Building a Culture of Innovation That Works

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.


Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.


Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

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Kristen: Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen 

Mike: And I'm Mike.

Kristen: And today we are gonna be doing an episode talking about how to create culture of innovation, which is one of my personal favorite topics to talk about.We have a little bit of extra sound insulation coming from the moving boxes that we are currently surrounded by.

Mike: it does sound different, right?

Kristen: Yeah. So, you know,

Mike: Maybe we can set up a podcast studio in our new place.

In the baby's room.

Kristen: In the baby's room

Mike: room.

Kristen: Also, by the way, we're having a baby.

Mike: Yes. We're expecting a little leader.

Kristen: I don't think we've talked about that

Mike: yet. We have not, 

Kristen: but, 

Mike: I guess the cat is out of the bag.

Kristen: We are expecting a baby boy in July, so Sorry.

Mike: Not the right sound 

Kristen: effect.

Yeah. RightThat's your only sound effect though.

It's okay.

But no we're excited and 

Mike: Very excited. We're, I'm old for this, but hey, we're giving it a go. It's happening.

He's coming. He's 

Kristen: So yes, we have a little leader 

Mike: Little leader

Or whatever he wants to be,

Kristen: Yep.Yeah. And we are mid move, so, you know, we'll see how this recording goes.

Mike: So we, you know, actually you, we didn't, you said leadership moment. We don't have one. I will say leadership is hard. So when I said that, like whatever he wants to be, I don't know, man.

I miss the days of not having any responsibility of just showing up and doing my position. I always wanted to be in charge. I thought I should be in charge when I was young. And now that I am, uh, it's. You know, there's, it's like a skillset, right? You, you can, you know, use boundaries for leaders, use all these like extreme owner, these techniques, and it's a skillset that you can absolutely be successful, but it is psychically taxing, and, um. I think there's a lot of CEOs and COOs that are giving up that to go do something more like It's not for, it's not for everyone.

Kristen: I hear that. Yeah. It's hard. You can't really like phone it 

Mike: in.

You can't phone it in you. You, you can

Kristen: mean, you can, but you're not gonna be a successful 

Mike: Not gonna be successful. You can have a bad day, you can phone it in for a day or two, but if you're phoning it in for a whole week, your organization is gonna suffer. You have to very much believe in what you're doing. You have to maintain your vision, you have to maintain your drive, and you have to,especially when we know from the Stars model, right? Depending on the type of situation, you may have to push really hard for weeks, months, years, to drive forward. I am, vetting and trying to bring into my community, a very, because this is culture of innovation, right? A very cool AI tool called Safely You.

And it's this, AI learning camera that like you can put in your, your senior living room and it will. It knows it like it does, it knows when people fall, but it knows when they're about to fall and it can tell like different types of fall. So seniors will fall, but sometimes, and they'll be discovered by caregivers sometimes hours later, right?

Yeah. And the first reaction is to send them to the hospital because, but. A lot of falls are not falls. There were like, someone who's suffering from di dementia will lower themself to the ground for whatever reason 'cause they're, they can ambulate across the room. You know what they'll find is like 92% of falls or something aren't really falls.

It's like a senior was like trying to get the candy that was in a bowl across the room at 3:00 AM huh? And this technology, 

it's this super, forward moving, AI technology that reduces like, I'm gonna give them a commercial. Hey guys,

Kristen: They're not sponsoring us.

Mike: No, they're not. but I'll tell you why.

They reduce like hospital visits by 92%. They will elongate a senior stay in a, in assisted living by like 120 days over. Yeah. So all this really positive benefit,to the resident to improve their life and quality of health and the services we can provide them. But we're talking to the rep,who's gonna come present to our board of directors and, I was like so my director's meeting, board of director's meeting is like four to 6:00 PM and he's on the East Coast, and I was like, oh, that's, seven o'clock. That's kind of late for you. He's like, I work 24 7. He's like, you can call me anytime. And I, he's, they're still like in startup a little bit.

