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The Chief Psychology Officer
Exploring the topics of workplace psychology and conscious leadership. Amanda is an award-winning Chartered Psychologist, with vast amounts of experience in talent strategy, resilience, facilitation, development and executive coaching. A Fellow of the Association for Business Psychology and an Associate Fellow of the Division of Occupational Psychology within the British Psychological Society (BPS), Amanda is also a Chartered Scientist. Amanda is a founder CEO of Zircon and is an expert in leadership in crisis, resilience and has led a number of research papers on the subject; most recently Psychological Safety in 2022 and Resilience and Decision-making in 2020. With over 20 years’ experience on aligning businesses’ talent strategy with their organizational strategy and objectives, Amanda has had a significant impact on the talent and HR strategies of many global organizations, and on the lives of many significant and prominent leaders in industry. Dr Amanda Potter can be contacted on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandapotterzircon www.theCPO.co.uk
The Chief Psychology Officer
Ep69 Creating Inclusive Workplaces: The Power of Psychological Safety
Unlock the secrets to creating a truly inclusive workplace with insights from Laura McLean, an HR and Talent leader at Santander. Tune in to discover how you can foster an environment where trust and innovation flourish, and employees feel empowered to bring their full selves to work. Laura, alongside Dr Amanda Potter, Chartered Psychologist and CEO of Zircon BeTalent, dissects the core elements of psychological safety, demonstrating their pivotal role in leadership development and the evolving landscape of today's workforce.
You'll learn about the transformative power of small, intentional changes that can yield significant improvements in organizational culture. Just like compound interest, these adjustments magnify over time, leading to better customer experiences and fostering innovation. We'll explore the internal climates that shape customer service and discuss strategies for embedding psychological safety at both micro and macro levels. A key focus is on recognising and addressing unconscious biases, promoting true cognitive and neurodiversity within the workplace.
Even well-intentioned leaders can inadvertently create toxic environments. Our conversation highlights the importance of authenticity, candid communication, and the balancing act between professional focus and personal connection. We'll share personal anecdotes to illustrate how perceptions can be influenced by external appearances and how a supportive environment encourages productivity under pressure. Whether you're an HR leader, psychologist, or simply someone looking to enhance workplace culture, this episode provides practical advice on raising awareness and integrating small practices that build psychological safety across all levels of an organisation.
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 back to the Chief Psychology Officer podcast, where today we're going to be discussing one of our favourite topics psychological safety. However, we are joined by a very special guest, laura McLean, from Santander, and she will be sharing her experience of creating a psychologically safe environment within Santander. But first, a really quick round of introductions. So for those who do not know my voice, I'm Caitlin, senior Business Psychologist at Zircon, and I will be hosting today's episode along with Amanda Potter, charter Psychologist and CEO of Zircon. Hello, amanda.
Speaker 2:Hi Caitlin, thank you very much. So we've been working with Laura and Santander for over five years, I think. We've had many projects, a lot around psychological safety, and I'm so chuffed you're here, laura. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you for inviting me to be part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was also very excited when I heard you were coming on the podcast. Obviously, I've had the pleasure also of working with you directly over the last year. Would you mind, by doing a quick introduction of yourself for our listeners?
Speaker 3:Of course, thank you, no pressure, right? So hi everyone. My name is Laura McLean and I'm passionate about leaving a legacy of resilient and purpose-driven organisations and individuals. Whether that's through the work I do as a coach or on strategic solutions within Santander, I'm always focused on creating environments where people can grow, challenge themselves and thrive. So, fundamentally, I'm here to create frameworks that don't just support immediate goals, but encourage and enable enough sustainable success that we build resilient themes and help each other to become our best, both professionally and personally.
Speaker 1:Obviously we'll have a chance to dive into all of that, but just obviously, if we have regular listeners then they will hopefully by now have some understanding around what we mean when we're talking about psychological safety. But for those who may be newer to the concept of it, amanda, could you just remind our listeners what is psychological safety from your research?
