Speaking IN instead of UP to improve workplace safety

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Laurin Mooney, founder of ‘Speaking IN®’, which provides a model and method to help organizations overcome the challenges of employees who don't speak up, and leaders who don't listen. Using her expertise to translate modern safety concepts into straightforward language, Lauren makes learning safety enjoyable and actionable.

Lauren begins this uplifting conversation by highlighting why ‘Speaking Up’ is “the winner when it comes to failing strategy at a workplace.” She explains that the approach is based on faulty assumptions, aimed at the wrong people and works against human nature.

Rather than just criticizing existing strategies, Laurin has created an alternative: ‘Speaking IN®’ - and she explains why this approach is more effective at improving workplace safety. It considers the big picture, directs attention to people who can make change, refocuses on purpose, uses language helpfully, and it’s fairer.

There are 4 core principles underlying ‘Speaking IN’, and Laurin gives an overview of the importance of each: Intentionally, Including, Inviting & appreciating and Diverse perspectives.

Using real-life case studies, Lauren also outlines the practical steps safety professionals can take to shift towards a ‘Speaking IN’ culture.

Laurin’s passion for helping workers, safety systems, and organizations thrive is evident throughout this engaging interview, as she genuinely believes that “healing the employee experience is one of the fastest and most effective ways to heal the world”.

♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary] My name is Mary Conquest. I'm your host for "Safety Labs by Slice," the podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport, in other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff.

♪ [music] ♪ Hi there. Welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." As you know, safety professionals can't be everywhere all the time. They rely on employee information to know when equipment needs repair, what processes aren't working, or how they can improve safety.

To get that information, it's common to tell workers to speak up or stop work. This request makes sense, but it doesn't always work. Our guest today is interested in why employees often don't speak up and how to overcome that challenge. Laurin Mooney is a former emergency department nurse and hospital administrator who spent seven years studying high-reliability organizing to better understand the challenges she saw in patient safety.

While her roots are in healthcare, she's committed to helping industries learn from each other. Laurin founded Speaking IN to provide a model and method to help organizations overcome the challenges of employees who don't speak up and leaders who maybe don't listen. Her work around psychological safety and leadership development opens a conversation about what's behind the speaking up message.

By using her expertise to translate modern safety concepts into straightforward language and images, Laurin makes learning safety enjoyable and actionable. The goal of her Speaking IN work is to unlock what individuals and organizations need to thrive. And Laurin joins us from Palm Tree, Connecticut. Welcome.

- [Laurin] Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

- Yeah. So, okay. I love a good interdisciplinary story. So, I'd like to start, can you give us an overview of how nursing and hospital admin led you to the world of safety, and kind of what you think patient care concepts can teach safety professionals?

- Yes, I will. I always say when it comes to complexity at work, we have a winner, and that is healthcare. And not only do we have a winner in complexity, what comes right along with that is the uncertainty. So I spent a year with cardiac patients and then just felt really drawn to the emergency room where you didn't know from a minute to minute what was going to happen next.

And everyone who was there, it was an unexpected event that brought them there. So I think that just kindled my love of learning to navigate uncertain and unexpected events. Later I became a hospital supervisor, so now I had more of a bird's eye view, and I started to see...it was a small system which actually worked sometimes against us, but mostly in our favor because we had so much trust with our very small staff.

So as we served 11 rural towns, it was amazing to see what could actually happen on any given night and how versatile we had to be as crazy, crazy stuff was unfolding. I think my record for helicopters of patients out one night was six. And we had everything in our town from a python attacking someone to yeah, you name it.

So I thought it was going to be boring. It was far from it. And later, when you're the family nurse, everyone calls you if somebody's having an issue. So besides my daughter being misdiagnosed for seven years, my brother-in-law became very sick on Long Island and I went down there and spent a month in the ICU.

Now, at this point, I had been out of healthcare for a while homeschooling and taking a break after three kids, but I saw a culture that had so much fear around uncertainty, and I saw fear of speaking and I said, you know, "I want to get back into this. This is too important to let go." And I've been hooked ever since.

- I think you'd be constantly working with risk and mitigating risk and trying to figure out, I mean, just yeah, I think your best training might have been improv theater or something where you just have to roll with it.

- You do. And the other piece that I really see that aligns with modern safety science is the whole safety 2, you know, and what we imagine or prescribe work as and what you actually have to do. And how many times I had to break a rule to do the right thing, and how many times I had conflicting goals. But I think the reason I'm so optimistic and the reason I keep pushing is because I worked with great leadership who really actually trusted us and gave us the freedom to figure out what needed to be done and then back us up.

