This issue of “What to Read” highlights Taming the Culture Tiger: The Art and Science of Transforming Organizations and Accelerating Innovation by Dr. Kate Price, which focuses on one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of life science organizations: how to foster sustainable cultures that enable innovation and lead to both scientific and business success.

“Purpose is not your culture. Spending time on team culture accelerates trust between members, especially for virtual teams, and high trust increases project performance, team satisfaction, effectiveness, and cohesion.

Dr. Kate Price

Summary

The author describes what culture is, what makes an effective and innovative culture and how to achieve culture change. With her background as a psychologist and real-life stories and examples interwoven throughout the book, it is clear to see how people and culture are tied together. By changing people, you can change culture. Dr. Price explains:

It’s a common belief that resistance is most prevalent within the rank and file of an organization. However, corporate communication plays a major role in whether resistance occurs. Frequently in my work with organizations, I find that leaders and managers are the ones who resist change, as Laetitia did, because of the challenge to their status, their entrenched ways of being, and their belief in the proven performance methods. The greater an individual’s motivation to maintain the status quo when uncertain about what change means for them, the greater their resistance to change will be. And if they don’t want the change, they are unlikely to be persuasive in their communications for change as the information cascades through the organization.

From Taming the Culture Tiger

Key Take Aways from Taming the Culture Tiger

The book is laid out in three parts, the first looking at what culture is (and isn’t) in an organization. The author explains the importance of the psychology of individuals and teams on a culture that supports, or detracts from, the goals of the company. The second part looks at what makes for effective cultures of innovation, but clearly explains that as each organization is unique (with its own unique culture), so must be each change plan—even if the principles are the same. The third part describes how to lay the path to successful cultural change, with each chapter dedicated to a different facet of organizational change.

Learn more about how to guide leaders to develop a deep understanding of people—how they think, feel, and act, and why they embrace or resist change. These elements build organizational culture and ultimately success.

PPS International Limited works with Dr. Kate Price and other consultants to support clients in life science organizations including in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical devices. Many of our programs advance organizational culture through leadership development and programs such as digital transformation.

A high-growth, global medical technology organization had sales representatives at varying tenures, sales and leadership ability. All were tasked with continuing the double-digital growth in existing and new markets, not all were equipped to make it happen.

Their HR Business Partner also recognized that these sales representatives fell into one of two categories with regard to the strength of their internal networks; either they had (1) robust and varied relationships with marketing, research and development, operations and more, or, (2) they had very limited networks to draw upon in working with current and potential customers.

Knowing the vast differences in the developmental needs for this critical population, the client sought a partner to assess, build individual development plans and coach on areas of high-return development.

Desired Outcomes for the Sales Assessment Center

• Identify strengths and plans to leverage these skills.
• Identify developmental needs for individuals and any group trends.
• Gain organizational insights for an audience critical to success.
• Identify high potential talent, who would be able to move into leadership.
• Identify highly-skilled sales associates to be mentors to less tenured peers.
• Implement globally to recognize regional and cultural differences.

Our Solution

• PPS leveraged the company’s sales profile and selected assessments appropriate for measuring those skills and competencies.
• PPS created a customized communication package to explain the assessment center, how the results would be used and the benefits to the organization and individual.
• PPS crafted a client-specific results-report and development plan template for use in the multi-hour virtual debrief. PPS also created a structured process for follow on one-on-one coaching that would be consistent from region-to-region.
• PPS trained assessors within the organization, entered and interpreted data and debriefed and provided individual and group reports.

Assessments and Services Leveraged in the Sales Assessment Center

• Client-specific 36-feedback survey customized by PPS International Limited
• LVI® assessment
• Harrison Assessment®
• eQi® assessment
• Individual interviews
• Coaching services

Success Indicators

• Assessments were available with limited time and resources needed for customization.
• Assessments were specific to the sales roles and functions.
• Analysis report structured for ease of individual understanding and for review by stakeholders to see group trends.
• Clear path through the virtual assessment center, debriefing session and follow on coaching and close out calls.
• Integrated company-specific values and expectations into process.
• Curation of company-specific development opportunities and tools; matched available development to assessment outcomes.

Download our Case Study

Participants adopt new behaviors from training and development when evidence-based content, engaging facilitation, use of adult learning methods and a culture of psychological safety is present.

What is psychological safety and why is it foundational? Dr. Amy Edmondson refers to it as, “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated by speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” 

You’ve no doubt heard the term psychological safety given all the buzz about it in the training, learning and organizational development literature. It’s the basis for a healthy team culture. Without it, teams and organizations wither, and organizations may make the headlines for unwanted reasons; with psychological safety, they’re enabled to flourish. Although Dr. Amy Edmondson doesn’t take credit for coining the term, she’s largely responsible for mainstreaming it.

