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#86: What Is Psychological Safety?
90 Plays2 years ago
With a need for safer and healthier workplaces at the forefront of everyone's mind, you don't want to miss this conversation about psychological safety and how it's improving work culture across the country.
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Transcript
Introduction to Accidental Safety Pro Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded February 7th, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer, and today my guest is Claire Herring, CEO of Blue Ocean Brain, an HSI company.
00:00:23
Speaker
Claire is a writer and speaker on all things related to leveraging science to elevate people performance. Claire holds degrees in business and cognitive science, and has spent the last 25 years focusing on improving employee performance by creating a continuous learning culture. Claire, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jill. Great to be here and with all of your listeners.
What is Psychological Safety?
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah. So I asked Claire to come here today to talk about
00:00:51
Speaker
psychological safety, something I don't think we've talked about on the show before. However, before we get there, Claire, would you mind sharing with us a bit about your professional journey? And for anyone who's not familiar with cognitive science, can you tell us about that too? Sure. You know, they say the typical adult professional has, you know, three careers and seven jobs.
00:01:18
Speaker
In my professional life, I've taken a couple different turns and really sort of excited to blend all of those here at this point in my life. But right out of college, I went to graduate school and got a master's degree in cognitive science. I've always been fascinated with how the brain works. And those early years, I actually spent inside healthcare institutions, a number of different institutions, subacute centers, hospitals, rehab facilities,
00:01:45
Speaker
And so as we get into the safety conversation later on, I actually can reflect now in a number of lessons learned on the safety side. But at the beginning of it all, really was fascinated with not only how our brain works, but how it is able to repair itself. And so
From Healthcare to Team Dynamics
00:02:05
Speaker
Um, in my space, I did a lot of work with traumatic brain injured adults, um, post stroke patients, and to see the tremendous amount of progress that we can make in a relatively short period of time, I think demonstrates how remarkable the brain was. Well, you know, fast forward, um, several years later, I was interested in really
00:02:24
Speaker
Um, examining how to impact teams, um, and how to enable people to elevate and optimize their performance. So I went back to school again and came out the other side, um, and pursued a career in organizational development. Um, I had the opportunity in big four consulting to work with lots of different
00:02:46
Speaker
organizations and so through that process I learned a whole bunch about what really differentiates an outstanding culture and the performance that follows.
00:02:59
Speaker
and those organizations that struggle with it. And so, you know, Jill, I'm glad that we can talk today. Our backgrounds are quite different and yet, in the short time that we've had together, I'm learning so much about how things are intertwined and talking about psychological safety, I think today will be the bridge to that. Today, in my role, I serve clients around the globe who are unified in their desire
00:03:28
Speaker
to not only retain their people, but to create an environment where they can grow and develop and where best performance outcomes can really flourish. And psychological safety is a big part of that. Well, then let's start right in with that.
00:03:45
Speaker
I think probably a place to start is really defining and doing kind of a level set here on what is psychological safety and how would you define it? Sure. You know, even though it seems like a 2022 buzzword, it's really not a new concept. It was freely described first back in the 1960s, but it gained a lot of attention
00:04:09
Speaker
decades later when Amy Edmondston, who some of you may be familiar with, she's a Harvard Business School professor, she brought this concept to the masses. And if any of you have your favorite TED Talks, Amy has a couple great ones out there. You know, I think her definition serves us well today. The idea that psychological safety is a climate where people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks by speaking up,
00:04:36
Speaker
and sharing concerns, questions, or ideas. So that's sort of one way in a framework I think we could use today. That makes sense. Interpersonal risks. And what was the other part you said? To speak up, to share concerns, to ask challenging questions, or share ideas. And through all of that, the sort of theme behind that is to make oneself vulnerable in order to do all of those things.
00:05:04
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Just hearing you say that makes me think of, well, a number of instances in the world of safety. Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You've got a couple of stories, I think, that you'd like to share in terms of maybe setting the stage here on a case for psychological safety. Would you mind sharing those?
Lessons from the Challenger Disaster
00:05:27
Speaker
Sure.
00:05:30
Speaker
The first story I think is something that is probably familiar to many of us on some level. If you were on the planet back in 1986 and you were old enough to remember, you might recall exactly where you were
00:05:45
Speaker
when the space shuttle Challenger exploded and burned. Do you happen to recall where you were, Jill? Yeah, I was in a chemistry class in high school. OK. And my chemistry professor, my teacher's name was Mr. Moss. And I do remember it. Yeah. And you might even remember the time of day I was in a high school cafeteria myself.
00:06:08
Speaker
Um, during school. So I think it was like midday. And some of you think about, um, what was happening that day. I think we were sending our first teacher up into space. And so they had tuned in televisions around the country, um, into classrooms. Everyone was watching this. There was a tremendous amount of pressure, um, for this to go. Well, what is interesting. And the reason I bring it up today.
