5 Plays for Psychological Safety

[00:00:00] So psychological safety is the foundation of great teams and organizations. Today we're going to learn about 5 Plays to Build It and how you can go about creating that in your own organization. Hi, I'm Andrea Adams and today on The HR Hub I'm talking with Carolyn Helbig and Manette Norman. They're co-authors of the Psychological Safety Playbook series. Carolyn is a leadership consultant with more than 15 years at McKinsey & Company

[00:00:29] and she's now focusing on mindset, emotional intelligence and psychological safety. Manette is a sought-after leadership consultant with 30 years of experience leading global technical teams. She's also the award-winning author of The Boldly Inclusive Leader. Hello ladies, how are you? Hi, I'm fine. Thanks for inviting us. Happy to be here. Well, I'm happy to have you both.

[00:00:56] I imagine you guys know who's answering that you have done this so many times that you're going to play off each other well. But the first question here is, what is psychological safety? Remind us, if someone doesn't already know, what is it and why is it so important? Sure, I'll take that one to start.

[00:01:14] So psychological safety is the idea and the belief that in a group, you can ask a question, you can disagree with someone else, you can ask for help, you can take a risk, knowing that you will not be embarrassed for doing so, you will not be marginalized, and there will be no punishment or negative repercussions. That's a basic definition. It really takes place in groups.

[00:01:38] And why it's so important is that there's lots of evidence, lots of academic research that shows that when we have high levels of psychological safety, performance goes up, innovation goes up, because all of those wild ideas are welcome and you can have discussion. And then also employee well-being and mental health go up, because when we have psychological safety, we feel free to be ourselves, we feel free to speak up.

[00:02:04] And when we don't have it, we're really suffering because we're calculating, like, do I dare say this? We are wondering if it's okay to ask a question. We may disagree with someone else in the group, but we feel like, oh, my voice isn't welcome. And so we're taking on this emotional and really intellectual burden of calculating every word. So when we don't have that, we can just do our best work. And that's why it's so important. A place of psychological safety.

[00:02:32] When you just describe it that way, I mean, obviously, it's a place we all want to work. Now, you have identified five plays that will help build psychological safety. So quickly, like, because we're going to dive into each a little bit, but like, give us an overview. What are they and why is each important? Yeah, maybe I can go with that.

[00:03:01] So it's kind of an overview, a map of what we can do. And this really comes not from academia or theory. It's really what are the practical levers we can all focus on to, in practice, cultivate psychological safety. So what can we do? One is how we communicate, communicate courageously, open up with vulnerability and things like that. Then how we listen, listening in a focused, attentive way.

[00:03:30] Then how we manage our reactions. That's the third play. And then the fourth, it's about risk and failure. How do we deal when things are not going as planned? And then the fifth play we identified as really key is how we organize meetings, for example, design inclusive rituals. So this is kind of the overall map.

[00:03:57] And for each of the five plays, we offer very tangible actions. We can do so-called moves in our playbook. And so if we did those five things, we're going to have a psychologically safe workplace. Probably. Or team. How about team? There's no guarantee. There's no guarantee. But these are kind of plenty of ideas, small things we can do to cultivate.

[00:04:25] And what we highlight and stress is really psychological safety is a practice. It's not kind of a destination. And there's no kind of order in terms of steps. There's no guarantee. I do X, Y, Z. And then outcome will be psychological safety. There's no kind of determination or determined way to do it. However, there are many things we can do.

[00:04:51] And coming from practice, these are the five key levers. And for each of the areas, there are a lot of things we can do. And we offer five tangible actions. Every one of us can practice. And of course, there are probably more. It's not kind of this is an exhaustive list. It's a start. And maybe it gives you ideas of what else to do. Yeah. Okay. All right.

[00:05:22] I like that idea that it's not a destination. It's a practice. But we're going to give the audience some tangible ideas today about what's one key thing they could do in each of those areas. Because so starting with communicate courageously.

[00:05:44] What is one thing that audiences could practice that would improve their levels of psychological safety? Sure. I'll start. So it's the very first move in our first playbook. Because we feel like this is, you know, as Carolyn said, there's no order and you can really try any of them. But this one is so foundational. So the very first move for us in communicating courageously is welcome other viewpoints.

