Neil Pretty - The Power of "Intellectual Friction"
Unlock the secrets of transformative leadership with Neil Pretty, CEO of Aristotle Performance, as he unravels the pivotal role of psychological safety in enhancing team dynamics and leadership development. Neil shares invaluable insights into how creating a safe space for dialogue and creativity can lead to unprecedented growth and collaboration.
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
"Neil Pretty - The Power of ‘Intellectual Friction’"
Original Publish Date: 1/14/2025
Host: John Broer and Sara Best
John Broer: A very happy new year to all of our friends out there in The Bosshole Transformation Nation. Welcome to our first episode of the new year. We are so excited to be back with you and launching a brand new season of the Bosshole Chronicles. This is John Broer, your co-host for today's episode, and joining me, as always, is my amazing business partner and friend, Sara Best, and today we welcome Neil Pretty, and Neil is the CEO of Aristotle Performance.
Some of you may remember us mentioning Aristotle Performance. These are the amazing folks that certified us in the Fearless Organization Scan and that is the tool we use for diagnosing psychological safety on teams. At the heart of psychological safety is performance. Well, you're going to get to know Neil and the work they're doing at Aristotle Performance around leadership development. It's an amazing bit of information to kick off the new year. Let's jump in. The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. Well, Neil Pretty, it is good to have you here on The Bosshole Chronicles, welcome.
Neil Pretty: Thank you very much for having me. I'm happy to be here. I always like seeing both of you.
JB: And it's nice to get reconnected. You know, Sara and I our audience knows that Sara and I a couple of years ago got certified by Aristotle Performance in the Fearless Organization Scan and our audience is very familiar with psychological safety and what it does. But we want to revisit that for sure and, by the way, it really stems from the remarkable work of Dr Amy Edmondson. Of course she has been on our podcast as well, but you know, maybe a good place to start, Neil, would be just sort of looping back and grounding ourselves in what is psychological safety and the work that you do at Aristotle Performance and why it's so critical, the work that you do at Aristotle Performance and why it's so critical?
NP: Yeah, so we help organizations increase psychological safety to improve productivity, innovation, growth, and one of the main ways, one of the main channels that we do that through is through leadership development. So we do a lot of leadership development. But the question is, what leaders and what do you want them learning? And a lot of our training is built around the kind of characteristics that we want leaders to be able to develop so that they can grow the people around them, they have the internal capacity and the competencies to build the kind of environments where people grow, where teams thrive, where innovation happens. All these sorts of things happen.
And we do that nested within this framework. Usually that is built on cognitive skills, so more tactical skills. So it sort of satisfies the people that are like, oh, we want to only do hard skills. You go, okay, yeah, sure, hard skills are the ones that you want to buy, but character skills are the ones that you want your leaders to have, that are grown. So that's sort of our approach and all of this to create environments where people feel more psychologically safe to speak up with questions, ideas, concerns and mistakes without fear of humiliation or interpersonal risk. So lowering interpersonal risk while at the same time increasing intellectual friction, and I think that's something that we enjoy trying to see. In really good, high-performing teams. There is a lot of intellectual friction and diverse perspectives and continuous refinement of how they're doing things, but people go home feeling respected and respectful towards each other.
Sara Best: That is pure gold right there. Intellectual friction, because I think that takes the touchy-feely emotional, like fear of conflict thing right out of that. It's intellectual friction and it's necessary, isn't it, to get to innovation.
NP: It is necessary for innovation, because if you can't disagree with how things are or somebody else's perspective and still be curious about it, you can't create new solutions.
JB: You know, when we talk about psychological safety, I mean we have all of the background work, the work that you've done, the diagnostic, the fearless organization scan to substantiate what it is. But I'm surprised at how many people still hear the term psychological safety and think it's a fluffy HR term. And I mean it is not. I mean it is a really serious and very relevant science. I mean it is a characteristic of an organization. I think that is I'm sure you run into that as well. Some people find it to be something that they think is very ethereal versus something that is very relevant and real to a team and an organization.
