Graban: So, Caroline, I'm going to point that same question to you of, you know, how and when and where, and why did you get involved with lean and continuous improvement?
Caroline Greenlee: Well, if I go slightly back into the midst of time, maybe not as far back as Chris, this is something work that I never thought I would be doing. I'm a languages graduate by education, and I started off after college working for, I'm going to date myself now, what was a new venture in the early two thousands and working for Amazon for the, and ran the French customer service team out of Belfast. And unfortunately, we were too successful. And as an outsource team, what happens when you're too successful and you meet all of your SLAs is that you get cut.
I found myself then looking for a new job. And thankfully, Michelin, the tire company, was looking for graduates and they were looking for graduates who spoke French. And so, quite frankly, Mark, I had what we would call here notions. That I was going to go and travel the world and eat in Michelin starred restaurants and do all kinds of cool things. And then that vision met reality and I got given a business unit in the tire factory managing the guys who made the tires. So that was a big wake-up call for me.
I did that for about three years. And Michelin, even in the early two thousands was way ahead of its time in terms of lots of its people and management practices. So we had self-managed teams where the guys managed themselves on the back shift, you know, 24/7 operation. People had empowered roles in the team that they took on and did things for no financial reward.
Then the opportunity came where they were looking for a lean coach for the site, that was going to be a new role and something that we hadn't really done before. And so I threw my hat in the ring and was fortunate enough to get that job and did that for, oh goodness, the best part of about 15 years, I think. Though they gave me the learning and development role alongside that.
For me, what seemed very normal to have L&D and Lean, I found out whenever I came out of Michelin, when the site closed, that actually those two things were quite different and quite unique. And where I saw learning and Lean as going hand in hand, lots of people saw those two things as different. And, you know, you talked about the people side of lean. People didn't necessarily see the people and the processes as going hand in hand. They saw them as divergent and not necessarily leading to performance and setting up this false dichotomy between the two.
I was fortunate enough to meet Peter Hines, who ended up introducing me to Chris. And we worked together with Cheryl who you interviewed on the podcast before. And we started doing some research around the people value stream. Really learning a lot on that and, you know, that what led to Thrive on and all of that. And that's really then what led on to the book that Chris had already planned to write, but it had been put on ice due to some other things and COVID. And therefore then when it came back again, then I had the opportunity to work with him and Stopes on that.
The Origin Story of Why Care
Mark Graban: Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. I think of Michelin, it's funny that you think of tires and fine restaurants. I've never been in a tire factory. I've been fortunate to dine in a couple of Michelin star restaurants, but they know something about about both. So, what led to the book? I'm curious the origin story for either of you that would want to start on this, to collaborate and to write a book about about caring. You know, that's a word that might not come up in day-to-day business language.
Chris Butterworth: So, I'll take that 'cause it's a story, it's a good opportunity for me to also talk about our other co-author. We'll slip into calling him Stopes 'cause that's what we know him as, and that's what everyone knows him of. But Stopes is a, used to work for Toyota many years ago. He's a mental health advocate. He actually spent, he now works and has done for many years for BHP, largest mining company in the world. And he's a CI coach and facilitator there, but he is also a mental health advocate. And the company gives him time to talk about mental health and his personal experiences of managing mental health across the organization.
I was really lucky to be doing an onsite assessment on one of the remote mines with Stopes. And we had met before, but we worked together for a whole week. And we did a really good job on that line. When we were kicking around the feedback that we wanted to give and talking about it at the airport lounge, as often some of these things happen.
We came, we landed on this thing that said, you know what, critical to continuous improvement is psychological wellbeing. No matter how well we design and implement a CI system, if we haven't thought about psychological wellbeing of the people, the CI system's not going to work, the two sides of the same coin. So that was a discussion we had in the lounge and we kicked it around and said, there's probably a book here. You know, this is just, this is a good story to tell because we're not aware of anything where that story has been explained.
We kicked it around for a bit. We then said, we need some help. We haven't got the expertise. So that's where we approached Caroline and said, would you be willing to join us as a co-author and give us all that expertise that we were missing? And that's how it came about.
