The Importance Of Psychological Safety With Minette Norman And Karolin Helbig

 

Psychological safety in the workplace is the foundation of innovation and trust. Join Elizabeth Bachman as she dives into the vital topic of how leaders can create a feeling of psychological safety with experts  Minette Norman and Karolin Helbig. In this episode, Minette and Karolin share their insights on fostering psychologically safe work environments and the profound impact it has on team dynamics and productivity. Discover practical tips and strategies from their collaborative work and understand the nuances of leadership that prioritize human connection and trust. This conversation is a must-listen for leaders and teams aiming to enhance their workplace culture and achieve sustainable success.

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The Importance Of Psychological Safety With Minette Norman And Karolin Helbig

Lead More Powerfully By Being More Human

Welcome to the show, Minette Norman and Karolin Helbig. I should say Willkommen, Karolin and Minette. Before I get into our subject of psychological safety, let me ask you about your dream interview. For each of you, if you were to interview somebody you can’t get to live, who would it be? What would you ask them? Who should be listening? Minette, why don’t you start?

I’m going to go back more than a century to someone I would like to interview if I could. That is Susan B. Anthony, who, for people who don’t know who she was, was a US suffragist in the 19th century. She was fighting for women’s right to vote in the US. The reason I would love to interview her is she faced so much resistance. She was arrested. She was constantly fighting the status quo, which I feel is a little bit my role in life, and she did not give up. I would love to talk to her about what kept her going in the face of all of that resistance and how she kept her core beliefs and kept pressing onward. She would be a dream interview.

That’s great.

I would love to listen, Minette.

Gertrude Stein wrote a play about her called The Mother of Us All, which the American composer, Virgil Thomson, set to music that I sang in college. I was never a very good opera singer, but we did a bit of it. It’s titled The Mother of Us All. Karolin, who would your dream interview be?

I’d like to travel back a little bit in time. I’d love to interview Seneca. Seneca was once a philosopher. In ancient Rome, the school of philosophers, the Stoics, were a combination of therapists and teachers. They cared about conscious living, how we should live, what’s the meaning of life, and so on. Seneca famously said, “If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you need is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.” I love this quote. I love the Stoics as a group of philosophers but particularly this quote.

I’d love to ask Seneca, “How could we apply this to modern times and business? When leaders are busy and overwhelmed, they want to change, but how can they change their attitude? How can they change themselves, first of all?” I’d love to have a discussion. I picture this not as a podcast or something but maybe a one-on-one discussion with Seneca.

Meeting And Collaboration

I’ll be there. I’ll come listen. This leads me to the topic of psychological safety. We’ve been talking about it since Roman times, but the definition has changed over the years. Can you talk a little bit about how you met Karolin and the two of you decided you had to write a book?

Yeah. It’s a really lovely story. That happened in early 2021. Karolin and I are both from different parts of the world. She’s a leadership consultant as am I. We knew about psychological safety and its importance. We were both looking for practical material. How could we help our clients who were interested in fostering a psychologically safe work environment?

We didn’t see any practical tools out there in the literature, so we signed up for a class, which was an online class, based on Amy Edmondson’s work. It was the Fearless Organization Scan, learning to do assessments on the level of psychological safety. We were both in this class. We were in a small cohort in the class together and clicked in a way. We really appreciated what each other contributed.

The way the book came to be is that Karolin heard me on a podcast. One of our fellow students interviewed me. On the podcast, I was talking about my work on inclusive leadership and psychological safety. I said, “I’m really looking for practical materials and I can’t find anything.” In fact, in the class, we were not learning that. We were learning to do these assessments.

Karolin sent me an email. This is in June of 2021. The subject line was Crazy Idea. She said, “Minette, I heard you on the podcast with Rob. Your ideas and mine about leadership are very closely aligned.” She sent me some of her materials. She said, “I have this idea. Since we can’t find this information, what if you and I put our experiences, hearts, and minds together and created a pamphlet or a brochure?” The idea was that it would be for our clients. We didn’t even think this would become a book that would go out in the world. That was how it all started. I said yes immediately and we set up a Zoom call. We can talk more about how we went forward from there, but that was how it all began.

Adding to that, it was helpful that we didn’t aim at writing a book and that we aimed at developing practical guidelines for our clients. We were aiming low and reaching higher.