Speaker 2:Psychological safety is when people feel comfortable enough to speak up, to challenge, to ask questions, to admit mistakes and also to build really deep connections with their colleagues. Now our research has identified that there's three foundational elements to psychological safety. They are trust, personal personal connection, and purpose and clarity. So if we have those three things, then we're more likely to have an environment where people feel that they can be courageous and brave and speak up and challenge and laura, I wondered if you had any reflections on how you see psychological safety building on what amanda said.
Speaker 3:One of the reasons I'm so passionate about it is it's more than just nice to have is that it's that foundation that allows trust, innovation and collaboration to flourish. So when we make it safe to share ideas, challenge norms, ask questions, we open the door for everyone to bring their whole selves and their best thinking to work, and I suppose that's probably contributed to why you're taking a focus of it within Santander.
Speaker 1:So why do you believe that it's important within Santander? What's your perspective on that?
Speaker 3:Well, obviously we know it's something I'm personally very passionate about. But looking after our leadership development strategy for the last few years and knowing that at Santander it's the place to be yourself, we know that there's a richness to human experience that can shape amazing solutions for our customers and by focusing on psychological safety we open the door to that. In the past few years, the way we live, the way we work it's transformed so much. The pandemic forced us to rethink what we need to thrive as individuals, as businesses, as a society.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting that you say that because it is all about environment, isn't it? And that's the point. Psychological safety is all about environment. It's all about feeling. It's all about experience, and our experience of our work. Life has changed so fundamentally. We have to think much deeper and much harder about how we can make sure people feel included and integrated, and all the work we're doing now around neurodiversity and cognitive diversity too. Everybody has different needs, so how can we help people to feel safe and included despite their different needs? I think it's really cool the work you're doing.
Speaker 3:I think the expectations of society and the workforce are changing as we learn more about different needs, you know, and the diversity that that can bring to our ideas and our solutions, and I think without that safety we risk stifling the innovation and the resources from Zircon to senior leadership and a large proportion of our people managers this year and my conversations I'm seeing, I'm hearing and I'm feeling the effects and the difference that it's making Because, as Amanda said, it's about the environment.
Speaker 2:That's so amazing and actually you've articulated beautifully the steps that we talk about. We talk about the fact. The first step is around education. The second step is around personal awareness. So how do I feel then? It's team reflection or departmental reflection? How do we feel and what do my colleagues feel when we're thinking about psych safety? And then what am I going to do? What actions am I prepared to take to actually change my environment and how everybody feels? It isn't just about reading a book or just about completing a questionnaire. It's most definitely about what do you do with that information and how can you implement change.
Speaker 1:I'm curious to know, Laura, I guess obviously you're doing a lot more work in psychological safety over the past year, but what was the understanding of psychological safety before this past year? Would you say people had even heard of the word within Santander. Would you say that it's definitely. I guess. What's the experience now compared to what it was before? And we talk about psychological safety as a concept?
Speaker 3:I think people had heard of it as a concept, but it varied from you know. I've heard of it but I don't quite know what it means right down to, you know, individuals who had more of an understanding because they had that passion. But it is a fairly new concept, isn't it? So I think that work and the consistency that I mentioned is super important, and making sure that what we did was focused on leadership, where we have that high influence, but also the people, manager, population, and making sure that everybody had that grounding of knowledge and understanding and education and they have got the highest impact, and what's so lovely about that is that you have three and a half thousand people managers.
Speaker 2:Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Around that number yeah.
Speaker 2:Around that number, and so so far, we have already managed to get in front of nearly a thousand people, managers, and we've already scheduling with you another thousand, hopefully for 2025.
Speaker 3:We've got plans for next year. We're not slowing down, we're speeding up.
Speaker 2:It's amazing, it's so good and what's so lovely about it is month on month, we actually track the psychological safety of those people, managers, and have been doing it since the very beginning, and what we're seeing is, even though it's not test retest because they're not doing it more than once, they're different populations every month.
