Laura Gallaher - podcast recording session
Tue. Dec 19, 2023

My guest on the podcast today is Dr. Laura Gallagher. I met Laura over the last few months. We've had conversations ranging from psychological safety to her book, The Missing Link. And actually the key here is The Missing Link. It talks about what is it that we need to build into our organizational culture to help us really bond together. Laura talks about the four elements that build up that missing link, and she intertwines it with the story of the DNA and how that comes together to build culture itself.

We talk about the Space Shuttle Columbia, which exploded in 2003 and is now featured in a BBC programme "The Space Shuttle That Fell to Earth" and how Laura's work identified some of the key organisational issues that led to the disaster.

22:53 - Phil Rose
Welcome to the Sparks of Ignium show. I'm Phil Rose. I'm the host. And this is the final recording for the Ignium podcast of 2023. And I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Laura Gallagher. Laura is an organizational psychologist, a speaker, a facilitator, and an executive coach. So I'm sure we're going to have lots to talk about. Laura was introduced to me recently through a fellow member of Strategic Coach, which I've joined up in 2023.

23:42 - Phil Rose
I'm learning a lot about that journey, about how I can manage my own time and develop myself. And we might talk about that more in other podcast episodes. But for today, I'm really excited to talk to Laura because she's got loads of experience. And I told her just now before the show that I've just been listening to her book. Which I'm sure we're going to talk about later on. But actually, when you look at the experience she's got, there's going to be a lot of learning. So if I was you, I would take out a pen, grab a piece of paper, take some notes and listen in.

24:09 - Phil Rose
So Laura, welcome to the show. That's great to talk.

24:11 - Laura Gallaher
Thank you so much for having me.

24:14 - Phil Rose
And you on your, your, your biases organizational psychologists and now I love speaking organizational psychologists, because every psychologist talk to has a different take on what psychology is to them. And I want to ask you that question what does organizational psychologists mean to you.

24:31 - Laura Gallaher
So I heard this phrase many years ago and I really liked it, which is that psychology is about understanding, explaining and predicting behavior. And so organizational psychology is about understanding, explaining and predicting behavior at work.

24:47 - Phil Rose
Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay. Now that's interesting, isn't it? Because a lot of people say you can't predict behavior unless you go through a psychometric and then of course it's only a representation of reality. So how representative is it when you've looked into it?

25:01 - Laura Gallaher
I think that there's a lot that we can do to predict behavior. And I also think it's wise to recognize that organizations are complex adaptive systems. And so most of the time, I'm not going to have quite the amount of data I would like to have to predict with the amount of certainty I'd like to have. And it doesn't mean that I can't predict.

25:21 - Phil Rose
That's interesting, yeah, because actually, at the end of the day, you can predict most things, but actually, when you throw humans into the mix, it does cause a little bit of confusion for most people.

25:29 - Phil Rose
And that's one thing I picked up from your book recently, actually, exactly that, about you can't always predict what humans are going to do.

25:36 - Laura Gallaher
Yeah, and I think that's one of the best indicators for leaders to say, if I'm not getting the behavior that I expect from other people, instead of me putting my attention on them, what if I put my attention on me?

25:50 - Phil Rose
Well, that's interesting. I wonder how many leaders are open enough to that type of conversation.

25:58 - Laura Gallaher
You know, I find myself very fortunate because the leaders that I get to spend time with and talk to are, they tend to be pretty open to these types of conversations.

26:08 - Laura Gallaher
I have no doubt that there are leaders out there that are not interested in that. They don't want that introspection, but I just, they don't tend to come into my circle very often.

26:16 - Phil Rose
Yeah and it's interesting actually I was coaching a CEO this morning in another part of the world and we had a conversation and the conversation there was about how can he best work with one of his c-suite executives and at the end of the conversation he realized it was at the inward looking piece that needed to change and I used a phrase which I used from the one of the tenets of NLP which is the meaning of your communication is the response you get I said to him, actually, it's up to you to change your response, but also to check in with the other person.

26:48 - Phil Rose
So he's gone away with a whole lot of work to look at, from his perspective, what I can do differently. Now, the key is he's open to coaching because he's been working with me for a long time. And I think that's the key, isn't it? The people that we talk to are the ones who are open.

27:01 - Laura Gallaher
Absolutely. The ones who have a high enough level of self-acceptance that they're willing to increase their self-awareness.

27:08 - Phil Rose
Oh, that's interesting. High enough level of self-acceptance to increase their self-awareness. That's really interesting, isn't it?

27:15 - Laura Gallaher
I mean, it's because you and I know that it's pragmatic. It's simply the most pragmatic thing that I can do. If I'm having difficulty working with somebody else, I can put a lot of energy into hoping and persuading and trying to get them to change. Or I can take a look at my part of any pattern that's emerging and I can shift that. And what we know about psychology is that it's actually far easier for me to create a shift in myself than to try to force it in somebody else.

27:45 - Phil Rose
Yeah. Very true. If you can only change yourselves at the end of the day.

27:49 - Laura Gallaher
But it does mean looking at myself. Like that means if I'm a leader and I'm going to look at what's my part in a pattern, and I have to be willing to recognize that I'm actually contributing to these situations that I say I'm unhappy with. Can I let go of judging myself long enough to just recognize, okay, I've contributed to it, so now I can change it if I want to.

28:10 - Phil Rose
That's really interesting, isn't it? We're all part of that system at the end of the day, but you've got to recognize that to start with before you can make the change.

28:17 - Laura Gallaher
Absolutely.

28:18 - Laura Gallaher
Yeah, I think that's where it all starts.

28:19 - Phil Rose
Yeah, so.

28:20 - Phil Rose
Just to use that phrase where it all starts, I'd love to go back in time a little bit. So what got you into this world? Why, when and how did you arrive as an organizational psychologist? You've been to a wonderful experience and I know some of the stories you've told me about it. I'd love to talk about some of the elements in the book possibly as well as we go through this, but what brought you here today?