00:06:33
Speaker
You know, after the disaster occurred, there was years and years of diligence done after the crash to try and understand why. And in a physical sense, they identified the O rings, these small sort of lightweight rings attached to the shuttle as becoming unsealed due to the very cold temperatures that were occurring at the time. So that was the physical cause. The more important finding
00:07:03
Speaker
from the entire investigation is that there was a perception that the organizational culture and decision-making processes actually greatly contributed to the catastrophe. So a lot has been written about the lack of psychological safety on the ground. Yeah, tell us more about that. This is fascinating.
00:07:27
Speaker
You know, when space shuttles are going to take off, they are always looking at the weather. Weather is extremely important. And finding a good weather window, I think when the winds are low and the temperatures just right, it's really important. Well, they were trying very hard to be able to make this launch inside a weather window. And yet, on the night before, several employees kind of discussed the idea that the low temperatures could potentially
00:07:54
Speaker
cause a problem with these O-rings. And they shared that in a small way with one of their sort of frontline managers. And the response was, my gosh, do you really want me to launch this next April? And otherwise, you're asking me to wait months and months and months if we don't do it tomorrow. Other people have said after the fact,
00:08:18
Speaker
Um, that some folks didn't even raise their hand at all, but shared these concerns and now unfortunately have to live with this sort of lifelong guilt. This is a dramatic example, but it's one I think many of us on the lawn today can relate to when we think about what is a seemingly small choice to not say something in the moment.
00:08:38
Speaker
can or cannot have massive ripple effects and consequences to both people and process. Gosh, isn't that, isn't that true? I mean, even, I mean, I'm thinking about so many little tiny decisions that people make when it feels like unpopular or maybe something won't happen. Oh, maybe they didn't have that much to drink and they're getting in the car. You know, I mean, right. I mean, it's like it's an unpopular thing to speak up about.
00:09:07
Speaker
Different things like put your phone down while you're driving, you know, that's right Yeah, the speaking up is what's kind of what people are reluctant to do and you have to sort of sit and ask yourself You know, why is it human nature at times? To not speak up right? Why do we make that choice? And you know some folks would would would argue that that has a lot to do with what we've learned and
00:09:31
Speaker
Starting with middle school, and I think it still holds true as adults, is the idea of impression management. We spend so much time in the world of work managing what other people think about us and choosing, as you've heard the phrase, choosing your battles, pick your battles, right? Because people feel like they're spending impression capital when they speak up. And if you go back thousands of years ago,
00:09:55
Speaker
You know, early humans on the planet, their number one concern was survival. And in order to do that, survival was often all about mitigating risk. How can I limit things that might put me in danger?
00:10:11
Speaker
And that primitive thinking, unfortunately, as it relates to this topic, is still with us today. And so we are constantly looking to protect ourselves, to be in that sort of cocoon. When you've heard people say, you know, I like to fly under the radar.
00:10:27
Speaker
Well, that usually is not so helpful when you're trying to build a continuous learning culture of safety. That's right. A completely different way of looking at risk. I mean, for safety practitioners, we think of risk in a different way than what you're talking about with impression management. Not interpersonal risk, right? Right. Unfortunately, those interpersonal risks impact, you know, I'm sure a myriad of things that impact physical safety.
00:10:57
Speaker
occupational safety across the workforce. And I can say personally in healthcare, I had one experience early on in my career and you know, I'll make myself vulnerable to say my hindsight here, I should have done more. I was actually working up on the floor.
00:11:12
Speaker
and I was doing a psychological assessment on a patient and our facility had a very strong no falls policy. We were going to have zero falls in our facility for an extended period of time and it was listed on the wall and it was talked about in every meeting. But it was conveyed in such a way that I think people were fearful
00:11:36
Speaker
of what would happen to them if a fall occurred. And I was walking down the hall to go see the patient and I passed a door. There were always lots of, you know, just open doors. I observed a patient and two nurses in a room and the patient was on the floor. Now I did not see the fall occur.
00:11:59
Speaker
but it very clearly looked to me like a fall occurred. And after the fact in the next few days, there were still zero falls reported. So I was left with the idea that this potentially medically frail older individual who maybe did not, you know, break a hip, but could have suffered some type of injury
00:12:21
Speaker
actually did not get the care they needed because the employees were afraid of reporting the fall.
Safety Incentives and OSHA
00:12:27
Speaker
Right. And as we talk more, we have to really think about, you know, it's easy to point the finger at those employees, but what can we do as leaders and what are we asking of our leaders to do to create the kind of climate where those employees feel safe to report that fall in a moment?
