An in-depth discussion about psychological safety in the workplace – why it's so important and how it impacts individuals and organisations.
The Chief Psychology Officer website is now available https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
To contact Amanda via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandapotterzircon
To contact Amanda via email: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk
Timestamps
Psychological Safety
It’s all Chemical
Forming Psychological Safety
The culture of the workplace
Workplace Toxicity
Implementing new practices
Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zircon-consulting-ltd/
To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php
For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk
An in-depth discussion about psychological safety in the workplace – why it's so important and how it impacts individuals and organisations.
The Chief Psychology Officer website is now available https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
To contact Amanda via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandapotterzircon
To contact Amanda via email: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk
Timestamps
Psychological Safety
It’s all Chemical
Forming Psychological Safety
The culture of the workplace
Workplace Toxicity
Implementing new practices
Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zircon-consulting-ltd/
To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php
For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk
Welcome to the second episode of the chief psychology officer with Dr. Amanda Potter, a chartered occupational psychologist with a wealth of commercial experience today, we're going to be exploring psychological safety, why it's so important and how it impacts people in their organisations. Amanda, the response we got from the first podcast was amazing.
Dr Amanda Potter:It really was, and I felt quite overwhelmed by the number of personal emails that I received and the number of LinkedIn messages. So thank you everyone for your support.
James Good:So today we're talking about psychological safety. Can you start off just by telling us what it is?
Dr Amanda Potter:Psychological safety is a climate or feeling. So if you feel safe at work, you are likely to ask questions, to make suggestions, to innovate and to solve problems. Psychological safety is basically the extent to which you are prepared to take interpersonal risk within the team. If you feel safe, you are likely to speak up with candour and you are likely to make suggestions that are useful for the organisation.
James Good:And why is that so important?
Dr Amanda Potter:It's so important because organisations and individuals need to continually learn. And it's very difficult to learn if we are not being prepared to fail and learn from those errors or those mistakes,
James Good:People seem to be talking about psychological safety. It seems to be a popular topic at the moment.
Dr Amanda Potter:It's amazing. Cause it really is. It's gone from being a topic that was popular in the academic literature. And there are a number of books published around the concept of psychological safety and it was definitely a topic that was being talked about by psychologists and academics, to now being a topic that our clients are talking about on a daily basis. And they are coming to us and asking for our help, they want to know what is it and how can they improve the level of safety in their organisations? When we conducted the research to look at what is psychological safety, we found that there were 10 attributes of a safe environment and three of those 10 attributes were core and foundational. So teams that feel safe are teams that trust each other that are personally connected and have clarity and purpose. And that really helped me understand that actually psychological safety is critical for purpose and belonging for individuals, and to feel that they have a place in the organisation that has meaning,
James Good:Why do you think organisations should be focusing on this right now?
Dr Amanda Potter:Leaders more than ever are conscious about the role that playing and the environment they are creating. They are very focused on wanting to create an environment for success and psychological safety is key for creating that environment for success. The role we play as leaders and as colleagues has a massive impact on what it feels like to go to work. And as a result has an impact on productivity, on wellbeing, on performance teams that feel psychologically safe, are more engaged. Each of the individuals have a better sense of personal well. And very often the productivity is higher, but in particular teams that feel psychologically safe are more likely to report errors. They're more likely to face up to failure and they are often much better at challenging each other and slowing down the process of problem solving, which results in greater ideation and innovation.
James Good:Why is it important for leaders and managers to even care about this?