NP: It's an interesting question because this is kind of the issue of the day for the psych safety world, I think, and certainly a lot of the people in our sphere talk about this as the main problem. The misconceptions around psychological safety are perhaps the biggest challenge that we're facing, and one of them is this like you know, reality that people in all kinds of domains have used this term inappropriately or content that they've packaged around it is inaccurate yeah and you know, psychological safety is not a new thing. It is not. It is a forever thing. This is how human beings have figured out how to work together. Forever you like. We solve problems in groups. To solve problems in groups, we have to be aware of the dynamics of the group and then adjust our behavior accordingly.
JB: Yeah.
NP: And if you don't do that, actually it's a real problem. You know, it's a real challenge for everybody else in the work or in the group to work with you. So I think that's where people get sort of confused about this. It's not a uh, do you navigate it or do you not navigate this it's do you do something productive about it, do you ignore it, or you do you do something destructive yeah and I think you fall into one of those three categories and that's your option. If you're, if you're doing interdependent work and that's a key, you know if you're solving problems with other people, if you're dependent on other people to get your work done and be successful in your goals, you have to be doing things that manage psychological safety towards trending towards the positive side of the equation, or you're, you're, you're gonna be missing out on great potential of that group and perhaps you know breaking it down right yeah well, one of the one of the things I took away what I mean I took so much away from our certification.
JB: But two things that really stood out for me is at its heart psychological safety is about performance, about team performance and organizational performance. So you could you know, I go to a client when we're having these conversations and say, look at your teams, which of your teams are struggling? Which are your teams are performing below expectations. That is an absolute opportunity to start to diagnose what is the level of psychological safety, and we've done podcasts on the different domains. I'll put that in the show notes so people can go back and listen to it.
But the other thing that really stood out for me is psychological safety is about de-stigmatizing failure, and I said that I was presenting to a group last year and I went through that. That's a standard part of how we're introducing psychological safety in the fearless organization scan, and one of the CEOs it was a group of CEOs he came up to me afterward and he said you have to come talk to my team. That phrase alone, destigmatizing failure. We have a problem with that, problem with that. And for him it became real because I think before it was sort of that misinterpretation, that poorly quantified or poorly understood term, and then it resonated with him and it's just such a relevant component and, as Dr Edmondson says, it's the soil, not the seed, which is a powerful metaphor.
SB: I do think the soil part becomes a visual that I have to refer to often and even refer our clients to. Having done the trust building and the team development work for years, I have to admit now that there's always been something kind of missing from that, like it's not enough just to say we have to be vulnerable, we have to be honest and be open and share our mistakes, and leaders have to go first. It's not enough to have that or to say people need to do that, because there was never a discussion about what's the foundation for that, the soil for that. The thing that that sits upon is the psychological safety, the idea that you know it's okay to make a mistake. Here we revel in the fact that people aren't perfect, but that takes a lot. I mean, we could do a whole episode on how leaders sometimes are so unaware of their invulnerability. But I do want to ask you a question, Neil this destigmatizing failure. Have you encountered organizations in your work where what they're saying sounds good Like yeah, you know, we, we don't really. We don't knock people for making mistakes. We know that they help us learn, but everything about how they operate and their protocols is the exact opposite. They get smacked on the hand or they get ostracized, but they don't see it, and so do you. Have you seen that, and how do you help people understand that you're not quite living into that?
NP: Yes, we've seen that and I think at this point we've seen most versions of how we're at a point where it's like it's repetition, now new things. And I mean, I'm sure you guys have experienced that in your careers. Now too, when it comes to organizations, there's always pockets of fear, pockets of fear you're never going to have it, and that's you know. That's a statement right from the words of Dr Edmondson herself. You know, and I remember hearing that from early on, and it's true at the macro level and it's true at the micro level you don't walk through your life and have 100% of your social interactions be positive. It's not a thing. 100% of your team interactions are not going to go perfectly well and 100% of your organization is not going to be psychologically safe all the time. And that's okay, and that's part of the reason why I say it's funny. Our principal consultant, Dr Taylor Harrell her and I, when we first started working together, we kind of got into this all the time like leadership's a relationship or leadership's a process.