I mean, you know, they, they have a lot of funding. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, I'm sure. Yeah. And they're not in the beginning state, but he very much was like, we are in this, I. To, and I was like, okay, so there'syour stars model startup, There's nothing else. And I'm sure there, this is really beautiful technology. It's and everybody in the company has somebody in their familywho has dementia. It's a very like, personal thing for them to try and improve quality of life and the care that we're able to give, you know?

But he's like, yeah, call me anytime. I was like, alright, so 4:00 PM is fine. So that's cool though. Yeah, it's amazing technology. They actually. I digress, but that's what I do. Their, global headquarters was around the corner the, Hyatt that I worked at, at Oracle Park. Back in like late 21. They were the first company that started traveling And we started getting calls like, hey, we need a block of rooms. We need a group. And we hadn't had group since Covid started. Group makes up a huge,component of revenue and it's, and Safely You started traveling and I did a bunch of blocks for them and they were super professional and super easy to work with. And then fast flash forward like two and a half years and I'm at my ED convention and they're like introducing safe and now I'm in a different industry. They're introducing Safely You. And I'm like, why do I know that name?

And it took me like two days of hearing them talk. I was like, oh. Because I never knew what they did when I was at the hotel. I was just like, this is just some tech company booking a block of rooms. But small little world. And now I'm trying to bring them intour community. So, innovation. Take it away, baby.

That's it. I'm done. I know nothing else about innovation.

Kristen: Well,I don't think that's true. But we're gonna talk all about it.so yeah. so kicking off with what is a culture of innovation.What does that mean? So I define it as fostering creative risk taking, collaboration and psychological safety in order to drive business growth.

So it's really about creating an environment where everybody feels empowered to share ideas, experiment, and even fail forward.

We'll talk about like, failure is a big part of this. And I like to think of it as like a true culture of innovation is one where people are more afraid of missing out on a great idea than they are of sharing a bad one. 

Mike: Fomo. Fear of missing out. Fomo?

I mean, yeah. FOMO on a great idea, But people are don't. Oh, I see. Okay.

Kristen: It's like fear of missing out on 

Mike: They want to get in on it and they're not afraid to fail, and they're not afraid that they're gonna get castigated in front of everybody if they come up with something that doesn't work. 

Kristen: Yep. Exactly. And that's

Mike: that's psycho. Yeah. That's culture. That's psychological safety, like no bad ideas. 

Kristen: Yeah. And it's something, I mean, this is something a lot of companies talk about how they're innovative, but often they don't actually have the cultural building blocks of innovation. It's something that you, can't just wish for it. You have to actually design for it. And design your organization and your culture for it.And of course, like even organizations that are doing this well, like, there's a lot of things that can get in the way. As soon as you start having things like burnout and misalignment siloed teams, micromanagement, lack of diversity, fear of failure, like these are all things that can get in the way of those good intentions. So I would invite you listeners to think about like what is getting in the way of innovation on your team right now? And the main framework that, I have for talking about this. And this pulls a lot of inspiration from improv. That's what we'll talk about into strategies to spark innovation. Because it's just really a good way to think about it. But I call this the Improvation Matrix. And there's, so it's basically a four box matrix with two axes.

Mike: Y axis, X axis.

Love it.

Like love a good axis.

Kristen: Love a good axis. Yeah. So on the X axis is looking at openness to new ideas. Like what is the level of openness to new ideas in your culture? And then the Y axis is what is the level of commitment?

Mike: Yeah, I was thinking about that when you said what's getting in the way of innovation.

I think a lot of it is people don't own the vision or they're not I mean, my world is different than the tech world, but it's like they're just coming and clocking in and clocking out. They're not bringing their creativity to work and it's not rewarded or nobody's interested in that. 

Kristen: Yep. 

Mike: It's like we go back to It's Your Ship, right? You can get a good idea from anybody. 

Kristen: Yeah, for sure.

Mike: You never know who has that like secret sauce. But if they don't care, if they don't own the vision, if they're not part of it, 

Kristen: Yeah. 

