so my first job right out of college was
teaching 14 through 30 day long
mountaineering courses for outward-bound
our goal was climbing 13 and 14,000 foot
Peaks just like mountain opals and if
you think about it our bounds business
model is pretty wild let’s take a group
of random completely inexperienced
strangers let’s give them ice axes and
heavy backpacks let’s venture deep into
Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and then
let’s tie into some ropes and climb to
some pointy summits so essentially the
customer you are paying them to help you
face down but for many people is the
hardest physical and emotional challenge
of your life now on one of my early
courses I had the student let’s call her
Barbra middle-aged from the Midwest
never done anything like this before in
her entire life
and we’re coming down from this 13,000
foot peak and we get to an area where
the rock is really fractured it looks
sort of like this I mean basically the
mountain summit is a giant pile of
chassis rubble you know and everything
Barbara touches Wiggles every foot she
places wobbles
and she freezes I mean she’s too afraid
to take another step too afraid to even
sit she’s totally paralyzed with fear it
was her instructor I’m trying to help
her but I’m just 22 years old and I have
no idea what I’m doing I mean like none
right so I’m throwing the kitchen sink
at her I’m dropping Martin Luther King
quote I am doing anything I can to help
this woman and it’s not working and then
the other students they see what’s going
on right so they start coming over and
they start helping her encouraging her
believing in her and their fright in
front of us Barbara has this beautiful
beautiful moment where she closes her
eyes she takes and holds this deep
breath and we just see her absorb all
that feedback wrestle with her fear
and then she lets it all go when she
opened her eyes she was able to take a
step and then another step and roll like
yeah you know like cheered her on you
know it was absolutely incredible you
know so looking back instructing for
outward-bound was incredible teacher
about the power of fear and how the
right teams can help us push past limits
of what we believe possible limits that
are usually self-imposed and Barbara I
gotta tell you at the end of that course
when she came down from those mountains
she was totally transformed she was
physically fit mentally strong and
excited to tackle any challenge that
life put in front of her and just like
Barbara when I came down from those
mountains at the end I too was
transformed because my time without
rebound teaching for them was the first
time I felt truly connected with the
people around me was the first time I
felt that what I did truly mattered and
ever since then I’ve been obsessed with
creating those feelings in every group I
belong to from my personal life to my
professional life but as much as I
cherished my time without rebound I know
it couldn’t spend my entire life up in
the mountains so the day came when I
traded my ice axe for a college
classroom now we all know America’s K
through 12 educational system is
struggling but higher education is to
approx colleges and universities
approximately 40% of freshmen don’t
graduate in a community colleges the
rates are even worse graduates they’re
in the minority so being in the trenches
with literally thousands of students has
shown me that fear helps explain why now
every teacher I work with has been in
this situation every teacher I know not
just work with they you’re about to hand
out an exam and you ask the class are
there any questions
no hands go up sir like yeah they got
this
yet when you’re grading the exams you’re
like huh you know it’s a significant
portion of the class underperforms or
fails and that’s so discouraging for the
teacher so I spent so much time asked
myself why why why are these students
raising their hands why aren’t they
asking questions and what I came to
realize is that for many students the
answer is fear just like Barbara they’re
anxious and hesitant to act but instead
of the mountains they’re worried about
being judged and punished because if you
stop and think about it if you raise
that hand and say hey teach I don’t get
it you risk the other people in that
room judging you and thinking wow you
are stupid I mean stop and really think
about that many students would rather
underperform
on an exam than risk being perceived of
as ignorant so I started asking myself
how do I take what I learned about here
up in these mountains down into our
everyday lives and I’ve been wrestling
with that question for almost 20 years
now as a college professor as a
corporate trainer and consultant and
meanwhile still mountain guiding on many
weekends
and what I’ve discovered and develop
some tools that really work and I’m on
the stage today because the need for
these tools is enormous
dysfunctional groups they’re everywhere
let’s look at the business world for
example just like students if employees
are worried about being judged or
punished for what they say or do they’ll
hold back they’ll only share the ideas
they feel most comfortable with
I mean I’ve ever noticed that how it
meetings people are hesitant to bring up
their concerns
yet afterwards behind closed doors they
freely do so at length fear and fear
impacts innovation as well because
innovation by its very definition
requires risk-taking requires putting
out half-baked ideas that maybe with a
little work could be the next artificial
heart iPhone
or YouTube now classrooms workplaces and
the mountains are three very different
contexts
where I’ve experienced group dynamics
and their challenges may look different