So, I think having seen good, I want to help it become more, you know, in more places, more good. More good experiences at [inaudible].

- Yeah. Once you've seen it, you know it can happen. So let's start with the standard speak-up message. How does that typically play out? And I realize there's no typical organization, but how do you see it playing out in organizations?

- Honestly, it's the craziest thing. I was saying to someone today, how I see it playing out is I think that the speak-up strategy is the winner when it comes to failing strategy in a workplace. My analogy is if you were a factory and you had a gate and your workers had a card and I came to visit your business and I noticed that, you know, lots of people weren't getting through the gate and you said, "Well, you know, it only works 30% or 40% of the time, but we just keep it."

And I'd say, "Why would you keep such a gate? You're missing out on your best...you know, what you need." And so speaking up fails, miserably everyone knows this. It is the elephant in the room. But I also think there hasn't been another strategy out there. So that's why I'm excited to present, you know, a new model. And I think it plays out as you asked, not just in the lack of safety, but in really, really creating a poor employee experience.

It also obviously keeps us from team performance, improvement, and innovation. So, it's just bad for business all around and bad for people. It's nobody's fault, as I said, there wasn't any other one, but it's time to move on, I believe.

- Yeah, I mean, I think all these things come in with good intentions, but it doesn't mean that they're the best system to continue with. So, in your work, you've listed some specific reasons about why speaking up doesn't work, and if it's okay, I'd like to go through them and get you to elaborate a little bit on each of these.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah. So the first one is faulty assumptions. What faulty assumptions are behind speaking up?

- So speaking up is really founded on the assumption that, well, if we tell people to speak up, they will. That's very basic. But also that we've sort of planned your work, it's going to go fine and you're going to just speak up if there's a problem. So, it's this very intermittent, hey, we need to address something now versus needing a very continual flow of information because new scenarios are constantly emerging.

And it's under the faulty assumptions I really think that it basically isn't aligning with human nature. So under that section where I said, well, we assume it's going to work, there's this glaring opposition to the fact that humans need to know that they're not going to be harmed when they speak up.

So it doesn't help us with that.

- Okay. And then another one is talking to the wrong people. So what does that mean... who?

- Well, I think that this message, speak up, is directed at the frontline staff. So we couldn't spend the night counting how many speak-up initiatives there are and reminders and posters. And we cannot put a number on the dollars that have been spent trying to persuade the people that can't make it safe to speak up.

So, I think the whole message has to be redirected to the people who can make the difference. And that's the people in power. However, I want to point out that the people in power shifts depending on where you are. So, we can talk later about how speaking in is very dependent on the role you're playing in the situation.

- Okay. And you may have touched on this, but it works against human nature. What part of human nature specifically are you talking about here?

- Yeah. Well, all right, let's not say it works against, let's just say it's not aligned with. So it's not aligned with our need for psychological safety. It doesn't in any way help us see that we belong. One of the other flaws I put is that it doesn't address the factors driving the silence.

So that's where it really doesn't align. So, in terms of the natural default to silence that humans will tend to in hierarchies, it doesn't address, wow, we have to overcome power dynamics.

It doesn't address that people need a sense of purpose. Okay. We're just speaking up to you, whereas in speaking in, we're going to talk about sharing our voice directed to a purpose.

- Yeah. It doesn't acknowledge power dynamics at all. There's sort of there is an assumption behind there that everyone is equally comfortable speaking up in all situations. So, you gave five different reasons why speaking in is different or the reasons that it makes sense. And I'd like to go through those too. So the first one is that it's big picture. What do you mean by that specifically?

- It's addressing the totality of not just an organization or the people in it, but also that we operate on a VUCA world. So I have this model. I call it the wonderful wild world we work in. So picture this. We have at our core, we're all getting out of bed in the morning and stepping on that these are safety folks, you know, this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous earth.

Then we have this next layer around our core of people, right? Having all these different experiences and emotions, people can't come to work in any other way than as an emotional being, right? That's how we're built.

And then finally, these folks, which I've labeled as fabulous, fallible, and free-willed, and we never know the same doctor that did the life-saving surgery in the morning could be fallible in the afternoon. So picture you've got a VUCA world, now you have a layer of fabulous, fallible, and free-willed people. Now, these folks go build their complex sociotechnical systems.

And in the end, all of these kind of layers are spinning like a roulette. And sometimes the fabulousness of the person aligned with the VUCA world, like when Captain Sullenberger landed the plane on the Hudson, you have an absolute fabulous outcome. But other times, it's just a bad system with a fallible moment, right?

And then the weather kicks in, and then we have this huge disaster. So the big picture is that in this amount of complexity, power we have thought was, well, power comes from compliance or power comes from control, and we're wondering why we're not getting the results.