Speaker 2:Because of that focus on action and that focus on reflection, we're starting to see that the psychological safety within the people manager population within Santander is improving, and that is just because psychological safety is increasingly on their agenda and people are starting to understand, I believe, from our conversations that, how important it is. And that's quite different to some of the work we've been doing with other clients, which is interesting, laura, because sometimes when we start talking about psychological safety, its importance and its impact, the level of psychological safety initially goes down, because once people understand it and they're aware of it, they then realize it's missing. So it almost takes a dip before it goes up. But actually it's really great that we're seeing a very steady increase, month by month so far, for the first year of assessments within Santander.
Speaker 3:It helps people to have, you know, a bit more bravery and belief, because psychological safety is quite new outside of people's comfort zones, outside of the way maybe traditionally how people have been managed in organisations. So it helps us to prove that you know this is making a difference.
Speaker 2:And that proof point is so hard, isn't it, Caitlin? We do so much work and research around stats and trying to connect the data with something that's tangible to show that there is an impact. So, Laura, what would you say? I know we're gathering data all the time, but what would you say the benefit has been for this approach and focusing on psych safety for Santander over the last year and a half?
Speaker 3:I think we've seen a real impact by opening the discussion at all levels. So, as I mentioned, we started with senior leadership, but then we embedded it within our School of Management, which is our programme for all people managers that we continue into next year, and that's given our people a way to apply these concepts in real life scenarios so they can adapt, they can learn, they can grow, keep their momentum, but also help us scale that knowledge by putting out a consistent call to action on this, by making it clear the expectation is for our leaders and our people managers to collectively create psych safety. The benefit we've seen is that we're actively shaping a workplace culture that will attract and retain the best talent. So it's positioning us to thrive in the long term.
Speaker 2:One of the things I love about the approach that you've taken and I've been talking about your approach with other clients who are also working with us in the area of psych safety. I must say a few of them are stealing your ideas, laura, which is the ambassador model Shocking.
Speaker 3:I know sharesies.
Speaker 2:But it's the ambassador model that you've created and you asked us to roll out, which is once we had conducted the psychological safety event with your top 250, we invited the Solar UCO to be ambassadors for psychological safety and we had a great take-up of people saying, actually, I would like to be an ambassador and it's the ambassadors who are rolling out the people manager program. So it's not being done by Zircon, it's not being done by external consultants. That's actually being run and led by your most senior leaders, which is the coolest part of it. We're here to support them, but actually they're the ones who are passionate about psychological safety and sharing the stories. I think that for me, me is a real sign that the business is embracing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just thinking. It shows that they want to invest in this. And it goes back to what you said, amanda, that passion. People are passionate about making that difference for the long term.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, because we need our people to be passionate about making this difference. It's not something HR can deliver to the business. It's not something you know that we take out of a box and it's there.
Speaker 1:We need every individual thinking about it, thinking about the shadow they cast across the organization and the environment that they're creating and we always talk about it in saying that it starts with you one looking after yourself, so you can show up and create an environment of psychological safety to then allow others to feel that they can do that as well do you know if people in your organization feel safe to speak up about their concerns and ideas?
Speaker 4:we often talk about the importance of psychological safety on this podcast, but did you know we offer a diagnostic tool to help measure the climate of psychological safety within your team. When your people feel empowered to speak up, innovation has the chance to thrive. Visit the cpocouk to learn more about the b talent suite or get in touch with me on linkedin. That's angela malik m-a-l-i-k. Open the door to the art of the possible today.
Speaker 1:But, laura, I wondered, what have you learned then when implementing psychological safety across the organization? What are some of the key things you take away?
Speaker 3:So I think, when I think about what I've learned, I think about what's at the core for Santander. So what's at the core of our strategic blueprint is to make our customers better happen, so especially during pivotal moments of their life maybe buying their first house or perhaps losing a loved one. So getting this right means understanding what better looks like for them and for those customers to trust us with their stories, their precious moments, and employees need to feel safe. So what I've learned is that, well, it starts with leadership. It's not just about them. Yes, we need leaders to be intentional about safe spaces within their teams so that everyone feels empowered to do the same for customers.