28:44 - Laura Gallaher
I think psychology has been interesting to me since I was a kid, really. So I knew I wanted to study that in school. And then I found myself loving social psychology when I was taking classes. And I didn't know what to do with an advanced degree in social psychology, but somebody said, you know, there's this whole field that you can go into called org psych. And you can basically study anything you want, as long as you stay at work at the end of it. And so I thought, oh, okay, that sounds great.

29:12 - Laura Gallaher
So let me go study how human beings behave in these different group settings, how we evaluate each other, how we judge each other, how I might shift my behavior based on how other people show up or the stories in my head. And so I chose to study organizational psychology at the University of Central Florida.

29:30 - Laura Gallaher
And I also was fortunate enough to be given a chance to then work with NASA. So as you know, the space shuttle Columbia accident happened in 2003. Now, when people think about the shuttle accidents, they usually think about Challenger first, and I'm just going to draw the distinction because this one was different. I'm not quite old enough to have worked with NASA following Challenger. So Challenger happened in the 80s, but Columbia was the second shuttle tragedy, and the Columbia disintegrated across Louisiana and Texas when it was given the green light to reenter the Earth's atmosphere.

30:09 - Laura Gallaher
And what the investigation showed is that there was a piece of foam that fell off of the external tank and it struck the leading edge of the orbiter's wing during the launch. So during the course of the mission, leaders at NASA made a lot of decisions that ultimately ended up losing the lives of those seven astronauts. And so the investigation said it wasn't just the culture as well. It was to blame. Rated the number one place to work in the government just a couple of months before the accident.

30:40 - Laura Gallaher
And so it really raised some important questions about what is culture then? If culture is not simply that we've got the most engaged workforce, that we have some of the smartest people, NASA employees would give back so much of their paid time off back to now. I mean, they were incredibly engaged and dedicated to the mission, but there were these variables in play that led people to make really poor decisions.

31:03 - Laura Gallaher
So my business partner, Dr. Philip Mead was asked to lead the culture change initiative at Kennedy Space Center, following the findings of the investigation. And then he found this whole field of org psych and said, Oh, this is okay. We have people who, literally study this. They study human behavior in the workplace. And so he hired me and a couple other organizational psychologists to come in and work with him to transform and maintain a different type of culture.

31:32 - Phil Rose
And I think it's really interesting, isn't it? Because I think when you look at that, that that key piece, you said there that Nassau was rated the number one place to work in the government at that point in time. Yet a few months later, a big disaster. The president got involved and actually said, we need to find out what stopped this. What created this, you say. And I know that you went over having read your book recently, one of the key things that Philip me was involved in was looking at how do we then get the next shuttle launch, but we had a bit of culture work to do start with, because it wasn't an engineering problem.

32:05 - Phil Rose
It was a psychology problem. It was something going on in the organization that was causing this. And I was fascinated just reading the book in the last few weeks. There's a lot of parallels there. I worked for an aerospace company back in the, in fact, I joined in 1989. So when you said about Challenger, I remember reading the report on Challenger in 1989 when I joined that company. And it was different,

32:29 - Phil Rose
But for me as a young engineer, it was insightful to understand what was going on there. And I think there were parallels to it, possibly. And that's that's a long time back there. So I am old enough to remember that, which is really, which is really scary. I think of that. But I think it's interesting when you say about for Columbia, there were some big issues there. It wasn't just a hole in the wind, it was something else was causing this and a whole load of a catalogue of issues. So from an organisational psychology point of view, without getting into all the details of what's in the book, and I would urge anyone to go and read the book, and we'll talk about that because I think there's a whole load there in terms of the missing link, which is the key.

33:08 - Phil Rose
What did you find when you're working with NASA at that time about the organisational culture that led you to do the work you do today?

33:20 - Laura Gallaher
There were several things, like you said, and we have a couple of different culture models that we developed as a result of our work there. Um, the simpler one is our inside out model,

33:29 - Laura Gallaher
Which is, you know, you can picture these concentric circles, right? We have self in the middle and then you have team, and then you have organizational culture at the outer ring. And to look at the highest level, there were variables at each of those three rings that really contributed to this. From an organizational perspective, the design of the organization was not conducive to effective decision-making. The mission manager had a ridiculous number of hats that she was expected to wear.

34:04 - Laura Gallaher
She was supposed to be responsible simultaneously for schedule and budget and safety and technical excellence. And that is just, at a certain point, it is possible for an organization to be designed in a way that it exceeds what a human is capable of of doing, especially when we're talking about these decisions. I mean, we don't want people making these types of decisions on autopilot. We need them to access this prefrontal cortex here, and we are limited up here in what we can actually hold in that prefrontal cortex.

34:35 - Laura Gallaher
And so from an org design perspective, it was not set up well to have safety and technical excellence represented as well as things like schedule and budget. So org design absolutely needed to change because org design has a huge impact on people's behavior, right? People's understanding about who has decision authority and how information flows has a really big impact ultimately on when people choose to speak up and when they don't and what they say to who and when and how. And a team, oh, go ahead.

35:10 - Phil Rose
No, no, you carry on. I was going to ask the question. You carry on.

35:13 - Laura Gallaher
Okay. Well, at a team level, part of what we saw is that There were engineers who were concerned about the phone strike because they could capture it on video, but it was so far into the launch, they couldn't see exactly where the phone had hit the orbiter. But there were three different teams that were looking into it that said, this might be a problem. And they were all using informal channels to see if they could get more data. So from a team perspective,

35:40 - Phil Rose
Okay.

35:43 - Laura Gallaher
While I think it's wonderful to have friendships and organizations, we don't want to have the kind of organization where people are leaning on friendships rather than following the formal processes to communicate and get things done. And so at a team level, a lot of it comes down to, are we creating psychological safety where I feel like I can use a formal channel to raise a concern that I have versus just going to somebody over here, because I feel like he and I have a good relationship, right?

36:11 - Laura Gallaher
Organization wide, we want to have enough psychological safety that people feel willing to break things up, even if it feels vulnerable to do so. And that really leads into the self level, the inside out model, which as a psychologist, I found this part the most fascinating. Because to have some of the smartest people in the world and people who I know cared deeply about the lives of the astronauts, they had intrapersonal fears that ultimately stopped them from speaking up past a certain point.

