Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#169 How psychological safety plays a role in comms (especially change comms) (ft. Dr. Samantha Rush)

• Season 1 • Episode 169

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Every day, we make around 35,000 decisions, of which most of them are fast, subconscious, and driven by emotion rather than logic. So what does that mean for how we communicate change?

In this episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast, we sit down with Dr. Samantha Rush, a cognitive decision-making specialist, to unpack how decisions are really made, especially in complex, high-stakes environments.

Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, and her PhD research, Samantha explains why acceptability is the critical first step in any change. Before people adopt something new, they make a series of micro-decisions about whether it feels safe, what it means for them, and how it might impact their reputation or standing.

Together, we explore:

  • Why logic-heavy communication often falls short
  • The role of psychological safety in decision-making
  • How fear, uncertainty, and self-perception shape responses to change
  • Practical ways communicators can design messages that actually land
  • What influences whether leaders align to, and follow through on, decisions

This episode challenges traditional approaches to change communication and offers a more human, realistic lens on how people think, feel, and decide.

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Every second of every day, your brain is making a lot of decisions. It's generally thought the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions every day. In fact, people can make an average of 226.7 decisions about food alone every day. Of the 35,000 decisions, most of these are micro decisions where your brain is quickly helping you navigate life and you know, help you decide to do things like sit up straighter or blink more when you're looking at the screen and during change, whether it's at work or at home. We're also making a bunch of quick decisions like, should I trust this person who's telling me about the change? Is this change good or bad for me? Should I engage or not? So as communicators, knowing this about decisions, what can we do with that information to help us communicate change more effectively? Well, that's where today's guest comes in. Dr. Samantha Rush is a cognitive decision making specialist who works with leaders operating in complex high stakes environments where judgment, risk, and accountability matter. Her work focuses on how decisions are actually made under pressure and how leaders can design decision environments that support, clarity, rigor, and actually get follow through. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, and structured analytic techniques. She helps leaders make decisions they can explain, defend, and actually execute. Now in this session, Sam gives us insights into her research and decision making and provides examples of how we can use those insights to improve our own decisions when it comes to creating communication strategies. I love this chat so much that we are already organising a second one to dive deeper, but for now, let's get into today's conversation. Here's Sam. Dr. Samantha Rush, thank you for joining us on Les Chatter More Matter. It is a pleasure. I'm glad to be here. I'm very excited that you are here. But before we kick off today, can you tell us a little bit about you? Who are you, what do you do? How did you come to develop your expertise in this space? So I am Samantha. I'm a Scorpio. Um, my hobbies are cheese, weightlifting and cats. There are three of my favourite things too. That's the most important thing that, that everyone needs to know about me. Um, so my area of expertise is in cognitive decision making, and it's something that I've been interested. For a really long time, how do we make decisions? Um, and so I did a PhD, so I finished that PhD last year and I will tell you a little bit more about my PhD. I think you, you've got a couple of questions about that specifically. I do, but how did I come into it? Yeah. I'm a curious person. I like, I do. You know what, this is it. I like knowing how stuff works and I think inside the human mind is the ultimate black box. Nobody gets a, a manual for it. We don't know how it works. Everyone's is slightly different. Mm-hmm. But, uh, it's a fascinating place to be, sometimes scary, but a fascinating place to be. Yeah, I love that. And I mean, obviously you weren't always looking into decision making, so what in your career path, I guess, kind of led you to that? Uh, look, I, I did, uh, I did a psychology degree years ago. Um, so my undergrad was in international business, and then I did psychology later in life as a mature age student. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I finished that back in 2011. So I did my psychology degree and psychology honors, and then I went straight into an MBA. Uh, my career has been all over the shop, a lot of time in financial services, but I've done some other stuff as well and things like transport, software development, um, infrastructure, uh, and um, I've done lots of different kinds of things. So I'm definitely a, a curious person. So I worked in learning and development. I was in learning and development for a long time actually. And um, then I was in kind of like an audit function and then product and strategy and. Um, uh, business intelligence and then I ran a portfolio. I've been in project Land in lots of different kinds of things in project land, um, including comms and change, which is I think where we met. Yeah. Something to do with our old financial services firm, which shall remain unnamed. Unnamed, he who shall not be named. Absolutely. Um, so let's talk about your PhD, which you achieved last year. