Transcript
dr: podcast episode seven. Today we're going to talk about psychological safety in practice. The past is present in every conversation. You might have been listening to our podcasts on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or on LinkedIn.
dr: We've talked about psychological safety in practice about silence is not agreement. We've talked about communication 101. the sender, the receiver. We've talked about power, trust, safety, and shared responsibility.
dr: You might have jumped on to reframingconversations.com and done some of the e-learning, or you might have even done the psychological safety tool that we talked about last time. So today we're really excited to talk about the past is present in every conversation.
dr: So I guess I think to myself, have you ever hesitated to speak up because of how a similar conversation went last time? Most of us actually assume conversations happen in the present moment, but they don't.
dr: Every conversation is influenced by what has happened before. It's influenced by our previous interactions. It's influenced by existing relationships.
dr: It's also influenced by our organizational culture, our team culture, psychological safety, even experiences of being listened to or ignored in current workplaces or previous workplaces.
dr: The successes and failures when speaking up really does influence all of our conversations. So the past is present in every conversation. People don't enter conversations with a blank state.
dr: It's like they bring memories, they bring emotions, they bring assumptions. We all bring expectations and our experiences that really shape and interpret what's happening.
dr: What we know to be true here is that there is an influence of socio-historical context. So Dr. Mel, can you take us through a little bit about what is socio-historical context when we're thinking about communication?
Melanie Barlow: Thanks Dr H. So socio-historical context is really comes from cook communication theory and one I use extensively is communication accommodation theory.
Melanie Barlow: And this is around the the social and historical aspects of communication that are influencing our current conversation.
Melanie Barlow: So it refers to the experiences, interactions, conversations and systems that have shaped a person's understanding of communication over time. This includes past workplace experiences, team culture, professional norms, organizational history, experiences with hierarchy and authority, previous successes and failures when raising concerns,
Melanie Barlow: Previous interactions with an individual or someone from a particular group or profession. So this is where things, you know, where we can make errors of attribution, where we've had bad experiences with one particular discipline, let's say, someone from that discipline, and then we attribute it to the whole group. So, for example, nurses, nurses,
Melanie Barlow: a nurse might have struggled to speak up to a doctor and then they attribute that to the whole group so it's difficult to speak up to all doctors because of potentially an experience.
Melanie Barlow: So we know this to be true whether the experience was good and bad. If you had a great experience, you're more likely to speak up again. If you had a bad experience, you're more likely to stay silent. so the current interaction is so important because it's going to influence future interactions.
Melanie Barlow: And we know from previous conversations on the podcast around social identity, people can enter and engage in the same conversation and experience it completely differently. So I might go to you, Dr. H. I'd like your feedback.
Melanie Barlow: And you may feel that that's a genuine invitation. But if I've asked you that in the past and you gave me feedback and I did nothing with it, you're like, I've heard that before.
Melanie Barlow: Like nothing's going to change with this feedback. Or yeah, it could trigger skepticism or hesitation. You know, maybe you don't feel comfortable giving me feedback for whatever reason. So these things definitively play in. So the past is present in every conversation. So the communication is never about, as we've discussed in the past, what is being said.
Melanie Barlow: It's also about what has been said before, what hasn't been said before, what happens after this conversation, and what people expect will happen this time versus the last few times we may have interacted.
Melanie Barlow: So trust is built through history, really, not just intentions. Dr. has can you can you help explain that?
dr: Absolutely. So I really like your point about triggering skepticism or hesitation, you know, the the mental pathways of escalation. So building this through history and through not necessarily intention is a really key point for us to think about going forward.
dr: Because communication is never just about what is being said. It's really about... making sure that our trust is built through repeated experiences.
dr: People believe trust is just established through good intentions. So I'd like the listeners to think a little bit about things that might have happened in previous workplaces or their current workplaces and ask yourself, was I listened to previously?
dr: Was I treated respectfully? What concerns were acted upon or not acted acted upon? And also, did I speak up?
dr: Did that lead to learning or did that lead to negative consequences? So I've got a workplace example here where we have a manager who really genuinely wants open communication in their team.
dr: So we've got team members that do remain cautious because previous concerns were dismissed. The team members are cautious because they their concerns were defended against, their concerns were ignored, or they were never followed up.
dr: So the key message that the team members see there is that trust isn't created by saying, my door is always open. Because your door is not always open.
dr: Trust is created when those past experiences suggest that speaking up is worthwhile. So take me through a little bit around fertility, because I think that that's a key concept that we can link here to building that trust
Melanie Barlow: Thank you. Yes. What is futility? Well, futility occurs when people believe speaking up in that kind in the speaking up context won't make a difference.