Mike: You're not getting their, buy-in.

Is that what you meant by commitment?

Kristen: En engagement is a big

Mike: part. Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah.

Yeah. Also like willingness to execute on something is a big part of this as well. So just to explain this further, so there's four quadrants, right? That is since we have a matrix. 

Mike: Love, a love a quadrant,

Kristen: Love a quadrant,

Mike: a grid.

Kristen: So the one that a lot of companies who would love to innovate but they get stuck at is Stagnation.

So this is like the lower left. quadrant. So we have low openness and low commitment, which is where you get stuck in stagnation. So at this level, people are disengaged, they're indifferent. There's a lot of resistance to change, and the team is just stuck in this cycle of repetitive uninspired work. And then the bottom right quadrant, you have Noise, and Noise is, there's a high openness to new ideas, but low commitment. So what this looks like is because you have that lack of commitment, there's zero follow through. Often people know something needs to change, but they're not really sure how to make it happen, or how to actually stick with one thing to execute it.

So there's a lot of ideas, no shortage of ideas, but without dedicated effort and focus, those ideas just remain as scattered thoughts rather than actionable plans. 

And then on the opposite side, we have Rigidity, which.

Mike: Good word. 

Kristen: Rigidity, which is low openness to new ideas and high commitment. So exactly the opposite, right?

Mike: People are diligent, they're focused, they're highly productive. But I already knew this is the way we've always done it.

Kristen: Oh yeah. You saw that coming? Yes.

Mike: I didn't even need to see your, I knew it was coming.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. This is all like within the confines of established processes and yeah, you're gonna hear statements like, this is the way we do things around here.

This is the way we've always done it. So it's, you're lacking in that, that new ideas part. So it might be a very productive, efficient workplace, but you're missing that, that component for innovation. 

Mike: Sounds 

Kristen: like Lumon.. 

I don't know what Lumon is. Lumon is a

Mike: They're definitely innovative.

Kristen: I guess they're innovative.

Definitely messed up.

We're referencing Severance if you do not

Mike: if you aren't on earth at

Kristen: if you Yeah.Which is a fantastic show.and then

Mike: The cliffhangers are, it's really driving

Kristen: They do love to end a season on a cliffhanger.

Yeah, 

Mike: It's a little much, guys., When you have to wait liketwo years or more for these series nowadays. 

Yeah. Like they're amazing, 

Kristen: Severance was three years between

Mike: two. I think there was a writer's strike

Kristen: Yeah, there was

Mike: There was some and I kept going, it's not gonna be good. It's gonna be like Heroes. It's gonna come back. It, Nope. It was great.

Kristen: It was great.

Mike: Weirder and darker and 

Kristen: Yeah. It's a also just a great satire on the corporate world and yeah.

If you have not watched it, if you don't have Apple TV Plus or whatever. But, but yeah. And then that brings us to the final quadrant, which is innovation, which is high openness to new ideas and high So like this is a level where the magic happens, right? There is the willingness to experiment and take risks.

And there's also the commitment and engagement needed to actually put ideas into action. So that is what we are working for when we're trying to create a culture of innovation. So you can think about like, where is your team today on this matrix. 

So the rest of this episode is gonna be talking through five strategies from improv that can be used to spark a culture of innovation. So the first one, and in some of these, if you've listened to our episode on why improv makes you a better leader, this also comes up a little bit in some of the leadership presence episode.. So some of these might be familiar, but it's a little bit of a different take 'cause we're we're purely talking about that culture of innovation today. So number one is foster a yes and mindset, and this is usually the thing if, if people are familiar with improv at all. This is the thing they're kind of most likely to know. Yes and is the cornerstone of improv. And there's really two components of it, right?

You have those two words. There's the yes, which is agreement validation. So you're saying yes to what the contribution the other person is bringing forward instead of negating it. And the, and is then you're adding your own contribution to it. And it's a beautiful thing when this happens.