While conducting Ph.D. research regarding medical error rates and teamwork in hospitals, she hypothesized that more effective teams would have less errors. By contrast, and to her astonishment, she found the opposite; that is, the most effective teams reported more errors. Why? They were not afraid to report them. This inspired further research and had huge implications for patient care, health outcomes, team culture and morale.

What’s the implication for training and development? When the seeds of new habit formation are planted in a psychologically safe learning culture, they’re more apt to sprout. If psychological safety isn’t present, why bother?

The really great news? Cultivating psychological safety doesn’t take budget or resources; it simply takes intentionality and consistency. Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, states “Trust is built in drops and lost in buckets.” So is psychological safety.

How strong is psychological safety in your culture?

How can a leader know if it’s present? Dr. Edmondson developed a pulse check to help leaders understand the degree of perceived psychological safety within their team. Review below and rate as True or False. If you’re unsure, it may as well be false.

1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is not held against you.
2. Members of this team are encouraged to bring up problems and tough issues.
3. People on this team accept others for being different.
4. It is safe to take a risk on this team.
5. It isn’t difficult to ask other members of this team for help.
6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines others’ efforts.
7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

*Modified from https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety

Interpretation: For each item, answer “True” or “False/Unsure.” The greater the number of “True” responses, the higher the psychological safety: vice versa. Be curious about any “False” responses and consider how you could move them to “True.”

How to improve psychological safety

Increase psychological safety by prioritizing such things as emphasizing why every employee’s voice is important, encouraging leaders to admit how they’ve learned from their mistakes, and proactively seeking and responding to employee input. Research by Harvard Business Review suggests employees value authenticity over the illusion of perfection in their leaders.

Fostering psychological safety isn’t about “being nice.” It’s about being authentic and modeling vulnerability; it’s also the basis for effective DEI strategies. Third party consultants don’t have this degree of influence at the team level, but team leaders do; they directly influence perceived psychological safety.

On that note, Dr. Edmondson’s research supports that psychological safety is most effectively cultivated at the team level…even if it doesn’t exist organizationally (which is way more complex). This is great news for leaders; they can have a direct effect on the seven items above simply by being deliberate with how they consistently show up moment by moment, day-by-day, week-by-week with their teams.

The cost? Zero dollars, 100% effort. Moreover, it’s an investment with almost guaranteed returns.

Leaders who can get to “True” for the items above are nurturing a learning and growth mindset. According to Dr. Edmondson, this mindset promotes vulnerability, sharing and learning from mistakes, risk taking, trust, supportive and positive relationships, improved wellbeing and, equally pushes the boundaries of innovation. Who doesn’t want that?

If this sounds desirable to you, it’s in our sandbox. Contact us to learn how to build skills in leaders to promote psychological safety, including incorporating ‘plug-and-play’ psychological safety training into your program.

Jeannie Jones is a senior consultant supporting PPS International Limited. Jeannie specializes in inspiring and empowering healthy high performance. She enjoys working with teams and cohorts and believes leadership is the “X factor” bridging employee and organizational excellence. She infuses over 30 years of award-winning experience in her consulting and facilitation.  Her niche spaces are leadership development, cultivating a positive work culture, mental fitness, coaching, as well as mental health/wellbeing & resilience.

This issue of “What to Read” highlights Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter with Marissa Afton and Moses Mohan.

“Quoting Charles Darwin, “It is compassion and care that have made us the dominant species on the planet…It hardly seems probably that the number of men gifted with such virtues as bravery…could be increased through natural selection. Those communities which included the greatest number of the sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.” From Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter with Marissa Afton and Moses Mohan.

Summary

In difficult times, leaders are called upon to make decisions that will often make someone unhappy, deliver negative feedback and make choices that disappoint people. It is the responsibility of leadership to be a steward for the greater goals while remaining a ‘good human being’ who brings out the best in others. Throughout the book, there are examples of how to blend the difficult sides of leadership with a desire to be compassionate.

Key Take Aways from Compassionate Leadership

Among other things, the authors make the case compassionate leadership includes exercising ‘skillful means’: when you do something seemingly unkind, harsh, hard or inappropriate to achieve a positive results for the one you do it to. The authors break the myth that compassion is somehow being soft and unproductive. Rather, they show how doing hard things and making difficult decisions is often the most compassionate thing to do.

Leaders often confused being a compassionate leader with being an unassertive leader. As the authors point out, “Compassion is the quality of having positive intentions and real concern for others. Compassion in leadership creates stronger connections between people. It improves collaboration, raises levels of trust, and enhances loyalty…To be effective, it often requires pushing agendas, giving tough feedback, making hard decisions that disappoint people…” Not every leader has the skillset to do tough things while continuing to maintain relationships. Some default to avoiding confrontation. Others are overly aggressive. The authors share simple to understand, yet challenging to implement approaches to being more compassionate.