but they feel the same and that’s why
these tools to overcome these things are
so Universal now the tools themselves
aren’t revolutionary there’s things you
intuitively know work but here’s the
challenge there’s this fascinating gap
between what we know and what we do so
let’s close that gap so I’d like to
start with this story of inspirational
leadership a few years ago Volkswagen
decides it’s going to dominate the car
market in the United States by
developing a diesel engine that sips gas
like a Prius it accelerates like a
performance car do you know what they
got those of you familiar with this
story now one of the largest buybacks in
automotive history and an estimated loss
of 30 billion with a B now I owned one
of those Volkswagens and personally I
thought this buyback was awesome cuz I
made thousands on that car I mean who
makes money buying a car I wish I don’t
two of those things but truth is I was
angry at Volkswagen and I want to
understand why this happened according
to New York Times reporting the group of
engineers in Germany whose job it was to
create this miracle engine felt like
they’d been given an impossible task and
they worried about their job so much
they collectively decided as a group it
was better for them to cheat the
admissions test and break the law then
disappoint corporate leadership so the
root cause of the scandal here now
academics have been studying this fear
for a while and they even have a term
for it they call it psychological safety
and the most established definition of
psychological safety comes from the
Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson
and notice her definition look at these
words confidence embarrass reject
punished these are about emotions these
are emotional words and then
psychological safety is about a feeling
that feeling that Barbara and I and so
many others felt at our bound that
empowered us to be our best selves so
question is how do we create that
feeling this is our first tool now our
bound does an amazing job with this and
here’s one way to take it down from the
mountains you know I spent the first
seven years of my college teaching
English classes and at first day one you
know felt like meeting with your lawyer
I mean it had out all these documents
you know of course God syllabus you know
grading rules policies and then I found
myself wondering why some students
didn’t come back for day two I mean
right so I threw that all out now day
one is about relationship building I get
students talking to each other not about
high fear topics about low fear stuff
you know like for example was your
favorite restaurant and you know if you
could wake up with any superpower what
would you want and why because once you
get them talking about low fear stuff
it’s so much easier to transition to the
high fear stuff you know where they’re
asking hard questions taking risks and
giving authentic feedback interestingly
Google discovered the same thing they
spent five years and twenty million
dollars trying to perfect the perfect
team Charles Duhigg has done some
fabulous reporting on it and their
methodology was to analyze the personal
data of their employees and nobody is
better at finding patterns and big data
than Google and what they discovered
mattered is not the stuff you would
think the number one thing that
determined a team success regardless of
what the team did is psychological
safety is this and that makes sense
because these are fundamental human
needs so now at Google
according to Duhigg when they have a
meeting they don’t just launch right
into the issue at hand they spend a few
minutes relationship building you know
for example if folks might share a risk
every year people die in avalanches
people I’ve known I had a sobering close
call myself and it’s really interesting
we used to think of avalanches as a
physics problem why did the snow slide
down the mountain now we think of
avalanches it’s a group dynamics problem
how did a group of people incorrectly
assess the risk and make bad choices
because it turns out in most Avalanche
accidents there’s several common
behavioral patterns and a researchers
call one of those patterns the expert
halo if you perceive that somebody in
your group is an experts and knows more
than you you’re much more likely to not
ask questions to not express your
thoughts you hold back just like these
silent students looks different feels
the same so the question is what do we
do to combat the expert halo how do we
get folks to speak up psychologists have
an answer for us and it comes out of
research called the Asch conformity
experiment and in the experiment they
show a group of people a slide similar
to this and they ask them which line on
the right is the same length as the line
on the left seems simple right but
here’s the trick everybody in the group
are paid actors except for one there’s
only one test subject and these actors
they lie the first actor says oh yeah
number two is the same length as a line
on the left and the next actor goes oh
yeah line two in down line two two two
two until they get to the test subject
and then what the question is what will
the test subjects say the conclusion 32
percent of test subjects will conform
and say number two as well stop and
think about that 1/3 of people will
publicly state something that is
obviously blatantly not true why you
guessed it
fear so interestingly they’ve done
variations on the test and in one of
those variations one of the actors just
one will tell the truth and in that case
they found that almost all the test
subjects will say that you have the
courage to say the truth as well
conformity drops to almost zero so