Melanie Barlow: And when you review the literature, this is a really common barrier for people speaking up. I've spoken up in the past and nothing happened. And so futility isn't that people don't care and they don't speak up because they don't care. It's really because experience, past interactions, past conversations, past experiences has taught them that when you do speak up or give feedback, nothing changes.
Melanie Barlow: Concerns go nowhere, feedback is unwelcome, and raising issues creates personal risk. And going back to something we explored previously around Being congruent, you can't just say like you just said, my door is always open.
Melanie Barlow: And then berate people when they come in and want to take up time speaking up. So behaviours must be congruent with what you espouse. And so there's some insights from research I did within the speaking up context. And we really explored with clinicians barriers and enablers to receiving speaking up messages.
Melanie Barlow: And those studies identified that receiver responses play a critical role in determining whether people are likely to speak up again in the future. And I think anyone who has spoken up and felt their message dismissed understands exactly what this is. So when individuals experience being dismissed or their response being really defensive or ignored, future voice is reduced.
Melanie Barlow: Conversely, constructive responses, curious responses, respectful responses encourage and engage future speaking up behaviour. So a reframe I want people to think about is silence is not always a confidence issue, right? Someone is not speaking up because they don't have the confidence to. Sometimes silence is a logical response to negative previous experiences.
Melanie Barlow: And so a question I want listeners to ask themselves is if someone isn't speaking up, what experiences might have taught them that remaining silent is safer and more effective?
Melanie Barlow: Because if we start thinking about that, we know as leaders, as team members, as peers, how to help people to find their voice. So receiver really has an influence on psychological safety.
Melanie Barlow: What are your thoughts, Dr. H?
dr: Well, I really like how you're talking about that silence is not always a confidence issue, because you're absolutely right. Silence silence is a logical response to previous experiences.
dr: You know, we have a real traditional view of focusing on the courage of the person speaking up. So I'd like us to think about it from a different perspective. I'd like us to think about some of the the research that you've talked about and that you've done, and we'll put the the links to your research in the put the comments.
dr: We've got, you know research from the receiver's perspective. This highlights that what happens after someone speaks up is actually going to be more important than the act of speaking up itself.
dr: So receivers influence whether people feel respected. When I speak up, am I feeling respected? When I speak up, am I feeling heard?
dr: When I speak up, am I feeling valued? And really, is it going to be safe for me to contribute again? So the learning culture connection here really is around having a transformational organization, so a workplace learning culture. So this learning culture is around that we can raise concerns, that feedback is welcomed,
dr: Questions are encouraged and that the different perspectives are really explored rather than dismissed. So we don't have silence so that we can have a conversation, reframing conversation.
dr: The quality of our receivers' responses really does help determine whether future conversations are going to occur. So I've got some practical questions here for receivers.
dr: for our listeners. So next time you are being challenged, I'd like you to think a little bit about how do you respond when you're being challenged?
dr: Do you become defensive? Do you demonstrate curiosity? Are people leaving your conversations feeling heard? Take some time to to have a bit of a reflection there. I've got some e-learning on reframing conversations.com that talks a lot about some of this stuff as well.
dr: the key message in today's podcast really is I want us for to think about how others respond when they take interpersonal risks and that the history travels with you into future conversations.
dr: Dr. Mel, can you take us a little bit through communication accommodation? How how are these responses going to shape our future communication?
Melanie Barlow: Yeah, thank you. And I guess just to highlight, when you look at professional development, traditional professional development programs, we have programs out there on how to give feedback, how to speak up or greater assertiveness.
