Dr. Laura Gallaher’s fascination with changing company culture began with her work at NASA. After the tragic explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia during re-entry, she joined a team there to change the culture to encourage more open dialogue about issues. An expert in industrial organization, she joined The Savvy Entrepreneur to talk about changing company culture. 
The CEO & Co-Founder of Gallaher Edge explains why culture is everything to a business. She shares why some organizations can’t really see their culture, and why it takes a lot of careful work to change and maintain the culture you want. She has a number of tips for companies and culture, whether trying to establish the right culture, changing the culture, or maintaining the great culture you have.
She shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur show why it’s so essential to have difficult conversations to create a healthy business culture, even though most of us don’t know how to have them. She then shares tips on how to approach these conversations.
You can read the show transcript below — you’ll be glad you did, because some of the tips will help in your personal life as well! Or, you can listen to an on-demand podcast of the show here.
Doris Nagel 0:41
Good morning, everybody! Welcome to the Savvy Entrepreneur show. We’re broadcasting from the Greater Chicago Milwaukee area.
If you’re an entrepreneur, or a small business person, or thinking about becoming one, this show is for you.
I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour. I’m a crazy serial entrepreneur, and I’ve also counseled lots of other startups and small businesses over the past 30 years. I’ve seen lots of mistakes, and made a lot, too. My goal is to offer a helping hand to other entrepreneurs, and to inspire and maybe make your journey just a little bit more fun and interesting. To help with that. I have guests every week on the show who are willing to share their stories and advice.
This week’s guest is Dr. Laura Gallaher. She’s the founder and CEO of her company, called Gallaher Edge. Dr. Gallaher has worked in the field of professional and personal development since 2005. Laura, as she says I can call her, is an organizational psychologist. She’s a speaker, as well as a facilitator and an executive coach. She’s the founder and CEO, as I mentioned, of her company, Gallaher Edge, which she started in 2013.
She’s had quite an interesting career. And it started after a very sad event in 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia exploded upon re entry, killing all the astronauts on board. After that, NASA hired Laura and a team of organizational psychologists to change the cultural influences that were deemed to play a role in the accident. She worked there for eight years to positively influence the culture at NASA, their leadership capacity and improve organizational performance at the Kennedy Space Center.
Later, she was also hired to help and manage change management with employee performance processes at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. She also says she loves stand up comedy and improv.
Gallaher Edge applies the science of human behavior to organizations to create highly effective cultures. The company has helped numerous C-suite teams successfully take their company to the next level, growing their capacity to lead and to succeed.
Laura, thanks so much for being on the show today. Welcome to the Savvy Entrepreneur show. Thank you for joining me today!
Dr. Laura Gallaher 3:27
Thank you so much, Doris, for having me.
Doris Nagel 3:29
You know, I have to ask kind of a dumb question. What exactly is culture when it comes to business? How do I know it when I see it? What is it?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 3:44
I love this question. Culture is an emergent property of an organization. And it emerges from the interactions of the behaviors of the people. And that’s part of why it becomes so tricky — it’s this emergent property. It’s not something we can work on directly. We have to be able to understand the organization as a system and then understand humans as complex creatures. vAnd once we understand those things, and we can be really intentional about them, then we can actually guide culture.
Doris Nagel 4:18
I think it’s interesting you say that, because I’ve worked for and with a number of businesses that I think don’t even really understand what their culture is, or they think it’s something that it’s not. A lot of organizations — probably almost all of them — say “We value our employees,” “Employees come first,” or “We’re open to new ideas and diversity,” or whatever.
And yet, if you work there, management will say this at some meeting, and the employees will just roll their eyes. Or on the customer side, they will say that isn’t the company culture at all! So why is it so hard for leaders within a company to clearly see what their culture is, much less try to change it if they want to?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 5:17
Okay, a couple things there. One is, our intentions as human beings do not always align with our impact. Think about the dynamic between any two people. Say I were to say something, and I just think I’m being helpful, but it offends you. Or you feel really hurt. Probably what you would want if you were open with me would be to tell me, “Hey, that hurt my feelings,” or “Hey, I don’t like the way you said that,” hopefully, what I would do is say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I’m so sorry that my words hurt you.” Often what we do is go well, I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Right? Like we have this sort of defensive response: “No! Look at my good intentions!” without actually acknowledging the impact.
Doris Nagel 6:03
Right! You didn’t hear me right! You misunderstood what I said!
Dr. Laura Gallaher 6:06
Yes, and we want people to understand our intentions. I get why people want to do that — they want to point out “Oh, but my intention was good. My intention was positive.” And, that does matter, but impact also matters.
