I met Sarah Harvey – aka Savvy Sarah – a while back and we talked about books, the publishing industry, and how to get started in that Alice-in-Wonderland world.  Next thing I know, she’s published a book – so apparently I gave out some great advice, if I do say so myself.  It seemed only right to set up a chat once I’d read the book to see what I could learn from Sarah about establishing a great workplace culture – the subject of the book, as you may have guessed.

Nick:  You argue for a safe, trust-based culture in the workplace.  That sounds good – but what are the key steps to take to establish that?

Savvy Sarah:  One of our most fundamental needs is to feel safe with the people around us and be able to trust the intentions and motivations of others. When our workplace feels psychologically unsafe, we can’t build working relationships on mutual trust, and we are never going to perform at our best.

As a leader or manager, we must make it safe for our teams to disagree with us and speak out when they don’t agree with something. They must do that respectfully, of course, but if the way we lead makes people fearful of speaking up, we are never going to create an open and honest culture. So, we must always seek to be clear about our intentions towards others, treat them with respect, and check in with them regularly to prevent any misunderstandings. We should also be sure to recognize and reward open and well-intentioned challenge to encourage a safe, trust-based culture, rather than penalize people for speaking up – which creates a blame culture. We can build trust by being consistent, trusting others, doing what we say we’re going to do, and investing time in our relationships.  In that way, trust develops and builds over time.

Nick:  You suggest that emotional intelligence is something that a workplace needs.  I thought EQ was hard to develop — something you either have or don’t have — or can it be strengthened?  If so, how should I go about it?

Savvy Sarah:  It’s a common myth that EQ is either something you have or you don’t. In fact, we can all develop our levels of emotional intelligence as it’s not fixed.  You can develop it pretty much as you would learn any other skill. Some will find this more difficult than others, but with conscious effort we can all strengthen our EQ throughout our lives.

The first step is to develop our sense of self-awareness by tuning in to the emotions we feel on a day to day basis and recognizing them accurately. With a developed sense of self-awareness, we can more accurately recognize the emotions we experience and gain a helpful understanding about their impact on how we behave, how we perform, how we make decisions, and how we talk to others. Once we’ve got this nailed, we can set about managing and regulating our emotions, as well as more accurately recognizing them in other people. All very important for having savvy conversations!

Nick:  You champion the truth.  Are there times when leaders have to withhold the truth from their employees?

Savvy Sarah:  This is a question that often comes up in my leadership coaching.  I’ve always taken the view that I want to be as open and honest as I can be and so have always shared knowledge, information, and strategy that I’ve felt was helpful to my teams for them to do the best job they could do. That said, sometimes I’ve had to keep things to myself because it was confidential or sensitive information.

Creating a truthful workplace doesn’t mean telling everyone about everything all of the time. Sometimes the truthful thing to do is maintain confidentiality and not divulge sensitive information until it’s agreed that should happen.  Sometimes leaders are in a difficult position and can’t always be as open as they’d like to be. I don’t see this as not being truthful. I see this as a time when we need to use our values and judgement to decide what information we should share and what we shouldn’t. It’s about acting with integrity and being honest about when we can and can’t communicate certain messages. People need to know there is no hidden agenda. If we act with integrity, we retain our credibility and people will acknowledge and trust us when we say that it’s not the right time for certain conversations to take place.

Nick:  You say you want people to “keep moving in the right direction.”  Can you say more about what you mean by that, and how you do it?

Savvy Sarah:  Being Directional is one of the five key factors of my CREDS Conversational Model. Without continually moving in the right direction, we can find ourselves stuck, at an impasse or simply not making enough progress towards our goals. But goal-setting and action-planning is not enough on its own; we need to make sure we align our efforts and behavior with our goals to get the results we’re looking for. So, it’s about moving things on in a timely manner, agreeing small steps forward to achieving bigger goals, and holding ourselves and others accountable for those actions.

A great leader won’t put things off unnecessarily. Rather than avoiding issues, they will work out a way to move forward even if that sometimes means not getting their own way. They recognize that it’s not always important to prove they’re right or the other person is wrong, so they focus on what will help move the conversation on and agreeing targets and goals which motivate. They help their teams break larger objectives down into smaller chunks or steps and collaboratively agree action points, working hard to get buy-in and commitment from others to what needs to be delivered, by when. Being Directional keeps things moving in the right direction to get better results and maintain more positive relationships.

Nick:  Finally, tell us more about Sarah Harvey.  How did you find this calling?  And how did you come to be Savvy Sarah?

Savvy Sarah:  Well, following a 17-year career in HR, I established my own consultancy and coaching business in 2003. For some time, I’d been fascinated to find out what it takes to turn difficult discussions into highly effective conversations, because when it comes down to it effective conversations really are the key to our personal and business success. At the heart of everything we do to change our lives and work for the better, conversations are the smallest unit of change. You can develop employee engagement and communications strategies and implement culture change programs, but the starting point for all of these is your day-to-day conversations. It’s your day-to-day conversations that create positive employee engagement, that make great communication strategies happen, and that create and embed culture change.

I began developing my Savvy Conversations® concept and STREETCREDS® framework back in 2013. I’ve now identified the six considerations for creating an effective conversational culture as well as the five ‘conversational cogs’ that must be present for every conversation to be a success. I’ve come to believe this wholeheartedly and, having shared this with 2000 managers in workshops, I wanted to capture it in my book so that I could share more widely what I’ve discovered. I firmly believe that if everyone in the workplace communicated with more savvy, we’d have minimal conflict, optimum performance and positive working relationships all round.

I do love that so many people now know me as ‘Savvy Sarah’! It started with my Twitter handle, then I was encouraged to use it when introducing myself at network meetings.  Today I meet people for the first time and they say “Hello Savvy Sarah!” because they’ve bought the book or follow me on social media!

Nick:  Thank you, Savvy Sarah!