36:46 - Laura Gallaher
And the way that I always want to explain this to people is not that people thought, well, I can speak up and perhaps I'll get in trouble or I will be the engineer who cried wolf Because I don't really know if there's a big problem or not. There might be, there might not be. They're not really weighing, do I speak up as the engineer who cried wolf or do I allow seven people to lose their lives? That's not what happens in our brains. Our brains are prone to self-deception. And so what's happening is these engineers are subconsciously talking themselves out of some of their own fears.

37:24 - Laura Gallaher
Because it is actually so scary to stand up in front of a room with all these impressive people with these very big titles, some of whom have previously made decisions saying, we already said this is not an issue, and go, hey, I'm not sure, but this might be a problem. So being able to address what are the intrapersonal fears within each human that impact our behavior.

37:48 - Laura Gallaher
And so that's why we really like to look at organizations through a very comprehensive lens. How is everything designed in a way to drive behavior and is that toward the results we want or away from it?

38:00 - Phil Rose
That's interesting and it's really interesting this intrapersonal fear because I think you know looking at companies I've worked with over the last 20 years and looking at aerospace companies I've worked with where there's a hierarchy and what I'm hearing from you there is that actually when you look at it there's this team level concern but it's going through those informal channels because people aren't willing to confront what the real issue is and one thing you said right at the beginning there is We've got this safety versus technical versus schedule complex here.

38:29 - Phil Rose
And if somebody puts a hand up and says there might be an issue, there's a fear of retribution was what I hear there. And that retribution might be maybe not direct at that point in time, but later on it could come out, which is where we talk about psychological safety. That people are fearful of the impact it would have on reputation in that longer term.

38:50 - Laura Gallaher
Yes, absolutely. And I think reputation is big in a lot of organizations. It certainly was NASA. And to me, somebody that has a reputation of being chicken little, the sky is falling, is not something that people wanted to have at NASA. And as context, too, for your audience, foam striking the orbiter, the PRCB had said, this is not an issue that we worry about during flight. So if you think about other decisions that are made in the context of companies, how often might executives feel frustrated with a lower level employee pushing against a decision that's already been made?

39:27 - Laura Gallaher
And they're like, look, we've decided, let it go. People kind of know how that dynamic can happen and NASA wasn't immune to that. When those decisions were made at a certain point, people are discouraged from continuing to push against it.

39:42 - Phil Rose
So what happens? So just thinking, fast forwarding here, when you think about the learnings you take from this and the learnings organizations can take, because NASA managed to launch the next shuttle fairly soon afterwards through the work that you were doing. So the resolution was found is what you would assume. The next shuttle was launched and everything's been, touch wood, safe since then. What were the key things that needed to change to enable you to get from disaster through to actually agreeing we can get this back on the road again?

40:14 - Phil Rose
What had to happen in the organization? Because that's a big shift.

40:17 - Laura Gallaher
It is. Yeah, there were a few key things that were important. One thing is changing the design of the organization, for sure.

40:26 - Laura Gallaher
Creating more of that separation. Safety became its own organization with its own senior leader who had the same level in the organizational hierarchy. As somebody who's representing the program, the shuttle program. Another thing was really paying attention to leader behaviors. So a behavioral checklist was actually created to say, these are the behaviors that we want to see from leaders in order to create the kind of open environment we're looking for and to help ensure that we have psychological safety.

40:57 - Laura Gallaher
And so a lot of work was done to help the current leaders better understand their own behavior to do it in a way that is quite specific. If you ask, I'm curious actually, Phil, your experience with this. If you ask your clients to describe behaviors that they want to see, do they usually actually give you behaviors first or they describe things that are more general and vague?

41:21 - Phil Rose
That's really interesting. So really good question. I guess I'll answer it a long-winded way around. I love a piece of work by Gustavo Rossetti, who created a piece of work called the Culture Canvas. And in the Culture Canvas, it starts with purpose and values. And then there's eight other boxes around that I've imagined a page of paper, purpose and values in the middle. And around that, we then look at norms and ways of doing things, we look at behaviours, we look at rituals, and we look at psychological safety.

41:51 - Phil Rose
But to answer your question, do they look at behaviours? A lot of people know what they don't like, but they don't know how to articulate it. And that's one of the key things. So it takes a lot of work with a lot of post-its on the board, sticking them up to try and find out what those things are. It's never a simple answer because people I don't think know what they really need. And it comes down almost the same point as when we're talking about values. People put the typical values of trust, integrity, fellowship, whatever it might be.

42:21 - Phil Rose
But then you ask them, what does that mean to you? Because you and I might have the same value of trust, but it might mean different things to each of us. And I think that's the bit that takes the time in the discussion.

42:31 - Laura Gallaher
Yeah, to get to that level of specificity around behaviors often requires more time and intentionality than leaders have given it before. But these are, you know, even the best intentioned leaders. And so in this case, it was really working to get quite specific. To the point where I could, if I was watching a videotaped meeting, have a list of these behaviors as a checklist, and I could actually observe the behaviors. So it's not understanding something it's, you know, literally Did the leader interrupt somebody while they were speaking?

43:01 - Laura Gallaher
You know, that level of specificity. And so that was really helpful to invite the leaders to be more self-aware on that behavioral level. How are they showing up and how might they unintentionally be undermining their own effectiveness?

43:16 - Phil Rose
And this is a massive thing, isn't it? Because, you know, I work with lots of businesses who are smaller businesses, you know, maybe 120 staff. I also work with one organization where there's many, many, many thousand people. But of course, there's all lots of independent departments in there. And I often find as a small people, they're looking up to the rest of the business. And they try and make those changes. And they do it in a small way, but to make it across a whole organization and to be able to buy into it, it's a big ask.

43:44 - Phil Rose
So how do you go about in two things, I think? How do you go about ensuring that the behaviors are understood and translatable across the whole organization? And how do you make them, I use the word enforceable, because that's the biggest issue. How do you ensure people self-police themselves to call people out when they're not doing what they should be doing?