Defining Psychological Wellbeing
Mark Graban: So Caroline, maybe a follow-up question for you. How would you define or frame psychological wellbeing? I mean, does that go beyond happiness and satisfaction with one's work? It sounds like it. There's a deeper impact on the people in a business.
Caroline Greenlee: So psychological wellbeing is, it's a continuum, Mark. It's not something that you either have or you don't have. It really is that continuum on that scale. And it goes I guess on the negative end to where you're just surviving and you're just barely making it through. And you know, whenever you look at the statistics today around burnout and the fact that, you know, when you look at two thirds of the population are having mental health problems, there's a huge suite of us here down at that lower end of the scale.
And then all the way up on the positive end, then you've got what the positive psychologists would call flourishing or what we've decided to call thrive. And that's really that sense of where you, you feel really good and you can give of your best. And there's the alignment work between your personal values and what it is that you do every day for work. Whether that's an organization or in the voluntary sector around that. So it's not just that sense of happiness, which is quite fleeting and not lasting. But there's very much that meaning, purpose and matter all tied up in that then.
Chris Butterworth: And that manifests itself. I mean, when we get into the workplace, because you know, people who are, we've not got that psychological wellbeing, it impacts our capacity to think. You know, so one of the pieces of research Caroline brought to my attention was, you know, when under stress your IQ drops dramatically. Now, not only your IQ drops, but actually the amount of capacity for you to think drops.
So if we've got people under stress, we've got people who have not got psychological wellbeing, and there are lots of factors that will affect that. The more factors that affect it, the less capacity you've got. And even if people are in survival mode, they're in protection and they can't, they haven't got time to even think about continuous improvement. So expecting people to make things better when we haven't thought about the psychological wellbeing, it's not going to work.
Mark Graban: Is it fair to say that, thinking, placing myself back in the stressful situations. I think even personally, it didn't just affect my IQ negatively, but also my EQ. Absolutely. In those moments of stress. What are your thoughts on that EQ connection as well?
Caroline Greenlee: Yeah. You're absolutely right, Mark, because when, Chris said about the IQ, and I was startled when I read the research on this. You know, so when you're anxious, you lose up to 40 points in your IQ. And if you're fearful, that goes down to 50. That's a huge loss, you know, of your mental process and power.
But also you can get triggered by situations. And stress is one of those. And you go into that limbic system of the fight or flight. And so that ability to pause and to choose how to respond goes, and you do go into that very much stimulus and reaction. And so you're not going, you know, anxious people and people who are fearful don't behave well. And they don't make, they don't make good choices.
I have a million opportunities every day to practice this. And sometimes I do it really well, and sometimes I really don't. And then I have to catch myself on and go back and repair and restore. So yes, all of this matters for work, but it matters for personal lives then as well.
Chris Butterworth: I really like a phrase Caroline uses in the book actually, which she says that, everybody is first and foremost a feeling being. Who has the ability to think. That ability to think gets narrower and narrower if we've not got that psychological wellbeing. So actually we respond emotionally rather than thinking about how we should respond.
Intentionality and Thriving Plans
Mark Graban: You know, there are some other Shingo connections occurring to me. When the late Stephen Covey was involved with the Shingo Institute, I saw him do a session at a conference, this might have been a decade ago, and he talked about the classic seven habits framework of being able to put a pause between stimulus and response. That's something I've really worked on getting better at. It's easy to react and then to blame the stimulus. What are some thoughts you would have for me or the listener who was trying to work on that? How can we create that pause where we're more intentional about our response?
Caroline Greenlee: I think it starts with intention, Mark. So, having that as an intention. And then it's about building habits and practices. And like most things, it's best to do all of this communally. You know, so, you know, if you think whether you're trying to build a gym habit or you're trying to change behaviors, you know, the more you can do that in partnership with somebody else who can help keep you honest and accountable and also kind of bolster you and give you that, you know, the main function of resilience comes from that connection.