But foundational to the speaking in strategy is that in complexity, these layers of complexity, power comes from your ability to learn, and especially to learn in real-time. So that's really what I'm hoping to unlock with speaking in is the big picture of why organization...both the organizations, they need people contributing and people for their own wellbeing need to contribute.

So it's a win-win on the big picture.

- Yeah. It reminds me of, I've heard of them called a kind environment is one in which all the rules are understood and kind of static versus a wicked environment where things change all the time. And guess what? We all live in a wicked environment.

- Absolutely. Yeah. So, it's a shift from...I really believe that speak up is coming from a linear model, okay? A linear command and control model. So we're just speaking up to the people and the preset plans, whereas speaking in is aligned with an emergent wicked climate scenario.

- Okay. So the second reason why it's a little different is that it directs attention to the people who can't make change.

- Who can? It's going to...

- Okay. I wondered.

- Was there a typo? I could have been [crosstalk 00:13:51].

- No. And no, it was my typo. Editors, can you cut that bit? I'll just start that again. No, you know what? And I was reading ahead going, that's not a typo. I'm like, I better just go with it.

Anyway, so I'll try that again. So the second reason is that it directs attention to the people who can make change.

- Exactly. We know this. I do think that leaders have now realized that, you know what? We have been working on the system for a long time and we have six sigma and lean, and we have worked so hard on our systems to everyone's credit, right? But what is missing?

What is it going to take to get to that next step? And that next step is about relationships and trust and learning. And so because of power dynamics, because of how easy it is for fear to sneak in...and I do want to add this here. So speaking in has a component of addressing the fact that leaders tend towards overconfidence and tend to not listen and think that, well, somehow from my perspective in that nice office, I actually know what's going on, you know, on the ground.

And so what we want to do is address the fact that the leaders are the ones who are going to make it safe and easy and also worthwhile to share because one of the things we're overcoming is not just a fear that I might be harmed if I speak.

So we have to take that question, "If I speak, will I be helped or harmed?" Well, the leader has to remove that question by the choices they make about the culture. So the other question is, "If I speak up, will anything ever happen?" Well, the leaders are the one controlling the resources to decide, you know what, you won't have to say it 10 times because people won't.

They'll say it once or twice, and then they're going to conserve their energy and disengage. So the leader has to say, thank you for the gift. This is a big piece of how speaking in is framed that when someone does share their perspective and speaking in is about intentionally including, inviting, and appreciating diverse perspectives that when that perspective is shared as a gift, how the leader handles that.

So whether the leader seeks it, invites it, and appreciates it, and then how the leader handles that, decides whether is it safe? Is it futile, right? And is my perspective valued? So yep, this is about the...

The big work of speaking in, I believe, takes place in a leader's mind. Now, I want to recognize right now that lots of leaders already lead like this, but not enough or we wouldn't have such a problem with... But that when a leader can realize more is possible, then we can plan for or imagine, and that our plans, our people, and our information are imperfect.

And that because of the complexity, people are going to be the solution. Then they can start realizing, wow, I actually can pick up the keys to start unlocking my greatest resource, which is the knowledge and the energy of people. But right now, we know the disengagement is at an all-time high, right?

The energy is low and the data on speaking up is absolutely abysmal. So one of the quotes that actually prompted me into creating Speaking IN came after I had spent quite a bit of time studying, well, seven years, studying high-reliability organizing, and the power of diverse perspectives When you're navigating this unclear or ambiguous situation.

And I'm seeing how desperately needed diverse perspectives are. So, I go into the nursing literature for speaking up, and it says in this global meta-synthesis, speaking up is perceived by nurses as most times unsafe and ineffective. And I thought, how are we ever going to deliver safe and reliable care until we solve this?

So when you look at the depth of challenges working in uncertainty, and I have to make a model of everything. That's just me. So, I make an iceberg of knowledge model where at the top is, you know, what we know, and at the bottom is what we don't know.

And that bottom is much bigger. And it includes I saw case after case of patient tragedy, things that were unseen, things that were unclear, things that were unstable, but then came the things that went unspoken and things that went unheard. Under that, we had things that were untimely and then unimagined. And I said, you know what?

If we can address the unspoken and the unheard, matter of fact, until we do, we're never going to get good at dealing with things that are unclear, with dealing with things that are unimagined, right? Because think about disasters in other industries and how many times these things were happening. Someone saw a weak signal, they're trying to get leadership's attention, I think this is going to be a problem.

It's dismissed. We have something very large blow-up, catch on fire, you name it. Or people just, you know, plain old don't share. So, over and over and over. So I said, let's tackle these first. How are we going to tackle this? And the crazy thing in the literature is there are now up to 256 factors that determine whether a person speaks or not.