Karolin, for the sake of everybody who’s reading who has written a book or thinking about writing a joint book, what was it like to start with the practical part and then turn that into a book? You call this a playbook, which implies that it’s a series of exercises that you can do.

It’s not only just the title, playbook. The nature of the book is a playbook. It’s meant to offer small little things you can try. You don’t have to start at the very beginning. You don’t have to read until the end. You can flip the book open and see what’s there and what is resonating with you. You can take this, put it into an action or experiment, and see how it works in your life.

Part of the beauty of the book is the very clear structure. We have little bits and pieces, but we have them organized in a clear structure. There are five key levers we can pull to increase psychological safety. It was also helpful in our work together across two continents that we had a clear structure so we could work asynchronously and then share what we developed, comment, and so on. It was not that we had one threat of writing where only one person could continue. We could work simultaneously.

Impact Of Small Changes

That’s very interesting. It’s The Psychological Safety Playbook. I’m going to go back to Karolin. You were teaching workshops with this material some years ago when you wrote this. What have you found in terms of using these techniques? What have you found in the reactions to people?

I see over and over again that people are amazed at how small steps, small shifts, and small changes can really have a big impact. For example, when introducing one small question and making it a routine in team discussions or whatever, you could be like, “What am I missing?” That’s the very first move we suggest in the book. Adding this little phrase or this little question can change the nature of the meetings and the nature of the collaboration of the interaction between people. For example, a big company in Germany ran a pilot starting, because it’s the first move, with this little intervention. They were blown away by the impact.

What sort of impact did you get? What happened?

Suddenly, people voiced ideas that had been hidden so far. Suddenly, people spoke up which tended to be silent because this question alone was making clear, “We want to get your ideas. Put them on the table. Let’s discuss. I’m interested in this idea.” Usually, it was only the leader talking and putting forward their idea and suggestions. They didn’t ask for what they were not seeing.

Minette, this is a question that a leader can ask their team or ask the people that they’re working with, yes?

Yes.

That’s what I wanted to hear. What if the team person or someone in the team asks it?

It’s very impactful when a leader asks it because the leader so much sets the tone for the organization. In many cultures, we see the leader as the infallible person who has all the answers. By saying, “What am I missing?” they’re acknowledging that they don’t see everything and that other people have something really important to contribute.

By asking 'what am I missing?', leaders are acknowledging that they don't see everything and that other people have something really important to contribute. Share on X

One of the things that we have learned in doing these workshops, and Karolin and I have both done so many of them, is it’s not just the leader who can ask this question and have a big impact. No matter where you sit, acknowledging that there are other perspectives you’re interested in hearing, “What am I missing?” We add to this another possibility, which is in a group where it’s so easy to get into false harmony and group think that we can start to ask, “We’ve all converged on this one solution. What are we missing? What perspectives are we not thinking of? Whose voice is not in this room?” Those kinds of things are very powerful to get people to think differently.

In addition to what Karolin said about small changes, one of the organizations that I was working with said the same thing. Someone said, “I thought I was the leader of a group. I thought that people would share their thoughts. Until I started explicitly asking, they didn’t. By adding the question, “What am I missing?” I started to hear from people in ways that I never did before. I had made the assumption people were speaking up and they weren’t.”

It’s these tiny little shifts that truly make a difference and then being willing to listen. That may be the next step. When someone does share a dissenting or divergent perspective, ask the question, “Will I listen with an open mind? Will I listen without reacting instinctively in a defensive way?” These things are important as well, but we start by inviting other perspectives.

I have so many questions here. It’s making it safe for everyone in the group to speak up. I’m guessing you have to do this several times if people don’t necessarily feel safe. It takes a while to build that trust. What if you’re a leader who doesn’t feel safe to admit that they don’t know everything?

Leaders’ Self-Awareness

That’s also one thing we emphasize throughout the book. For leaders, in order to establish those small things, they need to really develop their self-awareness. We say in the book that they need to become bravely self-aware. For a leader who wants to make this change, it feels scary. They were used to having all the answers. They were hiding behind the mask of knowing it all and so on. Suddenly, they’re taking off this mask. Suddenly, they’re admitting, “We don’t know it all.” Suddenly, doing things differently is a scary thing.

First of all, leaders need to notice, “I’m scared,” and then increase their self-awareness and not let this fear stop them from doing what they want to do. It’s acknowledging, “This is new to me. This is scary. I don’t know how I will be perceived. This is a true experiment with an open ending. Let’s see how others will react.” Then, do this brave step. Ask this question and see how it develops.