But this is particularly important when we're talking about innovation because Yes, and is really es a really essential tactic for effective generative also known as divergent thinking. So we have these two types of thinking, like we have divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the generative form of thinking where you are coming up with new ideas.

Convergent thinking is when you are actually doing like the analysis and narrowing down those ideas to a single solution, and what tends to happen with a lot of companies is there's not enough time given to that divergent thinking part. And what happens is you just spend a little bit of time on it and then you go straight into the convergent.

And often you try to do these at the same time. And the key is that you really need to create a separate space for divergent thinking to happen. And I love this study by Paul Nutt. This, I think we originally talked about in The Coaching Habit. But he did a study of 160 different business decisions and he found that the vast majority were binary.

So they were only looking at two options. And the decisions that looked at more than two options actually cut the failure rate in half.

Mike: I think about that every day now. Yeah. Right.

Kristen: Yeah, right. Third option. Yep. yeah. 'Cause companies will just stop, not really spend the time to do that generative,

Mike: You know, or political parties. 

I'm 

Kristen: yeah. you 

Mike: Listening to another podcast, History That Doesn't Suck. It's actually a great podcast. And he goes back, he starts at like the forming of the nation. So it's interesting to go back and he.

It's interesting to hear history redone by somebody who is not just, reading off a textbook that state mandated or something really delves into the leverage points of the day, and the difference between the Federalists and the Republics of the day, The actual formation of political parties in the beginning. A third one would be great. Third one. Third one would be great. Third option. Yeah. Third option, 

Kristen: yes. Yeah, no it is super interesting. Mm-hmm.

Um, So how this relates is Yes And is a really powerful tool to spend more time in that divergent process where you're coming up with new ideas and building on them and really giving them a chance to breathe before you start dissecting them.

'Cause that's the fastest way to kill creativity is to shut down the brainstorm, right.So just some best practices when you're thinking about using Yes. And So the first is commit to the language. So you'll notice we're not saying yes, but 

Mike: Yeah, I was thinking about that.In my world, I think there's a lot of yes but

Kristen: there I, in every world there's a lot of yes.

But

Mike: It's like we're gonna, I am gonna acknowledge what you say, but then I'm gonna take it in a completely different direction. 'cause I think I'm 

Kristen: And you hear it coming right? Like you can tell when somebody's, when it's not a real, genuine Yes. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Kristen: Yeah. So 

Mike: yes, 

Kristen: Both of those components are important. And even better is to be specific with your Yes. So things like, oh, I like that because it really reflects the needs of our users, or whatever. Like coming up with specifically what you like about it. And then follow through on the And and be clear about how it relates to the first idea. So you're not just using the and to like squeeze in your own totally unrelated agenda item. 

Mike: Uh, for 

Kristen: It actually is a true process, a collaborative building process, and also like finally just giving permission to your team to dive deeper when something stimulates interest. So recognize when there's like, that you can kind of, you can feel it in the energy of the room where people are like, huh?

That's an interesting idea. So you can take a pause and say like,let's riff off of this for a minuteand really let it happen. 

Mike: So number two is embrace failure openly. And this is where, we've talked about failure somewhat on this podcast, but it's so important especially when you're talking about innovation and creativity. Team members need to feel safe enough to express their ideas and talk about their learnings for creativity to actually happen.

Kristen: And like remembering, we're talking about like the sign of a culture of innovation is a place where people are more afraid of missing out on good ideas than of raising potentially badthat is what we're aiming for. So in order for that to work, you need to de-stigmatize and even celebrate failure for it to become something that's not preventing people from contributing. 

Mike: Lime Aid flavored Oreos.

Kristen: Okay, we're gonna get there.

Mike: I'm reading ahead. I

Kristen: Our listeners can't read ahead.

Mike: I can't ignore that. Limeade flavored Oreos.

Kristen: So we're not there yet.

Mike: Oh my God. What is that? 

Kristen: They're so close.

And this is one thing that improv is so good for, like in my level one improv classes, we actually. We'd celebrate mistakes. Like anytime somebody made a mistake in an exercise, we would like applaud.