Our Manager as Mentor & Coach program supports supervisors and managers in being assertive while getting the job done. Compassionate leadership isn’t a soft skill that is easy to put into practice, but it is a skill that increases psychological safety and confidence in leaders navigating uncertain times. Learn more about compassionate leadership from the authors in their related article.

Whether your training is held as a virtually facilitated session or an in-person workshop or event, you can find ways to encourage networking during training. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Provide a ‘getting to know you’ lookbook-style document on participants prior to the session. This can be created in a jointly accessed file on Microsoft Teams or could be assigned as pre-work to participants and then compiled by your coordination and logistics team.
• Create a networking questionnaire that prompts participants to discover and uncover information about their program peers.
• Build structured networking time into your agenda. In a virtual setting, you can use randomized breakout rooms to form smaller pairings and change the breakout room structure after 3 minutes, using several rounds. Sprinkle these into the virtual session.
• Hold networking events such as drop in open hours for breakfast or end-of-day get togethers. In the virtual world, if your budget allows, you can use applications to support these mini-conferences such as AirMeet.

Whichever method you use to encourage networking during training, keep in mind that not everyone is comfortable or skillful in networking. For those who could benefit from guidance, we offer a quick infographic that will help build confidence. It includes four tips:

1. Identify people you can add to your network to assist in achieving a key project or initiative you may be involved in at work.
2. Identify senior leaders and guests who have similar backgrounds to you (i.e., studied certain curriculum, worked in similar roles in career, etc.). Identify what was similar and what was different compared to your history.
3. Find people in the workshop who could connect you to people who are key influencers and/or in a position to help you in the achievement of your career aspirations.
4. Identify people who have similar working styles and preferences as you and how this way of working has helped them in their current role (i.e., likes lots of data, enjoys collaborating more than working alone, etc.).

Consider using it with your participants to encourage networking during training; we’ve included an example: PPS Networking During Formal Learning Infographic

In the early 90s, competencies became mainstream and were often developed by companies in order to guide training. Many times, companies built competency models for what were (then) called ‘soft skills.’ In 1993, Lyle and Signe Spencer published their book, Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance. Their book summarized 20 years of research on using the McClelland/McBer job competence assessment (JCA) which told us that the most ‘state of the art’ human resource management applications benefited from leveraging job competencies. Prior to this, most competency development work was reserved for the military or in highly technical roles subject to compliance requirements. In the decades since, many organizations expanded their use of competencies as a talent development tool, but now we need to ask—are they as useful as they once were?

Importance to Talent Development Efforts

Competencies are very helpful to Talent Development efforts—it’s part of why competency development was taken on in such a wide-spread way. Having defined and specific competencies are especially helpful to those efforts. For instance, competencies can:

• Provide the basis for measurement and evaluation of individual and group skill-gaps and needs. When competencies are behavioral and observable, it’s easier to evaluate how well they are being used. If competency assessments are behavioral, assessments are much more accurate than those without behaviors. Likewise, off-the-shelf assessments are more reliable in measuring competencies when those assessments are mapped to behaviors.
• Clarify where to invest limited development time and budget. With limited time, budget and attention, talent development professionals are constantly battling to prioritize their projects. A competency development initiative should result in building competencies that are prioritized. Not every skill and behavior carries the same weight. When prioritizing, consider factors such as, “How difficult is it for someone to learn this competency?” and “How frequently does someone in this role use this competency?” By prioritizing competencies as part of competency development, talent professionals know where to focus.

Importance to Talent Management Efforts

Competency development can also support talent and performance management efforts. Competencies in talent management can:

• Be the basis of tools used to recruit and select talent. With well-defined competencies, hiring leaders can plan their interviews around important competencies. Structured interview guides can be set up in advance for high turnover or critical roles to help ensure consistent, relevant data-gathering by interview teams.
• Establish clear guidelines on the standards and skills that are needed for success in a particular role. If the competency development process results in having role-specific rather than generic competencies, they can be the basis for defining expectations. For example, while having more generic leadership competencies provides some value, the expectations and skills needed for a front-line manufacturing supervisor are vastly different than for a mid-level sales manager. Conducting a competency development initiative to differentiate between those two roles’ competencies would uncover uniqueness that can help with managing development for both.

Competency development efforts continue to be important and relevant for these and other reasons.

A Caution: To Remain Relevant, Revisit Competency Development

In today’s ever-changing and volatile environment, competencies cannot be static. Some even say that there are competencies that are universally needed because of this volatility. (Read Dancing at the Edge: Competence, Culture and Organization in the 21st Century by Maureen O’Hara and Graham Leicester for more about that.) Talent development professionals should revisit and re-prioritize competency models to keep them relevant and useful. The process of re-examining competency models has value—even if ultimately the competencies don’t change. This is because a well-run competency development process:

• Builds buy in and support of the competencies from key stakeholders.
• Creates agreement and alignment of processes and roles.
• Reduces the risk of poor adoption of competencies.
• Draws attention to expectations that may need reinforcement.

