Full Transcript for Solo Cast: Creating Psychological Safety

where feels like there's somebody that's taking up all the oxygen in the room. 00:03:12.750 --> 00:03:15.040 You feel like you can't get a word in edgewise. 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:21.180 You feel like. 00:03:21.180 --> 00:03:27.510 They're just gonna run out the clock and you're not gonna have chance to say anything. 00:03:27.510 --> 00:03:36.090 Or if you do, have a chance to say something that they're just gonna talk you down. 00:03:36.090 --> 00:03:59.860 Well as a leader. You absolutely want to have a private conversation with this person about how they're being perceived. 00:03:59.860 --> 00:04:08.240 Why are they acting that way and tell them the impact that they're behavior is having suggesting them that they think about a meeting where, if there's 5 people, they show, only be speaking a fifth of the time at Max, there's 10 people, you should only be speaking a Tenth of 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:13.560 the time at Max also suggest to them that they should call on people that are speaking less. 00:04:13.560 --> 00:04:25.850 They should try to bring in other ideas and other thoughts. 00:04:25.850 --> 00:04:31.600 But also you wanna talk to those people as well. The people that aren't talking up in meetings and say to them in private, are there ways that you can help them? 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:40.570 Can you call on them in meetings? Not everybody is comfortable being called on in meetings. 00:04:40.570 --> 00:04:47.880 If they're not comfortable being called in on meetings find other ways that you can get information from them and share it with the group. 00:04:47.880 --> 00:04:57.870 Perhaps you talk to them ahead of time before a meeting. Perhaps you have them. Text. 00:04:57.870 --> 00:05:00.040 You during the meeting. You could even have a conversation with them after the meeting about what they thought it made me bring up that information to the rest of the team. 00:05:00.040 --> 00:05:08.370 Asynchronously. 00:05:08.370 --> 00:05:19.600 And then, of course, you know, credit that those ideas to the person that gave it to you. 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:33.230 When it comes to authority. Bias Nixon is the exemplar in my mind. 00:05:33.230 --> 00:05:40.850 When information was starting to break about the Watergate scandal, Nixon gather together all of his team and said. 00:05:40.850 --> 00:05:43.640 We need to cover this up. This is really bad. It's gonna get so much worse if we don't cover it up. 00:05:43.640 --> 00:05:55.510 I think we should do that. 00:05:55.510 --> 00:06:02.380 And in that meeting nobody contradicted him in that meeting, because nobody contradicted him. 00:06:02.380 --> 00:06:18.460 Everybody thought that everybody else thought that Nixon's idea was a good idea. 00:06:18.460 --> 00:06:30.270 In fact, everybody thought that it was a bad idea, except for Nixon, but because Nixon had talked first because Nixon was known to be a bullet, because Nixon was their boss. 00:06:30.270 --> 00:06:42.090 They did not feel safe. They did not feel comfortable bringing it up, and because they thought that they were alone in that idea, they also didn't bring it up. 00:06:42.090 --> 00:06:47.830 Irving Jones quoted White House aid, John Ehrlichman is saying, one necessarily regrets not having said the word that would have deflected the course of history. 00:06:47.830 --> 00:07:08.780 When I'm in a meeting. I'm often thinking to myself, am I being Nixon here? 00:07:08.780 --> 00:07:14.220 I try to make sure that if I have ideas, then I let other people get the first shot at talking before I bring them up, and even if I do bring up ideas I try to make sure that people understand that I'm open to criticism and I'm open. 00:07:14.220 --> 00:07:33.020 To hearing other ideas, and that maybe my idea isn't the best idea. 00:07:33.020 --> 00:07:39.400 Oftentimes companies have things that they do to look back at projects. 00:07:39.400 --> 00:07:52.490 Sometimes they call these retrospectives. Sometimes they call them post-mortems, sometimes they call them incident reviews. 00:07:52.490 --> 00:07:59.430 These are very critical meetings when it comes to learning how to improve and cycological safety is absolutely critical. 