44:03 - Laura Gallaher
So I have a couple of ways to answer that. You know, the first is that, as you pointed out, NASA had to ground the shuttle fleet until they were granted approval by Congress to fly again. And as you can imagine, that was an extraordinarily important goal for people at NASA. So I think when there is a common purpose and people feel united in terms of making something happen, they will feel a lot more inspired. They will feel a lot more bought in. And part of why I had the opportunity to go in and work with Dr.

44:39 - Laura Gallaher
Philip Mead at NASA is because they recognized we can't simply focus on transforming culture for a finite period of time. Give out behavioral checklists and teach leaders this stuff once and then go, okay, good luck. Bye. We need to have a continued presence. And so I was working internally there for seven or eight years and there's an ongoing function. Excuse me. There's an ongoing function there at NASA around this organization development. So they recognized we need a function inside the agency that is dedicated to making sure that our culture continues to support the execution of our strategy.

45:19 - Laura Gallaher
And helps us to be successful.

45:21 - Phil Rose
Okay because that was good that's answer the next question I was going to ask which is actually how do you ensure it's sustainable.

45:27 - Phil Rose
Because I think at the end of the day we can create something one day but unless it's continually monitored it slowly degrades over time and we end up with here we slowly divert into a different direction and I think there's something there about what you're saying there over seven or eight years having that ongoing function within there which is purely about making sure we're doing the things we say we should be doing.

45:46 - Laura Gallaher
Yes, absolutely. And the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, at least the last that I was aware of it, continues to have an item that NASA in particular hyper-focuses on, which has to do with that psychological safety. And are there people in the agency who fear that there will be a negative impact to their career if they speak up with a dissenting opinion? So that to give that particular item such focus in the survey every single year, I think, signals to people how much this matters.

46:18 - Phil Rose
It's interesting, isn't it? Coming to mind here, I think about other surveys. So the Gallup Q12 survey, where we look at employee engagement. And then that's taken me down the track of employee engagement surveys and getting honest answers. Because what I'm hearing there is that people are willing to answer the surveys. They're willing to answer the questionnaires to say that they feel they have this psychological safety there. They're willing to say they've got the right environment around them.

46:45 - Phil Rose
And over time, you would hope that does become embedded. But what happens when people don't fit that culture, when they're up against the deadline again? Now, I know you said we've got the safety as a separate area, separate function now with a separate mandate. But when you've got schedules, you've got to hit. And we see this in small businesses. People want to get software releases done quickly. And now, there may be not a life-threatening issue with that, but people are still pushed to get things done.

47:13 - Phil Rose
And one of the problems we've seen in a lot of companies over the last few years, which may be a problem one side benefit on the other is minimum viable product, let's just get out the door, and we'll correct it later. And sometimes that can lead to issues in the business where people are making decisions around timescales as opposed to functionality or safety. How do you ensure that we get the right levels of safety in that case as a behavior driven through? Because we can monitor all we like, but if people aren't telling you the truth, because they're not feeling safe, you're never going to find the right answer.

47:48 - Laura Gallaher
I mean, I think a lot of it does come back to keeping that monitoring going, like you're saying. And I think it's really important that people don't lose track of the why. A lot of this, you know, one of the things we talk about in the book is how common it is for organizations where the safety function is quite important that when there's no accidents, right, everything is safe. And that's true for, let's say, many years. People start to look at the budget and go, why are we spending so much on safety?

48:21 - Laura Gallaher
We don't have any issues. We don't have any accidents. And they fail to recognize the system impact decrease the budget for the safety program. They want to decrease the focus on it because it doesn't seem like it's necessary. And that's exactly then when an accident happens and the budget goes back up for safety and the focus goes back up for safety. And so that system's loop. Is problematic when people lose track of the why. Yeah, about why those things matter. And so I think, you know, storytelling is really useful in organizations to drive culture, making sure that we're not losing sight of why these things mattered.

49:01 - Laura Gallaher
And it's true in the other direction, too, Phil. I know that you have worked with clients who are like, well, I don't know. We've always done it this way. And they can't articulate the why. And maybe it doesn't make sense anymore. So being able to hold on to the why helps people know, is this still useful and relevant? Or have we moved past this in some way?

49:20 - Phil Rose
And I think there's something there which comes up. You know, years ago, we used to talk about, you know, continuous improvement, total quality management, and the Japanese philosophies around making sure we're continually developing. And the point you just made about storytelling, to make sure people fix back to the reason we did things in the first place, to understand the basis of what we do. And I think that why, when you've had a disaster, you can focus and say, the reason we do it is because of this, because we never want that to happen again.

49:47 - Phil Rose
But it's really interesting, isn't it, when you look at some of these things, If the story starts to degrade, people then lose track. And

49:55 - Phil Rose
The typical thing we see a lot of businesses when... Now, I know lots of accountants, so accountants, you're listening, don't take this in a bad way. But when the accountants get in charge of the business, they look at the cost and they look at the issues where the costs are and they cut costs. Now, we've got to make sure safety is number one in mission critical businesses. If you have that in an airline, and I've seen this happen in some of the low cost airlines in the US and in the UK, where safety is always there, but we need to look at how do we cut costs?

50:23 - Phil Rose
How do we change things slightly? And you always get those problems running out. You have to keep the safety right. And I heard recently of an airline in the US, and I'm not going to say the name in case I'm wrong, where the pilots were noticing things going wrong. But the airline management, because the founder of the airline died, he passed away, and he had the story of how the airline ran. The accountants took over, and the pilots were voicing concerns about safety. And I think it's really interesting because the accountants then weren't listening.

50:53 - Phil Rose
Now I haven't followed up on that story, which I'm not going to say which airline it is, but I think it's really interesting when you hear those things come true.

51:00 - Laura Gallaher
You know, I, I'm, I'm making a note to myself because I, I think storytelling is such a valuable piece within culture and that's true societally as well as in organizations. And I think what often happens is that the humanness gets lost in the story of it. You know, here in the United States, I've been talking with people recently, as we are noticing, so we're coming up on the year of twenty twenty four um I mean, 2023, so it's been 22 years since 9 11 happened for us right here in DC, in New York and Pennsylvania.