here’s what we need to do have the
courage to speak your truth when you do
you give others the courage and
permission to do the same they will
follow your lead conformity drops to
almost zero and that responsibility lies
on all of us to be that first person in
leaders you have an especially important
role here because your choices either
create that culture of fear think
Volkswagen or that culture of
psychological safety and openness so
when that first person speaks up or ask
that question don’t punish them because
if you do there won’t be a second person
instead celebrate that person that brave
soul you know Thank You Johnny I’m so
glad you asked that question final tool
it seems so simple but the one of the
most toxic things to group performance
is to silence the voice of its members
and it happened so unconsciously nobody
intends for the expert halo nobody
intends for the Asch conformity effect
nobody intends for the natural dominance
of extroverts but we’ve all been there
hearing Jonny talk a lot go on and on
and on so we need to be incredibly
intentional here and one of the ways to
do this is called conversational turn
taking some folks at outrebound use a
talking stick you know I in class
debates often use a duct tape ball of
power you know
turns out the Supreme Court does the
same thing they believe in
conversational turn-taking
I don’t know if they use a prop but
according to Justice Stephen Breyer when
they adjourned behind closed doors to
deliberate a case they have a rule
nobody speaks twice until everyone has
spoken once and if that helps the
Supreme Court decide the most
controversial legal issues of our day I
guarantee it will help it your meeting
too so stepping back it’s often said
that fear is a powerful motivator but if
we stop and think about it that’s a word
of caution because what fear motivates
is holding back and poor team
performance you know so we need to be
intentional about creating psychological
safety you know we need to you know
because our default mode is fear of
judgment and Punishment our default mode
is holding back in conformity our
default mode is a group being dominated
by a few experts or extroverts our
senior members that gap between what we
personally I’m forever grateful for my
time without rebound it showed me how
powerfully fear holds teams back holds
us back holds me back and because of the
teams I’ve found and cultivated my life
has been filled and blessed with these
amazing experiences you know climbing
Denali creating transformational
experiences for students and outfitting
Buddhist monasteries in Tibet with solar
empower I invite you to do the same
because through your power to choose
which groups you belong to and influence
how those groups are function you can
create any life you want the one that feels right to you thank you
teaching 14 through 30 day long
mountaineering courses for outward-bound
our goal was climbing 13 and 14,000 foot
Peaks just like mountain opals and if
you think about it our bounds business
model is pretty wild let’s take a group
of random completely inexperienced
strangers let’s give them ice axes and
heavy backpacks let’s venture deep into
Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and then
let’s tie into some ropes and climb to
some pointy summits so essentially the
customer you are paying them to help you
face down but for many people is the
hardest physical and emotional challenge
of your life now on one of my early
courses I had the student let’s call her
Barbra middle-aged from the Midwest
never done anything like this before in
her entire life
and we’re coming down from this 13,000
foot peak and we get to an area where
the rock is really fractured it looks
sort of like this I mean basically the
mountain summit is a giant pile of
chassis rubble you know and everything
Barbara touches Wiggles every foot she
places wobbles
and she freezes I mean she’s too afraid
to take another step too afraid to even
sit she’s totally paralyzed with fear it
was her instructor I’m trying to help
her but I’m just 22 years old and I have
no idea what I’m doing I mean like none
right so I’m throwing the kitchen sink
at her I’m dropping Martin Luther King
quote I am doing anything I can to help
this woman and it’s not working and then
the other students they see what’s going
on right so they start coming over and
they start helping her encouraging her
believing in her and their fright in
front of us Barbara has this beautiful
beautiful moment where she closes her
eyes she takes and holds this deep
breath and we just see her absorb all
that feedback wrestle with her fear
and then she lets it all go when she
opened her eyes she was able to take a
step and then another step and roll like
yeah you know like cheered her on you
know it was absolutely incredible you
know so looking back instructing for
outward-bound was incredible teacher
about the power of fear and how the
right teams can help us push past limits
of what we believe possible limits that
are usually self-imposed and Barbara I
gotta tell you at the end of that course
when she came down from those mountains
she was totally transformed she was
physically fit mentally strong and
excited to tackle any challenge that
life put in front of her and just like
Barbara when I came down from those
mountains at the end I too was
transformed because my time without
rebound teaching for them was the first
time I felt truly connected with the
people around me was the first time I
felt that what I did truly mattered and
ever since then I’ve been obsessed with
creating those feelings in every group I
belong to from my personal life to my
professional life but as much as I