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. There are many institutions across the country who, like you said, have their board that they post, have gone so many hours, so many days, so many years without a reportable lost work time injury. And then some employers have gone to the extent of saying, if we hit these particular milestones,
00:13:08
Speaker
we will reward the employees with, you know, something monetarily or, you know, we're going to have a special lunch or people are going to get, you know, a piece of logoed clothing, things like that. That's very common. However,
00:13:24
Speaker
It's not a very healthy practice. Even OSHA has come out and said, we don't support those kind of things because we feel it will lend to a culture of under-reporting for the very reasons that you just talked about. Interesting. And do you find that when you have to advise on that, that it's difficult for people to sort of change their ways or they just so heavily focused on the
00:13:50
Speaker
extrinsic uh need for reward and recognition for their people how effectively can we start to make that change right and so think about framing it in a different way and maybe taking i mean if you want to record those days hours whatever fine but don't link it to
00:14:08
Speaker
a reward or find a different way to measure something else. So for example, it's rewarding employees for bringing forward things that can make their jobs more efficient, safer, or finding a certain number of hazards or better ways to do things and using that as the reward system and making that the
00:14:31
Speaker
If you're going to have a competition, if you will, or something like that, that you are asking people to make their work environment better and they're rewarded when they do. I see. Rather than the other way around. When it comes to your brain's chemistry, we all need those dopamine hits, those endorphin rushes. All of that stuff feels good.
00:14:57
Speaker
We would be well served to think a lot more about consequences and unintended consequences of setting up programs like that. And what are other things that we can do. So you made a good point, you know, having leaders who are prepared to reward and recognize people.
00:15:14
Speaker
for bringing up the safety concerns, to give specific feedback. In other sessions, you know, we talk about, it's one thing to tell people, great job. It means so much more when you can specifically describe what that individual did that was so amazing. And that's one of the ways, frankly, I think you can motivate without a t-shirt or without a lunch. That's right.
00:15:36
Speaker
That's right. Awesome. You had another story, I think. Yes. Yeah. And this is my favorite one. It's about the company Google. I think we all have heard of Google. And now this is about six years old. But back in 2015, Google did a very interesting experiment. They were curious to learn what characteristics or attributes generated
00:16:04
Speaker
or created the highest performing teams. So Google has a reputation for studying just about anything you can imagine. And for someone like me who loves organizational design, they have tons of fun things we could talk about. I'll just tell you one. All stereotypes aside, if you imagine a culture at Google where you have lots of engineers who are doing heads down thinking, Google wanted to create a more collaborative environment. So one of the things that they did
00:16:32
Speaker
is that they timed the length of the line in the cafeteria. I think you might remember Google actually used to have like a free food program. I don't know if they do anymore. I remember hearing that. Yes. And they also pushed the cafeteria tables. This is pre-pandemic much closer together than they needed to be. The idea was they wanted people to stand in line for about two minutes and they wanted people to physically bump into each other practically as they went to sit down because they imagined and determined
00:17:02
Speaker
that that would actually create more sort of spontaneous interactions and networking, et cetera, et cetera. I'm so curious to hear how this ended up. OK. Yes.
Google's Study on High-Performing Teams
00:17:14
Speaker
But the story that relates to today is Google's Project Aristotle. They are excited to learn which teams perform best, why, and can they replicate it.
00:17:24
Speaker
And this study went over almost two years. I think it took a lot longer because the data rolling in initially did not reach any conclusion. They were studying variables like tenure of team members, IQ in some cases,
00:17:41
Speaker
Um, performance levels as they were measured, um, on an individual basis across Google, and they could not find any one particular variable or even an interaction of a couple that demonstrated high performing teams. And so they went back and they looked at everything again. Ultimately, what they were surprised to learn that top level teams, those driving profitability, driving innovation, um, those teams held a high degree of psychological safety.
00:18:13
Speaker
And when you think about, well, so really, what does that mean? What does it mean when you have psychological safety? How do you know you have it here? How does it show up? Yeah. Yeah. Because it's, you know, again, with any buzzword, it's great to hear it and know what it means. But practical examples, I think, are critical here.
00:18:30
Speaker
So I'd like everyone to sort of think about teams that they've been on personally, professionally, or maybe sort of how you would describe your current work culture. So, you know, you have psychological safety when people see mistakes and describe them as opportunities to learn. For example, imagine a project that does not go well at work and a leader chooses to have a post project
00:19:02
Speaker
And they set that session up to allow brainstorming, candid discussion and collaboration about all of the things that they would do differently next time. Some people use the stop, start, continue. It's sort of the stoplight, red, yellow, green, to utilize that. The modeling there is, look, we absolutely made mistakes. We're going to own them. We're going to talk about them. But more importantly, we're going to enable a growth mindset to say, how do we learn from those mistakes? So that's one way you know that you have it.
