Connecting to Create: How Strong Work Relationships Ignite Creative Genius (With Ady Dike) - Lean Agile London 24 TalkInTen

Each year the Product Agility podcast goes on tour. We get to go to some of the best conferences and interview some of the most influential speakers out there. 
And this year is no different. We kick off our talks in 10 initiative for 2024 by visiting Lean Agile London. 
Lean Agile London is a fantastic community event, which has a lot of soul and a lot of energy to it. They've also attracted some of the best speakers I've seen on a lineup for a long time. Over the next few days, we are gonna be bringing you as many of these speakers talks in 10 as we possibly can do. 
Each of these episodes will be recorded on the ground in the moment, so you may hear some background noise, I hope, but that adds to the ambiance and makes it feel like you are there with us. This episode of the Product Agility Podcast is sponsored by AHA Slides, your solution for more engaging and productive team meetings. Transform your team's learning experience with our HA slides, AI powered tools designed to quickly generate quizzes and interactive content, boost engagement and efficiency in one go when. What more can you ask for? Visit aha slides.com and use the exclusive discount code prod agility 2024 to get 50% off of all yearly plans. Now, shall we get onto our talking 10. Welcome back to the product jersey podcast. We are sitting in a hallway for this one on account of the lovely British weather, 
a causing a bit of a bit of precipitation it seems. So we're not outside. If it's a bit echoy, we are Apologize, we are recording these. Live at a conference. Say yes, please forgive us. Um, I am joined by Addie, uh, DKE. That's right. Who? Um, you came on one of my large scale Scrum courses. I did many less. Yeah. Many years ago. Maybe it wasn't long. It felt like a long time ago. Um, and it's a pleasure to see you here. You gave a talk, uh, earlier on today, uh, which was connect to Create. I'm wondering could you introduce yourself to our listeners and give them a bit of an overview of your talk? 
Hi y'all. I'm Adi Dke, and yes, I was here to talk about connecting, um, to create. Um, my background is that I've had, uh, over 10 years as a senior manager working up to director level. 
Um, and then sort of from there went into the digital data space, uh, and that's where I became acquainted with Agile. So I've around 15 years experience, um, within the agile domain. Last 10 years, um, working as an enterprise coach. Last five years working as an executive coach where I coach. I have a practice coaching senior leaders and coaches who are looking to become leadership agility coaches. So my topic for today was connecting to create, which is a really heartfelt topic for me because, um, it's something 
for me, it's something about wanting teams, wanting organizations, and wanting individuals to fulfill, you know, that their higher purpose, whatever that is, that they define for themselves. 
And so, um, 
you know, 
and, and one of the things that is really prominent for me in terms of the literature 
is psychological safety. And I really wanted to explore how creating psychologically safe environments and, um, you, you know, developing higher levels of emotional intelligence, 
um, give us greater cap, uh, capacity to develop those and nurture those kind of environments where that's creative spark can thrive. So that's the general thrust o of the presentation. And, and it's the reason why I went for it. I also wanted to show that there was a, that there is more than a tenuous link between emotional intelligence and psychological safety. And that even though management studies show leaders have a, a really key role in nurturing those environments and leading by example, I wanted to show that we also play a part that we can also play a part 
that we are members of teams or sometimes we are, you know, leaders of teams or sometimes we are coaching teams. And it's really important that we, you know, uh, sort of embody, um, 
emotional intelligence. We're aware of how we're showing up. Um, what I wanted to show in the presentation that the way we show up affects where people want to work, it affects how they feel. 
And I, uh, used Maya, Maya Angel's, um, one of her quotes, which is people will forget how what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you make them feel. And, uh, I ran a bit of an exercise to really get people to experience psychological safety for themselves. See the link between emotional intelligence and that, and the empathy of whoever 
the person or their, their safe person was. 'cause I got them to identify their safe and unsafe person. 
And they began to see how those people embodied different, you know, capacities around emotional intelligence, but that, you know, they, they, you know, the ones that made them feel safe, also embodied greater intentionality around creating inclusive environments. 
Awesome. I wish I could have been there. 
And it's, and it is part of you having some technical difficulties as well of your laptop at the beginning. Horrible way to start any talk. It just, 
Dr was just draining 
and it didn't matter what adapter we used. And so in the end, I, I had to use Jose Jose's laptop. Um, um, and yeah, I'm really thankful to Jose and the organizers of this conference because they really saved the day. 
Awesome. Reminds me of the first big talk I ever did. Um, was a large scale scrum conference talking about my, 
uh, less adoption at Royal Bank of Scotland. 