And at first it was really jarring for me as a recovering perfectionist, but it's really cool. And it really just reframes the way you think about it and in improv failure is truly a gift, right? Like mistakes are gifts because that's when some of the best scene work comes out of somebody making a mistake, right?

So it's really that reframing 

Mike: I've seen your, your troupe just run with stuff.

Kristen: Oh yeah.

Mike: Yeah. It's the funniest 

Kristen: It's so funny when this

Mike: Alex is really good at that.

Kristen: Yeah. Oh yeah. She's 

Mike: She's very Oh, okay.

Kristen: Yeah. It creates great 

Mike: improv.

And keep going. 

Kristen: Yep. So it all comes about like how you're looking at it. RightAnd what Mike was reading ahead on, oh my God.

Mike: Oh my God.

Kristen: It's one thing that I think is super cool that I learned about is a traveling exhibition called The Museum of Failure. 

Mike: I want to see that.

Kristen: I know, I think I have to look up where I think it, I wanna say it was mostly in Europe.

Mike: It features 150 products that didn't exactly pan out. Including New Coke, BIC for Her pens.

Kristen: Oh my gosh. Okay. So I just looked at their website 'cause I haven't looked at it in a while, but apparently they're up to 200 items and the latest edition is a Cyber truck.

Okay. 

Mike: I like cubism 

Kristen: I know you like how they look,

Mike: I don't hate how they look 

Kristen: Uh 

Mike: hate how they look. Oh,

Kristen: uh.but yeah, so I guess the. In 2004. They were in, Budapest was the last one, and 

Mike: Well, limeade, limeade flavored Oreos.

Kristen: But yeah, some of the examples of products. 

Mike: flavored lasagna. No. Colgate branded 

Kristen: Colgate branded Lasagna 

Mike: The f Yeah.

Kristen: BIC for her pens. 

Mike: I could see that, that it like they were making razors and they're like, well, she wants her own pen.New Coke was a 

Kristen: New Coke is a classic like marketing

Mike: That was probably before your time though, was it? Were

Kristen: Yeah, but I like that was a every case study in like every marketing class I ever took. Yeah. Yeah. It's a classic example. Yeah, there's some really fun ones in there. You can go on their website and search for it. I'll

Mike: Okay. Can we, the limeade flavored Oreos. What? Okay. So, okay. I mean, there are some things that, there's some citrus that tastes good with chocolate.

Orange is particularly good, but

Kristen: Lime is not one of,

Mike: Not, lime is not one of them.Like I love orange and chocolate and about the cream. There's definitely a way you could maybe do that. Limeade, what the, 

Kristen: Yeah, there's some really fun ones. I recommend looking at their website. There's some fun ones. but

I can never spell museum right. It's kind of a weird word. But yeah, there's some there. Highly recommend checking it out. I'll link to it in the show notes.

Mike: Innovation needs. Their first thing says innovation needs failure. All progress is built on learning from past failures and mistakes. The museum provides a unique insight into the tricky business of innovation. 

Kristen: Yeah. No, I love it. I love everything it stands And part of the point too is that like most of the companies they feature actually still exist and many of them are thriving. But they fail sometimes too.

So it's a failure is not necessarily the

Mike: end medical mishaps.

Kristen: So now Mike's gonna spend the rest of this podcast episode.

Mike: I'm gonna spend the rest of the week.

Kristen: Well, you know, I'm glad I've given you some entertainment. Yeah.

Mike: Home lobotomy tool, what Orbitoclast, a lobotomy tool was hammered into the upper part. Oh 

Kristen: Yeah. I mean, that's not 

Mike: That's, here's the thing that gets me about human arrogance. Like we're, what a hundred and 60 years in America from owning other people and we're about 50 or 60 years from giving people lobotomies. And we think we've got it all figured out.

Yeah. We don't understand gravity. If you ask Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is, you know, an astrophyics, what's Gravity? He will tell you, we have no idea. 

Hmm.Okay.

The or Orbitoclast, that's, I just like.