Speaker 3:As I mentioned earlier, senior leadership have the highest influence, but in number, the impact of a segment like people managers is much higher. So they need to be in partnership with senior leaders throughout, focusing on the collective impact, ensuring that everyone's conscious of their impact, their influence on the climate of psychological safety. So I've learned that that is what is going to help us to achieve critical mass. I like to talk about tiny changes. They add up to huge ones, and I've seen that in action here. So it's compound interest is the biggest lesson I've had total goosebump moments for me.
Speaker 2:Actually, what you're trying to do is trying to help improve the relationship between your business and the customer and I'm one of your customers so that in those really tricky times, we can have those really honest conversations and I can feel supported and helped and I can be honest about my situation. I think that's great, actually, because that's fundamentally what we're talking about here, isn't it? How the environment that people work in influences the experience that people have when they walk in the door or they pick up the phone and ask for help or ask for advice.
Speaker 1:And I say that's one thing that I take away as well working with yourself, laura, is the perspective that you and Santanza have in terms of thinking about the customer. I think that's a really good reminder, if we think back to what you said about climate earlier, that the internal climate and organisation directly impacts the customer experience, because when we see and when we nurture a climate that people can trust each other, they can be open. It builds confidence, obviously in individuals and in teams, which in turn translates into genuine customer service and being able to meet and exceed customer expectations.
Speaker 3:And what we'll see is that individuals will feel more empowered to step into some of those tougher competencies like global mindset, cultivating innovation, strategic thinking, self-development. That step out of your comfort zone that's going to give us even better products and experiences, for customers needs you to feel safe.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I think our clients are doing really well, Santander being one of them. I've got a number of clients in my mind who are doing an incredible job around psychological safety at the moment. What they're doing really well is the education, the facilitation, the awareness piece, so it's all that kind of micro stuff is at the people end. What would be really brilliant is if we try to make change more at the macro end as well, If we think about leadership frameworks, competency models, values models, performance management systems or appraisals, employee assistance programs, all those sorts of things where it impacts the talent life cycle of an employee, and to make sure that the aspects of psychological safety are fully considered and thought about.
Speaker 2:Because we started working with you, Laura, didn't we at the blueprint stage? We started working a long time ago with Michael and Shell and Kasia to build a blueprint that could be rolled out across Santander, which was a totally cool piece of work, looking at high potential success and making sure models like that consider psychological safety in the language and that they don't undermine it. That's one of my reflections. Actually, just thinking about the work that we've been doing with you. We've done it at both ends at the macro and at the micro levels, so that we can get the greatest traction you mentioned the word undermine, amanda, and it's.
Speaker 3:It's super interesting because there is a lot of influencing that has to go on around this subject, just to help people understand why it's important, because one of the biggest things that undermines it for me is our biology and the way that our brains work. Some of the systems we're programmed with that are simply human nature can undermine that psychological safety. So it's about being conscious about it and not taking for granted that it will just appear.
Speaker 2:That's such a brilliant point. I mean, the point you're making is we are naturally biased and we're naturally flawed in that we seek simplicity. We seek predictability and similarity. So therefore, we actively seek individuals who think, look and behave similarly to us. Yet psychologically safe environments are ones where there's true cognitive and neurodiversity and where we challenge each other and speak up.
Speaker 3:We talk a about um how we like people who are like us and our brains are wired to protect those beliefs and agendas. But how often do we look around the teams that we work in or the customer base that we serve, and do they all look like us? Are we all the same?
Speaker 2:it's rare and actually the more varied the better. It's great, isn't it?