[00:06:13] So welcoming other viewpoints. And one of the best ways you can do that is by asking a seemingly simple question. And that question is, what am I missing? And why that is so foundational and so important is that no matter how senior you are in an organization, no matter how much of an expert you are in your field, every single one of us misses something because we can't possibly consider or see all possibilities.

[00:06:40] And so when we, like, let's say we've given our strategy presentation and we've done all of our research and we've done all of our due diligence. And then at the end of it, after presenting it, we say with an open mind, we say, what am I missing? What we're doing in that moment is we're inviting all the brilliant minds who see things differently from us to the conversation. And they may say, Manette, there's something that I think you're missing. And it's very important.

[00:07:07] And so now we have really opened it up for input. And that is foundational to creating psychological safety, that the idea that every voice and every idea is welcome here. I love that idea. I love that idea of what am I missing? Because it really invites this openness and projects humility. I love it.

[00:07:32] Okay, so the next one was master the art of listening. What is one play that people could put in or one move that people could put into practice to make listening happen? Yeah, and maybe I'll jump in with that listening practice.

[00:08:01] And assuming, for example, you start asking these questions or this question, what am I missing? And then someone speaks up and then what? And then comes in the listening. And you might say, Ah, we are doing this all the time. Aren't we listening? However, if we really are honest and really look closely, are we really listening when we are not speaking? So often we are not.

[00:08:28] And what we are suggesting is really deliberately shifting towards listening to understand and not to respond. And developing the discipline of not preparing your response. That's our kind of first suggestion for how can we cultivate listening in a way that's fostering psychological safety. And that's a big shift, a mindset shift.

[00:08:54] So often when we are not talking and seemingly listening to a person speaking, what we are doing inside our head is preparing our response. We are already kind of assuming we know what the other person is saying. Or maybe we internally think, Oh, that's not true. Or maybe I have a better perspective and let me jump in and prepare why the other person is wrong and why I am right.

[00:09:22] However, the practice is to having the self-awareness to catch your mind doing this and refocus on listening to understand. And really refocus on the other person with the intent to understand, first of all. And then once you really understood the other person, then maybe share your perspective. And maybe you still think I am right or my perspective.

[00:09:50] There are more and better arguments for that. However, that's what we are often not doing to really understand the other person. And that is a big shift. I want to dig into this a little bit. I don't know if it's like, as a YouTube host. Well, like when we're having this conversation, I'm listening.

[00:10:20] And also I'm mindful of like, where do I want to go with this? I guess, I guess I'm just saying it surprises me that we aren't listening to understand because I feel like that's what I'm always doing. And maybe it's, is it just me or am I deluding myself? I don't know if you can even comment on that at all. I don't know. Maybe, maybe Andrea, you're already practicing this. And I don't know. Oh, that's a great thing to do.

[00:10:49] And maybe as a professional podcast host, you are kind of, you are trained in asking questions and then understanding what the other person is saying. And I see this also with, for example, coach colleagues. They are trained in, in this capacity, in the skill. However, that's something I often see with leaders and teams that this is really an underrated leadership skill.

[00:11:14] And this is something where we need to focus on in order to do our best work. Because once you ask this question, what am I missing? And maybe people begin to speak up. Then if you don't really listen and don't truly listen, you are not getting the full richness of their thinking.

[00:11:36] So I think most of the leaders I have seen, and maybe that's not true for professional podcast hosts, most of the leaders I have seen would profit and benefit from increasing the quality of listening. Moving on to the next play. Manage your reactions. Whew, this is a tricky one, I think. I have questions about this. Maybe again using myself as an example.

[00:12:04] Okay, so what's one key move within manage your reactions that people can think about and take action on? Should I take this one, Caroline? And then you can turn it. Okay. So the very first one, and this is, it is tricky. It is very tricky because what we're dealing with when we say manage your reactions is we're dealing with our natural biological response when we feel challenged. So if you ask me a challenging question or you say, like, I've asked you, what am I missing?

[00:12:33] And you say, you've missed something incredibly important. Right then, I feel challenged. And right then, why it's so tricky is that our brain is actually kicking into this survival mode of I am under attack. And our brains can distinguish between a danger in nature, like there's a saber-toothed tiger. You know, our answers are in danger. Or I'm in modern day, I'm about to get hit by a car. My brain registers that and I jump out of the way.