The other reason I think leaders misunderstand their own culture is because they underestimate how much intentionality is required to have a really great culture, especially as a company is growing. From an entrepreneurial perspective, most of us are trying to grow our companies. And I don’t like being gender specific, but I hear so often, because I work a lot of tech companies, you know, “We used to be like five guys in a garage. And you know, everything was easy and great. And now we’ve got 25 people, and it’s so much harder to get anything done.” So yeah, when you’re five times the size, a whole lot more intentionality is needed. And it’s just something that I think a lot of leaders underestimate.
Doris Nagel 7:01
I would definitely agree with that. So how do you figure out what your culture really is, as a company? How do you take those blinders off and recognize, oh, so we’re really not very open to new ideas, or whatever it is?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 7:25
One of the very pragmatic tools that we use with our clients is an organizational assessment that’s based around our specific missing link culture model. There are plenty of assessments that are out there that really give your employees a voice. So that’s one way to do it.
When you’re clear about what you want your culture to be, you have a sense of what it means to have an effective culture, you want to get from your employees their opinions about the impact that working in the organization is having on them. Does that feedback actually align with your intentions? Or is there misalignment? So organizational assessment is a really powerful way to begin to get a clearer picture of what you really have in front of you, and how far you have to go to get where you’re trying to be.
Doris Nagel 8:13
Why is culture so important? You see lots of business articles written about it. Why do you think it’s so important to get right?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 8:27
Culture is the way that we look at things. It’s so much more than having values on the wall, or having a ping pong table that shows “Hey, we’re fun!” Culture is everything — about how things happen in an organization. It’s everything about what the interactions look like, between the human beings. And so when you’re talking about the organization, it’s this complex adaptive system. You push on a human, the human’s going to push back. You can’t simply tell somebody what to do and then they automatically do it. We don’t work like robots.
So culture is nebulous, and it’s abstract. But it is everything about how the business operates. There’s this really, really great quote from Lou Gerstner, who led a big turnaround at IBM in the 90s. And what he said he learned through that process is that culture is not just one element of the business, it is the whole thing. It IS the game. It’s not just one piece of it. And so that’s how we view it.
Doris Nagel 9:30
I think one of the other one of the other challenges is that organizations are changing so quickly. Today, especially, they need to change. If they’re small, oftentimes, they’re growing quickly. Or they’re trying to pivot quickly. And big companies are trying to be nimble too, but they’ve let go of a lot of people, which includes a lot of institutional memory of how things are done. And so I think it becomes very difficult for companies. You know, the intentionality you mentioned, I think, is tough. But it becomes even more difficult when the organization itself is changing very quickly. Do you agree?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 10:53
You’re making so many good points here, in terms of how critical it is for an organization to be able to change and adapt. It’s everything. If the year 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that change is going to happen. And it’s often going to be something that’s difficult to predict, or something that we’re not paying attention to. And so how we respond to change is important when it happens to us, and also being able to anticipate change, perhaps not on a global pandemic scale, but you know, changes within your industry.
We look at an organization’s capacity to adapt as an attribute, and not an accident. So just like being intentional about culture, you can actually create in your culture openness to change, and that can be an element of what you’re cultivating. And you do that through actually developing each individual human self. That’s what we mean when we talk about culture is from the inside out.
When you have humans who are resistant to change, we actually want to help them go deep into themselves to figure out what, consciously and subconsciously, is challenging them as a human being about this change. There’s usually some misunderstanding, or there’s some kind of distortion and how they see themselves that triggers insecurities. And so they put up a smokescreen saying, “Well, I don’t want to do this change because of that thing over there.” And leaders go, Hmm, that doesn’t make any sense. Because it doesn’t make sense! Because they’re not even in touch with their own real feelings about it. So even something like change, we want to be able to look at that at all levels, we want to look at it from an industry perspective, all the way down to each individual human, and ask, “How are you responding to change?”
Doris Nagel 12:29
That is difficult, because I think we human beings are pretty hard-wired to resist change, at least at some level of some aspects of our lives. Some of us might be more open than others to, for example, doing improv or stand up comedy. But you know, even the person that’s open to that might not be very open to something else. And it’s hard, because psychologically, we all like to have some certainty, and when a lot is changing, it’s very easy to fall back on old behaviors or old ways of thinking, because that’s kind of how we’re wired as human beings, right?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 13:29
Yes. We are extremely loss-averse, as humans. So evolutionarily speaking, if we were losing resources, we would literally fear for our survival. So we have a disproportionate fear response to the idea of losing something.
When change is imposed upon us, or it feels like somebody’s asking for change, our brains, first and foremost, go to “What am I going to lose?” And that then becomes we focus on that, disproportionately, with a fear response. Because we place at least five times value on what we lose as what we might gain. But we can choose as human beings, where we’re putting our attention and focus and so part of the invitation is, with every single change, you will have a loss and a gain or really losses and gains with every change? Even changes that you want, Doris, you might resist.