00:19:24
Speaker
post-mortem discussion.
00:19:32
Speaker
Um, speaking your mind up in meetings. Now, when we are in meetings, some days I would venture to guess, um, all of us have been a leader on a team at some point, but in a given week, I don't know about you Jill, but I can be a leader in one meeting, a key influencer in another, and then maybe just sort of a.
00:19:50
Speaker
Peripheral participant in a third yep every day and part of that is just sort of the recognition of where you are but if you are a leader or a key influencer creating a meeting culture where everyone is expected to participate it's not a spectator sport and you are creating conditions that sort of pull people in
00:20:13
Speaker
So imagine we're in a meeting and there's 10 or 12 individuals in a meeting. Um, and I'm being, you know, very quiet and withdrawn, whether I'm in zoom or even in person, Jill may not be running that meeting, but she may be a regular participant in that meeting. And she might turn to me and say, Hey, Claire, I would really love to give your thoughts on this, or I noticed in your email last week, you know, you shared this concern. I think we should take a minute here. What Claire has to say.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that playing out in something that our audience, health and safety professionals, could do in practice. Obviously, with the people with whom we interact, but if you're trying to make change, this is a tip that Claire's talking about, that you could teach your supervisory staff.
00:20:59
Speaker
So if they're doing a morning stand-up on safety, maybe a toolbox talk or something, you could teach your supervisors that skill to really engage with their workers instead of saying, hey, I've got to read this statement about the right way to climb a ladder today.
00:21:18
Speaker
and engage on a whole different level. Let's hear about the ladders you all use. Could you, so and so, tell me about, are you gonna be using a ladder today? Or how many do you have access to? And just tell me a story about ladders or whatever it is.
00:21:36
Speaker
You're raising a really good point, and that's great leaders at every level learn that asking good questions is a very effective way to run a meeting. When people first become leaders, all well-intended, they feel like they've got to know everything and they've got to do everything. And the unintended consequence often is that you have people take a step back as you progress in your career.
00:22:04
Speaker
Um, how we ask questions closed ended versus open leading questions. For example, if I were to say to Jill, Hey, Jill, uh, any safety concerns on your floor today? I don't think so. I mean, that does not position Jill to go, actually, I hate to burst your bubble, but there are four things we need to talk about. Right.
00:22:25
Speaker
Right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I was a couple of jobs ago. I was part of a management team that had all of their supervisory staff that would get together once a week from all these different locations. And the leader of that particular group started out all of his meetings the same way. And this had nothing to do with me. I was the sort of the bystander in the room, if you will, who would
00:22:52
Speaker
contribute if needed on a safety thing, but he would always ask the same question. Go around the room and tell a story about something you did for safety this week.
00:23:04
Speaker
And so it wasn't like, do you have any safety concerns? People would start telling like, well, we did this. We had to make this change. We identified this. And sometimes it was, hey, we've got this going on this week. And I don't actually know what to do. And he basically didn't ask. He basically sort of assigned everyone to share something. And people need that extra nudge because they don't think you really want to know.
00:23:30
Speaker
And so how he phrased that is brilliant. And the fact that he did it every week also signaled, we often hear it at companies, you know, oh, it's the flavor of the month, or we're not going to be talking about it again next week. It's one and done. We have to prove otherwise, for sure. Yeah. And it put everyone on, you know, they came knowing what the expectation was, so people were prepared. Yeah.
00:23:54
Speaker
Hmm. Hmm. So yeah, those are really great examples, Claire, of what psychological safety looks like and how it shows up at work. Do you want to talk about its impacts? What that can do over time? Sure. Let's definitely do that.
Unconscious Bias in Workplace Safety
00:24:11
Speaker
As we think about impacts over time, I'd also like us to take a moment to consider the whole concept of unconscious bias. That's another buzzword we're hearing a lot about. And that has played out in many ways in terms of shaping workplace culture. But one of the things we have to recognize is as humans, we are all biased. It's part of the nature
00:24:37
Speaker
of who we are. And when I say that, what I mean is that our brain is constantly taking shortcuts in order to conserve information or conserve energy rather. So the typical working professional makes 200 plus work related decisions every single day. And you do not have an infinite amount of energy and an infinite amount of resilience. We also talk a lot about the need to recharge and replenish is one of the ways to build that.
00:25:08
Speaker
But long story short, when you are under stress, when you are extremely busy or feel pressure, we are much more prone to making biased decisions. And one of the biggest biased decisions is known as the status quo bias. And I'd like you to think about when your whole world is turned upside down, you have a natural tendency to want to keep some things in a steady state.