Dr Amanda Potter:I'm very interested as you probably already know James in the neurobiology or neuropsychology elements to understand why it's so important from an individual and the impact it therefore has on behaviour and on team performance. One of the things I've been doing is thinking about the impact of making errors and feeling safe on the nervous system and the impact that then has on neuroplasticity and learning. Because we know from the neurobiology research, that errors create the environment for us to learn. And we know from the psychology research, that being prepared to fail creates the environment of psychological safety. So from an individual perspective when we fail or when we get something wrong, the nervous system releases acetylcholine and epinephrine acetylcholine helps us with focus. It helps us understand the error that we've made, the margin of error that we've made epinephrine or adrenaline, which is producing the brain, helps us with attention, helps us to focus the mind. So these two things, acetylcholine and epinephrine when they're released in the brain and we've made a mistake, we get that feeling. We get the emotion of frustration. And that's really critical for learning because the understands those two chemicals. We have to remember that the brain doesn't understand emotions, but the releasing of those two chemicals primes the brain for neuroplasticity, which is learning. And the whole point of psychological safety is learning. organisations need to learn. Humans need to learn, but we only really get neuroplasticity when the behaviour is different enough from existing behaviour in order to create a new neural pathway or connection, when we fail and start to improve, we release dopamine and that motivates us to try harder. So these three chemicals released in the right order gives the neural circuitry for change, which once we've tried it, a few times gets embedded. We need to experience failure to learn from a neurobiology perspective. And that failure is an important part of psychological safety. And so I believe there's a really strong link between neurobiology and neuropsychology and psychological safety and the importance of failure and trial and error in order to succeed and that we're hardwired to learn through failure. And that sense of discomfort, that sense of frustration is so important within ourselves in order to learn. But that sense of frustration and discomfort within teams is also important for teams to learn and to grow and to develop too. But teams are often not prepared to face up to that frustration unless they feel safe to do so.
James Good:So it's not just that I've failed so many times that I've become quite good at talking about my failures. It's that there's actually a chemical reaction happening in my brain.
Dr Amanda Potter:There is. And actually what's so fascinating is that each time you fail, if you feel that you are getting closer to your goal or your target, you are releasing the reward, chemical, the neurotransmitter, which is also a neuromodulator dopamine, which helps us to motivate ourselves to try harder and keep pushing towards that goal. So I believe actually failure is a really key and important part of success, both for us individually, but also for teams too.
James Good:So how do you create psychological safety in a team?
Dr Amanda Potter:There's two main ways. The first one is focusing on cognitive diversity, which is all about thinking different and making sure that each of the individuals within that team have a different way of approaching problems or solving decisions. Another way would be inclusion to make sure that each person in that team are treated equally and fairly. You might have two colleagues in a team who are very different. One person might have the strengths around compassion and another might have the strength of competition. The compassionate colleagues might find the competitive colleagues frustrating to work with because they prefer to pitch themselves against their peers and spend time working on their own success, as opposed to showing concern for people in the organisation. It's this challenge or this frustration, which is so key for creating debate and enabling people to be authentic and be honest about how they're feeling and teams that truly are psychologically safe, are prepared to acknowledge and recognise those differences in strengths and understand them. And we found that inclusion is also so important and in particular resilient leaders create safe environments. So leaders who are resilient and who experience the positive emotions with feeling calm, feeling sure, feeling in control are likely to create an environment where people feel safe and feel included.
James Good:So do you think we're becoming more sensitive then, or, we're certainly more aware, but are we becoming more sensitive as employers?
Dr Amanda Potter:We know from research that as we get older, our emotional intelligence increases and therefore we are by default becoming more attentive to the emotions that we experience and the emotions that other people are displaying and experiencing in 1996, the proportion of the working population over 50 was 5.7 million by 2020. This had grown to 10.7 million by 2039. Over half of the entire workforce will be over 45. So by default, we will be working with a potentially more emotionally intelligent workforce who are more attentive to issues like psychological safety. And the reason this is so important is that teams that feel psychologically safe are more likely to experience wellbeing. They're more likely to be engaged and have positive regard for one another and ultimately are more to improve the level of productivity and output that's produced as a result because they are working in harmony together.
James Good:Are there any examples, specific examples of what might cause low psychological safety
Dr Amanda Potter:Really interesting. We have worked with a client recently who has been doing a great deal of around the concept of collaboration is very important to this organisation that each of the members of the organisation work towards a single goal. They have a very clear global purpose. The organisation has real clarity about why they exist and they work with a number of large partners in order to deliver that goal in trying to make sure everybody is on the same page. They have worked very hard to create a sense of consistency and to make sure that everyone is consensus driven as a result. The culture of that organisation is very much around consist consensus, but also avoiding failure because the employees very much buy into that agenda and that purpose, and do not want to make mistakes because it has impact on people's homes and their lives. Actually, as a result of this, the impact has been that the organisation has been moving away from an environment of psychological safety because people are not being encouraged to speak up and to challenge and to question they're being encouraged to confer and to agree. And so the very concept of having a collaborative framework within an organisation could potentially be at odds with the concept of interpersonal risk and candour, which is exactly what we found for that client.
