1) What “interpersonal risk-taking” means
Behavioral (primary)
- Speaking up
- Dissenting
- Admitting mistakes
- Asks for help
- Gives tough feedback
- Feedback acts: (peer→peer, IC→manager).
Perceptual (supporting)
- Fear of negative consequences (career/relational costs) for speaking up
- Regret after silence vs. relief
Quality (supporting)
- Conversation quality score in pivotal meetings.
- Follow-through: % voiced risks that trigger a specific action.
2) Predictors: cultural elements to test (team-level)
- Connection (care/safety): felt respect, inclusion, leader warmth, peer solidarity.
- Courage/accountability norms: expectations to surface hard truths; protected dissent.
- Leader micro-behaviors: invites dissent, thanks contrarians, models fallibility, reverses publicly when wrong.
- Conflict norms/hygiene: explicit rules for disagreeing.
- Feedback norms: how often/early tough feedback is exchanged.
- Psych costs & career safety: explicit statements and observed history of non-punishment for respectful dissent.
3) Hypotheses (examples)
- Connection × Courage interaction predicts interpersonal risk-taking (both are required).
4) Design (mixed-methods, team-centric)
- We interviewed 267 leaders from a wide variety of organizations in the public and private sectors.
- We surveyed 72,345 from Jan. 2023 – June 2023. All survey participants, who ranged in level from individual contributors to line managers to C-level executives participated. Respondents were not required to respond to all questions.
5) Overall design (convergent mixed-methods)
- Qualitative core: 267 semi-structured interviews with leaders to surface themes, mechanisms, language, and examples.
- Quantitative core: 72,345-person survey (rolling Jan–Jun 2023) to test & size themes and clusters.
- Triangulation: Link interview themes → survey constructs; validate with a subset of behavioral indicators
6) Sampling & recruitment
Interviews (n=267 leaders)
- Frame: Directors → C-suite across sectors; target diversity by function, gender, geography that came principally from client work (keynote and culture system client interviews).
Survey (n=72,345, Jan–Jun 2023)
- Respondents: ICs, line managers, senior leaders, executives.
7) Instruments
- A) Interview protocol (45–60 min)
- Critical incident meeting (“last time you hesitated to speak up/invited dissent, named an inconvenient truth”).
- Cultural conditions present/absent: protected dissent norms, leader fallibility, feedback norms (what became courage dimension), feeling of belonging, trust, psychological safety (what became connection dimension).
- Consequences (career, relational, learning).
- Concrete practices (presence of rituals, agreements, policies) and counterfactuals (“what would have made speaking up/naming inconvenient truths easier?”).
8) Qualitative analysis (interviews, n=267)
- Coding: build codebook from pilot interviews seeded with Last 8% constructs.
- Outputs: theme map: this was the earliest stage of the 2×2 that identified courage and connection as critical themes.
- Use: convert themes into survey items.
9) Quantitative analysis (survey, n=72,345)
Validation
- Reliability: ω or α ≥ .75 per subscale.
Link to behavior
Perceptions of Team Characteristics
We surveyed 72,345 from Jan. 2023 – June 2023. All survey participants, who ranged in level from ICs, line managers, senior leaders, executives. Respondents were not required to respond to all questions.
We asked respondents for perceptions of their team based on findings derived from the thematic interviews that informed the 2×2 map.
Perceptions of: Connection (care/safety): felt respect, inclusion, leader warmth, peer solidarity. Courage/accountability norms: expectations to surface hard truths; protected dissent. Leader micro-behaviors: invites dissent, thanks contrarians, models fallibility, reverses publicly when wrong. Conflict norms/hygiene: explicit rules for disagreeing. Feedback norms: how often/early tough feedback is exchanged. Psych costs & career safety: explicit statements and observed history of non-punishment for respectful dissent. Rituals & artifacts: presence of premortems, “last 8%” round, red-team seat, meeting templates with dissent prompts.
Finally, we asked individuals where on the 2×2 map they placed their current team. We found:
16% reported the culture on their team to have features of high courage and low connection as exemplified by characteristics of blame, prioritization of results over relationship, high anxiety and high burnout and where people were afraid to speak up for fear of being reprimanded. People on these teams reported not feeling valued, having a voice but would get feedback.
We termed this cluster as Transactional culture
14% reported the culture on their team to have features of low courage and low connection as exemplified by characteristics of inconsistency of feeling valued, having a voice and receiving feedback that led to low risk taking.
We termed this cluster a Fear-Based culture.
37% reported the culture on their team to have features of low courage and high connection as exemplified by characteristics of feeling valued, having a voice but not receiving feedback. There were mediocre standards, slow decision making, and people did not speak up for fear of hurting other people’s feelings. It was an avoid culture.
We termed this cluster a Family culture.
33% of people reported the culture on their team as being high in both connection and courage as exemplified by feeling valued, having a voice and having feedback rich environment. There was a balance of results and relationship and high trust which led to high experimentation and innovation.
We termed this cluster a Last 8% culture
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