I know the first step often is the hardest and the toughest because it’s the unknown. Once you cultivate this a little bit more, it isn’t scary anymore. You see, “I get back so many great things, not only ideas from people who I’ve never heard from but also relationships. I’m perceived as a human being. I can relate to my team members as human beings.” Suddenly, work is not only more productive but it’s much more joyful.

Minette, continuing in this line for a minute, I know for me as a leader, it was scary to admit that I didn’t know. There have been times when I didn’t give enough clear information so my team was confused. Where do we find the balance between giving people the direction that they need, since you’re the leader and you have to be giving direction, and admitting that maybe you don’t know everything? There’s got to be a balance in between there.

It is a fine balancing act that we are constantly navigating as leaders. Before I became an independent consultant, I led a very large global team. I had about 1,000 people in my organization. I’m going to speak from real experience that I had to navigate that. I’m getting up and I’m speaking at an all-hands for 1,000 people. To your point, I need to be crystal clear about the direction we’re going in, the strategy, and the context in which we’re operating.

What I really believe is that leaders need to share as much information as they can to set the context. It’s like, “Why are we doing this? What’s the world in which we’re operating? What are the business conditions?” It is so that everyone has the same context and background. Sometimes, leaders are very careful in how they dole out information, and that doesn’t serve them well.

I believe in as much transparency as we can share that’s not confidential with our employees and at the same time realizing and being public about the fact that, “There may be things we haven’t considered. I, as the leader of this group, have done my due diligence. I have met with a lot of people. I’ve gathered input. This is the way we’re going. This is the way forward. These are the goals, etc. If there’s something that doesn’t make sense to you or there’s something that you’re unclear on, then I want to hear about it.” To your point, it’s not a one-time thing. I can’t say that and people will believe it.

It really is over time that I have heard feedback from people. People have witnessed me getting a question, for example, in an all-hands and responding positively and openly to it. Maybe the next person is going to ask that question and say, “We’re missing something important here.” If I as the leader respond with curiosity and interest, then this is going to be a virtuous circle of perpetuating this openness and ability to ask questions and push back.

I wouldn’t use the word directive. That’s part of the problem about leaders. Traditionally, they’ve been so directive like, “Do this. Don’t do this.” It’s more about sharing information, vision, strategy, and goals and letting people figure out their way forward by having enough context and information as opposed to saying, “Do this. Don’t do this.”

That’s one of the things I remember from my years as an opera director. I was one of the early women, in America at least. I was always worried I had to be better than everybody because I was representing all women. I don’t know if anybody ever told me that. I felt that. That’s a social expectation that may or may not be true, but in those days, it was early. Also, I’m the oldest child, so I know how it’s all supposed to go.

If there’s an opera that I’ve directed before, I have an opinion about every single note and how it’s supposed to go. It was learning to let go and let the performers set up a structure, and then let the performers work within that to be inclusive to bring what they had to do. I was often working with international teams, so different people had different ideas of what should happen. I confess that was hard for me. That was a tough lesson to learn. In some ways, I’m like, “My way is still right, but maybe I could let other people do it.”

Managing Up And Influence

We’ve gone off my whole list of questions, so we have to do a longer interview another time. I want to ask you what happens if you are in a team or maybe you’re a leader but the people above you are not being inclusive. Is there a way that one can manage up if you believe in inclusion and psychological safety but perhaps your next manager does not? Let’s see. I’ll go back to Karolin for this.

This is a question that we find very often out there because this is a situation many leaders find themselves in. For them, they are convinced of psychological safety. They try to establish it in their team and their environment. Yet, still, the leaders higher up in their hierarchy seem to play a different game. It’s like, “What can I do then?” You can’t change other people. You can’t force other people to do something or not to do something. There are a lot of nuances. One nuance might be that we have to let go of things we can’t control. We have to focus on what we can control.

When leaders start to play this new game of psychological safety in their environment or their teams, sometimes, what is happening is that there is a ripple effect. This new play spreads toward the organization and suddenly, something is possible with the leaders who seem to be not open to this new idea, which was not possible before. However, there’s no guarantee, and this could only be one aspect. I know, Minette, we had this discussion. Maybe you want to add a little bit.