51:39 - Laura Gallaher
And that means that people are now entering the workforce here in states. We're not even alive when it happened. It means we have teachers in schools who are taking roles as teachers who were not even alive when it happened, or maybe they were alive, but they don't remember it. It doesn't have any meaning to them. And I think that sometimes when you talk about the story degrading, I think that's often what happens when we talk about history and we say we want, even as a human society, we want to learn from history.

52:12 - Laura Gallaher
I don't think that we will do that until we're able to keep the humanness of the story. We can't just make it the facts and figures. We have to invite people to have empathy and perspective taking and to really think about What must that have felt like, By the storyteller who's able to convey, here's how that felt and here's what I went through and here's what I noticed. Beautiful. But as time passes and we get further and further from that, the emotion behind the why, you lose it. And we're emotional creatures.

52:44 - Laura Gallaher
We make decisions rooted in emotion, no matter how logical or analytical you think you are. So I think that's a big part of really preserving some of these things, values-wise, that we say are important in organizations like Citi.

52:57 - Phil Rose
So interesting, actually. As I was reflecting that, I was feeling a bit of an emotion coming on me, actually, there. Because this year, I was in New York in April. So we took my children, who are now 21 and 18, to the 9-11 memorial. So they didn't know what it was. You know we lived I lived through it. They had never been there before. They didn't know what it meant. They'd heard about it, but going underground and seeing it made it real. So there's a story there, and in there you hear the voices of people.

53:32 - Phil Rose
You hear the whole story coming alive. And my youngest daughter who's now 18 also went back to New York in two trips to New York in the year. Interesting for her. And she went on a school trip and they went back to the memorial. So she went through it for the second time within five months.

53:48 - Laura Gallaher
Wow.

53:51 - Phil Rose
Afterwards, she said to me, she said, I get it. And I think there's something there about recounting that story and hearing it twice, because we can hear a story once and it doesn't go in, it's just a story. But what I heard from Emma at that time was she went back to the memoir and saw it from a different pair of eyes. And I think it brought it alive for her. So when you're talking about building that story up, I think there's a, that human, to use that word, I think it does come up through their emotions, but you have to keep experiencing it.

54:25 - Phil Rose
You can't just hear it once and get it. And I think this is the same in organizations, how you're mentioning it, making me think here, that we need to keep repeating the story, but ensuring the story is told the right way, because it can degrade if people pass down it through Chinese whispers. You lose the essence of the story. So something like the 9-11 memorial brings it alive for people and they can reflect on it. But if you don't have the chance to go there and see it again, it's just a story and you get on with your life again.

54:55 - Phil Rose
And it's easy to forget.

54:57 - Laura Gallaher
Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's something that leaders can choose to build into their organizations is that that piece of storytelling and to really capture the the human feelings of what it was, so that that's not lost, even as leadership changes.

55:13 - Phil Rose
And I think that's the key, isn't it? As leadership changes, because, you know, thinking over the last 25 years, the leaders will have changed, they'll have lost that, but you've got to keep that alive. You've got to keep that purpose alive. And that safety is number one in that sense. And interesting actually, so thinking about your book,

55:29 - Phil Rose
Great book, I love the narration in it, I've listened to the audible version, I'd urge people to go and listen to it and then buy the book as well because there's some interesting models in there which you can see the PDFs but go and get the book. I would love to talk to you about the DNA piece because I think this is, how do you find that DNA? Because I think that's the essence of this which is why the missing link becomes key to this. Can you just talk about that briefly, just to give us a view, because obviously you talked there just now about the conflict between self-team and organisational culture, but let's talk about the Dn a piece.

55:59 - Laura Gallaher
The dna piece. So the DNA piece is the visual representation of our missing links culture model, and we chose that because you've probably heard, many people have heard, that the culture is the DNA of an organisation. And we love that as a metaphor because DNA, as we know, is unique to each human.

56:18 - Phil Rose
And,

56:19 - Laura Gallaher
Um, we love the idea of culture being unique to an organization. In fact, part of what we do with leaders is help them to identify. What is that uniqueness? What is our differentiation? And at the same time being, you know, culture consultants and experts, part of what felt really important to us is that we give people some kind of grounding in what is ultimately effective culture. And so we talk about effective culture, really having four emergent traits and that's the maturity, diversity, community, and unity.

56:54 - Laura Gallaher
And none of that changes the uniqueness of an organization because we can have those emergent traits of maturity, diversity, community, and unity, and still have our own defining and unique characteristics. We can still make choices about who we want to be, what our purpose is, what our values are. Behaviors we think really will drive the results that we care about. And that's why we chose that as the visual representation.

57:20 - Phil Rose
And it's interesting because if I come back to the one word that jumped out with us that diversity. And I think one of the key things I see about effective boards is where there is a diversity of thought. Diversity of culture, but people have a common unity, which is why we have the unity. But diversity is key, because otherwise we end up with that group think and everyone just saying, yes, boss, yes, boss, yes, boss.

57:43 - Laura Gallaher
Yeah, absolutely.

57:44 - Phil Rose
So to me, that's a that's a key element. And obviously, diversity has a number of different connotations. But I think it's key, you've got to bring that into any organisation.

57:53 - Laura Gallaher
I agree. And we, I believe, take probably the broadest view of what that word diversity means. I mean, it definitely for us does include diversity and the way that people have been thinking about it a lot over the last few years, which is that diversity, equity and inclusion piece. I think that's extremely important. And it's also what you're talking about, which is diversity of thought. And so As you know, I think from the model, the diversity strand, as we call it, has three missing links.

58:21 - Laura Gallaher
To really have diversity, we must have actual differences between people. We can't have people who all think the same or look the same. We have to have respect of those differences. We must be inclusive of those differences. So I can have people who think differently. But if I am finding ways to not include them, either I ignore their input or I literally don't invite them to meetings, I literally leave them off of emails because I think they're going to fight me on it, that kind of thing, then my organization, my culture will not get the benefit of that diversity.

58:58 - Laura Gallaher
If I am inclusive of the differences, but I don't show them respect. I quickly demean them, belittle them, put them down, say that's stupid. Or you know, why would we, we tried that five years ago. Why would we do that again? If I am disrespectful toward the differences, then I'm also going to extinguish the actual diversity.

59:19 - Phil Rose
That's interesting.