Speaker 3:so I think, like becoming aware and acknowledging the fact that our brains can do this, our brains can look for those biases, to make those decisions and judgments on an unconscious level that we might not even be aware of, even just starting these conversations has allowed us to step back, quieting some of those egos, and genuinely listen and hold space for the humans in front of us I had a whole, whole debate yesterday with Sarah about whether bias can be unconscious or whether that's actually fallacy.
Speaker 2:So that's, I think, a whole other podcast.
Speaker 3:I think it can. I think it can. I think I was sceptical about the term unconscious bias and you know, don't fact check me here but I just thought I said that that feels like a cop out a bit. I bet it was maybe a white man that that coined that term. And I did the research and I looked at the names and I went, oh, one of those names is an ethnic man, a man of color, me assuming, and then I googled the name and it wasn't. It was a woman. How?
Speaker 2:funny.
Speaker 3:I love your bias, just even punched me right in the face and said no, laura, unconscious bias exists.
Speaker 2:And you have got it there. Well, actually it's conscious because you now know about it. So that's a whole nother debate, isn't it?
Speaker 3:I do like the saying on unconscious bias you're not responsible for your first thought, but you are responsible for your second thought and your first action first thought, but you are responsible for your second thought and your first action.
Speaker 2:I've even said that on the podcast previously and have quoted you multiple times on this podcast, and that's one of the ones that I have quoted.
Speaker 1:I love it so I'll get the questions for both of you, but Amanda first, what's been the greatest insight you've had since working with clients to improve psychological safety?
Speaker 2:I've had so many insights. It's just been amazing. And I love looking at the literature. I love talking to clients. I love it when clients are equally as passionate about it. So they challenge my thinking. And, laura, you're in that camp. You definitely challenged my thinking, so it's great.
Speaker 2:But there's one colleague, anne, who said to me when we were talking about psychological safety.
Speaker 2:She said to me the path to hell is paved with great intention.
Speaker 2:She used it to summarize my thinking when we were talking about it, because one of the things I said to her is that I assumed a bias, that when the environment is negative and when it's toxic and there's poor psychological safety, that it's because there's bad management, because it's bad leadership or because the intention is bad.
Speaker 2:But that's not necessarily the case. From our research, what we found is that pretty much most of the leaders who either create positive or negative environments have great intentions, and some of the leaders who create the most unsafe environments have the very, very best of intentions, but they're ruthless in driving results and they're relentless in their pursuit of targets and they hold back from sharing too much information because they want to protect employees or they're overly nice to everybody, or they look for consensus because they don't want to make the wrong decision. So they're just trying too hard. So that's for me a very long answer to your question, caitlin. To say the greatest insight for me is the path to hell is paved with great intention, and even the very best and well intentioned managers can create toxic, uncomfortable, unsafe environments.
Speaker 1:I think a nice example and I often hear you reference that quote and I think people can relate quite well to is if we think about one of the elements in our psychological safety model is professionally focused, being the kind of unsafe side, and being personally connected is the psychologically safe side. And actually people look at professionally focused and think, well, you know, I'm going to work, I need to be professional, so surely you know that's not a bad thing. But you know that's not a bad thing. But actually, as you say, it's not a bad thing. But ultimately if you turn up to a meeting and you get straight into business and you haven't taken the time to ask someone, you know how are you, how's your day, and kind of do the niceties and build that connection, then you are undermining the ability to personally connect. So I think that one seems to stick quite well with people, particularly in very professional environments.
Speaker 3:I like that one, though, because it's about authenticity, isn't it? And trust comes from consistent authenticity, being candid and honest, doing what you say you do. You can be honest and still be kind, and you know, I did a session yesterday on unconscious bias, and an audience member came up to me afterward and said you, I was really happy to see what you were wearing Like. It immediately just made me sort of feel like you know, I could be like you, and I reflect on pre-pandemic life and public speaking back then, and definitely when you turn up in a pencil skirt, you know corporate. I used to straighten my hair. For anyone that knows me, I have lots and lots of curly hair trademark, and the more professional I appeared, the less comfortable and open my audience would be.