[00:13:02] Whereas you attack me in public, it feels like, you know, in front of my staff or in front of my peers. It's the exact same reaction. My brain goes into this primitive survival mode. We've heard fight, flight, freeze. And at that moment, we don't have our intellect and our higher reasoning available. We are totally in survival mode. So picture you're in a staff meeting and someone says, you know, that you've got that totally wrong. You feel under attack.

[00:13:28] And what might happen at that moment is that you, you know, it could be the fight response. You feel attacked. You attack someone back. You snap at them. You yell at them. You say something that you're going to really regret. Or you're just sitting there and you can't even respond because you're in this state of survival. So what we recommend is, is like, it's a little bit of a multi-step process, but it becomes a practice that you can do every time. I'm feeling attacked and I get really red in the face.

[00:13:56] That is my body and my brain telling me, this is like danger. You're about to fight back. You're about to do something we regret. So what our move here is hit the pause button. So that moment we feel, okay, my face is hot. My, my heartbeat is racing. I am really under attack here. I feel under attack. I just hit the pause button and it doesn't have to be a five minute pause. It can be a very short one breath.

[00:14:26] It can be, you know, like my technique is like, if Carolyn says something challenging and she never does because she does it in the nicest way. But if someone says something challenging to me, I will do this. Oh, one sip of water. And what that one breath or one sip of water does is it actually changes our brain state because now we have, we have taken an action and we have calmed ourselves down. And now I'm not in fight, flight, freeze mode. Now I have my frontal cortex is back online.

[00:14:55] My prefrontal cortex, my full intellect is available to me. And now that I've hit that pause button, I can choose how to respond instead of having that instinctual response. And now I'm going to say, thanks for that question. Or can you say more about that? I want to understand. And I'm calm and I'm not shutting down discussion and I'm not destroying the psychological safety we've worked so hard to build in the room. Because now I'm curious. And you know, maybe even that hit me really, really hard.

[00:15:25] And I'm going to just take a moment and say, honestly, vulnerably, God, that hit me a little bit hard. Can you give me a moment? And then we basically signal to someone that, okay, I'm reacting. I'm human like everyone else. And don't want to respond in a way that I'm going to regret. And so that's what we mean by managing non-defensive reactions by hitting the pause button. And that pause can take different forms. I mentioned a breath. I mentioned a sip of water.

[00:15:54] Something physical will break your state also. So like wiggling your fingers and toes. Or if you have the opportunity to stand or walk, all of those things will calm you down. As you said, wiggle your fingers and toes. I'm like sitting here wiggling my fingers and toes. Giving it a try.

[00:16:12] Why do you think, like why does getting, I'm just going to ask the question, why does being defensive and a defensive reaction undermine psychological safety? Because if someone's being attacked, you know, depending on the magnitude of their defensive reaction, I think a lot of people will understand. The attack itself, does that not undermine psychological safety? It can. It very much can.

[00:16:40] And at the same time, there's no good that comes of attacking back. Because then everything escalates, right? And so if someone says something to me in a tone of voice that is, you know, loud or harmful, often the best defense to calm the room down is to really be calm and to quiet the room. Because if someone says something in anger or, you know, inadvertent, it's often inadvertent.

[00:17:08] Like it can be tone of voice that someone says something and they really meant it healthfully, but they didn't say it in the best tone of voice. If this escalates into a thing where I'm yelling at you and you're yelling at me, everyone else is afraid to speak now. And that is the definition of a break in psychological safety. If people feel like I'm about to get yelled at, attacked, whatever, I am going to stay right here under the radar. I am not going to open my mouth. I'm going to be quiet.

[00:17:35] And that is what destroys psychological safety when we do shut down anyone's voice. Mm-hmm. I'm also thinking about the person who, you know, raised their voice or shouted or like that is getting in the, can get in the way of psychological safety. Yes. And somehow we're going to have to need, need, somehow we'll have to deal with that person. Yeah. And, yes.

[00:18:02] And you know what, what often happens, and this is, I have, this is, I've actually seen in real life and practiced in real life. So, um, in a staff meeting that I was in once, uh, I had a colleague who really asked a question in a way that basically undermined me and my whole team. Like the question was, why don't we get rid of Manette's whole team in a certain office? And he said that in front of all of my peers. Now, in that moment, I had actually been reading about managing your defensiveness.

