It probably comes as no surprise that as teams are coming back together in person there is a lot of talk about mental health, and psychological safety. Over the last two years we have had to learn to be different kinds of teams at the same time as managing wide ranging personal challenges. We are now in another period of transition.
There have been two very public examples recently of high profile organisations (that will remain nameless but you’ll know who they are!) where reviews have found toxic work cultures with junior staff members unable to speak up, cases of bullying, harassment, and wide ranging discriminatory attitudes.
These two things coming together have led me to revisit my thinking about the nature of teams and how we create the psychological safety that it is only reasonable to expect at work. Psychological safety can be defined as ‘ the belief that you will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions concerns or mistakes’ (Edmondson, 2002)
Serendipity led me to a fantastic Twitter thread created by @tom_geraghty – he asked the organisational development community:
If you had to decide on ‘one’ practice that built psychological safety in teams, what practice or activity would you choose?
It’s a very long thread with some fantastic responses. Well worth a look if you have a moment. Given we weren’t able to post our selection box last Friday I thought I’d share a summary of Tom’s thread responses with the things that stood out for me. The replies can loosely be grouped under:
- Emotional climate
- Culture
- Processes and tools
- Other noteworthy points
Emotional climate: lots of characteristics for what makes a safe environment – honesty, candour, vulnerability, transparency, playfulness, humility, accepting conflict without judging, kindness, admitting not knowing everything. Much of which were defined in terms of what was required of leadership, a definite leaning towards ego management.
Culture: lots about owning mistakes and embracing failure (in some cases celebrating failure); publicly sharing your own development goals as a leader; building engagement; treating people like adults; co-creation; working on the ‘yes and…’ principle, always building on ideas etc; dialogue; and deep listening.
Processes:
- First and foremost, communications!
- Ensemble programming
- Training in mental health first aid and psychological safety
- Lots of mentions for post event reviews, critical incident analyses, blameless reviews and stepping back and taking time out
- Sharing experiences particularly the ‘messy’ details
- 360 degree reviews that focus on value and worth. An interesting way of reframing the 360 which often has quite negative connotations
- Working on the basis of ‘things to figure out’ rather than to do lists
- Using check-ins to create a human environment
- Circle meetings
- Regular training and coaching
- Eating together and taking time out to just ‘be’ together
- Taking holidays!
- Invite dissent – listen deeply
- Finding bright spots – those in the team who achieve more with less
- Small change experiments so people can see that change is both possible and happening (a point I agree with wholeheartedly)
- Honest to do lists with the following headings – to do, done, postpone, won’t do anyway and too late!
Tools:
Please note I am not endorsing any of these, but they may be of interest or relevant for you:
- A psychological safety process and dashboard tool
- Facilitation, and team games and tools
- Psychological safety toolkit
- Seven questions Prof. Amy C Edmondson uses to assess levels to team psychological safety
The main theme that ran through many of the answers was that of respectful dialogue:
- Asking great questions
- Active and deep listening
- Genuine conversations
Other points:
One response raised an interesting point about leader self-development/awareness; a proposal that the leader should be in therapy, having counselling or supervision. I am sure this will raise eyebrows but given the public examples of leadership we are experiencing at the moment there may be something important here to unpack.
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It is an incredibly rich thread and I’m sure we’ll pick up on some of the points in more detail. What would your ‘one’ practice be?
I’ll end with a great quote from @hallOween138, their advice being:
Not to be an asshole, and have empathy and be humble.
References
EDMONDSON, A. C. 2002. Managing the risk of learning: Psychological safety in work teams, Division of Research, Harvard Business School Cambridge, MA.