JB: And the answer is that it's both.
NP: Leadership is a process and leadership's a relationship. It is truly both, and if you want to create the conditions for people to be vulnerable, all these kinds of elements you have to be at least acknowledging of this relationship side as well. And part of being in relationship with people is having a willingness to endure missteps. If you can't endure when things don't quite go right, you're not in relationship with people at all and ultimately you can't create the conditions for people to err in the future. You just call it grace to make the conversation easy, but ultimately there is some grace that's built into that, and the organizations that I find that have this disparity between policy and practice ultimately are the ones where the leaders are the most fearful okay, leaders who are fearful for their own position or they have great fear in the active leadership of their team, in the process of leading their team. They are the ones that struggle the most to create the environments that we're talking about. Right, and I think that is chronic, you know, especially when we're talking about the misconceptions of psychological safety. You know someone recently I spoke with who's done a lot of wonderful work building psychological safety into their organization, also has been trying their damnedest to ram it down people's throats. You have to. You're mandated. You can't policy this right you, to use your guys's term, you can't be a Bosshole in the process of trying to make people psychologically safe. Right, it's like love, that it's good it's not a thing, right? No, you can't do it, so it's, it's one of those challenges where you have to bring people to the table in such a way that they understand that they are supported in their process of development and their goal as a leader is to create the kind of environment where their people can thrive and, to use this metaphor of the soil versus the seed, you're talking to a horticulturalist like one of my. Like I went to college for horticulture 20 or so years ago, right soil is nothing without a seed.
It's just, it's a growing medium. So what you know? So your seed has a goal to grow and become something, and it doesn't require just seed and just soil. It requires water, it requires nutrition, it requires sun, it requires all these other things and that's accountability, that's learning, that's all that stuff. So you need a place where people can grow, you need accountability to achieve higher standards and performance outcomes, and people need to feel like they're growing or they'll go somewhere else and perform right why would they stay?
JB: Absolutely. You know it's interesting, Neil in you had mentioned the micro versus macro perspective. Um, I know that when we got, when we got certified in the Fearless Organization Scan, it was really the architecture of it was built around teams, you know, looking at teams, and we can do that. We can measure the psychological safety within a specific team, the overall psychological safety, the four domains, but Aristotle, performance within the last year. You have now taken it to look at the enterprise, the entire organization. I was just fascinated when I read about that and Sara and I were talking about it. Tell us more about how that, how that's even possible. Because, because, like you said, there are pockets, you know, pockets of psychological safety, pockets of fear. How can you aggregate that? We'd love to hear more about that.
NP: Yeah. So we ask about the organization. Uh, the Fearless Organization Scan has done some wonderful work validating that process and actually removing some questions to increase the validity of the results, and they've worked with Amy to try to do that and really done an extensive job. So I give a ton of credit to Sonder and Fearless Organization Scan for trying to do that. I think that's been really cool to watch. And of course, we've been delivering these organization scans because there is some argument, you know some questions is there such a thing as organizational psychological safety? And obviously we believe there is, because people will have this sort of general sense of like, what's okay and what's not okay and how should I behave in this organization? And I think anybody who's done extensive culture work understands that there is, you know, a broader culture beyond the team culture. But team culture can trump that, no problem, and that's where we get these pockets. So so to that end, you know, when we survey an organization, the key to making that matter is the is demographic data. Oh, okay, you know people work in, work remotely versus blended, versus in the office, you know gender, race. Then you get into departments. You know tenure, tenure, all the and, and that's when things start getting interesting. When you start comparing tenure versus generation, versus level, you know and you start getting granular. And when you start seeing those elements and you compare them to sort of the macro trends that we're seeing and look at them in organizations, what it does is empowers how you intervene and where you intervene. Okay, or broad scale interventions. You know you got 5,000 people. You know you're not. You know you can train everybody. British Petroleum is a really good example of this.
JB: Okay.