00:25:34
Speaker
Your brain likes it that way. It's less energy, it's less time, it's less focus. And so often problems tend to break us out of whatever status quo moment that we are having. And so as we think about the impacts to people, to places, and to processes, it's always important to go back to the root cause. And if you leave with nothing else today, just recognizing that
00:26:03
Speaker
We all have bias and it's not something to feel guilty about. It's something to be acutely aware of, can help us with those impacts. I know some organizations will actually take a moment at the top of meetings to call out one or two biases in a preventative way. In other words, if you're going to review people and performance related matters, someone will say, well, let's take a minute and talk about the affinity bias or the just like me bias, the natural tendency for us to assume
00:26:32
Speaker
that people that look like us, speak like us, or work close to us, are more likable, more capable. Some of you know that as like the halo effect. Somebody does one thing well, we assume they do everything well. Tell me if this means the same thing. I'm thinking about the number of times, and our audience will relate to this,
00:27:01
Speaker
when something happens and the immediate response is, but we've been doing it that way for 30 years and nothing has ever happened before, or something goes sideways and the immediate first response is about, well, that's just common sense. How could that person have done that? Is that pieces of what you're talking about with unconscious bias?
00:27:31
Speaker
I think absolutely. First, it sounds to me like those individuals you're describing who are sort of second party to the incident perhaps, maybe or maybe not, a threat response has been elicited in them in some way, shape or form because maybe they're either tangentially related to what happened, maybe it's the supervisor of someone that had an area of concern.
00:27:54
Speaker
Um, the second we get a threat response, we are much more prone to bias thinking and we fall immediately into a self protection mode. I just like you to imagine me thousands of years ago, right? You're wandering off in some, you know, prairie or village and, um, you are constantly scanning the environment for threats. So when we lock in.
00:28:17
Speaker
on things that we perceive we could have directed at us, it eliminates our ability to have objective sort of unbiased thinking. That makes so much sense. Our audience, if they've been listening to the podcast for a really long time, may recall that in my time with OSHA, I've investigated, unfortunately, many, many workplace deaths and serious injuries.
00:28:46
Speaker
And the response that I would get from leadership always fell into two camps. Now, this is for me personally in my personal experience with this and it's not a study. But the response I would get immediately was either one of what I just talked about, more of a blame thing.
Leadership Reactions to Incidents
00:29:07
Speaker
Well, this is the way we've always done it. It's always been done this way. Nothing's happened before.
00:29:12
Speaker
Or, you know, that was just common sense. Why would have they ever done that in terms of blaming the victim? Or it would be, oh my gosh, let's deconstruct this to make sure same or similar never happens on my watch again.
00:29:27
Speaker
And people would just gravitate to two camps. And I could tell immediately which direction I was headed and what the work was going to be like for me as the person coming in on the other side to observe and collect information just based on a few interactions right at the beginning. Because people would just fall into one of those two camps right away. I'm curious, the first camp, which sounds like the camp we don't want to be in, the camp of self-protection,
00:29:57
Speaker
either before or after you'd sort of discovered this was the camp everyone was in, were there any other signs or symptoms that you noticed? And my second part of that question is typically was that sort of lack of psychological safety being driven from just the top front level manager, like the next person involved, or was it often like an organizational culture thing?
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean the clues that I would have to that would come out in the employee interviews that I would do and how willing employees were to be open with me and how much I might have to
00:30:35
Speaker
Really connect with them on particular levels for them to share with me the truth of a situation And so sometimes that would mean speaking with them Not at work or them contacting me later or people asking a lot of questions about their own job safety if I tell you this if I say that and
00:30:57
Speaker
I've had an extreme case where I was investigating, unfortunately, an amputation of a young boy's arm. When I say young boy, I mean he was underage and shouldn't have been working where he was. And this particular employer hired teenagers to work in a high hazard industry, and that was against labor laws.
00:31:20
Speaker
And the owner would just leave and let kids kind of run all of these saws and things. And something went very badly wrong one day. And I came in to do the investigation. And the kids, and I say kids because they were 14, 15, 16 years old, I got them all together. A mother collected all the employees and brought them to her home because I needed to do an interview and they were not wanting to talk with me.
00:31:45
Speaker
And one of the boys was saying, don't tell her anything. Don't tell her anything. We're going to get the boss in trouble. You know, it was this really interesting dynamic, though their friend had lost a limb. Yes. Wow. And that does show you just how sort of rational and strong sort of our threat response and our need for self-protection is. I think, you know, I'm curious to know this, Jill.
00:32:12
Speaker
we're always in my, in my line of work, when we're thinking about creating psychological safety, we're wanting to give leaders the tools and the talking points to signal the very things we're talking about, to make it over into camp to, to let people know it's okay to make, um, a mistake, not that we want mistakes, but that it's okay to talk about it and that I too, as a leader and, um, you know, fallible that I too am imperfect.