And I thought...I think when I looked at it, it was much, much lower, but I still had this moment of existential crisis, we're never going to fix this. But then I said, well, what if we had a model that instead of all these inhibiting factors, had such a pull on someone that they would speak. So if we removed the fear and then showed you, you know what? You have a unique perspective that nobody else has and it's valuable and we need it, and we need you and you matter.

And when we can start working from that model, I think we're going to see unbelievable improvements.

- It occurs to me that it's like changing the onus. So instead of having the onus on the person who's got all these potential inhibitors to speak up, the onus is on the leadership to, well, make it safe, but also model that they will listen essentially, right?

Because they do, they are the people who can make change, as you said.

- Yes, absolutely. And so one of the flaws of speaking in is that it puts all the responsibility for this upward knowledge flow on the people of lesser power. So I do want to talk now about power, how power shifts in a typical day. So it could be that the surgeon walks in and is very...he's a choice.

He can be open. And I know there are surgeons who say, you know, I'm Dr. Day, and I'm perfectly fallible and I'm depending on you to help me see where I might be headed towards a mistake. And there are surgeons who walk in and no one would dare. So, that's a a choice.

So in that moment in the operating room, the surgeon is in the position of power. And he needs, or she, is to take the responsibility to use the actions that overcome power dynamics. And here's the thing. The research is already done. Amy Edmondson research from 2006 says that, you know, invitation and appreciation can take nature off its course by overcoming hierarchy's limiting effects.

Meanwhile, Dr. Morrison did research and also said that when the person who could be voicing sees that the target is going to be open to input, also the effects of powerlessness actually can even be completely removed.

So, the person in power needs to leverage the research we already have about a direct and specific invitation and an appreciation. So, that's the thing I love about Speaking IN is that it's based...it springs from your own attitudes, your own assumptions, your attitudes, your questions, and your actions.

And if you choose these, no one can stop you. It's a part of who you are. You don't need a board meeting. There isn't really a budget per se. I mean, you may want to do some training, but these are things that are available to anybody to absolutely like supercharge their leadership if they choose.

- Okay. So, I'm going to move on to the next three. One is, it refocuses us on purpose. How does Speaking IN...yeah, how does that work?

- Yep. So, one of my goals with Speaking IN is to help reframe our understanding of purpose and direction of voice when we speak. So, okay, I see a problem with how work is going. So am I going to speak up to Frank if I can find him about the problem, or is Frank and other people of power going to invite me and say, hey, the purpose of our work here is this.

From your perspective, what's it going to take to make work go well? And I'm going to know...now, ultimately, you would hope you can get to a culture where it's absolutely understood. I'm the leader and I didn't make a direct invitation, but I want to know. And when you give me that gift, I'm going to take good care of it, refocusing us on purpose.

So, okay, instead of speaking up to a person which is a very personal thing because we're actually saying, "Oh, you know, gee, Frank, that plan you made, I got to tell you, there's a problem with it." Where now in the Speaking IN model, people are standing around a pool of complexity, okay? It's the work to be done.

There's some things we know, there's some things we don't know, but we have in the core of this, a purpose we need to achieve. So instead of me speaking up to Frank and telling him I don't like something, I'm just contributing my unique perspective of what it will take for work to go well within our purpose. So it's connecting and it's also illuminating your purpose as that your role is important, that space that you beautifully fill in our organization, your perspective from there matters.

So it's very much addressing the importance of the frontline view on how work is performed.

- Yeah. So there's maybe less of an emphasis on hierarchy or status and more of an emphasis on the connection. What connects us all, we're all trying to get something done, right?

- Exactly. So, one of the reasons that speaking in makes sense as opposed to speaking up is that it uses language helpfully. So can you explain what you mean by that?

- Sure, absolutely. I think language is an area where we can really make some great strides when it comes to both safety, employee experience, just organizational life, in general. But, well, I realized that the speak up, I'm like up, are we subconsciously reinforcing the hierarchy that's part of the problem in the first place every time we repeat this phrase?

It kind of...the very fact that we have to go around telling people to do this, you know, just shows us we have the silence problem. But secondly, it's a command. It's very much of a command and control imperative statement. Seems very parent-child and not really that respectful to me. So, the question, the language in Speaking IN is really about a specific real-time invitation with that, you know, hey, by the way, it would help me to know.

So, hey, Mary, you know, I'm not so sure what's going on here. Can you share your perspective? It would really help me to know. So now I know you know that I'm going to actually be helped by your answer. So that's going to remove a lot of uncertainty for you right there. Then once you do share, you'll be watching as will everyone else, what I do with that information and that gift of knowledge from you.