You’ve said it quite well that you can only influence where you can influence and you can try to manage up, but it doesn’t always work if people are not willing to change. Let’s say we’re in that middle layer of management, which is so common. We’re squeezed between our own teams and maybe the executive staff. If the executive staff is not buying into these ideas of inclusion and psychological safety, we still have a huge impact on the people we work with, and we must not underestimate that.

Let’s say I’m a director or a VP. The people who are in my organization are going to be appreciative that I am creating these conditions for the people in my organization to do great work, speak up, and do experiments even if the executive staff maybe doesn’t embrace it. Don’t underestimate the impact you can have on the people who report to you and on your colleagues. How do you behave with your peers? How do you create a great environment? As Karolin said, maybe the people above you will notice, or maybe not. Even if they don’t, you still can have a very positive impact.

It can be frustrating when you see the great impact these behaviors are having and then your higher-ups are not embracing them. Maybe they’re even silencing you and making you feel bad. We all have to make that decision of, “Is this an environment where I can continue to do good work and can continue to have a positive impact or am I simply too frustrated?” That’s a choice we all have to make.

I’m going to go back to you here and continue. You’ve got a new book coming out at the time that we are recording. Your new book is called The Boldly Inclusive Leader. I’m going to have to do a separate episode about that.

I’d love to.

Talk about the link between psychological safety and inclusion.

They are completely linked. In fact, I have a whole chapter in The Boldly Inclusive Leader on psychological safety.

Link Between Inclusion And Psychological Safety

Let’s start with inclusion and then talk about psychological safety. What’s your definition?

For me, in a work context, inclusion is that you, whoever you are and whatever your identity is, feel that you are appreciated. You are seen and heard. Your voice is welcome in this organization. You are afforded the same opportunities as anyone else. That’s my simple definition of inclusion. You feel that you are appreciated for who you are uniquely and that there’s nothing held against you for your identity as who you are.

Why psychological safety and inclusion are intrinsically linked in my mind is that I believe that unless we have a foundation of psychological safety where people feel they can share their ideas even if they differ from the majority, then we do not get to that feeling of inclusion where people are like, “My voice is heard, I am welcome here. I am embraced for who I am uniquely.”

 

It’s a chicken and egg thing. We have to start with psychological safety. We build on that. We get to inclusion, belonging, and all sorts of other good things. When we don’t start with psychological safety, we can often say, “Be your authentic self.” We hear that a lot, like, “Show up as yourself at work.” People don’t want to do that. They do not feel that it is safe, They feel that they have to conform to the group norms and the dominant culture.

What we do is we mask who we are. We cover who we are to try to fit in. The organization does not benefit from having a diverse workforce because everyone’s conforming and pretending to be someone they’re not. You don’t get to show up as your authentic self. You don’t get to bring your full self to work unless you feel it’s safe to do so.

I understand that one. Karolin, we’re recording this in June 2024. You were publishing the German version of The Psychological Safety Playbook because you’re based in Germany. You’ve both been working with global teams, but I’m really interested in the perspective of 2 different countries and 2 different societies. I’m married to a German, so I think a lot about that. Karolin, how does this show up in terms of inclusion and safety? Is it different when you’re working with German teams?

To have a proper answer to this question, which I think is extremely interesting, I would have to do more work with purely American clients. For the clients I collaborated with Minette based in the US, I don’t see any very systematic differences that stick out. Inclusion and the accent on inclusion is something which is more prominent and more important maybe in US-based companies. However, it’s also important in Germany. It’s on the rise.

Inclusive leadership is also an important topic. In Germany, the large corporations become so much more international that you don’t really see a huge difference anymore. I have a little bit of a hard time answering this question. If Minette would do some work for German clients, maybe you would detect subtle differences. I don’t know,

You worked with clients in India, Asia, or Africa?

That’s what I was going to say. I have worked with clients in both Europe and Asia, but not so much in Africa yet. The bigger differences I see are with Asian culture. When you look at least Western and European cultures in Germany and the US, in our cultures, we communicate differently but they are closer together when you look at different scales of cultural communication and directness versus indirectness. When you work with Asian cultures, it’s quite challenging to talk about psychological safety in cultures that are traditionally hierarchical.

Here’s an example. I was working with a client who is a leader. He was working with a global group. He’s Indian and based in India. His team’s all in India. When we were talking about this idea of being able to challenge the leader and offer a dissenting viewpoint, he said, “Minette, this is really hard in India and in our culture. I cannot even get my team members to call me by my first name. They only call me Mr. because there’s this respect for age and respect for hierarchy. How can I start to get them to be willing to challenge my thinking? It’s hard in my culture.”