cherished my time without rebound I know
it couldn’t spend my entire life up in
the mountains so the day came when I
traded my ice axe for a college
classroom now we all know America’s K
through 12 educational system is
struggling but higher education is to
approx colleges and universities
approximately 40% of freshmen don’t
graduate in a community colleges the
rates are even worse graduates they’re
in the minority so being in the trenches
with literally thousands of students has
shown me that fear helps explain why now
every teacher I work with has been in
this situation every teacher I know not
just work with they you’re about to hand
out an exam and you ask the class are
there any questions
no hands go up sir like yeah they got
this
yet when you’re grading the exams you’re
like huh you know it’s a significant
portion of the class underperforms or
fails and that’s so discouraging for the
teacher so I spent so much time asked
myself why why why are these students
raising their hands why aren’t they
asking questions and what I came to
realize is that for many students the
answer is fear just like Barbara they’re
anxious and hesitant to act but instead
of the mountains they’re worried about
being judged and punished because if you
stop and think about it if you raise
that hand and say hey teach I don’t get
it you risk the other people in that
room judging you and thinking wow you
are stupid I mean stop and really think
about that many students would rather
underperform
on an exam than risk being perceived of
as ignorant so I started asking myself
how do I take what I learned about here
up in these mountains down into our
everyday lives and I’ve been wrestling
with that question for almost 20 years
now as a college professor as a
corporate trainer and consultant and
meanwhile still mountain guiding on many
weekends
and what I’ve discovered and develop
some tools that really work and I’m on
the stage today because the need for
these tools is enormous
dysfunctional groups they’re everywhere
let’s look at the business world for
example just like students if employees
are worried about being judged or
punished for what they say or do they’ll
hold back they’ll only share the ideas
they feel most comfortable with
I mean I’ve ever noticed that how it
meetings people are hesitant to bring up
their concerns
yet afterwards behind closed doors they
freely do so at length fear and fear
impacts innovation as well because
innovation by its very definition
requires risk-taking requires putting
out half-baked ideas that maybe with a
little work could be the next artificial
heart iPhone
or YouTube now classrooms workplaces and
the mountains are three very different
contexts
where I’ve experienced group dynamics
and their challenges may look different
but they feel the same and that’s why
these tools to overcome these things are
so Universal now the tools themselves
aren’t revolutionary there’s things you
intuitively know work but here’s the
challenge there’s this fascinating gap
between what we know and what we do so
let’s close that gap so I’d like to
start with this story of inspirational
leadership a few years ago Volkswagen
decides it’s going to dominate the car
market in the United States by
developing a diesel engine that sips gas
like a Prius it accelerates like a
performance car do you know what they
got those of you familiar with this
story now one of the largest buybacks in
automotive history and an estimated loss
of 30 billion with a B now I owned one
of those Volkswagens and personally I
thought this buyback was awesome cuz I
made thousands on that car I mean who
makes money buying a car I wish I don’t
two of those things but truth is I was
angry at Volkswagen and I want to
understand why this happened according
to New York Times reporting the group of
engineers in Germany whose job it was to
create this miracle engine felt like
they’d been given an impossible task and
they worried about their job so much
they collectively decided as a group it
was better for them to cheat the
admissions test and break the law then
disappoint corporate leadership so the
root cause of the scandal here now
academics have been studying this fear
for a while and they even have a term
for it they call it psychological safety
and the most established definition of
psychological safety comes from the
Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson
and notice her definition look at these
words confidence embarrass reject
punished these are about emotions these
are emotional words and then
psychological safety is about a feeling
that feeling that Barbara and I and so
many others felt at our bound that
empowered us to be our best selves so
question is how do we create that
feeling this is our first tool now our
bound does an amazing job with this and
here’s one way to take it down from the
mountains you know I spent the first
seven years of my college teaching
English classes and at first day one you
know felt like meeting with your lawyer
I mean it had out all these documents
you know of course God syllabus you know
grading rules policies and then I found
myself wondering why some students
didn’t come back for day two I mean
right so I threw that all out now day
one is about relationship building I get
students talking to each other not about
high fear topics about low fear stuff
you know like for example was your
favorite restaurant and you know if you
could wake up with any superpower what
would you want and why because once you
get them talking about low fear stuff
it’s so much easier to transition to the
high fear stuff you know where they’re
asking hard questions taking risks and
