Do you make people feel safe
do you make people feel safe
in my first job i had a boss who was
wise enough to set aside some time in
almost every team meeting
for us to share new ideas and
suggestions for improving the business
he got some great inputs
and impressive results the first few
times
i contributed after joining the team he
responded with something like command
derek
i’m sure you can do better than that so
although it knocked the wind out of my
sails a little bit
i took it as a challenge and i tried
hard to do exactly that sharing
any new ideas i could conceive of
however out there they seemed
on one occasion you described what i had
proposed as hair
brained in fairness as i recall it was a
little bit
out there next time i went to contribute
he saw my hand and he said okay derek
what hair brain idea have you got for us
today
with practice that became his mantra
anytime
i offered to contribute all the while my
colleagues offered silent support of the
boss
often accompanied by an awkward smile
which in retrospect i realized
was likely driven by fear of getting on
the wrong side of the bus combined with
relief
that the boss’s focus was not now on
them
so over time i became really selective
in what i shared determined only to
bring up ideas i was certain would be
well received
as a result i often heard others
contribute ideas i previously thought of
but which i held back fearful they might
not be good enough
ultimately i stopped contributing
completely and just coasted quietly
through those team sessions making no
eye contact
and afraid to say anything that would
draw attention to myself
in the end i found those meetings such a
source of anxiety that i left a job i
loved on a company i admired
to go somewhere where i hoped i’d feel
more comfortable
have you ever had anything you said
dismissed or ridiculed
have you ever been made to feel like you
don’t belong
have you ever felt stupid because of
somebody’s reactions to your ideas
or your opinions have you ever known the
answer to a problem
but felt afraid to say anything
if so don’t worry you’re not alone
take a look at the animation behind me
these are the responses that we got
from more than 800 people on a recent
webinar
when we ask them the same questions
these are common
experiences now take a moment
and think of three words for how those
experiences made you feel
have you got three words okay hold them
for later
now again take a look at the animation
behind me
this is how those 800 people in the
webinar said their similar experiences
made them feel
there’s this luck or even feel familiar
there are so many words there but the
three that really spoke to me of how i
felt in that first job
were small worthless
and stupid if you’re like most people
experiences like these and the feelings
that came with them
very likely made you feel cautious about
being yourself
in front of the person or the people who
sparked them so you reigned back your
inclination to openly contribute share
your opinion ask questions or stick your
neck out in any way
for fear that you might screw up or be
judged and have to feel those feelings
all over again one of the biggest topics
in business today is what’s called
psychological safety which
despite the jaw-breaking name is simply
a sense of confidence one has in a team
environment
that speaking up and being yourself
won’t result in rejection
punishment or embarrassment by other
members of the group
almost 20 years of research showed that
teams that are psychologically safe
where people are unafraid to speak up
and be themselves get much better
outcomes
in terms of productivity engagement by
members of the team
and innovation visionary organizations
are therefore equipping their managers
and their leaders with the skills to
foster psychological safety in the
workplace
this is a really important development
but sometimes this focus upon making the
boss or the organization responsible
hides the fact that the way we feel in
groups is not just driven by what an
organization or his managers do
psychological safety is also driven by
the individual members of a team
everyone has a responsibility to
contribute to the creation of that
environment
psychological safety is a function of
the way that
every member of the group shows up you
either contribute to it
or you take from it if even two
or three of my colleagues had done
anything to create a space that was even
slightly more psychologically safe for
me
to make my contributions the impact of
the actions of my boss upon me
might have been substantially different
it’s probably easy to see therefore the
undesirable impacts of making people
feel unsafe
in that work environment your common
sense and research tells you that people
will disengage
and refuse to interact so that they
protect themselves
psychological safety is therefore
critical in a business environment
but there are environments that are much
more important
than business what if the people you
care about don’t feel safe enough
to be themselves around you how would
you feel
if you thought that the way you were
showing up to those you care about
was making your father your mother your
siblings your spouse your partner your
children feel small
worthless and stupid too afraid to be
themselves
around you what if they decided to
disengage go quiet or pull back to
protect themselves from the fear of
getting on the wrong side of you
perhaps they can’t change families as i
change jobs but
sometimes people check out leaving their
families or relationships without
actually leaving them
i’m not sure that that’s not actually
worse and would you even know possibly
not
most of us tend to take silence as
ascent assuming that a lack of negative
input or feedback on how we show up
means everything’s okay and it’s not
always so
how many times have you feared or
resented somebody in complete
happily there are some things you can do
to be a net contributor to the sense of
psychological safety experience by
everyone around you
and the good news is that once they
become part of the way you show up they
affect
all aspects of your life business and
personal
so whether you’re a senior manager in
charge of a large team of people or a
parent raising a small family or
something in between
here are some things you can do to make
those around you
feel safe to be themselves first
don’t be afraid to say you don’t know
amy edmondson the foremost researcher in
this space
says be a don’t know show it’s okay
not to have all the answers second screw
up
in front of those you want to have feel
safe around you let them see you drop
the ball
and own it demonstrate that it’s okay to
try something new and screw up
then when people drop the ball ask what
did you learn
help them own the upside of their
failures as well as the downsides
get people involved ask what do you
think and then really
obviously listen and involve everybody
get everybody sharing their opinions and
feedback let them know you don’t have
all the answers
i know i’m missing something what is it
have you any ideas
now there are many more things you can
say and do to enhance the sense of
psychological safety of those people
around you
but once you get started with this and
get into that mindset you’ll find that
other ideas start to flow naturally
now bring back to mind the three words
you thought of
at the beginning of my talk the three
words that described how you felt when
you were in
a psychologically unsafe environment
have you got them
take a moment to really reinhabit them
really feel them
now tell me do you want to be someone
who makes your children
spouse family valued friends or
colleagues feel that way
or do you want to be known as a person
who contributes to helping everybody you
interact with feel safe enough to be
themselves
do you want to make people feel safe
it’s as simple as deciding right now
that this is important to you
and setting an intention to show up
accordingly
from now on now to me
that feels like an idea worth spreading