NP: Okay, you know the Deep Water Horizon disaster in 2010 and then they went and they had sort of already started, but they were on a process of increasing the competencies of frontline leaders, for example, and they got to a point where they had to completely restructure the organization, not because they were a failing organization, but because the old structure was not effective and it was just causing friction because the frontline leaders had become so capable. They just wanted, like we want, to bypass this old system that is now getting in our way.
JB: Okay.
NP: Because competency had increased. So that's where, you know, an organizational scan of psychological safety enables us, as people coming in offering strategic advice, offering training you know those kinds of things and and often we'll refine or piggyback on training that's already happening. You know we do that process. It'll point the direction to where things are going to be the most high value to do something about it. And then when you know of course you know you do focus groups and things like that when you have those two hand in hand, when you start seeing these two things, it becomes a very powerful tool, because and I think the reason why it's so powerful is because there's a book, Art Kleiner. I got the book up there. You can't see it, it's just like Art Kleiner wrote what is perhaps the most important management book. That is very hard to get a hold of now, but it's a book called "Who Really Matters?
JB: Okay.
NP: In a way, when you do an EPSI, you get an examination of like who really matters and where are your biggest leverage points for the kind of leadership that's going to create the environments for innovation and high productivity.
SB: I have one clarifying question because I'm guessing some of our listeners would be wondering how similar or dissimilar is the enterprise psychological safety scan to, for example, to an engagement survey, employee experience survey, which people have been measuring that? Are there crossovers? Is it completely different?
NP: It's based on the research that the same seven question survey. There's just two questions removed, so it's only five questions, so it's quick. I think what's different to me? Now some researcher out there is probably going to poke holes in this, but you know, theoretically for me the way I think about engagement is engagement is an outcome. Psychological safety is an input.
JB: Oh, okay.
SB: Nice.
JB: Really, really great perspective. Okay, that makes sense.
NP: So it's a predictor of engagement. So that's one of the reasons why we like it it's quick, it's easy. Okay, this is where we need to be adapting or adopting interventions.
JB: Okay, yeah, can I get back to your point about sort of the demographics? I just recently did an interview it's going to publish sometime in the next month or so with a young lady and we had co-presented to a group, about the different demographics in the workforce. You know there are five generations in the workforce. I mean you may not have an answer for this, Neil, but have you seen anything interesting since you've been doing the enterprise scan relative to, you know, gen-Z versus the boomers versus Gen-X, or you know, as it relates to the different generations in the workforce right now?
NP: I think I would be overstepping to say that there's anything to do.
JB: Cool. That's cool, I just was curious.
NP: I could say, oh yeah, this, that we see this, that and the other thing, but generally speaking, you know, I think it's a little too early to say that, and part of the reason why is because it's different depending on the nature of the organization and what's rewarded and those kinds of things. One of the main problems that we have seen and here and I'm actually curious if you all have heard this too, but younger generations are much more reluctant to take on leadership roles and that's a problem that I've heard several organizations come to us and talk about they don't want to step into the leadership roles and own that responsibility and I think to me that is a problem that I think is really fascinating, in part because of the joy and the pain of taking on the responsibility of leadership. For me, I'm only 40, but I've had a leadership position for 26 years of my life and I've only had one year off. It was the year I went to college, and even then I owned a business.
JB: Okay, okay.
NP: You know, and ran a business with employees and everything. So you know, I guess I was probably a leader then too, so maybe call it 27 years. Sure seven years sure, but to see other people grow into what they can become and to believe that a person can be something more than they currently believe in themselves yeah it's such a joy and the anxiety that I've gone to sleep with knowing that I've failed and helping them accomplish that, and sometimes knowing that there have been times where I have been the boss hole that people are talking about around the time you know like you don't go through that more than a quarter zone. There's no question about it. But that's a really interesting point. Though is the emerging, and I don't like labels.