00:07:59.430 --> 00:08:11.420 In these meetings one way that in computer science. 00:08:11.420 --> 00:08:16.190 People have been trying to verify the cycleological safety in a meeting like this is to do a safety check. 00:08:16.190 --> 00:08:41.160 But really any type of meeting like this beforehand, you can do a safety check. 00:08:41.160 --> 00:08:43.860 Before we all went virtual and distributed. When you mean in person the way this would be done is you write a number from one to 5 on a piece of paper, and you fold that piece of paper up, and you put it in a hat, and so that number indicates how safe you feel one being you know feel safe. 00:08:43.860 --> 00:08:48.360 At all. You feel like if you're honest, you're gonna get blamed. 00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:55.030 You feel like you wanna avoid talking as much as possible in this meeting. 00:08:55.030 --> 00:08:57.840 Or as a 5 means, you feel pretty safe, and you can say pretty much anything that you're not going to get blamed for. 00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:06.580 Whatever you say in that meeting. 00:09:06.580 --> 00:09:24.780 So once. All these numbers are collected in the hat. The moderator for the meeting should then sort them. 00:09:24.780 --> 00:09:36.020 You know. Mix through the hat and then pull them out, and if there are any ones, and possibly even any twos, there's no point in having that meeting, because you don't have the cycleological safety, at least one person feels unsafe in that meeting, and they're not going to be able to show 00:09:36.020 --> 00:09:44.260 up fully for you. They are not going to be able to be honest in that meeting, and you want everybody to be able to be honest in this meeting to get the best information. 00:09:44.260 --> 00:09:47.320 Maybe,

instead of having the meeting you take that time to talk about safety and try to figure out how people feel unsafe. 00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:51.850 Do people feel like they're going to get blamed? 00:09:51.850 --> 00:10:02.290 Do people feel like their careers are unlucky in this meeting? 00:10:02.290 --> 00:10:25.720 It's also critical in one on ones to have conversations that relate to. 00:10:25.720 --> 00:10:51.410 One time I was leaving a retrospective where? 00:10:51.410 --> 00:10:57.670 One time I was reading a retrospective where we hadn't gotten as much work done as we had intended, and one of the people in the meeting came in and said, one, you get this done when you get that done, once you get this other thing done, which was not at all the process in which these 00:10:57.670 --> 00:11:00.780 meetings went. Usually these meetings would be about talking about things like start, stop, continue. What went. 00:11:00.780 --> 00:11:04.500 Well, what didn't go? Well, it wouldn't be about. 00:11:04.500 --> 00:11:31.020 Blaine wouldn't be about what this person was doing. 00:11:31.020 --> 00:11:41.820 In the meeting. I had to take him aside, and I asked him to not be in these meetings again until he could change how he was presenting himself in these meetings, and not to be about blame, but to be about finding information and working with everybody. 00:11:41.820 --> 00:11:52.650 And one on ones there are a couple of things that you can do for psychological safety. 00:11:52.650 --> 00:11:58.320 One idea I got from Harvard Business Review is having a 10 scale conversation about how people feel when it comes to. 00:11:58.320 --> 00:12:05.420 The company that they're at, so one would be. 00:12:05.420 --> 00:12:11.370 They don't feel comfortable at all. In fact, they're they're probably leaving like quoting right then in the meeting. 00:12:11.370 --> 00:12:18.270 Whereas a 10 would be that they really like the company, and they hope they can be there until retirement. 00:12:18.270 --> 00:12:41.700 So this question helps you identify. Who has potentially might be a flight risk. 00:12:41.700 --> 00:12:45.330 Who might be thinking about leaving, and then you can think about how to help that person and how to make that person happier at work, and you can continue talking to them and ask them what would a 10 look like now you can't expect somebody to go from a 6 to a 10 or even a 7 to a 10 00:12:45.330 --> 00:12:52.570 it's far easier to do a more incremental approach. 00:12:52.570 --> 00:12:56.620 So say, somebody said that they're at a 6. Ask them, what would it take to get them to a 7? 