What's On Our Minds This Week
All month we've been talking about Community. Not only is it our theme word for the month, it's also what the C Factor is all about, so it's safe to say it's a topic both Libby and I feel pretty passionately about. But, recently, I was thinking about the word 'community' and what it really means to feel like you're a part of one—to be an active and engaged member.
Here's the thing about community—often times one is ascribed to us just by living somewhere or sharing particular characteristics with the rest of the community. For instance, if you're a scientist, you're considered part of the scientific community. That community has been ascribed to you. But do you actually feel like you're a part of it? Now that's a different question and the one we've been working on answering over the past few weeks.

As we've discussed in previous newsletters, creating an aligned and shared purpose by starting with the 'why' is fundamental to motivating community or team members and build the feeling that we're all in this together, but without the presence of psychological safety, it can be next to impossible to achieve what's possible.

If you're like my husband after I mentioned to him my topic for this week's newsletter, your first question might be: "What is psychological safety?"

Humor me for a minute and let me tell you another story about my strong-willed and sassy 5 year-old. Right before bedtime last night, she ran ahead of us into her room, slammed the door and then told us not to come in. If you're a parent, you know this sets off immediate red flags and your mind instantly starts going through all of the scenarios you'll be facing when that door opens, but they still manage to come up with something that didn't even cross your mind (A+ for creativity, right?).

Before we had a chance to open the door, she cracked it open it just enough for her to slip out and announce, "I poured sunscreen all over the floor!" (Keep in mind we live in Canada and while we should be using sunscreen daily, it's often not within arm's reach a good 6 months of the year)

Before we could verbally react, she saw the frustration/anger/annoyance build on our faces and quickly added, "You told me it's better to tell you when I do something before you find out about it!"

Dang. She got us.

We had said that to her. Seeing her continuously trying to hide her little experiments on us, we encouraged her to be upfront with us if she made a mistake or made the wrong choice and that we would then work on finding a solution together.

I knew I had a choice in those few important seconds after she told us: let my anger continue to build and destroy the trust she had put in us by telling us (albeit right before we discovered it on our own, but...baby steps) or take a few seconds to calm down, thank her for telling us the truth and then work together on cleaning up sunscreen caked into the 100 year old hardwood and use it as a teachable moment to talk about why sunscreen doesn't belong on the floor.

I can't guarantee that we won't have another cream mishap, but I can guarantee that when we erupt in anger or frustration, it reinforces to her that it's probably better to hide or lie about the next incident because that option still gives her the slight chance of not getting caught. As well, by encouraging her to be truthful with us and replacing blame with curiosity, it opens the lines of communication with her to try to understand what is going through her head when making these decisions and work with her to make different decisions in the future.

So what is psychological safety? It's an environment where people feel comfortable, confident, and courageous enough to speak up and share their feelings, ideas, suggestions, concerns dissent, and most importantly failures. They can be vulnerable, authentic, and truthful without the fear of failure, embarrassment, and judgment.

Without psychological safety, however, people might be more inclined to hide mistakes, cut corners, hoard resources and ideas, keep concerns to themselves, and ultimately contribute to catastrophic failures.

A community with psychological safety is one that thrives. Members candidly share their worries, concerns, ideas, and successes. It breeds creativity and innovation, risk-taking, and continued learning and growth. At its core, it's built on trust, respect, and humility.

Understanding what psychological safety is is the easy part. Building it is the more difficult task, but that's why you're still reading, right?

Here are a few questions to help you assess whether you're contributing to a psychologically safe environment and a few resources to help you start or continue to build one.
Questions to ask yourself:

  • Have you set expectations and ground rules to not only promote behaviors and actions that instill psychological safety, but also establish the importance of it? Similar to the importance of establishing a shared purpose for the group, you need to establish the purpose for encouraging others to speak up, take risks, and not fear punishment or humiliation. And then you need to lay out the guidelines to establish that trust. Be intentional and open about the need for psychological safety.

  • As a leader, how often do you share your mistakes and failures with your team? Even if you don't have children, you've heard of Pixar and its irrefutable reputation as hitmaker of children's movies. The head of Pixar is often the first one to share his mistakes because he believes that if you talk about your mistakes, it makes others feel safe to do the same.

  • How are you encouraging candid conversations? In today's remote environment, these types of conversations can be even more challenging to achieve. Candid conversations are difficult to achieve without making space for them, asking good questions, practicing real listening, and giving proper acknowledgement.

  • How are others treated when they share concerns, dissenting viewpoints, or failures? Hint: if they don't share, that's a pretty big indicator psychological safety is lacking. Psychologically safe teams and communities encourage and even celebrate this sharing. In fact, one such initiative with a candid name started a global movement around this.
Want to dig in more?
  1. Click here to read this HBR article on why high performing teams need psychological safety.
  2. Check out the latest book by Amy Edmondson (who coined the term "psychological safety" in the late 90s): "The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Growing, Learning, and Growth"
  3. No time to read the book? We gotcha covered. Here is the basic framework from Amy herself.

Cheers,
Christine
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