It is said that all great teams have a high degree of Psychological Safety. That they are willing and able to engage in strenuous debate of ideas and concepts, challenge each other, and hold each other accountable – all without fear of blame, shame, or judgement.
In this Leader Lesson conversation, Jennie and Craig define Psychological Safety, discuss what it is NOT, the role of a leader vs. teammates in creating a psychologically safe space, and talk about why the goal is to develop a culture of contribution.
This conversation follows an earlier, longer, and more in-depth discussion of Psychological Safety. You can access the resources from that conversation here:
It is said that all great teams have a high degree of Psychological Safety. That they are willing and able to engage in strenuous debate of ideas and concepts, challenge each other, and hold each other accountable – all without fear of blame, shame, or judgement.
In this Leader Lesson conversation, Jennie and Craig define Psychological Safety, discuss what it is NOT, the role of a leader vs. teammates in creating a psychologically safe space, and talk about why the goal is to develop a culture of contribution.
This conversation follows an earlier, longer, and more in-depth discussion of Psychological Safety. You can access the resources from that conversation here:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
Craig:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to a short Leader Lesson episode of the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast, where myself and Jennie Gilbert provide a short version of one of our longer conversations. It's a chance for you to get some quick insights to an important leadership topic, and we know you don't always have time to listen to us for 45 to 60 minutes. So, we hope you enjoy this short episode, and if it encourages you to want to hear more about the topic, be sure to link to the full episode in the show notes. Now, for a quick Leader Lesson. Jennie we often sit and have much longer conversations than we're going to have today, but I think what we want to do in these short conversations is give folks a chance to get a high level thought on a topic that we've been discussing and where they could go with it next. And if they want to dig in further, we will certainly link the original podcast in the show notes. But this whole concept of psychological safety. is one that comes up a lot for us in conversation. And I think maybe what we could do today is just quickly talk about what is it and what isn't it?
Jennie:
It's a really good place to start. And one of the things that we uncovered pretty quickly in the longer version of this conversation is the fact that psychological safety is not a solution. It is something that leaders and their teams, or everybody, Is continuously working on and what it leads to is an environment where people feel safe to speak up. Tim Clark would characterize that as an environment of rewarded vulnerability. It is okay for me to ask the difficult questions or even maybe the dumb questions. And what it isn't, and this is where people often get a little confused, it is not about continually being nice, it is not about lowering your standards, and it is definitely not permission to behave badly, either. So there is an awful lot of ramifications within that one little title, psychological safety.
Craig:
Yeah, it's really about being able to have Good constructive conversation, good debate without fear of retribution and fear of, I don't know, the conversation carrying on after the meeting, right? And those hallway conversations that followed the comments in the meeting where somebody goes, the hell was he thinking? Why can't you say that in the meeting? That's where you would have a psychologically safe space, right? You would, and
Jennie:
The part within there is, and we talked about this too, what does productive conflict look like? Because we need to disagree, right? I need to ask you, why would you say that? Or what is leading you to that line of action? And you need to do that without damaging. You or your ego or your thought process, isn't it?
Craig:
Yeah, the ability to focus on ideas versus personalities, I think is so key in that too. But, so when we look at it then, how does this just fall on a leader to make sure that their team is psychologically safe? No, is it just my job as a leader to create a psychologically safe environment? Sure, it's part of my job, but it can't be just on me.
Jennie:
Is a yes and answer in there. So yes, you are crucial to the equation and your. Actions, what you model, how you approach situations are fundamental to how the rest of the team will behave. This is about the whole team. This is about the environment that we're building where people can show up to work. So we all carry responsibility within there. And one of the quickest moves for a leader is to take a quick peek at what they're rewarding. And what they're tolerating and the easiest sort of three labels to play across that, blame, shame, and judgment. If you're letting that happen, you're not helping or setting your environment up for success.
Craig:
That's so good. And it's the point about the leader setting the tone. And we've talked about the fact, I think it's John Amici really talks about your words carry so much more weight. Your actions carry so much more weight. And somebody else on the team. And so as a leader, you do, you are responsible to make sure that you are being very intentional and very deliberate about how you are carrying yourself, what you're saying, how you are saying it. You're not going to be perfect. Leaders have bad days, but I think you need to figure out how you're modeling that for your team, I think is so crucial. It
Jennie:
is. And I think it was John Amici that said too, culture is all the choices that we make. The tiny choices that we make through the day. So for leader and team, what are those choices? Can all of those choices add up on a daily basis?
Craig:
Absolutely. So if we could leave folks with one big thought around psychological safety. And again, we will link to the original podcast in the notes here so you can get much more in depth. What's the big thought we would give them?
Jennie:
Let's stick with choice. The choice is yours. Would you like a culture of silence? Rarely a helpful or productive workspace to be in, or would you like a culture of contribution? And that culture of contribution is vibrant, it's exciting, it's supportive, and it also is able to do the work when the work shows up.
Craig:
That's good. Being able to do the work when the work shows up. It almost always shows up, doesn't it? It
Jennie:
does. I'm talking about the gritty stuff. I'm talking about the harder conversations and the disagreements, which actually leads to collaboration. And that's a pretty healthy place to
Craig:
hang out. Yeah, absolutely. And if we wanted to just take it one step further, is there a couple of strategies we could give folks for when the work shows up?
Jennie:
I think to link it to our original conversation, I would stick with Amy Edmondson's Sort of three pillars as we talked about, how will you set the stage for that to happen? Like, how will we behave or how will we act when there is a disagreement between us? What does that look like? It's a little bit like boundaries, a little bit group norms. How do we create space so that everybody has a voice? And what is the productive response look like? And within our bigger conversation with so many ideas and takeaways within there, I think that's the easiest place to go to.
Craig:
Yeah, I really like that concept of the productive response, right? You're going to go through the day. We're. Not all of your responses are going to be productive. What the heck, you can't even keep track of all your thoughts. What's the average person having a day? 70, 000 thoughts? And we're only aware of a few of them, but how do you manage and control and effectively think through your responses so that they work well and They create the environment that you want. How do you make sure that your responses don't necessarily create friction where it's needed? Or, sorry, create friction where it's not needed? And then maybe, how do you make sure your responses sometimes create friction where it is needed?
Jennie:
And then friction, as we spoke about, we're looking for the friction you want to create is the intellectual friction, social friction stays lower, which is another good sign of psychological safety being present. And with the responses too, and I'm pretty sure we mentioned this in the conversation, we're always projecting something. So that productive response is not just your verbal responses, you're always projecting something.
Craig:
Absolutely. So there you go. Quick, short thoughts on psychological safety. As a leader, what can you do? How can you help your team with it? What it is and what it isn't? Hopefully you can walk away from this and maybe have a good debate with your team as to where the level of psychological safety is on your group. But if you want more information on it, again, we will link to the original and the show notes below, and hopefully you took something out of this short leader lesson. Have a good day. Thank you once again for joining us on the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast. If you'd like to stay connected and receive more updates from us, please follow SAIT corporate training on LinkedIn. Stay in the loop with the latest insights and valuable content to the link in the show notes.
Jennie:
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