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Five years of hard work, finally got that piece of paper, which, uh, huge achievement. Thank you but can you tell us a bit about what you explored and what you found through that research? I would love to, so about 10 years ago, it is this year because of the work that I was doing in business intelligence, I started, um, hanging out with intelligence people. So there's a professional association for intelligence people in Australia, um, and it's any kind of intelligence. So yes, there's the, the secret squirrel stuff and there's like people in business intelligence and there's people that like the tax office. So like a real spectrum of, of people who work anything with intelligence, which is about collecting information, having a look at what you've got, trying to make some kind of, uh, recommendations to support decision making. That's essentially what intelligence is. And so I started to. Learn about and get exposure to some of the tools and techniques that they use in intelligence. And I just thought to myself, do you know so many teams that I've worked with? I've just wanted to stab a whole lot of people.'cause it's been really hard. And I thought to myself, if I'd had access to these tools and techniques back in those times, I think we would've ended up in a different place. And so I started getting really curious about. How might we be able to take some of these tools and techniques and use them more in the private sector because they're not, um, unless you are someone who's from, you know, the military or intelligence and you've moved into the private sector, we wouldn't use these. And so I started thinking about those and I found a lot of research that was already about, uh, out there about these techniques and where, and whether they worked. Did they actually do what it says on the box? What I couldn't find was anything around, do people actually wanna use these? So that idea of acceptability then became the focus of my PhD. And so, um, I, I used as a theoretical basis, um, technology adoption, which is really key in any kind of, you know, change that happens in an organisation. You know, there's a, some kind of tech component normally, or a process component. And so that became the theoretical basis of, of my research. So that question of. Acceptability, how acceptable do I see using something or engaging with something new? Whether the any, any kind of tool might be tech, might be a new process, might be a new team.'cause some people are tools. Um, but it's really about the micro decisions that all of us humans make well ahead of adopting any kind of change. Um, so first comes, how do I see this? Is this acceptable or not? Then the next thing that happens is, what do I intend to do with this? Do I intend to do with it what I've been asked to do with it? And then the next thing is I adopt it. So it's actually like a precursor to any kind of change. So I looked at. Um, what influences, how acceptable someone sees something. So I looked at context and I looked at personality, and I looked at, um, psychological safety. And certainly what I found was all of those things were significant contributors to how acceptable do I see something. So I suppose, what did I learn? The, the, the too long didn't read version. The TLDR version of what I found is that, um, how a person sees. A change or something new, um, will really be determined by how do I think doing that will impact how other people see me? So, self-image, um, what kind of reputational, um, impact or risk could it have? So really it's all about the emotion. How do, how. How might this make me look? How might this make me feel? And that is really what drives how acceptable someone sees something. So from a comms perspective, what that means is if you are focusing on logic in your message, Uhuh, yeah, that's not gonna cut it. So that's what I found. That's really interesting. And so thank you again. I wanna take this back to, let's apply it to a business context. So change and comms. Yep. If we are, you know, a, a lot of the standard, I guess, approaches to change and like you just touched on, it's, it's very, it's logic. Here's the benefits, this is why you should do it. Um, and you know, I'm always banging on about what's the know, feel, do? Like we're always good at the know, we're pretty good at the do - the feel part is where we start to see it all unravel. How do you apply this idea of creating something that's more acceptable to somebody? Yeah, to a change project. I think what, what's at the core of it is fear. Hmm. Um, we fear new things we don't like them, and especially where it's going to, where we think there's gonna be an impact to us and our position in the organisation, how people see us, our status. Um, and really what's at the core of that is psychological safety. So what I found, yes, context makes a big difference. Yes. Personality will make a big difference depending on, you know, the extent to which, you know, each of the. The, the big five traits you have, you can't necessarily know all, all of that and you can't control all of that. But what you can do in anything is try and make whatever it is that you are doing, um, as psychologically safe as possible. So some examples of what you could do in any kind of, um, change like that is timing your comms, timing it for when people are likely to have the lowest cognitive load. Because if their cognitive load is low, then their psychological safety is likely to be higher. So if you are making sure that any comms you are sending at a time when people aren't feeling like, well, you're never gonna know for sure, but like 80 20 people aren't gonna be stressed to the eyeballs. Um, you know, when when's the time of day when it's generally quiet in your organisation. Like for example, if you have no meeting Fridays.