Doris Nagel 14:29
I’ll use myself as an example. I know I want to lose a few pounds, but there’s a lot of resistance there.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 14:34
Because there is there is a loss there. If you say I want to lose a few pounds, you know the gain or benefit is maybe my clothes fit better or I feel better about myself. But some of the loss might be I don’t get to eat some of the foods I love, or I don’t get to see in the same amount of time every morning because now I’m working out. There’s always pros and we get to choose we focus our energy. I like to encourage people to recognize that we don’t resist change, we fear loss. And there are always gains even in the faces in the face of losses. So let’s just make sure we’re getting enough brain space to look at the gains.
Doris Nagel 15:09
Yes. And sometimes the devil we know is easier to deal with then the devil, we don’t know. So, for example, I know how much I want that piece of chocolate cheesecake. I know how good it tastes because I’ve had it before. What I don’t know is whether people are going to notice that I’ve lost weight or how much better I’m going to feel if I lost those few pounds. Right? It’s a small example, but probably relatable for a lot of people.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 15:45
It’s a great example. And what you’re pulling on here about our desire for certainty is so true. There’s a saying that humans prefer certain misery over the misery of uncertainty. That’s very true. And it’s also evolutionary in nature.
And the reason I highlight some of the evolutionary basis for how we respond to things as human beings is, we’re largely past that. I know we’ve got a lot of problems in the world, but the vast majority of us day to day are not literally fearing for our survival. But our brains haven’t quite caught up yet.
And so we have these fear-based survival responses, when that’s not really what’s going on around us. And consequently, we have a lot of emotions that are not genuinely helping us anymore — they’re actually getting in our way. So to be able to rewire our brains to focus on things like the gains in the face of change is something we can do. We have that ability as humans, and it’s super cool,
Doris Nagel 16:46
We like to think of ourselves is highly evolved, but that crocodile brain is still busy working away, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 16:58
Uncertainty used to help us survive. If we could predict what was going to happen, we felt more comfortable in our in our space. And that’s true to a degree if you’re talking about the survival of a business, but not nearly to the degree that it used to be.
Doris Nagel 17:11 S
So let’s say there’s awareness, and even a vision among company leaders for the change they’d like to see in their culture, or culture they want to maintain as they grow. That’s probably not enough. What are some of the most common mistakes you’ve seen among company leaders as they try to do that?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 17:38
One of the biggest mistakes that I see, I’m going to pull on your example from before, where it’s like, oh, we need to change the culture? Well, let’s develop a new mission statement, right?
So that is rooted in some good stuff. If we have a really powerful statement or purpose as a company about why we exist, that’s actually really useful to drive engagement. And so it comes from a good place when leaders are trying to do that.
But, if they haven’t done some of the other work that I believe really needs to precede that, then whatever they come up with isn’t going to resonate.
Let me be more specific. Let’s say I have a team of leaders together in a room working to come up with this mission statement. But there’s all kinds of interpersonal tension and conflict that comes up or the absence of conflict, artificial harmony, three people are sitting in the corner thinking this is stupid, I don’t like this.
They don’t say that, because that’s a hard conversation. And people don’t want to have that hard conversation, or they don’t have the skills to effectively challenge the ideas that somebody else is bringing. And so what you get is something that not even the whole leadership team even believes in. You don’t actually have advocacy built into the whole process.
So you have to start there. You have to start with giving people the level of individual and personal self- awareness to know when they are shutting down healthy communication. They might be shutting it down by getting angry and hostile, or by withdrawing, and no longer participating in the conversation, or it might be agreeing with somebody when they don’t really agree.
We’re not honest as humans a shocking amount of the time! We really work hard to avoid hard conversations, and avoid conflict. And so if we haven’t built up the maturity in the organization, starting with the leadership, to be able to have those conversations where we get through resistance and we have healthy conflict, then we’re not going to have a product people really believe in.
Doris Nagel 19:33
As I was listening to you talk about this, I was reminded of my days back in corporate America, where the cognitive dissonance was truly amazing. And it’s something employees pick up on. By cognitive dissonance, I mean, employers would say “I really value your opinion, come to me and talk to me about anything.” And you swallow hard, you go talk to them, and then you get shut down. Or you hear about someone else who went to talk about it, and they got shut down, they got fired, they get demoted, whatever.
And so, there’s all these messages, oftentimes in organizations that cut across whatever your mouth might be saying, you know. There’s a lot of lip-flapping and, and, and people saying things, but are they walking the talk?
And that I think goes to the intentionality point you made earlier. How in the world do you get the CEO of a company or the management team to become more intentional about walking the talk that they say they want.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 20:58
There’s this great joke: how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change.
Doris Nagel 21:09
Funny!
Dr. Laura Gallaher 21:12
I did not do that in my standup comedy set, but I shared it with you here and your listeners. But there’s a lot of truth there.