00:12:56.620 --> 00:13:05.670 What would it take to get to plus one? So just asking, what would it get? 00:13:05.670 --> 00:13:11.020 What would? It take to get you one higher? Now, when I've had these conversations sometimes it's things that are out of my control. 00:13:11.020 --> 00:13:19.320 Sometimes it's it's something about the executive team, and I'm nowhere near the executive team, and I'm nowhere near the executive team. 00:13:19.320 --> 00:13:24.920 Sure maybe I can pass information up, but you know I probably am not gonna have a big impact on the executive team. 00:13:24.920 --> 00:13:41.230 If I'm a frontline manager in a very big company. 00:13:41.230 --> 00:13:45.220 I've also had a time when somebody said, Oh, well, I to get me to a plus one, I want someone so to come back from vacation like well, that person's gonna come vacation. 00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:51.280 So great, but you know sometimes it could be things like, you know. 00:13:51.280 --> 00:13:56.110 I wish we had more fun in our meetings. I wish I was learning more. 00:13:56.110 --> 00:14:09.960 I wanna take on some harder tasks. So those are things that are totally. 00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:18.010 In your wheelhouse to work on with that employee, and to help them be more happy when it comes to the company that they're at. 00:14:18.010 --> 00:14:24.310 I think that it's also critical to have exit interviews with employees. 00:14:24.310 --> 00:14:27.260 Now many of you might work at a company that does exit interviews in Hr. 00:14:27.260 --> 00:14:43.510 I've been in a few companies that Hr. Does exit. 00:14:43.510 --> 00:15:15.280 Interviews, and unfortunately they've never shared that information with me, and because they've never shared that information with me, the information from the exit interview I can't improve. I can't have the team improve based on that information. 00:15:15.280 --> 00:15:19.090 So for exit interviews. One of the reasons that it can be really valuable to get information is because there, already planning to move on you no longer are going to impact their career in terms of giving them promotions, giving them raises and giving them work, assignments, sure maybe you'll give them 00:15:19.090 --> 00:15:25.510 a Linkedin review. Maybe you'll talk to people that they work with in the future. 00:15:25.510 --> 00:15:35.280 But for the most part they're going to feel very psychologically safe in their last one. 00:15:35.280 --> 00:15:41.320 -on-one with you. And so the questions that I think are critical to ask are, first, did you feel like second? 00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:47.930 Did you have the resources you needed to do your job? Third, did you feel included? 00:15:47.930 --> 00:16:05.860 Fourth, what could we have done better? And fifth, what did we do? Well? 00:16:05.860 --> 00:16:14.130 Sometimes when you're trying to get information about how to help somebody right when you're a manager, you're not going to see everything that's happening in a team and. 00:16:14.130 --> 00:16:22.680 You know, people aren't necessarily gonna wanna share like, oh, so and so struggling because they don't wanna get other people in trouble. 00:16:22.680 --> 00:16:27.160 But what they might be willing to do is answer questions like, Hey, how could I better coach Kai versus? 00:16:27.160 -->

00:16:30.320 How is cognitive doing? And you see that difference? 00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:34.860 You know. How can I better coach Kai like? 00:16:34.860 --> 00:16:42.420 First of all, you know, I want Kai to excel. 00:16:42.420 --> 00:16:50.670 High exceling means the team excels, and that's in the best interest of everybody. 00:16:50.670 --> 00:16:52.920 Now, how is Kai doing like that could have more negative connotations? 00:16:52.920 --> 00:16:56.240 So really, it's about, you know. How do I help Kai? 00:16:56.240 --> 00:17:16.060 Because that's one of my responsibilities as manager. 00:17:16.060 --> 00:17:30.800 When your planning on changing careers, when you're planning on changing jobs, when you're interviewing at a company, you might want to think about psychological safety at the company. 