59:20 - Laura Gallaher
And for us, the diversity really can only emerge when the maturity reaches a certain level, which is all that self-stuff.

59:28 - Phil Rose
That's so interesting, actually. That's the key, isn't it? Again, maybe ask the question, in that case, what does maturity mean in that model? Is maturity just experience? Is it seniority? What does it mean?

59:41 - Laura Gallaher
So for us, maturity is about how effectively am I able to interact with all different types of people while getting the work done. And Right,

59:52 - Phil Rose
So,

59:53 - Laura Gallaher
It's like, you can look at that as like, how well do I get along with people? And I'm doing air quotes on that because the intention is not go along to get along. The intention is do I show up authentically? Which is how I'm going to be my most effective. So the three links and the maturity strand is self-acceptance, self-awareness, self-accountability. If I'm self-accepting, I'm probably not going to feel threatened by somebody bringing a different opinion. We've all seen people not respond well.

1:00:24 - Laura Gallaher
And if we're honest, we've all been that person who's not responding well to a different idea at times.

1:00:30 - Laura Gallaher
And what we don't usually know is subconsciously I've got some, it's a perceived threat. This different idea feels threatening to something about how I want to see myself. So I have to have enough self-acceptance to not take anything different as a threat to me. Have enough self-awareness to even recognize that that might be going on for me. And I have to have enough self-accountability to make a different choice in terms of how I respond and how I show up with other people.

1:00:59 - Phil Rose
I think that's really interesting, isn't it? I think that explains maturity really well to me. So that acceptance, awareness, accountability really says something. Because actually, when we come back to that conversation about coachees willing to step up and listen, but it's actually listening to themselves all the time, listening to what's in their internal dialogue, and having that awareness that they can change, and that often they are the problem, and it's not the other person.

1:01:25 - Phil Rose
Therefore, they have to work on themselves and hold themselves accountable for doing what they need to do. And I think there's something there about maturity of person. Now, it doesn't necessarily come with age. In fact, a lot of the time, it doesn't come with age.

1:01:37 - Laura Gallaher
It's not automatic. I'll say that.

1:01:38 - Phil Rose
Yeah, that's interesting, that's really interesting, isn't it? So when I think about the business owners we work with, and I've worked with over the years, I've seen some very immature, older employee, managers and bosses. And I wonder how this is changing in terms of, you know, I'd say we're coming to the end of 2023. A lot's happened in the world in the last 10 years. And you mentioned earlier about, you know, that the millennials coming to the workplace, my daughter is 18, will be coming into the workplace soon enough.

1:02:08 - Phil Rose
And they have a very different take on the world to we did and you did, because they've grown up in a different world, effectively. But I think there's something there about that inquiring mind to look at, okay, what is it I need to do different? And actually, how do I make a difference? So when we're looking at acceptance and awareness, the awareness piece is probably key to me there is, how can I be aware of other people?

1:02:31 - Phil Rose
Because if I can link that awareness to the diversity and have respect, I think the big piece there, because a lot of people growing up today, I say a lot, maybe this is stereotyping, a lot of people are aware, but maybe there's a big group of people who aren't yet. And there's a bit of education still to be done.

1:02:47 - Laura Gallaher
You know, so much of the awareness too, I believe it. It starts internally, right? So the way that we talk about self-awareness is do I allow myself to fully know my own experience? What thoughts and feelings am I hiding from myself?

1:03:04 - Phil Rose
Well,

1:03:04 - Laura Gallaher
Pragmatically, it's actually quite a lot. A lot of our experience operates in the subconscious, and that's not a bad thing. That's actually super useful. And sometimes the things that are operating in my subconscious are impacting my behavior in ways I don't understand. So I don't feel like I'm choosing my behavior. I feel like this is how I am. It's my personality and I, I tell myself that I can't change or that I don't know how to change. And really what's happening is their choices.

1:03:35 - Laura Gallaher
I made a long, long time ago and now they're kind of baked in,

1:03:39 - Laura Gallaher
But if I chose it back then I can make a different choice. Now I just have to allow myself to actually lean in, to allow myself to know my experience. I have to. Be willing to feel fear, feel pain, feel insecurities, because we all have things that we're afraid about ourselves, ways that we fear. And we don't like to acknowledge those things. So we hide a lot of it.

1:04:03 - Phil Rose
And it's interesting, isn't it? We don't like to lie on the job because at the end of the day, our ego is there to protect us. Our mindset is there to protect us. Our subconscious. There to protect us.

1:04:09 - Laura Gallaher
Is.

1:04:10 - Phil Rose
Therefore, it doesn't let us in there sometimes. That's the benefit of that. But it's the key about knowing you've got the choice.

1:04:17 - Phil Rose
And when you said about can't change, don't know how to change, I think there's a third one, which is that willingness to change.

1:04:24 - Laura Gallaher
Yes, that's true.

1:04:26 - Phil Rose
Because some of us don't have to change. And that's the mindset people have. But I think it's trying to get that through. I worked with a genius NLP trainer called Wyatt Woodsmall many years ago. And he had a, he was a, he did a lot of work to look at, okay, how do people make decisions? And I think the key there is actually we have to be enabling ourselves to make the decisions in the first place and be aware. It comes back to that awareness piece, because we can't make a decision about changing ourselves until we're aware of what's going on for us internally.

1:04:59 - Phil Rose
And that's the big piece.

1:05:01 - Laura Gallaher
So those three things, they work iteratively and can spiral in a beautiful upward trajectory if we allow it to. The self acceptance, self awareness, self accountability. The more I allow myself to know my own experience, the more I can make choices consciously that actually create situations I want for myself. And then I continue to grow my self-acceptance and my awareness and my accountability. It just keeps going.

1:05:25 - Phil Rose
So it goes up. Yeah. So communication and unity. Communication is key, but communication also internally as well is a big point there, and I'm sure. But what does the What does the unity mean? I want to go to the unity piece first. What does unity mean in this model?

1:05:43 - Laura Gallaher
Unity is all about, are we on the same page? Are we marching in the same direction? Are we rowing in the same direction? Whatever metaphor you want to use, right? Are we singing from the same songbook? Um, leaders, I work with you so many different metaphors, but through all the diversity, which is super important. We want to be able to work through any resistance. We want to be able to bring people ultimately into a common place, but we can have what we would call artificial harmony.