So sometimes we have to borrow that a little bit from others, you know? So, recognizing all of the times that you actually have that pause now that you maybe didn't before, and giving yourself a little bit of a pat on the back. And then helping to understand, you know, somebody to help you unpack that thinking partner. What are those triggers? When are you kind of hooked on something and what could you start to do to either back yourself out of those situations or get that buffer?
Mark Graban: Yeah. I think, yeah, there are two possible countermeasures. One is to try to respond better and one is to think about. If I'm in an environment that is constantly providing the stimulus, is that a culture? I mean, is that a culture I want to be a part of? Is that a thriving culture? And it seems like this is very interconnected. Your subtitle of your book refers to both thriving individuals and thriving cultures. It's probably not so easy to say one leads to the other, they're probably intertwined.
Chris Butterworth: They are intertwined. And also we, we, I mean, we have a chapter on the thriving individual. We have a chapter on thriving teams and a chapter on thriving leaders and a chapter on thriving organizations. ‘Cause they're all interdependent.
One of the things that is critical to that, and it just builds on your question earlier, is is that what we call the thriving plans. So these things, Caroline mentioned, intent, you know, changing these things doesn't just happen by chance. We've got to recognize there's an opportunity and create, we have a template in the book for creating thriving plans, thriving plans for an individual, thriving plans for the team. And getting that peer support around you to help you understand this is the help I need. How can, and this is help I can give you, so you're sharing it. To build up your competencies, build up your confidence.
Signs of a Thriving Culture
Mark Graban: So on the theme of thriving culture, how do you describe that? What are the signs you're looking for to get a sense of, oh, this feels like it? Realizing there's a spectrum, that this is a pretty good culture as opposed to one that's further from thriving.
Caroline Greenlee: Yeah, I can do. Like Chris, I've been out of organizations like yourself, Mark, out of organizations, all of the time. And I heard the author Richard Osman the other day talk about, you know, you get the vibes and there's that sense and you do feel it. You can walk into a culture and you can quite feel it. And I think it's the behaviors that are happening around you, but there's something about those nonverbals that almost resonate. If you can, if you can tune in to those.
You get to see other examples of people doing good things. You know, do they walk past the people, greet you? Do they, do they smile? How do people engage with one another? What does that look like? Does it look like a culture of respect and one of equals? Is it a meritocracy? You know, do people at the top, you know, do they all look the same or, you know, are they diverse, do, you know, does the front line look very different from the folks at the top? You know, so there are all of those things that you're kind of just, and it's amazing how quickly you pick up all of all of those signals and cues without necessarily even being aware of it.
Chris Butterworth: And just to build on that, I think it also goes right back to the title of the book in terms of Why Care? Because what you see is people do care. They care about each other and they look out for each other. So the environment, what you see is a much more positive, constructive environment. That's what we see in a thriving organization where people are not looking to catch each other out. People are looking at, how can I make it better for you every day?
Psychosocial Hazards
Mark Graban: I want to talk a little bit more to questions around thriving individuals that are hopefully part of thriving teams and thriving organizations. We're going to come back and talk about psychological safety, which is something that we've touched on a lot in different episodes. But I want to ask first about something you write about psychosocial hazards. If you could define that a little bit more broadly before we talk about psychological safety. What are psychosocial hazards and what are some of the most common ones that you would see?
Chris Butterworth: Sure. So we have a whole, that whole section is written by our co-author Chris. And what we've got in there is a whole list of hazards which are recognized. And they could be at work and they could be at home. And a hazard might be bullying at work, for example. It could be not working in a safe environment. I feel I don't feel safe, not just psychological safe. I could be physical safe.
It could be that I've got a poor relationship with my boss. A direct boss is one of the biggest impacts on people's engagement work is that direct relationship with the direct report. So what we have in the book is a list of about 10 different things, and then we have a way of assessing those and that's a key part of the developing the thriving plan is to understand where am I against all these different psychosocial hazards? And not like many things in lean focus on the vital few. So there might be 10 to look at, but I know we've got to fix 10 all at once. So what are the one or two things that are really causing me issues at the moment? What's stopping me from feeling engaged? Feeling able to contribute. And let's work on those.