Melanie Barlow: Very few, if any, teach receivers on how to receive feedback, how to receive speaking up messages, which is what led me to do the research.
Melanie Barlow: And so, yeah, one of the theories I used was communication accommodation theory. And so this theory is out of social psychology. It's a highly validated theory that's gone across multiple different disciplines.
Melanie Barlow: And it suggests that people adapt their communication based on the previous interactions and the responses they received, which is exactly what we've been talking about. So when receivers show respect, when they listen actively, so listen to understand rather than respond, acknowledge those concerns, say thank you for speaking up and demonstrate openness, so humility, people are more likely to engage, contribute and speak up again.
Melanie Barlow: When receivers dismiss concerns, interrupt, maybe belittle contributions and respond deen defensively. People reduce future participation.
Melanie Barlow: And so I also want to highlight here that also in my study of what showed up is often receivers weren't intentionally dismissing the person speaking up.
Melanie Barlow: Often, and it goes back to a previous episode we did, it was around There was a misalignment in the communication goal. So the receiver didn't understand that the person was trying to speak up.
Melanie Barlow: Their message wasn't clear and clearly understood by the receiver. So the speaker interpreted it as they were being dismissed, but in actual fact, that was not the receiver's intentions.
Melanie Barlow: They wanted to be helpful. They just didn't understand that was a communication goal. And so I want people to also reflect that often when we feel dismissed, also think about was my communication clear?
Melanie Barlow: How was that message received? Can I deliver it in a different way to get it to be received better? So...
Melanie Barlow: A practical reframe is that every response teaches people something about whether it's safe and worthwhile to engage. And so yes, the receiver is responsible, but also there is equal accountability from the centre to make that interaction,
Melanie Barlow: you know, psychologically safe and to work out a way forward. so We need to train both, which is something we focus on in our training and our workshops. So how do we bring this all together?
dr: Well, I'm going to build on some of the things that you've talked about already. You know, so you've talked about showing respect and listening actively, not listening to be correct, but listening actively, acknowledging concerns and demonstrate openness.
dr: So this is really still around that psychological safety and practice. This really means recognizing that every conversation that we're having in our teams, in the workplace has a history.
dr: And that trust is built through repeated experiences. Futility can be a barrier to speaking up and receivers, as receivers, we have an enormous influence on the future voice of our teams, of our managers, of our colleagues.
dr: So whatever our responses are today, it's really going to shape tomorrow's willingness to contribute. In the previous podcast, I talked about a formula, so I'm going to add another formula today, which is really past experiences plus current interaction is equaling our future willingness to speak up.
dr: So Dr. Mel, if you could give me a few key takeaways that I can take away with me today.
Melanie Barlow: Good. I love your formulas, Dr. H. So a few key takeaways for me is that the past is present in every conversation.
Melanie Barlow: People interpret workplace interactions through those previous experiences and the relationships.
Melanie Barlow: Trust grows through consistent actions over time. And we can change culture one conversation at a time. Silence may reflect learning futility rather than disengagement.
Melanie Barlow: The way we receive concerns influences whether people will speak up again. And every interaction contributes to the culture that we are creating.
Melanie Barlow: So the next time someone doesn't speak up, rather than asking why are they silent, consider asking what experiences might have shaped their expectation that speaking up wouldn't make a difference or that speaking up is too hard or that staying silent is easier than speaking up.
Melanie Barlow: So again, if this is sparked some interest, there are some e-learning modules. The Your Team Culture e-learning is a free e-learning and where you can go in and do the assessment from O'Donovan on working out the current psychological safety within your team.
Melanie Barlow: There's more resources and videos on the website www.reframingconversations.com. And if you're interested, Dr H and I, we can come and talk to your teams and we run workshops either in person or virtually on both speaking up and feedback and coaching people to have better conversations.
Melanie Barlow: So thank you, Dr H, for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you. in the next episode. If you like, you can hit like and subscribe and leave us any feedback.
Melanie Barlow: We walk the talk, we like feedback. So let us know if you like it or topics you want us to discuss. See you next time.