1:06:12 - Laura Gallaher
We can have unity. That's not actually unity. If, if the diversity is not there. So we want to make sure that we're bringing in enough different perspectives so that when we do make a decision about this is the direction that we're going and here's how we're going to achieve our future vision, that we feel good about how comprehensive we've been in evaluating the variables at hand. And ultimately, if we don't have unity, that this is where you find turf wars, silos, you know, things falling through the cracks, people dropping balls, finger pointing start to happen.

1:06:44 - Laura Gallaher
People working at cross purposes. So unity is ultimately, can we make the best decisions possible for ourselves? Yeah, fully agree, and then fully all support the direction together.

1:06:58 - Phil Rose
So once we've once we've understood where we're going, actually fully support the direction together is the key piece to that.

1:07:04 - Laura Gallaher
And so some of that's about the willingness and a lot of it's just about do we get how we're going to do this, you and I could have a meeting and feel super excited about what we're going to do and where we're going to go and And we think we know how we're going to get there, but I think that I'm making the decision and you think that you're making the decision. And we just, we missed that part, right? And so I'm making a decision and you are too, but, and now it starts to become like, Hey, what, what are you doing over there?

1:07:29 - Laura Gallaher
And we just missed it. So a piece of what we look at in the unity stand is actually control.

1:07:35 - Phil Rose
Yeah. And Think that's the key piece,

1:07:35 - Laura Gallaher
I. We need to understand,

1:07:36 - Phil Rose
Isn't it?

1:07:38 - Laura Gallaher
You know, how, How is information moving through the organization? Who has decision authority over what? What are those core processes that help us execute our strategy? And if we don't understand what those are, then we're going to struggle to really get things off the ground.

1:07:54 - Phil Rose
So can I loop that loop back into that communication piece? I left that out at that point for a reason. So communication to me is key, because when we talk about unity, we have to have that if we're, you know, to understand we're in a common place, in making common decisions, and fully to support the decision, we've got to be able to communicate the decision in the right way. So how do we go about this in a large organization? So NASA, multi-people organization, how do we get the same common message out?

1:08:22 - Phil Rose
What's the communication piece?

1:08:25 - Laura Gallaher
Cascading is extremely important. And what I typically see is an underestimation of how important it is and the time that's required to actually make it happen effectively.

1:08:41 - Laura Gallaher
So if there's any kind of organizational change, which there's usually organizational change, right? Always. Change happening for our clients.

1:08:47 - Phil Rose
That's. What communicating.

1:08:50 - Laura Gallaher
That's the nature of today's day when there's a change. I'll be most effective as an executive if I can drive that change through my team. And my team is working with their leadership teams. They're working them through some of their resistance, some of their confusion. And then those leaders are working with the next layer down to say, here's what we're doing. Here's why, here's how this affects us. So a really important role for leaders in every aspect, every layer is setting context.

1:09:23 - Laura Gallaher
Because that context is going to continue to change and messages coming from the top are very important and powerful. The front level workforce doesn't mean much to them. They just don't get it. So. Want to be able to cascade all the way down through the layers and levels and give leaders at each level enough space and time and energy and intention to process it in a way that they can then say,

1:09:38 - Phil Rose
We.

1:09:50 - Laura Gallaher
I get it and I get how this applies to my team. And so I'm going to now put some additional context on what the CEO said. To my team and I'm going to facilitate discussions with them to make sure that they understand.

1:10:03 - Phil Rose
Because that's the key, isn't it? And I think that space and time becomes one of the key pieces, isn't it? Because everyone processes that information at a different rate. And therefore, we can't assume.

1:10:11 - Phil Rose
Because I get it, that other person doesn't get it at that time. Therefore, we have to work at their pace. We can communicate the same message, but maybe we need to make sure it's landing in the right way, which is when you said setting context. And I use the word context a lot in terms of setting the purpose of why. But I think that's the key piece there. If you've got that ability to set the context and you've got the ability to give people the space and the time to think about it, that ultimately drives the unity because people are now on the same page.

1:10:39 - Laura Gallaher
Yes, yes. And it can trigger defensiveness sometimes in the leaders. Let's say the leadership team, the top team, the executive team has spent three days, five days, two weeks, I don't know, working on making all these decisions and they've hashed stuff out. And then they're so proud of what they've created. They go, look what we've created. And when they get a little resistance, sometimes they unintentionally exhibit behaviors that shut down communication. And that leadership level goes, well, I guess I just need to do what I'm told.

1:11:07 - Laura Gallaher
And then from there, it starts to degrade as you go down. So when we're working with executive teams, we remind them, because we always do all the work in the maturity strand early as a starting point.

1:11:19 - Laura Gallaher
So we're like, hey, as you're communicating this, just be aware of any defensiveness that you might notice. You've been thinking about this a lot. They're hearing it for the first time. They might not get it. They might not respond to you in the best possible way. And as a leader, We want you to go first with staying open, staying vulnerable, hearing their concerns. Have faith that what you've come up with is solid and hey, maybe they've got a good idea and it can be improved upon, great.

1:11:46 - Laura Gallaher
So we really teach leaders the importance of all of that humanness and the intrapersonal to keep them really effective in that cascading.

1:11:56 - Phil Rose
And it's interesting that we've come back to that same word, isn't that? Humanness as well, in terms of we've got to bring that together because that's the engagement piece. That humanness builds that emotional connection where people feel fully bought in. And it's only when you get that, you get that unity of purpose so you can work together on it. Fascinating model in that case. Thinking about your journey, you've obviously learned a lot over the period of time you've been in this.

1:12:22 - Phil Rose
What's your biggest takeaway? If you look back over your time and say, this is the thing that really resonates with me the most, what's that?

1:12:31 - Laura Gallaher
Said, It's, it's not enough to know. It's not enough to know. I, I, you know, I, when I was brought into work with NASA, I was incredibly honored. I already felt that the work that I was doing was important. And to have the weight of knowing what had happened with the Columbia accident and to know that that was what this agency was dealing with when I came on board. I was like, this is such important work. And I was brought in largely to work with leaders to make sure that they would continue to create that psychological safety.