Mark Graban: So, is that a necessary first step in an organizational assessment or a lean assessment to first do a psychosocial hazards assessment? Because I think of like workplaces I've been in that had a lot of bullying, a lot of abusive behavior from people in power. Like there's not a lot of improvement. There's not a lot of initiative that can happen.
Chris Butterworth: So, if you're seeing that, so people often say, well, where do I start with lean? And the answer is, well, it depends. But if you've got a toxic culture, you have to start thinking about the culture. Nothing else is going to work. You're just going to be playing with tools and wasting a lot of money. Why have we got people that have got high levels of absenteeism? Why have we got people that are not engaged in the day-to-day activity?
And one of the things we talk about is the role of leaders is to develop and manage the culture. And so, and what we're seeing in our organizations where you see psychosocial hazards is that culture is not being proactively managed at work. Still could be happening at home. But even at home, we'd want then people to, in a, create an environment where, I remember many years ago, I went into work and someone said to me, all your feelings stay at home. I want you, you hang up anything to do with home on the door as you come in and it has nothing to do with work. Well, that's completely unrealistic. ‘Cause we're all, we're all actually going to carry that with us wherever we are.
So what we have to recognize is that's going to happen. People, we've got to look at the whole person and value the whole person. So understanding what are the hazards that are affecting them outside of work as well as at work is critical. So that assessment looks at both aspects.
Mark Graban: Which is unfair, but when we see people acting in abusive ways, like, it's interesting to think, like, are you unable to control that or are you doing that intentionally because you think it's helpful?
Caroline Greenlee: And also, Mark, you're not going to get people's best thinking from treating them. If you look at the structure of the brain and all of those things. What they're doing is running counter to the results that they want to achieve.
Chris Butterworth: Well, they just don't know any different, you know? Or they don't know any different. Well, because this goes back to what the role of a leader is, is to, you know, proactively define and manage the culture. So if no one's doing that, then what you get is the culture of the strongest individual in a particular area or team. It doesn't necessarily always be the leader. It could just be someone who's got a very strong personality and they will determine the culture in that team.
So if you've got people who are manipulative and play off people against each other. That's going to create a completely different environment than what we want. I actually think there's a start point before that. The start point is to set, to be really clear on this is the culture we want. And describe it. You know, we want a culture where people thrive. What does thrive mean? Well, thrive means that, that they're happy to come into work. That we have high engagement levels, that people, we have high retention levels, that we have hundreds of people applying for each job we've got because we're a place where people want to come and work. So you've got to be, you've got to set an aspiration of what you want it to be, and then you can assess where you are against that aspiration.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB)
Mark Graban: Caroline, you earlier at least touched on ideas of diversity and representation. In the book, there's a lot written, a lot that you all have written about DEIB: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. Why is that such an important foundation for mental wellbeing, thriving people and thriving teams?
Caroline Greenlee: Yeah, so it's a really interesting question, Mark. I probably did more research for this chapter than I did for my master's thesis at university because, you know, to have a brain is to have bias and I really wanted to try to make sure that what we presented was as evidence-based from as wide a spectrum as possible.
If you think about it, diversity is about difference and inclusion is about having space and a voice. And equity is about making sure that there's a meritocracy that we're all able to achieve the same outcomes even if we're starting from different starting points.
And the need to belong is hardwired into us. And we need to feel that sense of belonging. And then the absence of that we feel outside. If you think back to when we lived in caves, to be outside the tribe at that point in time, was tantamount to death. And we feel the brain processes that in the same way. And the need to belong at work is second only to the need to belong at home.
So we don't have all of those things in place and we don't feel like we can show up as ourselves. And that doesn't mean just show up here. I'm, this is who I am, but it's, we all go to work and try to be the best version of ourselves. But not where I feel like I have to hide and take a whole pile of that emotional and cognitive energy trying to hide and have this facade of this, what I think this professional perfect employee needs to be. And then I have no chance of building a connection with anybody else.