Kristen: Yeah, there's a lot of very crazy stuff on here. Yeah. Another thing I like that, like apparently with the live exhibition, like the traveling exhibition, they also have a share your failure wall, which is something I often will recommend to organizations, especially like with like creative teams.

Where people, if you just have some kind of ritual around sharing failure, you can also accomplish this by just having a routine and team meetings where everybody talks about like what were their mistakes and what they learned from them. Whatever you do, you, it's critical that you go first as the leader and you set the example for what you wanna see.

So that is absolutely critical. It's all starts with you and what you're modeling. But there's a lot of different ways you can integrate this into the culture. Mike is still

Mike: running. I'm so deep in this. There's so much. Oh my God. Oh gosh. I highly recommend you check this out.

Kristen: Yes. There. They have a great website. There's a lot of stuff on there, so 

Mike: The $2 bill. Okay. 

Kristen: Yeah. Some of them are bigger than others, right?

Mike: beta max. Oh my gosh. Amazon Fire phone. I wonder if, the Microsoft, 

Kristen: Oh the Zune. 

Mike: Zoom. Zune, 

Kristen: Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike: Fisher-Price Video recorder. 

Kristen: So moving on.

Mike: I can't look away.

Kristen: Oh no, I should have done this one

Mike: Should have done this. You shoulda have done this last squirrel. 

Kristen: I've lost 

Mike: squirrel. Keep going. Just keep going. I'll chime in.

Kristen: So number three is listen to understand, not to respond. And this is something that's come up in some of our other episodes and, um. will, more in the future, but I've talked about these three levels of listening before.

So briefly,

Mike: I'm begging you to put the Colgate Beef Lasagna Graphicon our That,

Kristen: Yeah. Okay.

Mike: That is amazing.

Kristen: We can put that on the Instagram. 

Here. Like, is this supposed to be Colgate or is that Ricotta?Oh, they've even garnished it with some basil leaves, but it really looks like that might be Colgate. Toothpaste. Lasagna. I don't think it was

Mike: actually. No, of course it's not,

Kristen: Yeah. But the branding is, Very 

Mike: I heart this hard. Look oh my God.

Kristen: It's, I also have to point out the irony of you interjecting with that when I was talking about listening.

Mike: Sorry. I'm sorry. You did this

Kristen: Apparently. Apparently I

Mike: worked.

Kristen: Mike.

But yes, the three levels of listening.

Mike: Wait, there's purple ketchup. Oh no.

Kristen: Oh no,

It broke me. trying to get back on track. Just go back to the file. This will still be here when we're done recording. There's 

Mike: purple ketchup. Purple violet. And they have blue ketchup and easy squirt bottles. We gotta, okay. All right. I'm focused, 

Kristen: He's not. Oh my gosh.

Mike: Oh, the jarts, the lawn jarts. Oh my God. Ugh. Oops. So many kids got stabbed. That was my generation. Wait, there's a urinal and golf club combination. The UroClub. Oh, no.

Kristen: I really broke my 

Mike: The UroClub Club looks like an or ordinary golf club, but in reality, it's a cleverly disguised urinal. First unscrew the leakproof cap clip on.

It's 2008 on the fabric cover to your belt. I guess you're hiding your thing. Fumble around underneath it for a moment and then stand there pretending to be pondering your next move.

I would imagine that this isn't, they're, they were trying to solve a problem. Like I don't play golf, but I used to take walks along the water where the Ritz Carlton is down in, it's not Monterey, not all the way and there's like a famous golf course, it's like on the water there.

And I would watch these guys like driving around and they're just drinking so much beer. And there's like a cart that comes around and sells more beer. Yep. And that's the whole culture is like playing golf

Kristen: And you don't have a 

Mike: There's no bathroom and it's crappy beer. I'm sure.

And that's part of the experience maybe? Yeah. They were trying to solve a problem. Okay. At that.

Kristen: Yay. Back to the notes 

Mike: Yes. And

I'm very, it's like a train wreck. I wanna go back. I can't help it.