00:32:42
Speaker
In your world, do you see leaders receiving that kind of coaching and training, or is it more specific to sort of the physical aspects of safety? I think it really depends on where you work and the company culture itself and its value. What are its values? What are the values? Are the values on productivity? I mean, obviously, everyone has that value.
00:33:08
Speaker
but what outpaces one or the other you know or what sort of coaching has a leader had in well I mean you used this word before vulnerability right or just seeing people as human beings and having having those conversations
00:33:26
Speaker
and safety and health professionals most of us are wired to care deeply about human beings so many of us are going to you know try to connect with people because we're trying to influence people to to perform the way we want them to perform to be able to stay safe so we might come at that a different way maybe we're not being coached like that and maybe that's not the belief system of where we work or
00:33:50
Speaker
maybe it is. I often would meet with employees and instead of observing their work, they'd get nervous like, oh my gosh, here comes that safety lady. She's going to watch to see if I'm doing things okay. Before I even was just quiet and observing them, I'd introduce myself
00:34:13
Speaker
and say, tell me about your job. How does this thing work that you're doing? What is this all about? If they're working on a particular machine or something, tell me what this does. How long have you done it? What's the output on the end look like? Tell me what this is like for you. And get them excited to tell me about their work and how they do it, rather than them thinking, oh, here's somebody with a binoculars who's really going to try to find all of my faults.
00:34:43
Speaker
And what you just did there, I mean, it's so disarming when you want to talk about like the speed of trust. You connected with them human to human. You had a genuine curiosity for what they were doing.
00:34:54
Speaker
I think leaders need our support right now. They also need continuous learning opportunities to do what we're talking about. Leaders have a lot on their plate, and many of you out there, that's what you are. So you have all of the sort of functional logistical execution kind of work, and then you also have to garner a following of really committed, engaged people.
00:35:17
Speaker
I would say that while we want people to raise their hand about safety concerns and say that is one of their core elements of their job, for a lot of folks, it takes a little bit of extra energy to do that. And so we talk a lot now about a knowledge economy. So yes, we have many, many frontline workers who are engaged in physical tasks. But we also have thousands and thousands of people whose job it is to make
00:35:46
Speaker
decisions every single day and creating the conditions to enable those people to become better decision-making, better decision-makers, extremely powerful. And unfortunately, we don't take them out of the job and sit them for days and days in training often. We're having to learn how to do that in short bursts and moments. And I've learned from you and from some of my clients
00:36:14
Speaker
the importance for the stand up safety moment. We've also talked about how to bake into that a moment of inclusion or a moment of trust where we actually talk briefly with associates about what we are intending and what we value in order to make that connection.
00:36:35
Speaker
Right. You use the word trust a couple of times now and it's different than psychological safety. Yeah. Can you talk about that? Sure. So think of trust typically is more of an interpersonal action or trait that you develop. So I could trust Jill and Jill could trust me. And there are a lot of things that we could do over time to really build that trust. Psychological safety
00:37:04
Speaker
is a close cousin to trust, but it also means that the group norms support a level of trust. So psychological safety says, would it be normal to raise my hand in a meeting with that particular leader and let people know something that's not such great news?
00:37:25
Speaker
would it be normal for me to speak up and say something when I don't think something looks just right? And maybe most of all, if I make a mistake, if I do something wrong, would it be pretty normal for somebody to actually own their own mistakes?
00:37:40
Speaker
Psychological safety, I think, is extremely contagious, just like other emotions. You know, when we think about emotional intelligence or stress, we talk about toxic work cultures. Negativity breeds negativity, and I think creating these psychologically safe environments can perpetuate themselves once they're firmly rooted and starting to sprout. And drives human behavior then. Absolutely, absolutely.
00:38:08
Speaker
You know, you shared, I had the opportunity to be with Jill last week and just Jill shared a number of things that are in her head when she rocks around on the planet. And when you talked about it, you just, you talked about all of these different sort of safety concerns that you have and the lens that you look through things with. One of the things that you hear a lot today and maybe some of you are involved in are
00:38:33
Speaker
or efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion at your organization. And there are many reasons that diversity, equity, and inclusion is something we should be talking about more. But one thing we have to recognize is that diverse lived experiences actually help us achieve better outcomes. We're less prone to groupthink. We don't see things through the same lens. And so Jill, while we are too white,
00:39:02
Speaker
females of similar age, professionally, your lived experience is so different than mine. I can only imagine if we spent time together, our problem solving aggregate ability would be much greater. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, that's the joy of working in high functioning teams where you have that psychological safety and trust where you know that
00:39:29
Speaker
I can bring this piece to this project, this team, this problem, and know that my fellow teammates excel in these other areas that I don't even have to think about because they know they're gonna bring it. Those are really fun teams to work on.