So I say we go do a respectful invitation.

- Right. And then the last one is that it's fair. So, how is Speaking IN compared to speaking up in terms of fairness?

- Well, leaders are now taking some responsibility for creating that upward flow and creating the conditions where everyone knows that it's always safe and worthwhile to share a question, concern, and idea. So basically, what's happened with speak up is we're going to tell you to speak up, but we have not been involved necessarily in creating the conditions that you know that it's safe and effective to do so.

So speaking in isn't just...there's four parts to it that are very important. And if you leave off any of those parts, you leave yourself at risk that your knowledge flow is going to slow down or eliminate itself completely.

- Okay. So actually, you just talked about the four parts. So let's get into those. There's four core principles of speaking in, let's start with intentionally or intentionality, maybe.

- Yes, yes. Intentionally. So the reason we have to approach this intentionally is because even though these challenges are natural and normal in hierarchies, these behaviors are not. So we're going to try to...we have to overcome our overconfidence as leaders. We have to overcome...well, we have to acknowledge, intentionally acknowledge that we are working with imperfect plans, imperfect information, and imperfect people, and anything can happen at any time.

Our overconfidence, our risky system, and the natural power dynamics. And we have to intentionally remind ourselves, you know what? Others can see what I can't. And when we really take those in, then we can say, all right, I'm going to make space for diverse perspectives.

So that very first place that a leader needs to make space for diverse perspectives is in their own mind by being mm-hmm. Saying, you know what? Other people can see what I can't. And the system has all kinds of flaws in it, right? And darn it, I tend to be a little overconfident. I've got to get intentional for this. So then get intentional in your head, then you can start getting intentional in your meeting space.

How much time did you leave for other folks to share? Then you can get intentional with the types of questions. And finally, you can intentionally build this into your actual structures in your system constantly seeking diverse perspectives. So, that's the in intentional part.

- Yeah. Okay. And I would think about your language intentionally too, which is something you were just talking about. So the second kind of practice in Speaking IN is including.

- Yep. So I think of the including as when you are making operational decisions, or it could be planning, we call that operational. But, you know, asking yourself, are the people with the insight...I love the ins, so they just all came together. Are the people with the insight, are they even included in the meeting?

Are they even included in the discussion? So say, looking forward, who will we need to include in the moment? Who do we need to include right now? And looking backwards, did we include everyone that we should have as we made this decision in complexity and uncertainty?

So, the including means literally having that perspective present, but I do separate it from the invitation, which you're going to probably ask me next.

- Yes. I am so inviting and appreciating. Although actually, I want to stop and say for including, you mean including the perspective, it doesn't mean that every single person comes to every single meeting. I'm sure. It's more conceptual than that, where different people have opportunities to be included.

- Yeah. Especially I say including the people who will be impacted. How many times... So, it works two ways. One, when you don't include the people who will be impacted, you're, A, really kind of letting them know that you don't think you need their perspective, right? And two, you're really actually missing out on the expertise which is there at the frontline.

So that's the including is really thinking about who needs to be included during your particular activity.

- Okay. So the next one, yes, is inviting and appreciating. So how does that play out?

- Okay. So the inviting yes, based on the research. Inviting, like I said, is that very...now just because the person's in the room or on the Zoom...in the room or on the Zoom does not mean they're going to speak. How many meetings have we been at? Okay, yes, I've been included. I'm there.

But the invitation has to be made in real-time by the person of power signaling it's going to be safe if you share and then appreciating. So appreciating means verbally and non-verbally, which is much more powerful, showing that you are appreciative or thankful for that knowledge, even if you don't like the answer you got, because it is the window into the reality of what's happening in your business.

So that gift to be able to see work through someone else's eyes is a gift, and it needs to be received as such. It's how you're going to find your problems, right? It's the expertise of how to solve your problems.

But if you receive it gracefully and you are thankful...so there's the invitation and the appreciation, but the appreciation needs to include that follow-through. So I talk about this question for deep soul searching, individual and organizational, is how do you handle the gift of knowledge once you've received it?

And for this, I like to use Dr. Ron Westrum's...he has a flow of options, okay, of what you can do with the gift of knowledge. And it starts with suppression. So, I make little graphic pictures of everything. And in this one, we're sweeping that little present under the rug.

Next, we might like encapsulate it. And we put in a little file. We hope no one ever peeks in that drawer. Next, very, very destructive is the PR job. So someone's handed you a present, it's clearly blue. Everyone in the room knows it was blue. But when we go out to the company newsletter, we say it's red.