And you know, Fri Friday morning at 8:

30 is normally a pretty quiet, quiet time. That might be a really good time to send some comms where people actually have the space and the cognitive load to be able to read it with the lowest amount of fear. Um, I think also normalising mixed reactions is another one. Like, it's, it's okay. It's okay for, for different people are gonna feel differently and that's okay. Um, and I think another thing that can be done in comms to improve psychological safety is really honestly call out pros and cons because of our, uh, our bias and our suspicion that we have and also our dislike of ambiguity. If something's sold as, this is super awesome and there's gonna be all these good things and no negative things, like everything's cool. Mm-hmm. We're gonna sit there going, what are they hiding? Yeah. They're hiding something from us and then that fear response is gonna, you know, come up. So I think that's just a couple of things that can be really helpful to try and improve psychological safety in, in workplaces and in comms. Mm. That's, those are really good examples. Thank you. And one of the other things I think that I often talk about too, is. Talk about what's not changing as well as what is changing. Yeah, absolutely.'cause like you said, people have this fear response. They have a fear response to uncertainty. Sometimes you need to go like, yes, that's changing, but all this stuff over here stays the same. Yeah. So you can anchor people to that. Yeah. Um, and again, like you talked about, you, that threat to status potentially, well actually, you know, that's okay. You're gonna be all right because all this other stuff stays the same. Yeah. And I think too often, in particularly in organisations where there is so much change going on, um. All we do is talk about the change. Yes. And the benefits instead of going, you know, there's gonna be hard times and we're gonna have teething issues and here we are. Yeah. We expect that. And also, but don't, you know, don't forget all this stuff over here isn't changing. So, and I think we also have a tendency that we also have a tendency where there is transformation is to talk about it in really, really big terms. This is gonna be so transformational and it's gonna change the way we do everything, but the changes are gonna be too big. And so people are kind of like. I'm sorry, what? So it's gonna be transformational, but it's not gonna be big, like something's not making sense there. So I think that how we frame whatever it is that we're working on and, and the messages we're sending, we have to make sure that they align. Yeah. And also, and this is probably more of an aside and more of a bug bear for me, is when organisations talk about transformation, it's like, is this actually transformation or is it. You just, that's a buzz word, isn't it? Yeah. Or actually it's just a new system. It's not actually transforming anything. So yeah, it's, it's interesting how that. That's it. And, and that changes. I remember a time an un, an unspoken organisation that I worked for, restructures weren't called restructures anymore. They just slapped a new label on it so that it would, people wouldn't be seeing it as it's another restructure. So, you know, I wonder if kind of transformation, we'll get to that point where, actually we don't call it that anymore. We stick a new label on it. Oh yes. Yeah. Uh, and the problem is too, when you do stick a new label on it, people see through it. They're not stupid. Of course they do. They're sus and so, yeah. And so then they go, your credibility then goes down the drain. Yeah. Um, I remember one particular instance, again, the organisation shall not be named, but I believe it was called the Business Improvement Program, which is basically cost cutting and restructuring. Um, and it became vernacular to say you've been BIPped you've been BIP, Yeah. Our team's getting BIP. I think I remember that. Yes, I think you would. Yes. Um, and again, it, it, the whole credibility of the whole exercise just starts to erode when people start turning it into a joke, you know? Yeah, totally. Um, because you're, it, it is, feels like you're trying to pull the wool over my eyes and Correct. And if you want people to change, you gotta trust you. And people are savvy. Mm. People are savvy to it. Um, you know, it's, it's often not their first, it's not their first rodeo. They've heard this before. They've felt this before. And you're right. I think when, when someone clocks, hang on, something's something, something's going on here behind the scenes and then all of the credibility. And then what does that do to psychological safety when you feel like someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes? Yeah. It's so bad. Anyway, yeah, we digress somewhat. We do digress. But it was a fun digression. It was a fun dig digression. And I'm sure many of our listeners are sitting there going, oh my god. Yes. Um, but I want to move back into more of that decision making world Sure. And alignment to a decision, because that's the key to getting anything done in organisation, right? Like all the, the senior leaders, they all nod and smile, yes, we agree, we agree, and then off they go behind the scenes and, and don't stick to that decision at all. How do we get leaders to make a decision and stick to it? So there's a, there's a part of my work that I've been doing at the moment, so the first piece for my PhD that I'm doing something with is around decision environment. So understanding