Okay.

Power through. Let's go.

Kristen: Let's let's finish.

Mike: Okay. Go. Okay, three more. Okay. All I'm trying and focus,

Kristen: So listening. So there's three levels of listening. The first level is listening to hear selective listening. So this is the base level that most of us are just at.

When, we're kind of listening, but we're listening through our own lens and we're thinking about like, how does this impact me and how am I gonna respond? Listening to respond. And then there's focus listening, which is what a lot of people think of as active listening. This listening to hear.

So at this level you're probably,

Mike: Wait, you said that it was the first one.

Kristen: Oh, did I? I meant listening to

Mike: respond. Listening to respond. Okay.

Yeah. All right. See, I was listening.

Kristen: there. Okay.

Mike: I think about that. You taught me that. I, active listening. It is kind of a catchphrase, but like, okay. That the three levels as you broke them down is pretty useful. 

Kristen: Nice. 

Mike: As I'm listening to people talk, I'm like, I always wanna respond. I'm gonna respond, but I'm also like, I'm trying to understand.

Kristen: Yep. So yeah, so the middle level is listening to hear, focused listening. So this level, you're listening to the words you're saying, but you're still filtering it through your own perspective and you're not taking it to the next level, which is immersive listening. Which is listening to understand.

So at this level, you're not just taking in words, you're taking in body language tone, like other indicators. You're reading between the lines and you're really seeking to understand. What is that person's perspective. Like what are they feeling? What is happening for them? So that's immersive listening.

It's really powerful And it. It's powerful because it makes the other person feel heard, which increases trust. It allows you to pick up on insights that you never would've otherwise, and it helps create that safe space where people feel like they can be creative and take risks. So it's really important for building a culture of innovation. I see you.

Mike: I see you. Yeah. I, I totally listening to you, but I have gone back, but I, it's interesting, I've, I see there's a bunch of Google stuff in here, including Google Wave, which I thought was cool, but Google has failed so many times. Yeah. And I think that's a really good. Like lessen Google Wave went nowhere. Google had a watch that went nowhere. They've had a lot of things that they just decommissioned and, 

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. It's a good reminder.

Mike: It's a good reminder. It's a sure. Learn from your failures or you'll be like Disney and just keep trying to churn out bad Star War stuff. They're not learning. They're not learning. Yeah. Yeah. 

Kristen: So that brings us to number four, which is always make your teammate look good. This is another kind of fundamental improv role, and it's also really powerful in a team setting because the idea here is simple, right? If everybody on the team is focused on supporting each other, then the entire team performs better. And when you adopt this mindset as a team, people feel more confident sharing ideas because they know their team has their back.

Mike: It's like the NBA in the eighties, there was a lot of passing. I don't think they pass anymore. Everybody's shooting.

Kristen: Well, I actually, it's funny, like one of the example I have is NBA. So 

Mike: Really? So Oh, I read your mind.

in.

I'm tuned in. I'm, I actually

Kristen: Not from the eighties,

Mike: Did not read ahead. I guess I was listening to understand. But I just, I do remember like in the eighties, like Larry Bird, all these dudes like had these amazing, like behind the back pass, like it was like,it was like a little ballet and now it's gotta get 

Kristen: highlight. Yeah. Well, the, the example I used for this, and this is with the caveat that I'm not really a diehard sports fan overall, like I follow USC football, unfortunately, and at the moment, and that's pretty much it. But I, my dad was like probably the biggest Golden State Warriors fan that ever existed.

And I'm from the Bay Area, so you know, If I have an NBA team, it's definitely the Golden State Warriors. And they're also a really good example for this. So by the 2014 to 2015 season, they had gone 40 years since winning a championship. So there was a lot of hunger there and they had a ton of star power.

Like they, they could have just focused entirely on Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and called it, because they're that talented. But their coach, Steve Kerr took a different approach. I. The culture of the team was all about how they played together, and it became this thing that making the extra pass was the norm.