giving authentic feedback interestingly
Google discovered the same thing they
spent five years and twenty million
dollars trying to perfect the perfect
team Charles Duhigg has done some
fabulous reporting on it and their
methodology was to analyze the personal
data of their employees and nobody is
better at finding patterns and big data
than Google and what they discovered
mattered is not the stuff you would
think the number one thing that
determined a team success regardless of
what the team did is psychological
safety is this and that makes sense
because these are fundamental human
needs so now at Google
according to Duhigg when they have a
meeting they don’t just launch right
into the issue at hand they spend a few
minutes relationship building you know
for example if folks might share a risk
every year people die in avalanches
people I’ve known I had a sobering close
call myself and it’s really interesting
we used to think of avalanches as a
physics problem why did the snow slide
down the mountain now we think of
avalanches it’s a group dynamics problem
how did a group of people incorrectly
assess the risk and make bad choices
because it turns out in most Avalanche
accidents there’s several common
behavioral patterns and a researchers
call one of those patterns the expert
halo if you perceive that somebody in
your group is an experts and knows more
than you you’re much more likely to not
ask questions to not express your
thoughts you hold back just like these
silent students looks different feels
the same so the question is what do we
do to combat the expert halo how do we
get folks to speak up psychologists have
an answer for us and it comes out of
research called the Asch conformity
experiment and in the experiment they
show a group of people a slide similar
to this and they ask them which line on
the right is the same length as the line
on the left seems simple right but
here’s the trick everybody in the group
are paid actors except for one there’s
only one test subject and these actors
they lie the first actor says oh yeah
number two is the same length as a line
on the left and the next actor goes oh
yeah line two in down line two two two
two until they get to the test subject
and then what the question is what will
the test subjects say the conclusion 32
percent of test subjects will conform
and say number two as well stop and
think about that 1/3 of people will
publicly state something that is
obviously blatantly not true why you
guessed it
fear so interestingly they’ve done
variations on the test and in one of
those variations one of the actors just
one will tell the truth and in that case
they found that almost all the test
subjects will say that you have the
courage to say the truth as well
conformity drops to almost zero so
here’s what we need to do have the
courage to speak your truth when you do
you give others the courage and
permission to do the same they will
follow your lead conformity drops to
almost zero and that responsibility lies
on all of us to be that first person in
leaders you have an especially important
role here because your choices either
create that culture of fear think
Volkswagen or that culture of
psychological safety and openness so
when that first person speaks up or ask
that question don’t punish them because
if you do there won’t be a second person
instead celebrate that person that brave
soul you know Thank You Johnny I’m so
glad you asked that question final tool
it seems so simple but the one of the
most toxic things to group performance
is to silence the voice of its members
and it happened so unconsciously nobody
intends for the expert halo nobody
intends for the Asch conformity effect
nobody intends for the natural dominance
of extroverts but we’ve all been there
hearing Jonny talk a lot go on and on
and on so we need to be incredibly
intentional here and one of the ways to
do this is called conversational turn
taking some folks at outrebound use a
talking stick you know I in class
debates often use a duct tape ball of
power you know
turns out the Supreme Court does the
same thing they believe in
conversational turn-taking
I don’t know if they use a prop but
according to Justice Stephen Breyer when
they adjourned behind closed doors to
deliberate a case they have a rule
nobody speaks twice until everyone has
spoken once and if that helps the
Supreme Court decide the most
controversial legal issues of our day I
guarantee it will help it your meeting
too so stepping back it’s often said
that fear is a powerful motivator but if
we stop and think about it that’s a word
of caution because what fear motivates
is holding back and poor team
performance you know so we need to be
intentional about creating psychological
safety you know we need to you know
because our default mode is fear of
judgment and Punishment our default mode
is holding back in conformity our
default mode is a group being dominated
by a few experts or extroverts our
senior members that gap between what we
personally I’m forever grateful for my
time without rebound it showed me how
powerfully fear holds teams back holds
us back holds me back and because of the
teams I’ve found and cultivated my life
has been filled and blessed with these
amazing experiences you know climbing
Denali creating transformational
experiences for students and outfitting
Buddhist monasteries in Tibet with solar
empower I invite you to do the same
because through your power to choose
which groups you belong to and influence
how those groups are function you can
create any life you want the one that feels right to you thank you
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