that the decision that you make, totally get that it, especially, we're thinking in a group, but it, it is equally if it's on your own. Mm. Um, yes, you make a decision, but what influences where you come to, as well as the experience you have. Will depend on the relationships, will depend on how you are thinking and will also depend on the processes that you're following. So I've got a framework that includes those three el, those three elements and 10 dimensions. So relationships being things like how much psychological safety do we have in the room, what are the interpersonal dynamics like? Like can we, can we have a robust conversation and still be framed? Um, trust. Do I trust that actually you don't have some other kind of agenda? Um, do I trust that you have the competence to be able to do what you're doing? So that's, that relationship element thinking is about, um, leveraging the cognitive diversity in the room. Act like genuinely, not just, yeah. Yeah. Mel, that's a great idea. Now back to where we were, but actually genuinely considering. Those diverse views. Um, the decision framing, how is it framed? Because how it's framed can make all the difference. Um, and then also analytic rigor. How much are you actually testing? How, like where it is that you are thinking, how much are you trying to push the boundary of whatever, you know, assumptions people have or whatever is the first solution that we've come up with. So that's the thinking element. And then the third one is around the processes. So what's our process discipline. When it comes to making decisions, how much strategic alignment do we actually have? Is, is what we're doing in discussing, how does that align with what we're trying to achieve overall as an organisation? Accountability and follow through. So to what extent do we actually hold people and ourselves accountable? And the last piece is around cognitive load and actually. Do we have the, the cognitive mental capacity to be able to make decisions right now? Because if everyone is spending seven and a half hours a day in meetings, going from meeting to meeting, to meeting, to meeting, and then, you know, just after lunch you've got a massive decision you need for them to make, they are not gonna be able to do a good job at that. So, um, I've got a diagnostic that helps you be able to. Get views and perspectives from each of the people who are in that decision making forum or team. What do they think is happening across each of those dimensions? Mm-hmm. And then when you sit back and you look at the aggregate view, you can actually see. What does the decision environment look like? Because there are subtle differences, because we're all different people with different baggage and perspectives and personalities. So if you know where the decision making strengths are within the group from an environment perspective and where their opportunities are, then you can put some scaffolding in place. To help with the decision making around whatever are the areas that need to be scaffolded. Um, mm-hmm. Certainly in, um, the, the data that I have so far from the people who have taken the diagnostic, the key opportunities are in analytic rigor and, um, accountability and cognitive load is number three. Yeah. So that's what most people are dealing with. Yeah. And it's certainly, um. Let's just say it's not unfamiliar. No. Yeah. Absolutely not. And, and that's across different kinds of organisations, different kind of industries, you know, board versus executive level. It's, it's across the board. So, you know, I think that, um, you know, a quick answer to your question of how do we get alignment is don't trust your brain to do it by itself because your brain has got other stuff going on, um, scaffold it as much as you can, your thinking and your action. Yeah. Short answer. I love it. I love a short answer, but I also liked your long answer, so that's- Hey, there you go. Now, one last question on this topic. As professional communicators or change managers who are most of the people who listen to this podcast, we are often briefing leaders and we're trying to get them to make a decision. So we'll say, you know, here's three options we could use for this campaign or, you know, here's business decision that you need to make so that we can make other decisions. What communication techniques could we be using in these situations to give us the best chance of success to actually get the decision made, but also maybe the decision made that we want made of the three options we might present. Love it. Uh, and you've actually already referenced the answer, Mel, and that's is to focus on the fields. So I'm not talking fields in your comms. I'm talking how do I, how do I understand the person I'm trying to convince, let's just call it, um, how do I use emotion and how do I make sure that, uh, I've, I've done what I can to build trust. So I've got a great tool that I developed, um, to help you understand your audience. And there's four different levels of understanding and the more critical the decision, the deeper you should go in understanding your audience and what drives them, what moves them, where are they? How much do I need to, uh, how much do I need to be able to convince this person? Um, and it can help you pick the right frame, um, to work out what's the right framing based on what I want them to do. So what do you want them to do is the key question and what emotion do I need them to feel so that they do that? That's a whole other chat. I run