I’m really glad you asked the question. I wish that there was more research about this. I can’t find research about psychological safety across different cultures. This is a great area to explore. We all have this human need no matter where we are in the world, but it plays out very differently depending on our traditional cultures, communication styles, and ways of working. It’s an interesting question and I’m not an expert in it.

Certainly, if anybody’s reading and wants to send information, please contact me because this is something that I’m curious about. I’ve worked internationally since I was seventeen years old in opera. One of the reasons why I loved working in opera was working with international teams. It was mostly a European viewpoint. These were people who were mostly trained in Western-European schools, the US and Western Europe. If you had a Russian singer, a Korean singer, or a Chinese singer, it was how you reach them on a level that they will take it in and relate.

I want to say one more important topic before I let you go. Karolin, you said at one point that if you want to get superior results, you have to let go of pushing for the results and instead prioritize the human side. Since I spend so much time in the diversity and inclusion space and my work is all about gender equity, a part of me says, “Why is this so hard? Why are we still talking about prioritizing people before we prioritize the results or the money?” Let’s go there and I will ask further questions.

If you want to get superior results, you have to let go of pushing for the results and instead prioritize the human side. Share on X

It’s so hard because it’s not our nature and not our automatism. I had a little bit of an unfriendly discussion with a client. That’s what we always experience. When there’s pressure, then suddenly, people forget all the nice stuff and go to the seemingly safe side of pushing and being more directive and not less directive.

We talked about letting go earlier. If you increase the pressure, letting go is even harder to do. Letting go in good times is still hard and not easy, and something we need to deliberately do. However, it is a little bit easier compared to a situation where you are under severe pressure, for example, from above because you have to deliver results, the bottom line is not where it should be, and so on.

That’s what I experienced with all my clients. When you increase pressure, people default to the old automatism of more control, being more directive, forgetting the human side, not having time for checking in with the other human being, and going more to the pushing side. This is setting you up for not having success

Balancing External Pressures And Team Needs

In America since the 1980s when the priorities changed to shareholders keeping the stock price high rather than the people who work in the organization, there’s a lot of talk about empathy and treating people like human beings and not as units. If you are a manager, a vice president, or a director and you are squeezed between the private equity firm that owns your company and all they want is cash and stock price and your desire to help your team, how do you strike that balance? How do we find a way of balancing both needs?

This is such an important topic. When Karolin was talking about the pressures, I was going to where you were about to go, Elizabeth. I was working for a publicly traded company. It’s all about shareholders. It’s all about those quarterly returns. It’s not even always long-term. It’s very short-term. It’s like, “What are we going to report this quarter?”

My feeling about it and having been in a leadership position is that you are squeezed between the expectations of the street, your private equity, or whatever it is. The fact of who is getting this work done? It’s the people who work with you and for you. I always felt that no matter how much pressure I was under as a leader, we have to remember this. We don’t want to push that down to our employees because we know what’s going to happen. If we are in command and control or we are micromanaging, they’re going to be demotivated. They’re not going to do great work.

Our job as leaders is to, in some ways, shield our teams from those economic pressures and external pressures and instead clear the way for them to continue to do great work. That is the most important job of the leader, especially in these market conditions. You don’t have to expose them to all the pressures. You may be handling a lot of it and you may need to have someone you can talk to about the pressures you’re under. What you want to do is still continue to create healthy conditions for your teams to do good work, experiment, and learn from mistakes.

It is knowing, “Maybe we won’t do all of the pet projects we were working on. We may need to narrow our focus. This is the clear goal for the quarter.” In that, we are not going to go into micromanagement and directiveness because what’s going to happen is we’re going to burn out our employees and they’re not going to be able to deliver. That’s so much of what we see with the fact that people are truly experiencing mental health issues and burnout.

On June 11th, 2024, the State of Workplace Empathy Report is coming out. By the time it’s released, it will be the ninth report that’s come out from Businessolver. It’s called the State of Workplace Empathy. It’s a fascinating study. They interviewed CEOs, employees, and HR people across the world. Empathy is incredibly important for successful businesses and there’s an issue with it. I encourage people to get a hold of that report and leaders to digest some of that about how we need to show up with empathy for our employees because they’re in a bad state.

