106: Driving Psychological Safety Through Technology with Ollie Lingwood-Craddock, CEO of Rungway

Andrea interviews Ollie Craddock, CEO of employee listening platform Runway, on this episode of World Class Leader Show. Ollie shares his experience leading multiple companies and how he helped grow Mind Tools to 20 million users. He explains how Rungway captures real-time employee feedback to help leaders understand problems and resistance to change. The continuous feedback loop provides psychological safety for employees to contribute ideas and accelerate decision-making. Ollie and Andrea discuss how technology like Rungway can enable culture change but still requires leaders to also role model openness.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Rungway gathers ongoing employee feedback so leaders can address issues quickly before they become crises. It provides visibility into problems leaders may not see from the top floor.
• Leaders responding authentically to employee concerns builds psychological safety and fuels more participation. Vulnerable leadership creates a flywheel effect.
• Technology like Rungway enables culture change but isn't the complete solution. Senior leaders must role model openness and transparency for it to work.
• During major change, communicating the vision and involving employees in the journey is critical but challenging with remote/hybrid work.
• CEOs don't have all the answers. Good CEOs admit they don't know and empower teams to find solutions.
• Anonymity helps underrepresented groups feel safe speaking up. Overlooking their input means missing ideas and not hearing the full employee voice.

BEST MOMENTS

"If the senior team responds to that in a really human way, very quickly with the right tone, and that's where we help...that creates this kind of flywheel effect."

"I don't think we'll ever return to the full, full-time in the office. I think that world is gone."

"I would challenge any senior person who said they know everything because you don't."

"Colleagues of color are three times more likely to post anonymously."

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ABOUT THE GUEST

Ollie Lingwood Craddock

https://www.linkedin.com/in/craddocko?originalSubdomain=uk

ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Andrea Petrone. I'm a Human Performance and Leadership Advisor, Executive Coach and International Speaker. I help leaders and their teams to change their mindsets and master their leadership capabilities so they can achieve extraordinary performance. I've been in the corporate world for more than 20 years working globally - in 6 countries and 3 continents - for medium-large companies.