James Good:I think, most people have very good intentions. We hope most people have very good intentions. Can an individual derail, psychological safety, despite best intentions
Dr Amanda Potter:Completely. I believe every single one of us goes into work with a positive intention. We want to do the best we can for our organisation, for our employees, for our team members and for ourselves, we don't actively think I'm going to make the worst job of today possible. And I'm going to make my colleagues feel uneasy. I believe that low levels of psychological safety come from very good intention. The intention can be often that they want people to be happy. So one of the indications of low psychological safety are teams that are very nice to one another, or are nice all the time. And they are not prepared to be candid and honest or another behaviour that we might see from teams that are lower on psychological safety are teams that defer to leadership that don't want to make the wrong decision. So they defer decisions is up the chain of command and look to their seniors to make decisions for them because they don't want to be at risk of doing something wrong. This undermines that concept of candour or that concept of interpersonal risk, where people take ownership for their own decisions and take accountability, but are also prepared to fail or make mistakes.
James Good:What can people do to create an environment of really high, psychological safety?
Dr Amanda Potter:There's three foundational elements to a team that feels psychologically safe. The first one is trust individuals who are in a team of that feel psychologically safe, fundamentally trust each other, and they trust their leader, but we can't go immediately to trust. We have to build personal connection first and it's personal connection. That's so important to create a sense of psychological safety rather than spending all of our time, talking about our work and our professional relationships. We need to get to know each other as people, as humans and take time to actually invest in each other and understand our back stories for example. So we need to be personally connected. We need to trust each other, but also we need to have clarity and purpose. We need to know as a team, why do we exist? What difference do we make? And how are we personally aligned with that purpose? Does it fit with my personal values? And how do my values compare to those of my colleagues from the work we do with values. Values are the glue that bind teams together and are really important in helping teams have that sense of clarity and purpose.
James Good:So if I don't feel psychologically safe in myself and I see that other people don't either, how do I get people to see it or understand it, or be aware of it themselves?
Dr Amanda Potter:There are a number of signs or signals that someone may not be feeling safe very often. It's the absence of behaviour that we can spot in people that suggest they're not feeling safe. So they stop asking questions, they stop making suggestions and they stop offering ideas or solutions. And so these are what we would call micro assessments, where they are making very quick judgements to refrain from offering ideas or contributing. So that's how we can definitely see it in other people where people start to remove themselves from a discussion or they go quiet. And that's very much what you might want to look in yourself as well. If you are feeling that sense of discomfort and you are not being prepared to speak up or to question or to challenge, ask yourself, why
James Good:Is that a feeling of, I just can't be bothered. There's no point
Dr Amanda Potter:That's very interesting because I think you are now thinking and relating it to burnout. And what's fascinating from our research on resilience is that we found there were three main indicators of individuals who went on to experience burnout, and they were toxic relationship with the line manager, lack of clarity and purpose, and just too much volume too much. And the same three things we found were predictors of low psychological safety. So when there are toxic relationships, when the there's a lack of purpose and, or too much complexity or too much volume of work and things could never get achieved, they are also positive indications of low psychological.
James Good:Do you think employees leave employers because of a lack of psychological safety?
Dr Amanda Potter:Definitely. We've spoken to a number of clients over the last few years who have given examples where there have been passive aggressive behaviours, which is saying yes and not following through, and the impact that has on the overall feeling within a team. One very toxic member within a team can have significant ramifications for what it feels like to go to work for the rest of those colleagues. And so being Frank and being direct and being honest is really important. And I had a lovely coaching example just a couple of days ago, and working with a very senior finance director from an engineering organisation who in his example of what he'd been to doing that week gave me a lovely example of how he'd spoken to the chief of staff and basically said to that person, I know you want me to do it this way, but I'm going to deliberately ignore you. I just want to do it my way. And I'm going to take control. You are not going to control me on this one. And that behaviour will really upset his colleague. And for three days, she didn't speak to him after they spoke about it, talked it through. He explained to her how her behaviour was impacting him. And whilst he may not have handled it in a particularly empathetic way, his intention was to create a sense of safety and honesty. As a result, they've got a much better, stronger trusting relationship, and they both know where they stand. And they've talked it through to create a sense of common understanding. He was not prepared to compromise, but nor was she. And they recognise that they both come at the problem from a very different perspective and they now get it because he was brave enough. He was courageous enough to say, no, I'm not going to do what you want me to do the way you want me to do it. I'm going to do it my way. And they've come to an agreement and teams that feel UN, psychologically safe are teams that avoid that discomfort that avoid the conflict. And they avoid dealing with those difficult or tricky situations. And they prefer to sweep them under the carpet in order to create that sense of consistency or because they want to please their colleagues and they want them to be happy. And they prefer to take a strategy and approach of being nice rather than being candid and honest. Or in this example with this finance director being quite courageous and actually saying no enough is enough.