Empathy is incredibly important for successful businesses. Share on X

It’s also financially rewarding because it’s so much easier to treat your people well and keep employees rather than having them get fed up and leave. When someone leaves, that’s expensive for the company and expensive for the employee who leaves. Keep your people happy. One other point for those of you who are reading is that in America, we have a lot of pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion from people who are nervous. Investors are nervous because of all sorts of political things that are happening.

Don’t forget, and if you’re in a position, you’ve got this, that your team will help you produce great results. Even though your company may be pressured into eliminating the DEI department, that’s going to mean that the diverse employees you have are going to be angry. Even if you don’t have a DEI department, you can do your best to work with the people that you work most closely with to say, “We still believe in this. My team believes in this.” It’s one of the things that’s been bothering me a lot.

Practical Actions For Leaders

Minette Norman and Karolin Helbig, thank you so very much for joining us. There are about a page and a half of questions I still want to ask you. Minette, let’s start with you. If somebody’s reading and says, “They’re speaking my language. I need help,” what’s one thing you could start with? Karolin, I’ll ask you the next one.

One of the most powerful actions we can all do is to pay attention to how we’re listening to others, to truly slow down, to not try to put our response forward, and to listen. Listen with an open mind and an open heart, especially to the people you don’t agree with.

 

Karolin, what is one thing you could do?

I’d love to offer as a practice something that Minette did when she replied to one of your early questions, Elizabeth. She shifted from yes, but to yes, and. This is such a powerful move. What happens if you say yes, but as we habitually always do is you diminish and turn away what the other person said. However, it’s much more proactive and much more appreciative if you say, “Yes, and.” It’s a great and easy tool. I encourage everyone to try this. It can be applied in private life too.

Karolin Helbig and Minette Norman, thank you so much for being on the show. This is a very special episode. To our wonderful audience, if you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and subscribe to us on YouTube, subscribe to the show wherever you’re tuning to it, and especially leave us a good review on Apple Podcasts. That’s the one that matters. That will bring us more people to tune in to wonderful guests like Karolin Helbig and Minette Norman. This has been the show. I’ll see you on the next one.

 

Important Links

• Minette Norman
• Karolin Helbig – Leadership Expeditions
• The Psychological Safety Playbook
• The Boldly Inclusive Leader
• Karolin Helbig – LinkedIn
• Karolin Helbig
• YouTube – Elizabeth Bachman, Strategic Speaking for Results
• Apple Podcasts – Speakers Who Get Results

 

About Minette Norman

Minette Norman is an award-winning author, speaker, and leadership consultant who previously spent decades leading global technical teams in the Silicon Valley software industry and realized that we needed a new, more human model of leadership.

As the author of The Boldly Inclusive Leader and the co-author of The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human, Minette is committed to helping leaders unleash the full potential of the people in their organizations.

Minette knows that when groups embrace diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs emerge, and innovation accelerates.

Her most recent position before starting her consultancy was as Vice President of Engineering Practice at Autodesk. Responsible for influencing more than 3,500 engineers around the globe, she focused on state-of-the-art engineering practices while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture. Named in 2017 as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times and as “Business Role Model of the Year” in the 2018 Women in IT/Silicon Valley Awards, Minette is a recognized leader with a unique perspective. Minette holds degrees in Drama and French from Tufts University and studied at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

 

About Karolin Helbig

Building on more than two decades of experience as a management consultant and in leadership development, along with a deep expertise in science, Dr. Karolin Helbig helps leaders increase their effectiveness, optimize team performance, and transform their organizations through mindset, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety.

She serves large, international corporations as well as mid-size companies and non-profit organizations and is known for bridging the gap between theory and practice. Previously, Karolin spent more than 15 years as a top management consultant with McKinsey & Company, working as a trusted advisor and in some cases, a hands-on coach, to solve her clients’ toughest issues.

She integrated world-class problem solving, industry expertise, and proprietary tools and capabilities to create change and lasting impact with organizations in industries from banking to public sector to chemicals in Europe and the Middle East. While in that role, Karolin saw first-hand how real transformation is not the result of optimized processes and systems, but of transformed people leadership. Prior to McKinsey, Karolin received her PhD in human genetics from the Phillipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany. Today, she integrates neuroscience findings that revolutionize the way we understand how human brains function and translates them into applicable and powerful leadership practices. Learn more about Karolin’s work on her website https://karolinhelbig.com.