00:39:48
Speaker
And would you agree, it doesn't mean that those teams are necessarily your besties and your chummy with on every level. That's right. When people say dynamic teams, I think having different points of view can create candid debate. And unfortunately, some well-intended organizations have created these
00:40:09
Speaker
cultures of nice to the degree that Jill might not speak up if I did something that was unsafe because she wouldn't want to hurt my feelings or get me into trouble and that's not at all what we're talking about when we think about this safety. That's right. I had a team that I worked with a few years ago where one of the people always designated himself though he didn't necessarily like the designation as I think he called it the conscientious objector or there was a term
00:40:38
Speaker
there was a term for it and so you know we'd all be rocking with what we thought was a really great idea and then he'd be like all right now here are the things that I see that could go wrong with this or sideways with this and really challenged everyone's thinking but but said up front like this is my role in this particular group yes and if you're a leader you can actually ask someone to play the role of conscientious
00:41:05
Speaker
You know, some leaders, they go into a meeting, they mean well, they absolutely do. They let everyone know what they think in sort of a persuasive way, and then pretty soon everyone on the other side of the table or a Zoom call is nodding up and down, and the session is over. And so you remind me of a good story. So Warren Buffett, right, who some would consider one of the most brilliant investors of all time, has been known when he goes to make an investment change in his portfolio,
00:41:35
Speaker
He actually assigns the team around him to come in and try and talk him out of the decision that he's about to make. He wants 10 conscientious objectors to fully vet the decision. And I think sometimes it seems odd to have a meeting about the meeting. But if you think about it, if you're in a weekly meeting, you're meeting every five business days for a whole year. That is a lot of time. And if we don't take the time to redesign those dynamics and those discussions,
00:42:03
Speaker
I think it's a huge missed opportunity. Interesting. Great conversation. In terms of psychological safety's role in enabling safety culture, a safety climate, Claire, where do you see people can make some
00:42:25
Speaker
incremental changes or inroads.
Integrating Psychological Safety into Culture
00:42:28
Speaker
Sure. And this is the sort of call to action part. This is the payoff of spending time with us today. You know, first and foremost, you know, consider your role in the organization and how you think you can help best. We always think about sort of what is the highest and best use of my time. One of those first steps, I think, is to observe and baseline
00:42:54
Speaker
And even if it's just a qualitative assessment on your part, look at where you feel people are. And the organization is on a safety culture journey. We talk a lot about journeys these days because you just can't flip the switch. So I would encourage you to sort of baseline within your sphere of control. And then the next part would be to begin to have some conversations
00:43:21
Speaker
with key individuals about the concept to build awareness, starting with a few key leaders. Some people are already familiar. They know Amy Edmondson. They love the concept of psychological safety. They're ready to talk and move on it. Others may not. And I think, Jill, you've alluded, not everyone really talks about this. Once you've built awareness and you're almost having to do some internal marketing here, you're ready to take some phased action steps.
00:43:51
Speaker
And part of that is embedding a continuous culture of learning around these as well as maybe other safety related topics. Typical adult professional only has about 15 minutes a week to focus on learning that's not mandatory. And while we could certainly send people to mandatory psychological safety training, we've got to find ways to inject these moments into the flow of work.
00:44:21
Speaker
And I imagine Jill, some of the biggest challenges are, you know, how to, how to frontline managers reach a frontline workforce that's on the go all the time. That's right. Um, in fact, I'll ask you, I think you shared a story last week. We were talking about maybe a meat packing plant, um, and imagining, you know, that meat packers may have a daily standup with their supervisor. Um, how do you sort of affect or coach that leader?
00:44:51
Speaker
so that they are more in tune with their people and create a higher degree of psychological safety. Yeah, and I hope my answer isn't co-mingling the word trust and psychological safety here. But you know, I think about managers who have coached me
00:45:14
Speaker
Front-lane managers who have coached me particularly in diverse workforces In in which the meatpacking industry is is certainly a diverse workforce, but I've had front-lane managers say hey Jill if you If you want to get to know these people
00:45:32
Speaker
There were several suggestions that people would make. I remember one manager who said, in this particular area where we work, we have people who are new generation, first generation, refugees from this country, this country, this country, and this country. And he said, in terms of pride, if we could just have their flags hanging in this area,
00:46:02
Speaker
That would really help us connect one another. That was a suggestion. I had another frontline manager who I was doing a post-mortem like you were talking about with some training once, and I'm like, that just fell so flat. What did I do differently? I had just done this same sort of
00:46:26
Speaker
training with a group of people in one state, traveled to another state, did the same thing. It worked great in the first state. Second state fell flat. And the manager said, yeah, you didn't, they don't know you.