00:17:30.800 --> 00:17:53.970 You're going to. I think the best way to figure this out is to ask our employees, do you know any employees that already work there, especially close to the groups that you work in? 00:17:53.970 --> 00:18:01.870 Perhaps you can talk to your peers in interviews if you don't feel like you have up here in an interview to talk to, especially appear that if you're from an underrepresented population, if you haven't in interviews talk to anybody from a similar underrepresented population. 00:18:01.870 --> 00:18:06.270 I would recommend that you ask the person that is running your interview. 00:18:06.270 --> 00:18:16.320 Coordination, say, hey! I'd like to talk to somebody that's so. 00:18:16.320 --> 00:18:17.810 And so that weren't at this company, and you know, try to find somebody that's peer, because they're much more likely to be honest about how it is to work. 00:18:17.810 --> 00:18:36.020 There! 00:18:36.020 --> 00:18:42.010 When I gave this talk at the Lesbian Ctch and Allies Conference, somebody asked, What about people that wanna weaponize psychological safety? 00:18:42.010 --> 00:19:04.070 And yeah, that is definitely something that you need to be careful of. 00:19:04.070 --> 00:19:08.510 And you need to. You think about. And really, before that question was asked, I'm not sure that I had thought about it, but I have definitely heard of Erg's being weaponized where employee resource groups are sometimes created in order to find the dissenters in a company so that when a 00:19:08.510 --> 00:19:13.870 layoff is coming. Those are the first people to go. 00:19:13.870 --> 00:19:23.260 So similarly. 00:19:23.260 --> 00:19:27.080 Psychological safety could be weaponized in order to pick people for layoffs. 00:19:27.080 --> 00:19:36.830 You know, you get somebody feels safe. You get somebody to open up. 00:19:36.830 --> 00:19:47.920 You get somebody to be honest, and then you blame them, and you use that to remove them from the company. 00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:59.130 That's clearly horrible thing to do. But you know it is certainly something possible that you have to be careful about. 00:19:59.130 --> 00:20:11.140 I think another reason that psychological safety could get weaponized is, there's some managers that think more about how they look to the people above them. 00:20:11.140 --> 00:20:25.150 These are the type of managers that tend to take credit for things that they're employees do, and blame employees for any mistakes that happen. 00:20:25.150 --> 00:20:34.680 I think that if you are working for one of those managers, then you can't really trust them when it comes to cyclical safety. 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:38.330 Obviously, I hope that nobody listening here is one of those people I really want people that listen to this podcast. 00:20:38.330 --> 00:20:45.860 To understand how critical it is to. 00:20:45.860 --> 00:20:53.260 Lift up the thoughts and ideas and the work that your employees did help promote them. 00:20:53.260 --> 00:21:05.100 So when you are talking to your management team, it's about the successes of the individuals on your team. 00:21:05.100 --> 00:21:18.420 Those aren't your successes. They're the successes of your your individual contributors, and when it comes to things that were wrong, well, you're the manager. 00:21:18.420 --> 00:21:29.460 So obviously the buck end stops with you, you know it doesn't matter that, you know so and so drop the ball on something like as the manager. 00:21:29.460 --> 00:21:39.730 You're responsible. So you should be calling the the the people in upper management that you know it was your fault. 00:21:39.730 --> 00:21:46.960 In conclusion, group think, and authority bias can reduce valuable input from the team. 00:21:46.960 --> 00:21:48.960 And make people feel excluded performing regular safety checks can give you a pulse on retrospectives. 00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:53.020 And incident reviews. 00:21:53.020 --> 00:22:08.610 Give people a way to reveal. 00:22:08.610 --> 00:22:17.520 I hope this episode helps you to create psychological safety for your team at work. 00:22:17.520 --> 00:22:23.890 Think about how to reduce group, think, and get everyone's ideas included, and reduce the impact of authority bias, implement safety checks. 00:22:23.890 --> 00:23:48.890 Use one on ones to conduct, exit interviews, and ask Tensale questions.