At Work with The Ready

Psychological safety is a buzzy topic every company claims to want—but only a handful actually achieve. Sometimes, it’s misunderstood as being about “niceness” or “politeness”, but real psychological safety is deeper and more complex than that. It’s an ecosystem of behaviors that add up over time to impact how your team shows up day after day.

Unfortunately, this misconception has a stranglehold on most leadership teams as well, who spend more time talking the talk than walking the walk. We’ve seen and worked with many executive teams over the years where people didn’t feel comfortable speaking up, challenging ideas, admitting mistakes, or sharing concerns without fearing retribution or embarrassment. When that’s happening inside the team responsible for some of a business’s biggest decisions, there are big consequences.

In today’s episode, Rodney and Sam break down why leadership teams often feel the most psychologically unsafe, how to move the needle on developing trust, and why a ropes course can’t solve a team or organization’s culture problems.

(Producer’s note: Ok, so we're zero for two this week with Sam's mic going rogue after Rodney's mishap last episode. Taylor's been working some major magic lately. Hopefully third time's the charm with episode 21 🤞)

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While exploring bad meetings a few episodes ago, Rodney and Sam hit on something that doesn’t often get a lot of air time: the power of good habits and the discipline to care about the small things. Because when we’re trying to change companies on an atomic level, it can feel like small potatoes to focus on check-in rounds, or writing Slack messages, or how we compose to-do lists.

But you can’t run toward the future of work at full speed when your shoes aren’t properly tied. Here’s what we know: High-performing teams—from ice hockey to symphony orchestras—all prioritize the fundamentals. So why don’t we do that in the workplace?

In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into why building strong work habits are more important than you might think and the mundane but fundamental practices they start with.

(Producer’s note: We had a tech mishap during recording, so this week’s episode might sound a little different. We blame Rodney’s lake house ghost (more on that in the SXSW episode). We’ll be back to our usual sound next episode.)

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No burying the lede this week: Employee engagement surveys are broken.

We expect them to tell us everything about a workplace’s culture—but they often miss the mark, capturing just a sliver of what's going on and usually only symptoms instead of underlying causes.

As leaders try to make sense of the data, there’s frequently a lot of smoke chasing, but nobody can tell where the fire is, or if there’s one at all. Add to that employee distrust around anonymity, spun-up initiatives to make changes that never go anywhere, and the fact that most surveys don’t even ask the right questions, and it’s no wonder everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline worker, suspects these surveys do more harm than good.

In this episode, Rodney and Sam explore what “engagement” actually means, what organizations should be measuring instead and why, and how to truly understand the health of your organization.

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We talk a lot about the importance of emergence—of being more comfortable with being uncomfortable. However, it’s hard to practice what you preach… especially for a podcast with a tight schedule. Normally, when one of two hosts is out of commission, you don’t record. But when this recently happened to us, we asked “How might we?” and took a big ol’ step into the unknown.

We’re glad we did, because this week’s guest is Dr. Jason Fox, a self-proclaimed wizard-philosopher, best-selling author, and senior leadership advisor to Fortune 500 companies around the world. In classic wizard-philosopher fashion, he and Sam throw out the script for a far-reaching conversation about the importance of rituals, the roles we play when we’re at work, and how embracing uncertainty is where the magic truly happens.

Learn more about Jason:

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Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].

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It’s mailbag time! We’ve been diving into specific problem areas every episode—and turns out if you go deep, your audience will go even deeper. Listeners, the questions you send us are getting hard! The ones that feel extra complex and extra tangly? We take those to the airwaves to unravel them live and share our knowledge back with you.

On today’s episode, Rodney and Sam tackle another batch of our audience’s thorniest questions.

Questions tackled:

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Planning a corporate workshop or off-site often feels like making a burrito. So many options—and so many opinions on what should go in it. A presentation rodeo on the next quarter’s objectives? Absolutely. Time for a key initiative to get the spotlight in front of the C-suite? Yes, please. Extra scoops of mandatory team-building to strengthen your culture? Why not. Everyone likes fun, right?

But when it’s time to actually chow down, it quickly becomes clear you’re dealing with an overstuffed, leaky, $20,000 mess. And everything the workshop was supposed to accomplish? Yeah, that didn’t happen—so you’re back at square one come Monday.

In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore why our workshop eyes are often bigger than our workshop stomachs; standard off-site practices we need to offload; and how to design new experiences that are actually meaningful and productive.

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It’s an unspoken truth in most knowledge work that summer is a wasted season. From late May to early September, many teams face reduced numbers and it’s nearly impossible to spin up anything new. The director you need approval from? On a cruise. The graphic designer you need for that new marketing campaign? Camping with the kids. When people just aren’t around, it can sometimes be easier to keep the lights on during the vacation relay race and run out the clock until fall.

The two most common sense solutions: take vacation yourself or focus on different things when people are away. But actually doing either of those things? Way harder than you’d expect, especially when modern work is tuned to overwhelm mode 24/7/365.

In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin talk about why summer is where organizational progress goes to die, and how we can stop spending those months doing business as usual and instead live a hot employee summer.

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Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].

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The world is changing faster than ever. But leadership teams seem a little… stagnant. Sure, there’s plenty of changeover as one CEO is replaced by another, or as new C-suite roles pop up, but the way leadership teams operate is largely unchanged from the 1950s. That model? It’s antithetical to the change that’s needed for the rest of an organization to become more adaptable and resilient.

In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore the ways in which leadership teams are holding their organizations back from the future. They’ll dig into how leaders can shift from defense to offense, set the right expectations for their teams, and recognize what their “real work” actually is.

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Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].

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It seems everybody’s up in arms about meetings these days. “There’s too many! They ones we have suck! We have meetings to prepare for other meetings! They keep me from doing my actual job!” We get it, and we hear you. In fact, between BNW and our current show, we’ve devoted 9 episodes to meetings! What more could there be to say in a tenth?

Turns out, a ton. There’s so much intertwined with modern meeting culture that we’re often doomed to failure before we even get in the room. From the trap of the status meeting to leaders hogging all the stage time, Rodney and Sam dissect where most meetings go wrong and give you the tools to rewrite the script for how to start holding meetings that matter.

If you’re looking to make your next meeting better, make it a huddle! Learn more about how huddles can bring side-by-side collaboration and creativity to your remote teams at Slack.com.

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Prefer to watch rather than listen? Check out the extended live cut over on Youtube.

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In the nearly five years since launching this podcast, our inbox has received one type of question more than any other: “If I’m trying to change a system that just doesn’t want to change, how do I keep going? When should I admit defeat and leave?” As people who function as “professional resistance” in organizations all over the world, this questions always hits us hard—because change itself is hard and often can lead to burnout.

So we’re finally having this conversation out in the open to tackle why the people who care the most are the ones who leave. Rodney and Sam dig into why burnout is so common among change agents, how to identify signs of meaningful progress, and when individuals and leaders should see the writing on the wall and throw in the towel.

Oh, and we're on Instagram now! Check us out there for fun behind the scenes stuff and extra things you won't find anywhere else.

To see the video version of this episode, head on over to Youtube.

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Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com.