So handling the gift of knowledge in that way just is a great way to erode trust with your staff. And I would highly suggest not to do that. Then there's levels of inquiry from, you know, a local inquiry to a global inquiry on how we can really say, wow, we didn't like it or we did like it, but let's really respect it and look at it deeply.

Now, people will always say, well, but we can't address all the issues. No, but people are smart and they know when you truly have considered it and some follow-up, or, you know what?

I did talk to the big boss about this and we can't fit this in this year, but we're going to revisit that. That's what people want to know. So that's the four steps of Speaking IN. And two things about taking care of the gift of knowledge. One, everybody's watching how you handle it. It's not just your interaction unless you're...you know, even if you were alone, people are going to hear about it.

I told them. I told them the truth. And guess what? Nothing's been done. So that's one thing. But two, when they see that you actually are taking care of the gift, well, aren't people going to be more willing to share what they know? So everybody's watching how the leader handles the gift.

And it's hard because the whole process calls for vulnerability on the part of the leader. So we've kind of been demanding a vulnerability from the frontline. You know, you're going to speak up about your mistakes, but really it's the leaders are now inviting and welcoming information about maybe places where they've fallen down.

So, you know, I have some attitudes that I say support are actually essential for speaking in. And the first one is courage. And I say that because it's going to take courage on the part of leaders to one, admit, okay, this strategy has, is not working.

And two, I'm going to have to take responsibility because it's just the nature of things. It's just the nature of people. It's the nature of complex systems. And I'm going to have to make some shifts in my attitudes, in my actions, in my... So, there's a quote by Franklin Roosevelt, and it says, "Sometimes it takes courage to stand up and speak, but sometimes it takes courage to sit down and listen."

And I think that's the type of courage that we're going to need to get to the next level of healing our organizations.

- And it's new. It's certainly not traditional. It's not what has been expected. So it's a big shift. The last one is diverse perspectives. So then these are, again, the core practices of speaking in. So, the last one is diverse perspectives, which is sort of is an outcome of the practice.

- Nope.

- Nope. Okay.

- Well, it's unlocking... Yes. The outcome is...I'm sorry to interrupt you there.

- No, no, no. Correct me, please.

- Well, okay, yes. The diverse perspectives, what we're after is unlocking the power of diverse perspectives. So it's like all of those things are necessary to get...it is kind of the end goal, okay, is that we have now unlocked the power to do good for the person, to do good for the organization. And, you know, what we know is that...and this goes back to high-reliability organizing, that collective intelligence, and collective mindfulness are very, very, very powerful.

And the leaps and bounds that an organization could improve by when they removed the feelings of fear, futility, and powerlessness. Those are the three things we're after with speaking in, the power there is incredible. So I think once leaders wake up...well, that's not the right word.

How can we say this respectfully? Nobody teaches you this in so many organizations. You know, I look at healthcare leaders...look, we're crunching numbers. It's this attending to the power and potential of people in organizations is just starting. It must be just starting because we're in it.

You know, if you look at the surgeon general...well, you're in Canada. And you guys care up there, I know as well. But in October of 2020, our surgeon general issued a national call to action on well-being and mental health in the workplace. And it has five essential...it's easy to find, five essentials that workers need to know, mattering and community, but it's centered on worker voice and equity.

So here's....okay, and it tells us how to do the five bubbles, but it doesn't tell us how to unlock voice. And I'm going to tell you that unlocking voice has been a tough nut to crack. So this is where I'm really hoping that speaking in can help.

- Good. So I'm going to do a little bit of a pushback. I think some people might see this or might say this is just a rebrand of psychological safety, but how would you respond to that? Yeah.

- I would say it's the vehicle to psychological safety. I think that one of the things I've seen, you know, we're all talking about it, but how do we do it? So speaking in is very specific. Do this, practice this, you know, just reflect, where did I fall down? It's very much a tiny baby step.

Try it out. You're not going to get it right. You're going to forget to ask. You're going to be busy and your appreciation will be half-hearted. But people are also, you know, forgiving. And when they see you go back saying, you know what? I did not appreciate that incredible perspective you shared yesterday and I just want to tell you today.

So, is it a rebrand? No. What I like to think of speaking in as a framework for all the great work around this topic that's already been done, but we're still trying to do it under a speak-up model. And there's a misalignment there.

But, okay, inclusive leadership, it's very much inclined with, you know, the principles of inclusive leadership, the whole idea that we need to belong at work. The idea that, you know, the frontline, you know, that's where your expertise. So basically, a lot of this work had been done. I really put a framework and the language to it.

And I just want to appreciate all the work that everyone else did. This is just a piece of the puzzle, especially of healing organizations and especially bringing in a new communication strategy.