So it's critical if we want to know what's really going on, and those people will mirror our customers as well. If we want to understand what our customers need and want, then we need to, you know, make sure that that diversity is represented within our organization then as well.
Chris Butterworth: And I think it links very closely, Mark, to the Shingo Principle of Respect Every Individual. So, and you know, that's every individual, for me, is what makes that principle so powerful. ‘Cause what we're saying is we've got to respect the person as the person they are.
And we see it a lot where, where you get group think, where problems are not solved as a, or the solutions that come up with are limited because the thinking is not diverse. So diversity is not just about skin tone or sex or gender. It's actually about the ability to get people who think differently, to feel valued and work together. ‘Cause the outputs then will be so much better.
Leaders, Kindness, and Psychological Safety
Mark Graban: How do we operationalize that then, I guess is the question? What are some of the traits of leaders that are helping people and teams thrive, feeling included, feeling a sense of belonging? Maybe this ties into psychological safety and feeling safe to speak up. Like what are some of the traits that you've seen or the research has shown are most critical to creating a thriving continuous improvement environment?
Chris Butterworth: So I'll do a couple and then I'll hand over to Caroline, but the two we focus on in the book. One is listening. Being prepared to really listen and demonstrate that you're listening. The power of listening is often really misunderstood. People feel valued when they're listened to. And then the other one, I link it back to the second Shingo principle and the cultural enablers, which is leading with humility. So that you create the safe environment. You have to demonstrate humility.
Humility, there are many aspects to it, but actually recognizing that you don't have all the answers, that everyone has a valuable contribution to make. Also sets a completely different tone in the workplace than leaders who just tell people what's got to be done.
Caroline Greenlee: How they be curious and ask open questions and start to develop that true coach approach? So my experience of Lean practitioners is we bandy the word coach about quite a lot when actually what they mean as mentor, where somebody who's an expert comes in and is hands on and helps someone do something. Coaching in its true sense is hands-off. You don't need to have a subject matter expertise. And it's a whole discipline in and of itself, but it's skills and behaviors that can be learned. And to work on that mindset piece.
And then that's really underpinned by the whole emotional intelligence. And you know, when you look at all of the research that shows how phenomenally important that is for leaders and the link through from leadership through to performance. And I think the really important message around that is, unlike our IQ, that is fixed within a few percentage points as a function of our genetics. Our EQ or emotional intelligence can grow and develop all the way through our lives.
Chris Butterworth: Yeah. And I think the one other that struck me is the power of kindness. And there's a lot of research now coming out about the impact that small acts of kindness have on people.
Mark Graban: I think maybe it's important, let's step back and define kindness. How would you define kind or an example of kind that might not be the first example of kindness people think of?
Chris Butterworth: It's potentially being polite. Is it kindness? So I think, kindness for me would be going out of your way to help someone, unexpectedly would be an example of kindness. You're not doing it because it's expected of you, but you see an opportunity to help. That, that would be kind.
Actually, I think a lot of language relates to this. So the way we say things and the words we use can also demonstrate kindness. So if we, for example, someone makes a mistake, what do we say? Do they get punished? Or do we behave in such a way that celebrates and focuses on the learnings from perspective? That's an example of a kind mindset rather than a mindset that's going to treat people in a bad way.
Caroline Greenlee: Yeah. I think there's also all of the work of Brené Brown and the clear is kind. And that sense of, I'll tell you something or I'll share something with you. That's maybe difficult for me or I feel really uncomfortable doing, but I recognize that it's for your benefit or it's for the greater good. So, so there's not necessarily always an alignment between kindness and comfort. And actually sometimes to be kind, you have to maybe be not nice in the way that we were taught as kids. But it really is for that person's benefit.
Mark Graban: And, you know, psychological safety sometimes gets confused with comfort. I'm sure you've run across this. How, how would you help a leader understand what, you know, psychological safety is not a matter of feeling comfortable a hundred percent of the time?