like an entire day's workshop on how to do that. Like what are the, what's the action you need them to do? What's the neurotransmitter you need their, their, them to, you know, to, to, to, to experience and release? So therefore, what emotion do you need them to be able to feel? Um, and have as many trust markers as you can. So, you know, definitely your content is one of them, you know, what's the content? Um, and if you're in person, there's things like your posture, your gestures, your eye contact, your movement, your voice, your breath, your energy, like all of those are trust markers. So, uh, again, short answer to your question, how do you do that is do focus on the feels. Mm-hmm. Um, understand them, what drives them, what moves them, what's gonna move the mark, use the feels and build trust. Love it. Sam, I feel like we could have a whole other episode on that. So maybe we will. Uh- Well, we can. We can. We can do that. We can do that. But until then, uh, obviously there's a lot for our listeners to unpack even just from this chat. So I reckon we schedule another one, we d- dive deeper into those, that- Cool. last little section you talked about there, because that was really cool. Happy to. Um, but we are at that time of the episode where we ask, I guess, three questions. Are you ready for those? I'm ready. Bring it on. Let's go. All right. What is an unexpected or left of field way you've learned a valuable lesson about communication? Through making mistakes. Uh, I'm sure that's not a unique perspective. Um, there was an instance specifically that I'm thinking about where I was told to communicate a certain message, um, and it was very close to the wire of me having to communicate it and I did not have enough time to prepare and deliver it in the best way possible that was really well thought out and yet authentic. Um, and it did not go well at all. And I still think about that and that is 14 years later. Wow. But what did you learn? I learned that the way that I communicate and what I have to communicate has to be from me. Love it. Because otherwise, I will sit there and do the, do the blame of that, well, that didn't work because of that, but actually that's not the case at all. I'm just the messenger. I, yeah. Yeah. No. I ma- I made the choice to deliver that message in the way that I was told. Um, and that was, you know, part, um, you know, the context that I was in and who was giving me the message and telling me to communicate it, but it wasn't, it wasn't my message from me. Yeah. So that's what I've learned. Yeah. That's a really good lesson, and I, it's one I wish others would learn as well. Next question. What is a book or podcast you love and would recommend to our listeners? Okay. Well, Marvelous Women, the podcast, of course, I'm going to say that. Um, it is the joy of my life doing that podcast, and I think you'll like episode four or five, um- Yeah, it was early on. Yeah. Yeah, it was very early on. Um, best, best podcast ever, of course. And I also wanted to share a book that I've read recently and have just been all over, and I think that your audience would also like that. This is it here? Ah, Alchemy. Alchemy by... Rory Sutherland. Yes. Um, five stars for that. Yeah. Absolutely five stars. So it's about thinking, thinking differently in the way that we, that we communicate. So Rory Sutherland has an advertising background. So some of his perspectives are really, really interesting. It's an extremely thought provoking book. I'd give it six stars if I could. Yeah. I totally agree. And anytime I've heard him interviewed, um, he pops up occasionally on, uh, podcasts like, um, unf- Uncensored CMO or- Yeah.... uh, behavioral science for brands. His view on the world is just so different to everybody- Amazing.... else's. But such a smart individual too. So- Super smart. Every podcast he's on goes on forever because you can't chat him up, but everybody- Yeah, but why would you want to? Yeah. He's amazing. Is gold. Yeah. Okay. Last question for today. If you could wave your magic wand and change one thing about communication at work, what would it be? So my, my magic wand would, uh, change the way that we think about what it is that we're communicating. So focus more on the communicatee and less on the communicator. Mm, yes. That might sound funny, but because of our human nature and cognitive biases that we have, which there are hundreds of cognitive biases that we have, we think that everyone's like us, that everyone knows what we know and that everyone will agree with our perspective because that's the way that we're wired, but that's not the case. So if we, if we write comms on the basis of what we think is sensible and common sense and persuasive, I can tell you 80% of the time it won't be because everyone's different. So focus on the audience, not on you. Love it. Great words to live by. Well, Dr. Samantha Rush, if our audience members wanted to find out more about you and connect with you, how could they do that? So they can do that on LinkedIn, uh, Samantha Rush. Uh, my website is www.samantharush.com. I'm also available on that. Um, they're probably the best ways. Yeah, great. And we'll be seeing you in a few weeks time at Rethink Change in Sydney as well, so- I will be there sharing my, my message about acceptability and the importance of it. I can't wait to see you in action again. Likewise- Samantha, thank you so much for coming along to Less Chatter, More Matter today. It is an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.