- And there's another one that I just know from when you and I spoke earlier about terminology. You've said that some people have come up to you and said they don't like the term, speaking in. So can you share your thoughts on that?

- Oh, yeah. Well, really one person said, "You can't use the word, in." And I thought, why? I mean... Oh, why? You know, we've made up all these rules, a lot of the rules. There's the nature parts of ourselves, you know, that we can't change and the natures of systems.

But a lot of these rules we've made up, and then we've just stuck with them. And we also have seen though how such sometimes a small...well, this isn't a small shift, the word is small, okay. But we have seen things flip with, you know, Airbnbs. That's impossible.

It's happened. Uber, it's happened. I'm hoping that speaking in, and I believe...here's what I truly believe. I believe that healing the employee...I started from safety performance. I came up through the blood and guts and I read 353 cases of harm and it was so depressing. And I said, we're going to fix patient safety. But then I realized, oh, well, we have to then fix, you know, how we think about our work.

And then I realized, oh, we have to fix, can we speak? Then I realized we have to fix the leaders. Some of the mindsets. I don't take it as fix. You have to spend a lot of time on this to realize the only reason that I came up with this framework is I was gifted a whole lot of time to think about it.

And there's been many 3 a.ms where I'm like, what are we going to do differently? But what I believe is that healing the employee experience is actually one of the fastest and most effective ways to heal the world. And I believe that because with every decision we make in an organization, we can decide, are we bringing more truth and freedom and justice into organization.

And we have the chance to expose people to these things that never experienced them. They didn't experience truth in their family. Maybe they didn't experience justice in their country, but we have large corporations now that without a commentary on the whole political and economic, we still have the power to create an experience where someone leaves at the end of the day knowing what the good things are and not totally depleted.

Because for me, especially with healthcare, I think what condition are we sending these parents home in to parent? And what is the cost for the next generation because of what has happened at work to these parents? So, I mean, that's the pie-in-the-sky optimistic piece, but I really believe it.

- Well, I mean, we spend so much time at work, and yeah, how things that happen at work do affect things that happen at home, right? And things that happen at home affect families and that affects children and that affects mindsets as they grow up.

And yeah, I can see the connections for sure. I like to ask about practical steps. So, let's say that our listeners are here thinking, okay, I get it. These are great ideas. How would you suggest someone starts may be learning about this or putting some of the practices in practice at work?

- That is a great question. So first thing, you could go to my website, but I would expect speakingin.podia.com has lots of things that you can download about the whole topic. But first, I mean, there's a couple of steps someone might need to take. And I actually was really wrestling with this question today.

If you have an idea like I do that can change the world, but you're also sort of a businessperson, like how do you handle this ethically? And part of me, I really am wondering if I should...you know, what I try to do is put enough out there that you can get started without...you know, it's free to the world.

If you need support because, you know what, I don't understand why I need diverse perspectives, or I don't believe diverse perspectives, then that's where I can support either an individual or an organization. But to get started, there's three questions that I would suggest. So we were actually going over these before and then I think we moved away.

One is that simple question of, hey, is there anything else that you think I might need to know? It'd really help me if you shared that. That's a very, you know, superficial information-based question. The second question is, you can start asking those around you, so on this issue, I really appreciate it if you would share your questions, concerns, or ideas.

So, what are you guys thinking? Okay, so now we're tapping inside of a person and asking them what's going on in their mind. This isn't outside information. This is how they're processing. And the third question, which is borrowed from clean language, which is an amazing strategy of where you really try not to impose your mental model on someone else is the question, you know, it'd really helped me to know what would you like to have happen?

Now, you're allowing that person to actually share a vision of how they think things should be moving forward. And this is a really easy way to tap what we would call the latent expertise in the room, but maybe someone who's going to say they're going to stay silent unless you absolutely asked them and told them that sharing is going to be helpful.

So there's so many questions that can be designed around context, but those are three to just get started. And penciling into your meeting, I'm going to ask and I'm going to really appreciate and then I'm going to follow up. And even before that, let's say you're like, I'm not so sure about this speaking in thing, take some time to be mindful and really watch the dynamics in the room.

How are people reacting when someone shares their perspective? How many times are people actually asked to share their perspectives? And how much room for growth is there within those dynamics?

- Yeah. Another thing you can notice too in meetings is who speaks and who doesn't. Like, if you could have a pie chart of who gets to speak, there's always a few who don't and there's always a few who take more than their share of pie as it were.

- Yeah. And, you know, someone asked me or really brought up a great point about that, and she said, you know, Laurin, she's like, I love speaking in. She goes, but I got to tell you, I hate to speak in a meeting. She goes, what do you think about the idea that people can actually write it down and that the leader can say, you know, if you're more comfortable...