Caroline Greenlee: Yeah, for me, comfortable feels a bit less unfair. It feels a bit sit back and whatever's going to be will be. Whereas, you know, if you think psychological safety is setting that frame for learning. And trying to make sure that you're flexing and adapting your style so that each person feels that permission to be able to speak up and share. You know, one of the really interesting pieces of research we came across in the book was the fact that, you know, the psychological safety is different for all different people.
Chris Butterworth: And I think psychological safety is critical. But psychological wellbeing is different. Yeah. So we create an environment where people can speak up and talk with the psychological safety, but actually if there are psychological wellbeing issues that are not addressed and resolved, there are challenges still in that psychological safety.
Conclusion
Mark Graban: I think I'm back on track. So. There are leaders behaving in ways that help others feel like they belong and that they're included. Timothy Clark, I'm thinking of, who has also done a lot of research and writing about psychological safety in his four stages of psychological safety framework. Stage one is inclusion safety. You know, this might sound, oh, it's, you know, soft and nice to have, but it's really, it's necessary foundation. If people do not feel accepted and respected and included, why would we expect them to take risks about saying, I don't know how to do something, or I think I made a mistake, or we could make things better? Like, people will protect themselves by shutting that down and that doesn't mean they're bad people.
Caroline Greenlee: No, absolutely. And if you think of problem solving, Mark. You know, if somebody comes in and they don't feel that psychological safety and they don't feel that they can speak up, you think of all of the resources that are invested. And fixing what isn't really the problem because there hasn't been that psychological safety in the first instance. You know? So I think teaching people problem solving tools and all of the cool things that you can do there and the structures not, but also how do you create psychological safety? ‘Cause it's so foundational.
Chris Butterworth: Yeah. So one of the things we conclude in the book is that the design of any continuous improvement system, and there'll be lots of problem solving, will be a subsystem within our whole improvement system. But the design of any of those systems needs to take into account psychological wellbeing. Have we designed these things in such a way that it will make people feel valued and safe? So that they can contribute. Or actually they're going to be threatened by the way that we've designed these things and just shut down.
Mark Graban: How can we coach leaders? How can we coach humans? We can't just tell them, you need to be magically comfortable now with your employees disagreeing with you. You've got to value others.
Chris Butterworth: The people. You've got to really think about it in terms of, how do I value the contribution of everybody?
Caroline Greenlee: Yeah. I think it goes back full circle, Mark, to, you know, that pause that we talked about in the beginning, really, doesn't it? And how do we create that pause in that moment so that we can step into the space of being the learner and letting go of that need to know? You know, how do we let go of that need to be right all of the time? Because if we can step into that learning space and be curious and, and place that value on what somebody's telling us, then. You're valuing the relationship as much as you're valuing the task at hand.
Chris Butterworth: And it's okay to disagree. You can disagree agreeably. Yeah. In fact, many solutions only come about from rigorous debate. And if you don't talk about it, you're going to get suboptimal solutions.
Caroline Greenlee: Yeah, I think whenever Terri Kelly was the CEO of Gore, who made Gore-Tex, and they're probably one of the most innovative companies in terms of their management practices. But she talked about, about their meetings being like her in cards because there was so much discussion and debate. But once they decided on the solution, then everybody fell behind it and executed. ‘Cause there had been that space for that discussion.
Mark Graban: Thank you both for, you know, I think teeing up some important discussion by writing the book and being willing to come and talk about it. I hope people will go check it out. Why Care: The Subtitle is, How Thriving Individuals Create Thriving Cultures of Continuous Improvement Within Organizations. So we've been joined by two of the three co-authors, Caroline Greenlee and Chris Butterworth. Congratulations to all of you, including Chris Warner, on the Shingo Publication Award.
Chris Butterworth: Yes, we are all planning to be there.
Mark Graban: In March. Yeah. So hopefully we can we'll catch up then. I will, I will definitely be there. And we'll look forward to getting to spend some more time with, with you, Chris and Caroline, hopefully to meet you in person.
Chris Butterworth: Fantastic. In fact, we're actually going to be running a workshop on the book at the conference.
Mark Graban: Oh, great. I encourage people to check out the book. So again, Caroline and Chris, thanks so much for being here today. Thank you.
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