Speaker 2:How amazing. What did you wear?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I was going to ask that. Do you know what I actually had? Black trousers, fluffy white socks and black shoes.
Speaker 1:Did you see the fluffy white socks?
Speaker 2:yeah, you're good okay they were over the trousers. I bet you look cool, you always do.
Speaker 1:You managed to wear clothes much better than me, so I guess, laura, what advice would you give to HR leaders and psychologists who want to improve the level of psychological safety in their companies? Or, you know, with the companies and clients that they're supporting?
Speaker 3:my advice is to start with getting the conversation going now, but never lose focus on that goal of embedding psych safety deeply into how the organization operates every day. Some of the terminology that you have both used or all of us have used on this podcast comes from an amazing framework that allows us to raise awareness of people's good intentions that can be undermining psychological safety and help them chunk it down into small habitual practices, small changes they can make to create a different climate. We've used our skill of management to ensure that leaders and people managers are accountable for creating psych safety, but we've also helped them understand and educated them so they can go out and do that with confidence.
Speaker 2:I think the confidence bit is so important actually, because I think more and more leaders understand what it is and they're confident to talk about it, but they're not confident to understand how to change it, how to make a difference themselves. Caitlin, you made a brilliant point earlier about it starts with each individual person and how they show up on a day-to-day basis. Because we know from our research that when we are mentally fit and healthy and have wellbeing and we feel resilient and have positive affect and our internal dialogue is liberating rather than limiting, we're more likely to create an environment where people are going to share ideas and stories and speak up and challenge and so on. So I think it's lovely that after that conversation there's education and after education there's that recognition that actually even I can make a small difference, what it feels like to work with me, which will mean that it changed the experience of the environment for the people around me. I think that's pretty cool actually.
Speaker 3:I was going to say. I think the world is so volatile right now, but I think this topic, this subject, helps us to understand that there are things we can control to help ourselves, other people around us feel better, and I know that you know, even when I've been struggling, if I feel safe, I can remain productive.
Speaker 2:I think that safety really summarises our relationship, the three of us, because we meet weekly, bi-weekly depending on our diaries.
Speaker 2:And I. It's funny, isn't it, when clients become friends. We've ended up having some incredibly personal, deep conversations, haven't we? About our lives and situations outside of work and your coaching, for example. We've talked about your passion around coaching, laura. We've talked about families and all sorts of things, and it's so important that you actually are able to do that, because it does mean that we treat each other as people, as humans, not just as colleagues because we are humans and I think sometimes we forget that.
Speaker 3:And for me, why is that the exception? What reason is there for anyone to feel psychologically unsafe?
Speaker 2:at work. I know personally that we talked about the risks and I know personally that when I'm feeling really under pressure, I'm a bit of a no fuss person. I'm a bit like let's just get to it and I'll jump into a conversation and I won't ask you how you are and I'll forget to say goodbye properly or have a lovely weekend. I'll just literally be right. What's the agenda?
Speaker 2:stress though yeah, and so that stress will create a different type of approach in me. I it's not that I don't care, it's just in the moment I get super, super anxious and super focused. So it's something to think about, isn't it?
Speaker 3:And I think when we're safe and we know each other as humans, we can recognise that in each other. And then we take the ebbs and flows, without taking it personally, and I know, like in the past, we've reached out to each other. I was like in the past we've reached out to each other and we say you're a bit not yourself. Today Is everything OK, and you know, and that makes a difference it does.
Speaker 2:And so I mentioned your coaching, Laura. How are you applying what you've learned with us and with psych safety and all the reflections you've been having in your executive coaching?