The CEO, or any leader in an organization, has to feel motivated to make a change in their own behavior. One of the most damaging patterns or cycles that I see is a CEO who’s doing exactly what you’re saying –sort of lip service. They say, “Oh, yeah, come talk to me, I’m totally open,” but they don’t then demonstrate that. And then people gossip and triangulate. And they say, “Oh, don’t say that. He says that, but he’s not really open.” And so then nobody is actually going back to the CEO to give him or her that tough feedback, nobody’s doing it. And so this leader doesn’t have any reason to change, they’re not motivated to change. They’re not aware of an issue, or they get stuck in this mistaken belief that the issue lies with everybody else. “They’re not doing what I told them to do!” We get very lazy and our own defensiveness gets in the way.
We have to be able to disrupt the patterns that come up between people. One of the first things that we do when we work with teams is we disrupt whatever their current communication patterns are. Even if they’re reasonably good, everybody still falls into some dysfunctional communication patterns. It’s part of our human nature. So we really want to focus on building the skill, to have open dialogue and understand what it actually means to be open.
Doris Nagel 22:36
We’ve been talking about changing company culture, but I guess it might be more fun to help a small company establish its culture from the get-go. And I’m guessing that’s probably in some ways easier. But even then you have to try to maintain the culture you’ve established.
How do you maintain a culture? Let’s say you’re, you’re a startup, and you’re happy with the culture that you’ve created? How do you maintain that, as you grow?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 23:25
You want to be able to talk about it. You want to be able to articulate to other people, what, what is your culture. And so there are a couple ways to do that. The most common way is for people to describe what their core values are.
I really like the way Patrick Lencioni talks about values in his book, The Advantage, because part of what he does is he highlights kind of similar to what you’ve mentioned before, Doris, about when people sort of laugh in the corner or roll their eyes about “Oh, sure, those are our values. Okay.” He’s says, look, if you’re not already kicking butt at these values, then do not call them core values. You have to be real with yourself, you have to be real with your team and employees and customers. So if you’re not better than 90% of companies out there, at whatever this value supposedly is, then be real with yourself and with your team and call it an aspirational value. Acknowledge that it’s something that you want to become core, but it’s not core today.
And so knowing what your core values are, the next step is being able to translate those core values for people into behaviors so they know what does this actually looks like. So they know what it actually means in terms of how we talk to each other, how we communicate with each other. That’s really key. I think too many people assume that it should just be obvious, or people should just know, but putting words to it is really valuable.
And the other piece of this is that, whether you’re a startup or a big company, you want your culture to support the execution of strategy. That’s what I was saying before, in that culture is not just a piece of the game, it is the game. It’s the whole thing. So when you think about the strategy to be successful in the marketplace, that is going to require a certain set of beliefs and behaviors while you want to be able to build those into your culture. And so being able to talk about what your culture is through that more comprehensive and connected lens is really, really critical.
Doris Nagel 23:54
You mentioned something earlier that I want to come back to. You mentioned that you help people have difficult conversations. Talk a little bit more about what that means to you and why that’s so important for you.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 24:36
I think it has its roots in how I got started with my career. You mentioned in your introduction my experience working with NASA Kennedy Space Center. And of course, you know, when you look at a tragedy, like what happened there, there are so many factors — way more than what we can really talk about on the show. I don’t ever want people to misunderstand or oversimplify what happened, it’s way too easy to do that from the outside.
The thing that stood out to me so much as a psychologist, when I began working, there was, again, just as one piece of this whole story, there were engineers at NASA that were genuinely concerned, they were concerned about the safety of the astronauts.
People may not know the the technical elements, you know, what happened with Columbia is that a piece of foam fell off the external tank during the launch. And it struck the orbiter, which I didn’t know what that was before I worked there. So that’s the part that actually looks like the plane. And they didn’t know exactly where it hit, they weren’t quite sure, because it was pretty far into the flight. And so it was very high up. They had some video, but it was a bit grainy. And so there was a lot of uncertainty.
They didn’t know for sure that there was a hole in the wing. They didn’t find that out until after the accident, until it was too late. But they were worried about it. And there were some people who, despite their concerns, ultimately allowed themselves to be silenced. because there wasn’t a strong enough sense of psychological safety. For an engineer, for example, to be able to stand up in a meeting room, , filled with senior managers, and say, “You know, I think you’re wrong. I think this is dangerous. I don’t want you to dismiss this.” And then, continue to push it and continue to push it — that’s a very scary prospect, especially when there’s uncertainty.