JB: I don't, like you, know the generational labels necessarily, but it is interesting to think that maybe the emerging workforce has less desire or interest to get into supervisory or management positions. But that is. That is a bullet train into the Bosshole Zone if you force somebody to do it without really asking them. Because, as we know, while there are different, you know the different elements that support. You know team dynamics, organizational context, the leader role, the manager role. The manager has a larger percentage of that responsibility when it comes to psychological safety, and maybe people are just thinking I don't want to take on that burden right now, or maybe I'm just not ready for it.
NP: Yeah, I think there's, I'm not necessarily ready for it. I think they demand a more supportive environment, which is why I think there's going to be a massive and continuous upswing in leadership development. And I think that's necessary because I think leadership development is chronically under-trained. In some of the research that I'm aware of, 70 to 80% of leaders overestimate their psychological safety. So that's research done by our principal consultant, Dr Taylor Harrell, who's brilliant. Yeah, identified this, and here it is in black and white. Leaders overestimate this, but the problem is that people make the assumption that leaders are overestimating psychological safety because they're assholes. No, no, no, no, let's go back. Let's go back to step one. We all our primary, we're organizing our behavior in anticipation of future events, and the way we do that is by managing the information in our heads so that we get along with everybody. So what we're doing is controlling our behavior so our boss doesn't think we're a problem. Yeah, and then the boss goes yeah, there's no problem. Yeah, right, well, and you got a whole team of people that are covering up what's going on, you know. And of course, there is the other side of it, where there are some bosses that are completely just unaware. That's a factor too, and the longer you've been a leader, the worse it is.
SB: I could see that no-transcript.
JB: No, no lie, this is. This is. Go look her up. This. This is a Harvard Business study 95% thought they had a high degree of self-awareness when in reality it was like 15% that they were actually self-aware. And our whole work is around self-awareness with behavioral, our behavioral work and so forth, and that's where the fearless organization comes into to help. But I think I think this helps me tee up maybe as we start to wrap things up Something you said before we hit record really resonated with Sara and me. You said that we are getting, we are leaving the age of authority and moving into the age of authenticity. We know what you mean. Tell our audience what you mean by that.
NP: What I mean by that is just having a position doesn't mean that what you say has value or inherent worth anymore. I like to think of journalists and things like that. Often it's the kind of thing that no longer carries the same weight. And I think in a world of AI, in a world where there's things that are manipulated and we feel kind of sold to all the time, anything real is good.
SB: Yeah, all the time anything real is good.
NP: Yeah, and I think that was. I was speaking to somebody the other day about uh experiences and they they said you know, one of the values of the, or the mission of the company, was to provide uh authentic experiences. And I said, well, what's a fake experience? Okay, and I think that people yearn for something real, especially when we're working so much through this little box. The most real thing I do every day is go for a walk. So I think that reality is a call to action for leaders and I'm very much of the mind that. You know, this egoless state is just crap it is so hard for leaders to try to aspire to because it's a false narrative. You can be more authentic when you have a stable, strong ego and you know you say self, some self-awareness. Self-awareness requires courage to look in the mirror and then to have a mirror that it's a high enough resolution that you actually get a picture back that's worth looking at. That's right. Well said, all of that combined. You know that those are the conditions that are necessary and I think one of the most important things we did as a team when we were designing our Courageous Leader Program, which is really our like. You know, it's the program that we recommend the most often to organizations and that we roll out and we were asking about, like, how do you make decisions?
You know, in the face of fear, and you know I'm an adrenaline junkie. I've been an adrenaline junkie my whole life, in the face of fear and I'm an adrenaline junkie. I've been an adrenaline junkie my whole life. I didn't really know that that was a thing until I was quite a bit older. And it's like oh, other people don't operate this way. Okay, I'm a grip it and rip it guy. It's like I want to do this thing. I'm scared, I don't care. Here I go, I'm going to bowl my way through it.
You know, another person on the team was like I'm going to think about the reasons why I want this to be successful and what this is going to mean to my life, what this is going to mean to the future, you know. Then the other person, another person was like I'm going to think about my values. What is it that I value? What is it? That's that's important to me? And what was compelling to me about that was everybody has a different way to access their own inner courage to do the things that are hard, and that's where we find meaning.