1:13:05 - Laura Gallaher
So I understood the concepts. I actually think I was skilled as a coach and a consultant internally for them. And a few years in, I actually got feedback that I myself wasn't creating a level of psychological safety within my own team.

1:13:20 - Phil Rose
Hey.

1:13:22 - Laura Gallaher
I moved up pretty quickly and I failed to recognize the impact that my behavior had once I was in a leadership role versus when I was an individual contributor. And so as a psychologist, right, like with this PhD and brought in to focus on this, I was not immune to that same human element. That was really tough feedback for me and so eye-opening.

1:13:52 - Laura Gallaher
It's not enough to know. It's a constant journey and practice of awareness and a willingness to always stay humble and be vulnerable and be open to feedback.

1:14:07 - Laura Gallaher
That stuck with me the most. It's not enough to know.

1:14:12 - Phil Rose
I love that. And what you just said, those last three things, stay humble, be vulnerable, and be open to feedback. Yeah, amazing. When you think about that model of maturity, self acceptance, self awareness, self accountability. Living and breathing what you talk. Yeah,

1:14:27 - Laura Gallaher
Absolutely. It's so important. It was a tough experience that I think had the biggest impact on me overall.

1:14:35 - Phil Rose
So if we could think about a lot of the audience for this podcast, a lot of them are entrepreneurial, they've got that mindset of growing a business. We put the podcast out as being purpose-led and we talk about a purpose above and beyond making money, because we believe that those businesses do best are the ones that really can contribute to society, whatever that means to them. And money will flow at the end of it, but actually the key purpose is about doing good, whatever that means to people.

1:15:03 - Phil Rose
I wonder what's the key message? If you were to give another message, not enough to know is your key learning, what could be a message you could give to those people who are listening to the podcast thinking, what can I do with this? Because I'm not NASA. I'm a smaller organization, but I want to do good. What's the thing they need to take away that they could work on as one single simple thing as a priority?

1:15:28 - Laura Gallaher
One single thing is a priority. I think the ability to articulate how do I want things to feel in the context of this organization in order for us to fulfill our purpose.

1:15:45 - Laura Gallaher
So really linking the purpose and the strategy to the human beings. I think too often we forget how human we all are. And we sometimes say that, you know, humanity can be your greatest enemy, or it can be your greatest savior, just depending on how you're looking at it. So if as a leader, I'm able to say, I know my purpose, I know why I created this organization, I know how I want to contribute to a better world. I want to make sure I'm also thinking about What environment am I creating here?

1:16:25 - Laura Gallaher
What does it feel like then to work here? How do I make sure these humans in this organization? Feel inspired enough to make this purpose.

1:16:34 - Phil Rose
Yeah, I love that. And the word that stood out for me just saying it's that feeling piece. Because when you said about linking strategy and purpose to the human being, it's the feeling piece, which circles back to the stories we tell again, because we all engage in the feeling the emotion of the story. So there's that real strand coming through here. And it's almost a bit like, you know, sitting back around the campfire and telling the story of why. But to me, it's that campfire story coming alive, which is that ability to link the two together.

1:17:04 - Phil Rose
So I love that as a key takeaway. And I would urge people listening to this, think about what can we do to build that feeling into it? Because actually it's not enough just to know. We have to come back to it. It's not enough just to know. We've got to link it to the feeling and make that come alive as well.

1:17:18 - Laura Gallaher
Absolutely.

1:17:19 - Phil Rose
Yeah, I love that. Thank you. Laura, this has been a fascinating conversation. I could go on for hours. And I often think we should do a three hour podcast, but three different sessions. But in this last hour, we've talked about lots of different things. And you've shared the maturity model. We talked about DNA. We talked about organizational psychology. There's some really key learnings that people can pick up on. Now, how would people find you? How would people find you? How would people find the book?

1:17:44 - Phil Rose
Bit of a plug for you in that case. Where would they go looking?

1:17:47 - Laura Gallaher
I think the best place is probably our website, which is gallagheredge.com. And you did say my name accurately at the beginning. I appreciate that, but it is Gallagher and not Gallagher. So for anybody looking, it's gallagheredge.com and you can link there to see more about the book and our services.

1:18:05 - Phil Rose
Yeah, wonderful. Thank you. And I appreciate it. And it's a tough conversation. I'd love to have another conversation in six months time, think about where things have evolved and how maturity has progressed for us as well as we go through to 2024. Because at the end of 2023, there's lots going on in the world today that a lot of these things that we've talked about today, it could be really useful to look at how do we build that common purpose? How do we unite people together? And at the end of the day,

1:18:28 - Phil Rose
Building unity is all about communication, setting context. So your model has a whole role to play, in my view, in not just in business, but actually in society generally, community. Because if we think about the things that we talk about,

1:18:41 - Phil Rose
It's all relevant.

1:18:43 - Phil Rose
It's not just about business. It's about humanness, as you said before.

1:18:47 - Laura Gallaher
I find that actually to be extremely compelling. And I would love to apply this more to societal level.

1:18:52 - Phil Rose
Yeah, I think there's I think there's something there, because actually, at the end of the day, is the missing link, probably, just to quote that. So Laura, thank you. Really real pleasure to talk to you. We'll get you back on the show at some stage, but I appreciate it. And thank you.

1:19:08 - Laura Gallaher
Thank you.

1:33:40 - Phil Rose
I was fascinated by the conversation and by her experience at NASA and how you can apply that to any size of business you work in. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what organization you work in, it's all about the story we tell. So listen out as you go through this to understand what is it you can do as a result of Laura's conversation. What are the key elements that you can take away? And what's the story you can tell? Because I think that's the key to making this work. Enjoy the show.

1:34:06 - Phil Rose
And as always, let me know who else you think could go on the show that can provide value such as Laura does, that can help you build your business in the future. And also while you're at it, please leave us a review of the show and why not forward this conversation to other people so they can benefit. So over time we can change the conversations we're having one story at a time. Thanks for listening. Enjoy the show.