Speaker 3:So I would say my work in psych safety has completely evolved my coaching practice. What it's given me is a deeper understanding of how essential it is for individuals to feel safe enough to be open to challenge themselves. So it goes beyond theoretical. It's a practical approach that I use to help understand what does each individual client need to feel safe? Because that's going to be unique, that's going to be based on their past experiences, their values, their beliefs. And by understanding psych safety is about the climate we create rather than the individuals within it. It allows me to adapt to the human in front of me so they can feel fully supported as they navigate challenges, set set ambitious goals, push past their limits. That can be such a scary thing. That's almost impossible for some people to do if they don't feel safe. So since I've become aware as a coach of how to calibrate it in someone else cases of overwhelm or clients pulling back out of fear have reduced.
Speaker 2:That's really amazing, and I suppose the type of conversations that you're having with your coach is different.
Speaker 3:Of course, because it's foundational, it's fundamental and many coaches will want to go straight into that goal setting, straight into that future, straight into what actions can I take? How do I get moving forward? And by calibrating psych safety, you can understand, you know, is that an avoidance tactic or is that something that we can work with and run with? So you're almost addressing the challenges or the blockers before they even raise their head, by working on that psych safety from the outset.
Speaker 1:I also think it's quite a nice example of typically, when we're talking about psychological safety. We know that psychological safety helps drive high performing teams, so we look at it from that team's lens. But I think the example you're giving of how you're using it in your coaching just goes to show at an individual level how you can still have really important, valuable conversations on that individual basis.
Speaker 3:And you can position people to thrive in the long term as well by raising their awareness of the fact that it's about a climate, and when your climate changes to this, you feel unsafe. There's things you can change, there's actions you can take that aren't about fundamentally changing who you are it's changing habits, isn't it?
Speaker 2:and we know from our very early research that we can change and embed habits within 21 days and that we need to break them down into small micro habits and we need to reward ourselves once we do something well. So there's lots of ways we can actually start to create really lovely, healthy habits and this is how a coach can help you right.
Speaker 3:It's over that period of time. It's helping your brain stop and doing that flip-flopping back to previous behaviors, those well-embedded, well-intentioned behaviors yeah, talking about cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 2:Now, what happens when we have those two competing thoughts is we go back to what we know, rather than being prepared to change. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, laura sadly, that comes to the end of the podcast, so I wondered if there's any final parting thoughts from.
Speaker 2:Well, manda, let's go with you first, and then Laura will come to you so for me, I think the parting thoughts are that if we really want to make a significant change in an organization, we need to think at a macro and a micro level. At a micro level, we need to have conversations with individuals, we need to raise their awareness, we need to educate and we need teams to understand how they can personally influence and make change and how they can collectively influence and make change when it comes to psych safety. But at a macro level, it's about strategy. It's about talent management processes, it's about libraries of behaviours and competencies and values, making sure that they are all driving towards an environment of psych safety and not undermining it thank you, and laura, I just want to say thank you so much for inviting me to be part of the conversation.
Speaker 3:For me it's it's such an important topic, and my final thoughts would be that as our world evolves, so must our workplaces. Psych safety is essential for navigate this journey, and it's not just a moral imperative, it's a strategic advantage, and you will hear me say that over and over. I'm sure you've heard it before. But organizations that prioritize psychological safety will build resilient workforces that not only survive future challenges but thrive through them. And as we look to what's next, we need organizations where everybody feels empowered, engaged and valued at every level. That way, we allow for more fruitful discussions, the richness of human experience to come through, resulting better solutions for the organization and for the customers. So it isn't just about creating a positive work environment. It's so much more than that. It's about positioning ourselves to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
Speaker 2:So it's a strategic disadvantage if you don't frankly amen that was very powerful.
Speaker 1:Just goes to show that you're passionate. But also thank you for joining us today and sharing your insights, and a big thank you also to our listeners for tuning in. I hope you've enjoyed the conversation and taken away some valuable insights.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Caitlin, and thank you Laura. What a joy having the chance to have a good gossip with a couple of good friends about something we're all excited and passionate about. Couldn't be anything better to working life, hey.
Speaker 3:It's always a pleasure. My favourite meeting of the week.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, thank you, and thank you, caitlin, for hosting and thank you everyone for listening. I hope you all have a wonderful and successful day.