James Good:I find it really interesting every time we talk. I always think about how these things have, um, played their part in my own experiences in my own life and own work and career. And there have been times when I felt like my team were like, they felt like they were safe with me, but it was apparent that they weren't necessarily safe with each other. And amongst each other, is that, is that possible in a small team?
Dr Amanda Potter:Is completely possible. What I find so interesting is that very few organisations achieve the sense of psychological safety across every single member of the team. Even our business within Zircon, we're a team of 16 people and Sarah and I, the co-directors work extremely hard to be inclusive, to be courageous, to learn from our mistakes, to be role models as leaders, but even we don't get it completely right. And we actually used our psychological safety questionnaire with our own team and with ourselves and found that there are two areas that we fall short on and that the colleagues are deferring to our leadership. And we can be quite relentless because we have so many client demands and challenges all the time. So even as an organisation that spends a huge amount of time talking to our clients about psychological safety, we don't even get there.
James Good:So if someone recognises a problem, um, what would you recommend they should do? And how, how could they tackle a problem head on how should they raise awareness of a problem?
Dr Amanda Potter:If you were in a situation where you realise that a problem in the team, the first thing to do is to spend time thinking about all of the indications and the evidence that might be alerting you to the fact there might be a problem, what was said, what was the behaviour? And also what's the general feeling. And then you might want to validate that. So spend time with the colleagues that you are thinking are included and ask questions, check in and clarify, there may be a great deal more than you are observing or witnessing or feeling that's going on within the team. So if you are getting an indication or an instinct that there might be a problem, the one thing I would suggest you do is you go in and spend time with people and ask lots of questions to try and understand what's happening. But of course, try not to be too targeted or too directive with your questions, but be open and exploratory.
James Good:Have you noticed any difference regarding teams of different sizes? So are bigger teams, more likely to suffer issues relating to psychological safety?
Dr Amanda Potter:That's such a great question. Yes. Is the answer larger teams struggle to create the sense of psychological safety. And I see leaders working much, much harder than ever before in trying to create that sense of safety within their teams, but teams that are large are much more difficult to achieve the feeling of safety across all colleagues.
James Good:It's really interesting to think that if businesses measure change over time, that there might be a direct correlation between psychological safety and performance or innovation.
Dr Amanda Potter:And there is also some very interesting research from the London stock exchange group, which has shown that workplace sentiment around psychological safety and safety impacts higher price performance on the share index. And so there is some brilliant research now looking at the relationship between psychological safety and work performance and business performance.
James Good:So ultimately, why is it important for organisations and why should organisations even care about getting this stuff? Right.
Dr Amanda Potter:I love the concept of functional stupidity, which I know is a topic that our clients have a quite a strong emotive reaction to. When I bring up the topic, functional stupidity is the concept of narrow thinking or predictable decision making or group think. And it has been quoted that functional stupidity is when we encourage bright, thoughtful people to stop thinking for themselves, teams that are not psychologically safe, are being encouraged to follow the status quo, to look on the bright side, avoid negative information, to trust the community. And what we want actually is teams that are psychologically safe to challenge the status quo to not only look on the bright side, to face up to negative information, to question the community and to question rules and templates, not necessarily having to see them as natural and things that need to be delivered because teams that are disruptive, that are challenging, that are questioning are more likely to innovate. They're more likely to disrupt in a positive way and identify new innovative solutions that will be groundbreaking. And they don't focus on the inside of the organisation or current processes. They focus on their customers, the environment, the economy, and how they can contribute and how they can make a difference.
James Good:And that does feel really relevant at the moment. If organisations aren't consciously focusing on making a meaningful difference. They're certainly thinking about it. If anything from today has got you thinking, and you've got any comments or suggestions or questions Dr. Amanda Potter is available on LinkedIn. So go and comment there or send her a message. Thanks for listening.