[00:18:31] So I was ready and I, like in that moment, I almost wanted to say, like my, my instinct reaction is, why don't we get rid of your team? They never do anything. Right. That would have been what, that's what I wanted to say. And instead I paused and I said, can you tell me you're thinking behind why we need to get rid of that team? And I said it calmly. And my whole, everyone in the room was like, whoa, what's going on here?

[00:18:58] Because they had noticed the question and they were all like, oh, what's going to happen now? Manette's going to explode like most people would. But in that moment I was really practicing. And instead we had a very positive discussion. I mean, a rich discussion. And he then, so this is to your point, Andrea, he kind of backed down because he realized now what he had done. He realized that was a terrible question to ask.

[00:19:23] And instead he was like, I'm worried about, and there was something very specific he was worried about. We could have a really productive discussion about that one thing. And then he realized, ooh, okay, you better pay attention the next time you ask a question like that. So we didn't have to have a confrontation. We didn't have to have a sidebar with him. My manager didn't have to say, hey, you better not do that. Instead, we kind of worked it out by modeling, you know, how not to get defensive.

[00:19:51] And so that's one way of handling it. Now, I'm not going to say it works every time. I have a certain level of self-awareness there once I responded in that positive way that was like, okay. But in some cases it may not be that clean. But I will tell you, it can work. I can imagine. I totally can imagine. I've seen it happen where someone responds and then they feel kind of ashamed of themselves. Yeah, yeah. Right? And then maybe the next time they'll do it differently, which is all we can ask for, right? Like I learned something from that.

[00:20:20] I'm going to do better next time. Yeah. Well, and I think also modeling that non-defensive reaction that demonstrates that you are inviting real dialogue. And maybe next time they won't feel so compelled to erupt. They'll know that that conversation, if they think they need to have it, is waiting for them. Yeah. Right? So I think that's great. Okay. Moving on to the next one.

[00:20:49] One thing, Andrea, that is really the key. I loved your, sorry, Minette. Curiosity is really key here in what you described. It's so helpful. It's like an antidote to reactivity. And if you internally shift your mindset towards curiosity, getting curious about what, like Minette, why does this colleague ask this challenging question? That can really shift the whole game.

[00:21:19] I just wanted to underline that it's so helpful to get curious instead of defensive. Mm-hmm. I think when I look at, you know, at least the first three here that we've discussed, curiosity is really fundamental. Yes. As a value or a principle. Now, moving on to embrace risk and failure, normalized failure. There's actually been quite a lot of talk about this sort of in the last few years. Tell me about this.

[00:21:48] Yeah, and I love to explore this a little bit. How we deal with risk and failure is so important for psychological safety because what we want to achieve is really a learning culture. It has to do a lot with curiosity. It's not to avoid any failure, but to explore what can we learn from it.

[00:22:15] And the first idea we offer in this play is to normalize failure really by explicitly saying this is new to us and we expect we will experience failure. So what we are talking about is not kind of stupid, preventable mistakes. It's really when teams try to do something innovative. So it's about something Amy Edmondson calls intelligent failure.

[00:22:42] That's what we talk about. And it's so helpful if a leader states upfront explicitly. It's not about avoiding things going wrong. It's about learning. Learning as much as we can from our setbacks, from our failures. And in order to do so, to make it possible for the whole team to learn and explore, we need to talk about it.

[00:23:11] And people naturally tend to hide mistakes. No one wants to get up in the morning and thinks, ah, today I really want to mess up and I want to talk about it and so on. We are always a little bit ashamed. So as a leader, it's important to take the shaming and blaming completely out of the game. And to encourage open conversation about what went wrong. And let's explore what we can learn from this.

[00:23:40] Because then we are able to set up the next best experiment and apply everything we learned. Okay. The last play, design inclusive rituals. Talk to me about that. What is one move we can make within this so that we have more inclusive teams? So we really focus on meetings here because that is so much of the way that teams interact in meetings. And you're right.

[00:24:09] We need inclusion. Every human being needs to feel included. And that does not go away when we go to work. And yet, by the 12th, meetings tend not to be very inclusive. Because if you just see how most meetings run, you see that the loudest people speak a lot and the quietest people do not say anything. And we know that the quietest people may have some of the most important ideas, but they're not finding a way or they're not comfortable to speak up. And so we talk about this idea of appointing an inclusion booster.

