BCBusiness

BCBUSINESS.CA jULY/AUGUST 2018 BCBusiness 115 typical approach is top-down: consultants sweep in, interview leaders and executives to identify weak links among sta, crunch the data, stage an intervention with employees and write a prescription for xing problems. "But people don't want to be xed, so this method usually fails," Bushe says. "The other dilemmas of top- ness are that leaders are often clueless about what's really going on in their company, and they take on too much responsibility when they should spread it around. Another fundamental mistake they make is thinking, I'm responsible for other people's experi- ences. Everyone creates their own experience, so the goal is to create a space where employees feel safe to say what they think, feel and want." Bushe facilitated a program with the 110 front-line sta at the BC Hydro warehouse. He calls his method "bottom-up dialogic" change—a mix of team-building and group talk therapy sessions. But "talk therapy" is a loaded term, and perhaps too touchy-feely for the group in question, so the sessions were called "crew shop." "I admit I had my doubts initially," Bianco says. "And I knew my leadership style was important. You have to be willing to say, I don't know the answers. And often you have to drag it out of employees and empower them to try things and make mistakes. You have to be 100-percent committed to saying, It's OK to fail, and How can I help you get there? The more the crew talked, the more the thinking was, This isn't so bad. I can x it." The sessions were a smash hit. The crew quickly identied ways to increase productivity and cut service wait times down to 24 hours; within six months they met that goal. On their own time, sta have planted a community garden outside the facility, initiating friendly competitions like seeing who can grow the biggest tomato. Stress levels have plummeted, and the warehouse is better organized. "The program gave everyone a voice and empow- ered them to make a dierence and feel respected. It brought out their basic human virtues," Bushe says. He notes that his main role was trusting employees to "unleash instead of getting in their way," a key reason so many traditional change programs fail. "Gervase helped us design a format that lets employees engage with each other on a regular basis to solve issues and problems," Bianco says. "Besides the faster order turnarounds, we have improved safety, employee attendance and employee engagement." A safe place to work Workplace research supports this new dialogic approach, which has many catchy, even culty monikers, like Everyone Culture (where every employee is considered "high potential") and Deliber- ately Developmental Organizations. The process mixes team-building and psychoanalysis, sometimes going deep into staers' psyches to identify hurdles. The goal is for people to get along, partly because collaborative work has jumped 50 percent or more in the past two decades, taking up more than three quar- ters of an employee's day, according to a 2016 Harvard Business Review study. Positive work climates are also linked to improved health, while poor social relation- ships are deadlier than obesity and smoking, research led by Sarah Pressman at the University of California, Irvine, has shown. But what makes a successful team? In 2012, Google's People Operations Department set out to answer that question with Project Aristotle. Doing what they do best—pattern recognition analytics and data crunching—they were surprised to nd only a few char- acteristics. The key factor: psychological safety. Suc- cessful teams are sensitive and empathetic, Google discovered. Other research has established that a psychologically safe environment allows sta to take risks, be more creative, motivated, responsible and connected to each other, their work and their company culture. Empathetic, fair and self-sacricing bosses also foster higher employee loyalty, resilience, trust, cooperation and commitment. Studies have consistently validated this three- pronged psychological safety model of human needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness, which equates with social bonding. The model has been around since Sigmund Freud, became embedded in business development in the 1950s, peaked in the '70s and withered on the vine in the free-market '80s. Research suggests that happiness isn't a trickle- down commodity. Although a living wage is key, when We know that workplace stress wreaks havoc on organizations. In the U.S., it contributes to at least 120,000 deaths annually and racks up as much as US$190 billion in health-care costs, a 2015 study by researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities revealed. The American Psychological Association estimates that each year, such stress gouges more than US$500 billion from the national economy and results in 550 million fewer workdays

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