And I said, that's brilliant. You know, you could also extend and say, you know what? If something comes to you after this meeting that you want to share, shoot me an email. Oh, well, whoa, okay, because I couldn't make myself say it in front of Sue, but if I'm just sharing it with the leader, I can do that. So I think we have lots of room to be creative about how to make it easier for people to share their perspectives.

- Okay. So, I have a few questions that I always ask my guests at the end. If you had to choose only one, what is the most...I know this is a really hard one, what is the most non-technical, or the most important rather, non-technical skill for tomorrow's safety professionals? So here I'm talking human skills as opposed to the technical skills that safety people need - Asking good questions from a position of caring.

- Fantastic. Do you think that can be taught? I think it can.

- Absolutely. I have a friend who is a genius at it and I've had the honor of watching what that has done in her company and absolutely transform the culture.

- Great. Okay. And another one, if you could go back in time to the beginning of your kind of safety research portion of your career, is there a piece of advice that you would give to your younger self?

- Yeah. Oh yeah. I would definitely stop overthinking everything. Definitely spent a lot of time overthinking. And you know what? Underneath that is just be comfortable imperfectly going forward with help.

That's because I'm like, oh, but this could be better and that could be better. And then you hold it back. Meanwhile, anything we're going to produce is imperfect, right? So with the better ideas to go out with your imperfect idea, which I have an imperfect baby idea, and realize it's going to take other people and other perspectives to mature it to make it better, be open to that.

Yeah, I think I have to... Sometimes I beat myself up and I'm like, you're too slow. It's fear. You know what I'm doing is...this is the funny thing, I'm actually speaking up to the bigger world and I'm saying, "Hey, everybody. That speak-up thing, it's not working." So, in a sense, although beautifully, there's times like you people invite, and I was invited to be on this podcast and share my baby Speaking IN strategy.

- Well, I think it's really interesting. I think you've pulled together a lot of different threads that I hear from different guests and created sort of a workable framework. How can our listeners learn more about the topics in our discussion today? So, we can talk about your website.

Are there also any books or maybe any researchers or ideas that you think are worth looking into?

- Sure, sure. Well, I mean, I always suggest, you know, "The Fearless Organization" by Amy Edmondson. I mean, great work. For me, the book that influenced me the most is actually "Managing the Unexpected." 2001 is the yellow version.

And that book changed my life. And I think a topic to study...and Deborah Ancona, Dr. Deborah Ancona from MIT, if you Google sense-making. MIT teaches sense-making is the number one leadership skill. And I should have said this sooner.

So let me just add this that speaking in is very much founded upon our intense need for effective sense-making in organizations. Meaning just making sense of what is happening in front of us. What are our eyes and our ears and our information, you know, they're sending us signals that something's happening. And we will only be as successful as our ability to make sense of what is happening is.

So when I did look at all of those failures, I said, oh, actually, they made fine decisions for what they thought was happening, but they had mistook their world, right? So I see Speaking IN as a really strong lever in the improving sense-making in an organization. So I would say studying sense-making, high-liability organizing, of course, anything on psychological safety, and follow me on...Speaking IN has a page and I have a profile where I share ideas and we're creating three courses to help people.

One is the learning leader. So that's going to be the overview of the reflection and the what are the attitudes I need to embrace, the questions. We're working on something called the curious coach.

And this is about unlocking perspectives around you when you're that kind of coaching...anywhere in middle, I hate the word management, all those, you know, leadership. And then we're finally going to...we're also going to work on something called the fabulous frontline because what I want the frontline to understand is that even when you're new, even if your...sometimes because you're new, your perspective is so valuable.

You need the fresh eyes, especially with nurses. So like, I am going to be working on a little project with nurses and I think, you know, I want that sometimes even though you're the new nurse, if you are the only person that saw that patient the day before, then you are the only person who has a perspective on a particular shift in the patient. So, those are going to be becoming available.

Those would be the main things I would suggest.

- Just to clarify the profile and the page are those on LinkedIn or...?

- Yes. So Speaking IN has this and then me, Laurin Mooney.

- Okay. And we'll have this stuff linked in the show notes as well for our listeners. Well, we are out of time today. Thanks, Laurin, for joining me and chatting about Speaking IN.

- Thank you for having me. It was absolute honor and pleasure.

- And as always, thank you to our listeners. We hope that every episode is interesting and more importantly, that it's helpful to your safety practice. My thanks to the "Safety Labs by Slice" team who make it all happen. Bye for now. Safety Labs is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly blade.

Find us at sliceproducts.com. Until next time, stay safe.

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