Doris Nagel 26:31
Why was it so difficult?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 26:33
There were a lot of different factors. You know, NASA had seemingly a great culture — in 2002, it was rated the number one place to work in the federal government. And that’s been pretty consistent. NASA is a great place to work. And people are incredibly dedicated and they’re super smart. And so part of the challenge, my business partner, Dr. Philip made, who was leading that culture change initiative to start with, part of his challenge was, how do we figure this out? Because we’re a good company, we’re a good organization, like, what’s the deal here, and it comes back to the intentions and impact thing. So there were several things that were working against them that they weren’t quite aware of. So the simple idea of the foam falling off the tank and hitting the orbiter that had happened before. And it had never been catastrophic. Most of the time, when foam had fallen off of the tank and hit the orbiter. It was in the underbelly, where it had a much stronger, you know, reinforced carbon carbon tiles. And it was something that they would deal with when they were processing the orbiter for the next flight. It was never something that was destructive and catastrophic upon reentry before. So it’s this normalization of deviation. It’s like, hey, this isn’t supposed to happen. But it’s happened before, it’s never been a problem. So there’s there’s that as an element.
There’s also the simple fact that there are so many anomalies — in every shuttle mission they were looking at least at dozens, if not hundreds of things that had happened during the flight to try to understand, okay, what happened? What can we learn from this? Does this create a problem? It was never just like, well, there’s one big thing that might be a problem, do we ignore it? Or do we talk about it, there’s always so much that’s going on.
And another challenge that was working against them is they did not have a clear path. They were aware that maybe there was a problem. But even if they had discovered there actually was a large hole in the wing, they did not have any plan as to what to do about that. And so even subconsciously, that can create a block for somebody: if I feel like I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do to try to solve a problem, I might subconsciously convince myself that it’s not a problem. And I think that’s at least one part of what was happening.
And of course, you’ve just got so many influences on these human beings who are trying to make these decisions. At the time, the safety and engineering functions were underneath the program. And the most senior managers for the program are primarily concerned about scheduling and budget. So that was an organization design flaw that they needed to change in order to give safety engineering an equal seat at the table. That helps with that psychological safety piece, giving a person a sense that they have enough of a voice that they can speak up here and I, if I’m the director of engineering, I’m not going to be as afraid to speak up against the director of the shuttle program as I am if I am two or three levels down in the organization, right?
There’s just human dynamics that happen around power plus the uncertainty, nobody was sure. Nobody was confident 100% that this was going to be a disaster. They were just concerned that it might be
We want to create psychological safety in every organization. So that when people have fears, they are listened to listened to enough that they can actually articulate it well enough that others might understand. I mean, most of us have had the experience of somebody describing something, but they’re not doing it very well. And so it’s confusing. And then we don’t really listen very well, and don’t get what they were talking about. Most of us know that experience.
And so that’s part of what was happening, if the engineers weren’t articulating it in a way that the managers could understand it well enough, they would just be dismissive.
And so being able to set aside any ego and arrogance, any I think I know better than you or I don’t have time to listen to this, and really be able to create space to trust the human beings that you’ve hired into your organization. So they can have those conversations, they can feel safe enough to disagree. That’s a key example of a hard conversation. And obviously the most extreme example. But there are huge implications, financial implications, and other organizations have safety implications as well.
So we really want to have all those hard conversations.
Doris Nagel 30:57
I’m also thinking there’s this organizational creep that often happens. For example, I was talking with a couple of my financial friends about Enron, and somebody who didn’t really know much about finance just said, “Oh, this is criminal, this is awful.” But my financial friends explained that most organizations don’t usually rush headlong off a cliff. Usually, they tiptoe their way there.
So, a decision might be made year-end or at the end of a quarter and the company isn’t making its numbers. So, managers decide that even though they’re kind of close to the line, they’ll decide to book something one way which will make the numbers look better. They are under tremendous pressure to make these numbers, and might even lose their jobs if they don’t make the numbers. So, they justify doing it just this once and fix it the next quarter. But then the next quarter comes, it’s like, we got to bend it just a little bit more. And the the way out is always just around the corner. And in fact, it’s often just the little decisions that build upon each other, eventually taking the company where it never really wanted to be in the first place. There are a lot of these decisions, right?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 32:10
Right. And it’s because we’ve got very strong psychological defense mechanisms built up around us.
There’s something called the fundamental attribution error. My favorite example of this is if I’m driving in traffic, and somebody cuts me off, the fundamental attribution error says that I am more likely to attribute their behavior of cutting me off as them just being a jerk, right? That’s just who they are.
But if I do the same behavior, I’m far more likely to give myself the benefit of the doubt and think, well, I’m just really busy. I’m not normally like this. And thinking feeds into what you’re saying, Doris, with your example. If we start to go down a dangerous road, we make these really strong excuses in our own minds about how I’m not normally like this, or this is just for this purpose, or I’m actually really good person, and we lie to ourselves without realizing it. And that that same thing stops us from learning from history.