And as you noted, this is something that is not very common in like modern basketball, right? Like it's much more about the stars and in modern, like modern NBA. But so this was something that stood out. So like the goal being not just to score, but to get the best shot possible for the team, whoever it ended up being. And they celebrated each other's successes on the court, whether it a great assist, a defensive stop, a very essential three pointer. And their marketing slogan was Strength in Numbers 

Mike: Strength and honor. Strength, and honor.

Kristen: It was also like the rallying cry for that season and beyond because it, it actually represented the way that they played and the Warriors went on to win in 2015 and then again in 20 17, 20 18, and 2022. So I think we can all learn from them. 

Mike: So finally that brings us to number five, which is cultivate a sense of play. And when we talk about play in the workplace. That usually brings up images of people playing like foosball and ping pong instead of working like in a classic tech startup, like straight out of HBO's, Silicon Valley. Right. But

First couple of seasons werereally 

Kristen: Were hard to watch because they were so true. 

Mike: It looked very true. Yeah, it looked very true.

Kristen: Yeah. It was like funny, like painfully funny Yeah. But 

Mike: But middle out compression,

Kristen: God.But yeah, play is not really just about having fun. It's about creating an environment where people feel free to experiment.

They to explore, take creative risks without a fear of judgement. And when you think about it, when we were kids play was how we learned. Like it was how we explore the world tested boundaries and came up with completely new ways of doing things. So in a work environment, bringing that sense of play that can spark creativity, innovation in ways that just traditional brainstorming sessions and meetings cannot. 

And there are a lot of like proven benefits of play for adults. So it reduces stress, cognitive function, increases energy, prompts more creativity and better problem solving, and it leads to better teamwork. This is also backed by research. So there's a, there are a lot of things you can do to implement this.

You can start meetings with just like a quick fun exercise creativity, creatively. Um.

Mike: that was a creative word.

Kristen: I can talk. Right.And improv exercises are especially good for this, I will say. But you can do a lot of different things. You can also do things like creating a ritual of play days where the only rule is just to explore new ideas without worrying about deliverables or outcomes.

It's pretty amazing how much more creative we can be when we're enjoying the process. So with that, that is our episode on creating a culture of innovation. Mike is back to scrolling the Museum of Failure website.

Mike: I listen with my hands. Okay. Like I have a, I'm on my fourth career that I use my hands in very special ways.

Like I listen and my hand, like one hand is doing. So I I could everything you said, but I'm absolutely obsessed

Kristen: So if you got nothing else from this episode, at least you now know about the Museum of Failure if you did not before, which I had never heard of it until I was originally doing research for a talk and I love it. So, so, yeah. So that's that.

Well, no, it's actually not that short. I always say these are gonna be

Mike: answers, but well, it, I, I'm sorry,

Kristen: But then I remember who my co-host is.

Mike: Wow.

Kristen: I love, I love

You 

Mike: you. I love you too. You missed that tone of voice. I love you too. Uh,

Kristen: Uhhuh.

Mike: I get that a lot.Okay. Well check it out. That's a very cool idea. you come from a world that like really values Is all about innovation. 

Kristen: Or at least it tries

Mike: it tries to, you know, but I, my industries are a little more traditional. It come, it pays to go in a mindset that you aren't focused on, we've always done it this way. Okay. especially right now, I mean, we're at a crossroads for sure. Right. When I was a kid, we were just getting computers in the classrooms. TSR80s. Google that, you'll see what I'm talking about. And now everyone has a phone that has the entirety of human knowledge, you know, 10,000 years of human knowledge.

And we walk around with that. It is a change, change in humanity, so. 

Kristen: Yeah, 

Mike: Cool. All right. Thanks Kristen.

Kristen: Thank. Thanks, Mike.

Mike: You're welcome. 

Can we get outta here now?

Kristen: Yeah. Yes. we need to go watch White

Mike: Lotus. Oh my God, yes. 

Kristen: With that, thank you guys for listening and we'll see you next time. 

Mike: Thank you..


Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.