[00:24:38] And what we mean by an inclusion booster is someone who is actually going to facilitate your meetings. And this should be one of the team members rotating in the role. And the idea is that they are going to make sure that everyone does get a chance to speak. And if someone is speaking too much and taking up too much of the airtime, that they can politely say, you know what, Minette, thank you so much. We want to move on. We want to hear from Andrea and Carolyn. And so how do we do that? And maybe they put in place a few little rules.

[00:25:06] Like maybe as a team, they decide that what we're going to do is we're going to have, we're going to put out an idea that everyone wants to comment on. We're going to let them know in advance. So before the meeting, people have time to think about it. Come to the meeting prepared to share your ideas. And then we're going to go around the virtual table and everyone is going to have 30 seconds or one minute, whatever it is. And they're each going to speak once. And no one's going to speak twice before everyone speaks once. So we can hear all the voices.

[00:25:33] Or maybe we'll just put them all on sticky notes on a whiteboard so no one has to speak. You know, there are lots of different ways of facilitating to make things more inclusive. And it all starts with the intention, the intention that every voice matters or you wouldn't be invited to this meeting. All the ideas need to get out there so we can make our best decisions. How can we do this in the most inclusive, effective, and time efficient way? And so then we design around that.

[00:26:00] So we offer some suggestions of what the inclusion booster might do. But, you know, the best thing is if the team itself creates these agreements and says, like, how are we going to make our meetings inclusive and effective and efficient? Because we don't have a lot. And then how will we get everyone to participate? So that's what we recommend as the starting point for designing inclusive rituals and inclusive meetings.

[00:26:24] I feel like right now, I want to identify the elephant in the room where it's diversity, equity, inclusion, and inclusion has been lumped in with that. Yeah. And not that I object to any of it, but that people are actively trying to move away from some of these principles. Yeah.

[00:26:54] And so briefly, just talk to me about why inclusion is so important to psychological safety. Mm-hmm. I'm happy to take that because I've been, I have often these last year or so been in the crosshairs of that anti-DEI sentiment, in the U.S. especially. And it's like, we can't talk about this. The way I think about it is that psychological safety is the foundation to getting to inclusion.

[00:27:19] You have to feel that you and your voice are welcome here to feel included in a team. And why inclusion is so critically important. This is not some politically correct thing. This is not some lefty thing. This is, again, our human biology. Human beings as a species, we have survived by being in groups. That is how the species has survived all these years. Mm-hmm. And that need is fundamental. And let me just share a bit of neuroscience because this grounds it that this is not political.

[00:27:48] This is biology. The neuroscience of inclusion. So there's a researcher at UCLA, Matthew Lieberman, who wrote a book called Social. He studied the human brain using functional MRI technology. And he simulated games where people were included in groups and excluded. And when they were excluded from groups, their brains registered pain. Just the way they register physical pain. So now think about that in the workplace.

[00:28:14] The day that you get talked down to in a meeting or you get interrupted and never come back to, or your ideas get completely dismissed, you are feeling excluded and therefore you are in pain. And people in union are not going to be creative. They're not going to be fully engaged. They're not going to do their best work. So if you want, if you've hired these people and you're paying them, you want them to be fully engaged. And how they get to be engaged is they feel that they matter, that they're valued and respected,

[00:28:43] and that's all inclusion is. Okay. We are getting to the end of this. Yep, for sure. Can you tell us where someone can find more information and your books? Yeah. We are both on LinkedIn, so Carolyn Helbig and Minette Norman. But you can go to our shared website, thepsychologicalsafetyplaybook.com. You'll find all the information about both books. You'll find links to buy them wherever you are in the world. And we also have a bunch of free resources to download from that website,

[00:29:12] so thepsychologicalsafetyplaybook.com. Well, thanks, Carolyn and Minette. That was wonderful, actually. That was just so lovely. I feel lighter. I feel better. I feel better. The part, well, just one of the many things I'm thinking about is this idea of intelligent failure, which I have to dig into more because it isn't just accepting all failure. It's, you know, being strategic about that too. Thought that was great. Among many things I thought was so great.

[00:29:42] I did an episode recently on emotional intelligence for HR. That also had lots of smart and useful stuff in it. Link to that is right here. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.