Anytime I talk about the NASA example, with Columbia, I want people to be able to put themselves in the human shoes of the people making the choices and see how they could also make those choices instead of going, gosh, what’s wrong with those people? Because that’s where we really miss the boat — when we think that we’re not susceptible to the same thing.
Doris Nagel 33:30
So how do you and Gallaher Edge break through some of those barriers to help people have the difficult conversations that need to happen in most organizations starting, quite honestly, at the highest level?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 33:47
We help people become aware of what their own defense mechanisms are. Because we all have them. And we’re very creative. As human beings, we have lots of different ways that we, we show our own defensiveness, and we don’t always recognize it for what it is.
So we start by helping people become aware that everybody has these defenses as part of being human. Congratulations! So let’s all just get past that and acknowledge we’ve got them.
And then we help each person figure out what is it that they’re really defending against. Because it’s always internal. It’s always some kind of internal fear that they have about themselves that they’re actually defending against. It’s never that they’re defending themselves against somebody else.
And once they can work through, what am I defending myself against, then they realize that whatever it is that they want to say to somebody is not nearly so scary anymore. So, if I find myself judging somebody else, because I think that they’re doing a poor job, or I feel like somebody is just lazy. So that’s me being a critic. And a critic is a form of defensiveness.
So really what’s happening? Let’s say that I’m a leader, and they’re an employee, and I’m like, oh, they’re just lazy, like, how can I possibly have this conversation with them? They’re going to shut down. I can never say that to them.
Doris Nagel 34:58
Let me stop you. You said, that’s a form of defensiveness, you’re being defensive if you feel somebody is not pulling their weight on the team.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 35:08
When I say somebody being defensive, it means that they are making the other person’s behavior about them without realizing it. And that’s a painful thing to think about. They distort how they see the world. They don’t have to think of it that way.
I’ll be more specific. If I’m a leader, and I have an employee that I think is lazy, subconsciously, it’s probably triggering all kinds of internal insecurities about my capability as a leader, right? Like, am I not motivating enough? Am I not clear enough that I do a bad job in hiring, you know, like, what I am failing in some kind of way as a leader, but that’s a painful thing to think about. I don’t want to think about that. I want to think about myself in a really positive light. And so without even allowing myself to become aware of those internal insecurities and fears about my own incompetence, as a leader, instead, I distort the world around me. And I simply apply a label to this person, and I’m critical of them. Right, and there’s like this edge, it’s a judgment, I’m not simply noticing their behavior and the gap between how they’re showing up and how I want them to show up, I am judging them. Because when I do that, I get to discharge some of the pain that’s coming up from me, but I don’t know any of this is happening. Does that make sense?
Doris Nagel 36:21
Yeah. I’m just thinking you probably can help people in their personal lives!
But how do you become aware of it? How do you help people understand that? You know, the joke is, it’s all about me, you know, we’re the me generation. And yet, what you’re saying is, it really IS all about me when you’re looking at yourself under the microscope, because all you’re doing oftentimes is projecting something you’re feeling or fearing or seeing on to other people or a situation.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 37:05
Yes, that’s one part of it. Projection is one piece of it. And there’s other ways that these things can relate as well. So one of the sayings that we use a lot, is “What bugs me about you, is really about me,”and that’s calling out defensiveness.
If I feel emotionally triggered, frustrated, angry, insert word here, and that I’m directing that towards you, what’s really happening is there’s something about the way that you’re behaving, that’s triggering part of my brain. I’m making that about me – thinking for example, “If you liked me more, you wouldn’t do this to me.” Or “If you thought that I was more competent in my job, you wouldn’t treat me this way.” Or “If I was more important to you, you wouldn’t act like this.”
And so there’s some kind of subconscious story that’s going on for us a lot of the time. And that’s actually what we’re responding to in the world. What we want to do is help people understand that story in their head. And we do that through experiences, that are designed to elicit emotion around these things. And then something that we do — that we almost never do in real life — is we might have a five minute interaction between humans. And then we spend 45 minutes talking about those five minutes. So we go super deep into what was happening. What were you thinking? What did you say? What was your intention? Well, what did you get, and when we really start to break it down, we realize how many little tiny disruptions come up, or all of the ways that we’re not being fully open and honest with each other, and how it does impact the other person. So that’s a big part of how we help people see themselves differently, is we create so much more space. You know, experience is not the best teacher. Reflected experience is the best teacher. And we do that to a pretty big extreme to help people understand their own emotional responses to things.