Competency development and re-validation does not need to be an overwhelming and lengthy project. It is possible to use a robust, yet streamlined process that nets prioritized, behavioral competencies. To answer the question we first asked, ‘are they as useful as they once were?’ the answer is Yes! Keeping competencies relevant is worth the effort; they remain important for those in talent development and talent management roles and our organizations as a whole.

PPS International Limited has a global team who support and work with DiSC. Our project leader is Kayla Burns, who has worked with DiSC for almost a decade, managing global implementation of Everything DiSC® and DiSC® Classic assessments in multiple languages, facilitating sessions for team-building and setting up streamlined, client-specific ordering processes for the assessments as part of leadership development programs.

For those who aren’t familiar, Everything DiSC is the leading suite of DiSC®-based workplace training and assessment solutions. These advanced applications combine online assessment, classroom facilitation, and post-training follow-up to create powerful, personalized workplace development experiences. With a global network of independent Partners, Everything DiSC solutions are used in thousands of organizations, including major government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

Learn more about our suite of assessments including Everything DiSC.

To stay up-to-date on industry trends, best practices and more, connect with PPS on LinkedIn.

Those who serve in HR, Talent Management and Training roles in these organizations face challenges comparable to their peers; time is limited and demands are many as the end of the year comes closer. As one training manager pointed out, “Every year we start with the illusion that the pace of things will slow, but why we continue to think that is a mystery. Those last few months are always busier than any other time of the year!”

What is worth fitting into an already-full agenda? Any activity that sets up the start of the year for your organization’s learning success. Some thoughts:

1. Use available year-end information as an ad hoc mini-needs assessment. Data such as documented progress on KPIs and completed performance appraisals that have been collected over the course of the year can be useful information about existing, performance-influencing needs for development. Even a brief scan of these documents can show patterns that training efforts can affect. Yes, there are more complex ways to determine needs—and simpler ways (for example). But if you are going to be reviewing this data anyway, why not cull development needs in the process?
2. Re-publish and remind employees about your organization’s development planning tools and guidelines. Often these include development planning forms and references to specific development options that build your organization’s defined leadership competencies, core values or role-specific skills. Many people are refreshed and motivated to make changes in the new year. Take advantage of this motivation by putting development plans front and center. (Don’t have any tools? Here is one you can use.)
3. Request ten minutes on the agendas of key managers and use it to invite them and their staff to attend training in the new year. Frequently, calendars of formal development are set well before the new year starts, but enrollment can be slow to take off. A personal invitation, with callouts of programs of most relevance to managers and their teams can be just the nudge that is needed to ensure attendance rises.

Have more time?

1. Prepare for and hold recommendation meetings with department managers. Share information about the closing year’s development activities (for example, who attended which programs, what results were achieved, what improvement was seen) and give recommendations for development focus in the new year.
2. Conduct some much-needed development with your own HR or Training team. Sometimes surprisingly, HR and Training groups are often overlooked when it comes to team development. Run a team feedback survey (an example) a specific topic that will help you address an issue the department will face in the year. Whatever the method—your own team will benefit from the same attention they provide to other teams.

The year-end, like other times in the lives of HR and Training professionals, is brimming with activity. If you choose to add to your efforts, these options can prepare your organization for learning success in the new year. 

Contact us.

David brings over a decade of experience as a global and strategic leader of talent development within multi-national corporations, leading teams of regional learning leaders and managing multi-million dollar projects.

Never content with the status quo, he continuously challenges organizations to influence and shape the learning culture to support the development of their employees. David’s expertise includes learning reinforcement, manager enablement, learning technologies, competency models, evaluation and measurement, sales enablement and leader development. He is also a skilled facilitator with multiple professional certifications.

David is a curious, life-long learner who defines his purpose as enabling others to find their path to authenticity in the workplace. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Central Indiana Chapter of the Association of Talent Development and contributes to the University of Indianapolis’ Institute for Postindustrial Leadership.

As David joins our team, he shares this vision for the role and his work with clients: “At PPS International Limited, we do the privileged work of building capacity and skills of individuals so that organizations are better positioned to achieve their goals. Continuing the PPS-SyNet tradition, I’ll ensure that both business dynamics and human dynamics are incorporated into our work with clients. This emphasis results in authentic, personal connections and honors that meaningful work is accomplished through influence relationships in the workplace. I am thrilled to join this team and to serve our clients.”

Learn more about David and his experience, and connect with him on LinkedIn via https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdavidjarvis/David can be reached via email at David.Jarvis@PPS-SyNetAmericas.net or by phone at +1 864-962-6789 extension 7 after January 3, 2022.