00:46:43
Speaker
like you didn't you didn't do anything like you come here and you represent the big company and i'm like i do i thought i was just like safety lady like i am everywhere and she's like nope you represent the big company and she said in this state and this was in missouri um she said this is different
00:47:02
Speaker
if you're going to work with people they need to know you like you have to tell a story about who you are where you grew up where you came from you need to spend a lot of time explaining that and then getting to know them on the same way before they're ever going to absorb anything you have to share so i took that to heart
00:47:24
Speaker
And I started taking notes. I would meet these teams of people. I would write their names down. I write down facts about their families, things that they told me about kind of where they were in their life's journey. And then I'd save those notes. Next time I come back, I could ask them questions about themselves. And pretty soon we were knowing each other.
00:47:46
Speaker
as human beings and then we were able to move toward what we needed to for safe safety initiatives. We were trying to take questions that I needed answers to bringing in new ideas but it was completely different than how I did it in another state.
00:48:04
Speaker
And what you're describing here, when we think about emotional intelligence at the highest level, you are giving of yourself and you are walking into the next meeting and the next state and wherever you're headed next with a genuine curiosity about how can this go best. And oftentimes we don't learn that until it doesn't go well or we need to adjust a couple of times. I have to circle back on the flag comment.
Cultural Influences on Safety and Inclusion
00:48:32
Speaker
The fact that in a very small, quiet way, people had a chance to feel honored as individuals, I think we forget sometimes just some of those moments.
00:48:45
Speaker
can make a world of difference. And that does bring up the whole idea of what may make you feel safe could be very different than what makes someone else feel safe. And I was born and raised in America. I'm from North Carolina. I felt a strong sense of belonging my whole life. I'm not a huge extrovert, but I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I'm an ambivert.
00:49:07
Speaker
So, I assume that the conditions that make me feel really safe are the same conditions sometimes that would make everyone else feel good. Just using introversion and extroversion, let's imagine you have a team and you have a few folks that seem really engaged. Their voices are loud on the team, maybe mostly positive, and then you have others that really never communicate or participate.
00:49:29
Speaker
as a leader, it's kind of on us, I think, to step back and think about what is the best way to bring out the natural skills, talents, and the communication that we need from that person. That's right. That's right. That team in Missouri, we ended up building our own sort of cadence and rapport. And so every time I would show up, they would wait for me. It was like a quiz. They wanted me to say all of their names from memory.
00:49:57
Speaker
So I would stand in this room and before we said anything they knew like okay here she goes let's see do you remember me you know one of them would start with do you remember me and then I'd say yes you know whatever their name was and then I would go around the room and name each person it was like this high stakes quiz every time I would go in there. That is just
00:50:18
Speaker
Fun, impressive, amazing. And don't try this at home, right? Or come up with your own secret cheat sheet. We could talk about bringing games to help memorize because names and faces are hard. That's really cool. It was really hard. It was cool, but yes, it was high stakes and a little bit tricky. Oh, man. Anyway.
00:50:42
Speaker
Claire, I know that we're running a little bit short on time, but any other things, you were talking about things that people can take away today. You mentioned a number of them with observing and conversations about the concept and then embedding a culture of learning. Are there more things to add to that?
00:51:05
Speaker
I would just say, number one, you are not alone. And I know sometimes as safety experts and safety professionals, you may feel that there is not a circle around you that is considering these things that we've talked about today. There are parts of organizations, whether it's in the learning side of the house or even in HR, that can help with this. Identifying psychological safety is something you think needs some work,
00:51:33
Speaker
in order to optimize safety outcomes. Find out what tools and resources are available across your learning ecosystem and be sure to ask about opportunities for continuous learning moments. And then finally, I would just say, you know, oftentimes our HR professionals and learning professionals
00:51:55
Speaker
only feel like they can reach those tethered to technology every day. Ask questions about how to make these connections and these learning moments available to people that never touch a computer during their particular shift and then be willing to be part of that, to go first. There's a ton of great information
00:52:17
Speaker
out there in psychological safety. That's something for me at Blue Ocean Brain that we do. What we do is we provide these micro learning moments of psychological safety and some of our frontline leaders will just grab them and then use them for that like 60 second stand up. But there are other tools out there. I just encourage you
00:52:34
Speaker
to make sure you're injecting this conversation into the daily flow of work. Thank you, Claire. Thank you so much. This has been such a fun and enlightening conversation. Really appreciate you sharing your gifts. Likewise. Enjoy what you do. And to all of your listeners, really.
00:52:53
Speaker
thankful and appreciate the protection that you're affording all of us in the world of work. So thank you for having me. You're welcome. You're welcome. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app,
00:53:19
Speaker
or any other podcast player that you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals. Special thanks to Naeem Dreyse, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.