Doris Nagel 38:56
I can envision how those kind of group exercises help coworkers understand each other better. I can just imagine thinking, I’m sure you felt x and they’re like, that isn’t how I felt at all. And you’re like, oh, wow, I wouldn’t have never thought that this person would be hurt by that or would be thinking those kinds of thoughts, you know?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 39:26
Yes. And that level of self awareness makes it easier for us to have conversations where we can be self- accountable. Let’s say you said something doors, and I felt offended. Instead of me thinking, oh, gosh, she’s such a jerk, I can be self-accountable and self-aware and acknowledge that that’s my own stuff. You know, if you said something and I had emotional reaction to it, I get to own my own feelings. I get to own the story in my head about it because that’s what I’m responding to.
And it doesn’t mean I don’t talk to you about it. It means when I talk to you about it, I am very clear that I am doing sharing with you my experience, and I’m inviting you to share your experience. So we can talk, you know, and cut through the noise, and cut through a lot of the BS that often happens in those conversations, where we’re trying so hard to not hurt each other’s feelings or shut each other down.
You talk about your experience, I’m gonna talk about my experience, yours is yours. And I want to hear what that is. Because I value you as a co worker, and it’s going to help our relationship if we can co create this together. And that’s what makes those conversations not so hard.
Doris Nagel 40:29
I can especially relate to what you’re talking about, because one of the things I focus on is helping organizations partner more effectively. And so a lot of what you’re saying is totally congruent with the world of effective partnering.
In that world, people often say, “I want you to be my partner.” But they don’t define what they mean, and so one party has one set of ideas and the other one has different ones. And because there was never clear agreement, when the other one does all these things that cut against what they’re saying, then people get angry and disappointed.
One of the thing that I advocate, with people trying to partner or more effectively is a set of ground rules where things can be openly brought out. You haven’t talked about that. But I’m guessing that must be part of your engagements with clients, because without them, genuine attempts to have difficult conversations can really go south. I can envision saying, “Well, I felt this way, and I’m owning this,” but if there aren’t ground rules, the other person might just say, “Well, yeah, I’m glad you recognize you’re a jerk.” And then it’s becomes really hard to trust and try anything different. It’s not helpful for you to be vulnerable, if that gift is not openly received and responded to in kind, right?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 41:52
Right. We want to honor vulnerability, whenever it’s expressed, we want to thank somebody for doing something vulnerable, because it’s taking a risk. And it’s actually showing, hey, I’m trusting you in this moment, you know, to hear me and to not respond with judgment or not use this vulnerability against me. So it’s actually a pretty beautiful thing that we can do as humans.
But unfortunately, we don’t always honor others’ vulnerability, if it still triggers. But that’s what the psychological safety is all about, you know, how can I achieve a level of self-acceptance for me that when you’re talking about something, I’m not making it about me anymore? Right? This isn’t about me, I want to understand what you’re saying. So I can learn more about you. And I can understand you, and I’m not going to make it about me, because I’m okay. I’m good.
Doris Nagel 42:38
I’m curious, in terms of your business, and the kind of clients you help. I’m going to guess there are certain clients that probably may call and say they want your help, but maybe aren’t the best fit. Talk about the kind of clients that really blossom with your help and guidance, and the ones that may not really be worth your time and effort.
Dr. Laura Gallaher 43:12
One of the patterns I’ve noticed is that leaders might approach me with a general theme. They don’t use these exact words, but the general theme is, “You know, I don’t know if my leaders are quite who I need to take this company to the next level, can you fix them?” When a leader starts with this, I don’t discount them straightaway. What I’ll do, though, in that first interaction is find something real that I can share with them as feedback about how I am experiencing them. And I gauge how they respond to that.
So when I am using all of the tools when I am open and vulnerable, and I express to somebody how I experienced them, and ask a question about, you know, how, if that’s true for anybody else, how might that impact their effectiveness as a leader or things like that? I see how do they do with that. Do they freak out? Are they defensive? If they’re defensive, I give them one more shot. And I’ll say, you know, the story in my head is you’re feeling defensive right now, it seems like I’ve upset you. I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you. I do want to talk openly with you about how we can solve this together. What do you want?
And if those two attempts don’t bring about a shift in their energy and their receptivity, then they’re not a great fit for me. And if they if they’re open, and they will actually respond to the tools and the concepts and the ideas when I just use them, then they’re probably going to be a great fit.
A really common piece of feedback that we’ve received is that the leader will say, you know, I really did kind of go into this thinking this was for all for my team, not for me. But I realize now how much I needed this!
Those are the best clients. And the ones who are pretty stuck in the “Leave me alone, I don’t want to deal with the details, I don’t want to be involved or participate, just go work with them,” I actually won’t work with those leaders. I won’t do it. I think maybe in the beginning, I took one or two clients where I thought I would be able to get them to step into this. And I realized really fast that that’s not going to work, they have to be willing to invest the time and the emotional energy into doing the work, they’ve got to lead. They’ve got to model ahead of everybody else for it to really be successful.