If you do hard things, you take responsibility for those. They become meaningful to you. They become meaningful to you, and that act of taking responsibility and finding your way through the things that are uncomfortable, they become the things that are important, and to me, that's the kind of authentic leadership that allows people to develop their own style, allows people to learn, and that's the kind of vulnerability I want people to see leaders be able to express. Not I'm going to tell you every little gory detail in my whole life, but, like I'm a human, I grow, I struggle. This is where I'm taking responsibility and this is where I'm I, I see you be, this is where I see you going and what I see you becoming. How does that line up for you? You know, and helping people achieve those outcomes, and Neil, this is within the Courageous Leadership Program.
JB: Yeah, Cool. Well, I want to remind our listeners go into the show notes. You will find Neil's LinkedIn contact information. Aristotle Performance, go, check out their stuff.
SB: Well, I just want to say, Neil, where have you been hiding? This is such a good interview. I'm so grateful that we had this chance to reconnect and I know that when we met you during the certification process, I was really wowed by the simple, yet very powerful, pingy way you ask questions and you just put it into this language that everybody can understand. So this has been really informative. I have pages of notes too, by the way, like this could be a title for a workshop, or I should add this to my slide that I have on that subject. But really, really good stuff. Thank you for enlightening us today.
NP: I’ll just say hey, Sara, you're going to make me blush. That would be the third time in my life.
SB: Oh, wow, want me to keep going, and it's short.
JB: Well, that being said, we would love to have you back. This is critical stuff. This is so important because organizations, until they figure out how to help managers and supervisors really settle into being developers of people and and creating that space for psychological safety, organizations are going to struggle with low engagement. You know difficulty holding onto talent and you know subprime performance. That's right, but we'd also love to have you back when you are ready to announce your book and there's a book in the works. Is that correct?
NP: There is a book in the works. Yeah, correct, there is a book in the works.
JB: Yeah, okay, and you said it's a field guide. Is that what it's called?
NP: Yeah, it'll be, it'll be sort of like a field book. I think one of the things, the reason why I'm writing the book and the whole premise of the book, is what is the book that I wish I had and that every single HR/LND people in culture you know, cultural architect had read before we started working with them?
JB: Oh, okay, it's the book that.
NP: I want to write and that I want to put out in the world, because when we started with psychological safety, I mean, saying that we didn't have a clue was an understatement. We often giggle about the idea of, uh, the dunning kruger effect. You know, it's a good thing that it's in play. It's a good thing it exists, because if it didn't, people never get started that's true that's true.
Yeah, so we. So you know that's the. What I'm writing is the book that I wish I had and that I wish all these people had before they started interventions because there would be. Because you know, our goal as Aristotle Performance was to improve the experience in the workplace and for businesses to thrive at the same time. I mean, I'm a on that elder, millennial, young, Gen-x sort of line, so the organization is necessary for jobs and stability and all that kind of stuff, and people have to thrive too. So I sort of sit between those two value propositions.
JB: Yep.
NP: And I'm of the mindset that our goal is to reconcile those two, and psychological safety is the pathway to do it.
JB: That's a great premise. What a great premise for a book. That's awesome. Safety is the pathway to do it.
SB: That's a great premise. What a great premise for a book. That's awesome. I imagine this has the potential to do what I would say Patrick Lencioni's field guide did for teams. You're going to put in the hands of people a roadmap, the tools or perhaps just the understanding they need to start to cultivate this before they engage you or someone like you. Powerful.
NP: I hope so. You're going to make me blush again.
SB: That's my job.
NP: Two out of four. Damn you're 50%.
JB: She's good at this man, she's so good at this. That's right, that's you know I just I hit record and then Sara just makes it all happen. But listen, Neil, this was great. Thanks so much for being with us. Everybody go into the show notes, get to know Neil Pretty, the team at Aristotle Performance, but please do come back and keep up the great work and we can't wait to hear what more you're doing.
SB: Look forward to the next time we chat and we'll see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles.
JB: Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here, and if you have your own Bosshole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com, we'll see you next time.
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