And I was super nervous and I had, uh, a guy called Craig Laman sitting there as well. He's one of the co-creators. And I'm like, 
I'm very like, very nerve, very nervous around him. And he walks in and it's a full house as well. And I'm like, oh my God. And my laptop was, I couldn't get anything shown on the screen. And my friend Sean Smith was like, have my laptop. And I'm like, I love you. I love you. This is not how I need to start. So I really empathize this situation because that's horrible. 
It's horrible. Um, 
now just to 
about halfway through. So I want to, I want to maybe just hone in on, in your opinion, the difference between emotional intelligence and psychological safety. 'cause I think these are, for some people I think they're interchangeable terms when, when actually they shouldn't be. So could you give us a, 
a delineation between the two? Yeah, 
I'd like to say that, 
that a number of different 
definitions abound. Um, there are quite a few prominent players in the field of psychological safety. Like am Amy Edmondson who wrote the Fearless 
Organization. There is Timothy Clark who wrote the four stages of psychological safety. And then Google who ran a project to understand top performing teams. They identified psychological, psychological safety as being one of the top, the most predictive, um, attributes in top performing teams. They came up with 
a, um, a definition of of, uh, psychological safety. 
If I'm to boil it down, I would say that psychological safety is, is about the risk, personal risk, um, to, 
uh, learn 
in an organization without feeling that people will think you don't know what you are doing. Being able to ask questions, um, being able to make mistakes and, and people not feeling 
that you are not up to it. So that's learner safety. 'cause Timothy Clark came up with three, 
four levels, four stages of psychological safety. And he says inclusion is the first level of it, followed by learner safety, followed by, 
um, uh, contributor safety and then followed by challenger. So the ultimate is challenger safety. But when you look at 
how things work, you see that it's all about, uh, you know, 
risk, being able to take personal risk to learn to, to um, to contribute and to challenge. And I think all those definitions have element of that personal risk in it. It's psychological safety also denotes the environment. It speaks about the culture. 
Thank you. While there's emotional intelligence, 
there are two com components to emotional intelligence. It's about 
your awareness of how you show up, that's number one. 
But then there is something about how you regulate. 
So you are aware that your, your tone, the way you express yourself, the way you respond to people can affect how they feel, 
how they show up, 
and how they feel is a function of this psychological safety. The, the, the the the respect and the permission that you give to them to learn and to, to, uh, contribute and to challenge. Um, 
there's also something like, so social intelligence, which is kind of interlinked, but it's more than just how you show up. It's how you, your awareness of, you know, social phenomena. You know how people are relating, uh, you know, making an inclusive environment, but it's also what you are, you are 
prepared to do to, to, to manage those social relationships. So this is thinking about wider stakeholders, thinking about how the sum of the parts work together and really having greater intentionality around fostering those interactions that really help organizations to learn quickly and have, you know, environments where people really feel that they can be their creative best. 
Awesome. I, I could listen to you talk about this for a long time. I think maybe we'll have to get you back on for a long, a longer episode. I think after your holiday. Yeah, after my holiday. After holiday, yeah. Yeah. Let's not talk about a holiday. 
Holiday sounds like a long way away. Um, 
there's a lot to unpack in what you said, and I think your, your, your explanations of the differences, like discerning between the two incredibly useful. 
If people wanted to learn more from you about this mm-Hmm. And they wanted to, uh, and they 
talk to you or whatever it may be, how is the best way that people can find you and, and the work that you do? 
Well, the best way to get hold of me is on LinkedIn. Yeah. I'm, I'm on link LinkedIn, so just please look out for me 
ake on LinkedIn and I will definitely get back to you 
on that. Um, please look out for the, my Talk, 
um, at Lean Agile at 2024 and just, uh, 
and you know, very happy to send you the content from, from that presentation and just have a chat generally. I, I really, this for me is something I love talking about and, but I also wanna learn from the community as well. 
Awesome. And yeah, what you're saying about learning 
in learning is at the heart of being able to adapt. Mm-Hmm. And our inability to learn our, our, 
um, hesitations to learn and the way that we focus on learning is actually one of the things that really holds us as organizations, as, as products, whatever it might be, from actually being able to change direction. We want to change direction and that's a lot of time where the cost comes in, we wanna go in a different direction. Well, that team has nothing to do with that thing ever has to learn how to do it. So we decide actually, well, there's no point for them. It's too costly for 'em to learn, so let's not do the thing. Well, let's get a third party and, and it all begins to go to shit. So I really like what you were saying and that's why I'd love to go a bit deeper, but we are, we are out of time. So thank you so much for coming on. It's lovely to see you again. And uh, yeah, thank you everyone for listening. Do remember to follow us on, uh, LinkedIn so you are made aware of all the episodes we're doing at Lean Agile, London 2024 and some the awesome episodes we've got coming up over the next month or so. So again, thank you Addie, thank you for listening and we'll be back again soon.