Doris Nagel 45:31
You mentioned how your NASA experience formed your passion for this area. But how and when did you decide to go into business for yourself?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 45:45
I started out thinking I would just do some executive coaching on the side. And I got connected with this really great leader in the Orlando area who wanted more than just coaching, he wanted help with his organization. And so it’s not the only variable, but it actually kind of grew faster than I anticipated. And when I was facing the prospect of being at NASA for a very long time, and being asked to shift and move into different functions and do different kinds of work, because that’s something that NASA expects of its leaders. And I think that’s very important, it’s important to not be siloed, and then move up into leadership, it’s important that you get a lot of different experience, but I was like, I really liked doing this work. And I care more about being able to do the work that I love to do, than I care about working specifically for NASA. And so when I felt like I had a good chance to really go out with my own company and get to work with all kinds of different organizations, I was so excited to do that. And I was working with pretty small businesses at first, you know, 20 people, 50 people. And I was working with the CEOs and the C suites. And so I was getting to experience and contribute to full culture change throughout the whole company, because it was, you know, 20 people, or 50 people. And it was so exciting and so rewarding. And it made all of the extra stuff that goes along with being a business owner and entrepreneur totally worth it.
Doris Nagel 47:16
I’m sure it must be very rewarding. I have no doubt that there are quantitative measurements that come along with cultural improvement — it’s not just about feeling better, or having less tension in the workplace. I am sure that there are all sorts of trickle down or trickle up effects when you improve it company culture, right?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 47:43
Absolutely. And I’ll share some numbers with you. But it’s funny — up to this point, I have experienced an abundance of leaders who they already believe that it matters, they already believe that it has an impact, they’re not coming to me saying, “Okay, prove to me with the numbers that I’m going to get a return on this investment.”
You know, if you think about concentric circles, there are so many leaders who already understand they know how much culture matters, how the human beings feel in the organization, they don’t need me to try to prove it with data.
Eventually, perhaps we’ll get to the point where I’m talking to leaders where I first have to prove to them that they should care about culture and should care about their people, and then I’ll actually help them with it. But right now, there are so many leaders who already understand that it’s important, they’re just looking for help.
But anyway, my favorite set of statistics to quote from when we talk about culture, comes from this longitudinal study that was conducted where they were looking at ineffective cultures and effective cultures and the differences over an 11 year period and compared the two when it came to their increase in net income and revenue and stock price. And the numbers are they’re so big, it’s kind of hard to even imagine. The companies with ineffective cultures over an 11 year period, their net income increased 1%. doesn’t sound great. It’s an increase, but over 11 years 1% — that’s a little rough. But companies with effective cultures grew their net income 756%.
Doris Nagel 49:12
What??
Dr. Laura Gallaher 49:12
Yes, over an 11 year period. So when things are humming, it makes a huge difference. Huge. It’s hard to even fathom that number. But it’s a really, really big difference. And it definitely has a compounding effect over time. So I think sometimes leaders are afraid once they understand culture a little better and how much intentionality is required. Sometimes they’re afraid of putting the time in, but they they’re under estimating how much time and money they’re losing when they don’t.
Doris Nagel 49:41
Great point. We’re almost out of time. Laura, how can people reach you if they’re interested in learning more about culture or about what Gallaher Edge does, or maybe just want to brainstorm with you?
Dr. Laura Gallaher 50:00
The best way to get in touch is if you go to our website gallaheredge.com. When you get there, there’s a bunch of different ways that you can get in touch with me there, my favorite of which is our, our membership site. If you go to the join page, you can join for free. And we have all these five-minute videos, like over 105 minute videos, about all these different ideas. And anybody can go there and learn much more.
And then once you’re a member, we do these monthly webinars and office hours where you will get direct access to me. And that’s all totally free. Because I love this stuff. I love talking about it. And I genuinely believe that this stuff makes the world a better place. I know a lot of people say that and it sounds really corny, but I believe in it for me and what we do at Gallaher Edge. So I would welcome conversations with anybody.
Doris Nagel 50:49
Great! Well, I’m definitely going to go and check that out and sign up. It sounds like a phenomenal resource.
Laura, I want to thank you so much for being on the show this week, it was really a delight having you!
Dr. Laura Gallaher 51:07
Thank you so much, Doris. I really had fun.
Doris Nagel 51:08
I did as well.
That’s our show for this week, folks. Thanks so much for listening. And thank you especially again to our guest today, Dr. Laura Gallaher, founder and CEO of Gallaher Edge.
You can find more helpful information and resources on my website at globalocityservices.com. There’s a library there are free blogs, schools, podcasts and other resources for entrepreneurs.
Because this show is for you my door is always open. I’d love to hear from you! You can email me anytime at dnagel@lakesradio.org. I promise I’ll respond, and the show will be better for your input. Be sure to join me next Saturday at 11am Central noon Eastern time.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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