Episode 1 - What is Psychological Safety and why you should care?

In this episode we explain what Psychological safety is, and why you should care!

Sources:
Gartner Research, The Missing Element in Nearly Every Learning Strategy; Gallup, State of the American Workforce Report;
Zak, Paul J., “The Neuroscience of Trust,” Harvard Business Review, January 2017, https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/business-functions-blog/work-psychological-safety
The Fearless Organization, Amy Edmonston
The Four Stages of Psychological Safety, Timothy Clark

Transcript

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Track 1 0:05

Hi, I'm Deanna,

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 0:07

And I am Kara.

Track 1 0:08

and this is the Got Ps podcast where we talk about all things psychological safety. But first, who are we?

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 0:16

Like I said, I am Kara. I spent a decade working in the federal government contractor area before. Staying home for 15 years with my children as a stay at home mom. After that, I decided to come back to work, and I've been back to work for six years after being a software engineer before I am now an agile coach this time around, and I work off my strengths, which I feel are being detailed oriented, organized, and driven.

Track 1 0:45

And I'm Deanna. Unlike Kara, I have no children and I've pretty much worked my entire career as a software engineer. I started out first doing telecommunications and fun fact. I was partially responsible for Northern California having no internet for two days back in the nineties. Now I mostly do Agile and DevOps transformations where I can really lean into my strengths of being creative, enthusiastic, and people focused. And now Kara, why are you into psych safety?

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 1:19

As I said before, I stayed home for 15 years and when I came back six years ago, I have to say it was a huge culture shock and I experienced a lot of imposter syndrome as I was starting to get acclimated to working again and all of that fear and doubt that I felt really had an impact on how I worked. And also it didn't help that one of the first projects I started on was a hot mess, and who else was on that hot mess? Deanna. Deanna, how'd you feel about that project?

Track 1 1:56

Well, I will tell you, it is not the hottest mess I have been in, but I would agree that I've been on projects that were just amazing, where it felt like we were all family and we would have each other's back no matter what. And I've been on projects where quite honestly. I had been miserable and I felt like I'd burnt out when it was really just, I was that uncomfortable in the group. And so I really wanted to figure out why. Why is this team amazing? And this team is dreadful This was during Covid times and we had lots of free time on our hands. Which is how we ended up delving into psychological safety.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 2:40

But we've talked about psychological safety. We've thrown the term around a lot, but let's get into it. What really is psychological safety

Track 1 2:51

Well, I'm gonna tell you a little story. Once upon a time long, long time ago.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 2:56

When the dinosaurs rode in the earth?

Track 1 2:59

More like 10, 12 years ago when the tech dinosaurs roomed the earth, Google commissioned a project to figure out why they had some teams that could really produce amazing products quickly, and other teams that just sort of slogged along this project was called Project Aristotle. And you know what they found?

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 3:20

It has to be lots of PhDs.

Track 1 3:22

Actually, no, it didn't matter what kind of education the people in the teams had.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 3:28

Well then it has to be good food, free food, donuts, pizza, all the time. Everywhere.

Track 1 3:35

Well, unfortunately, everyone at Google at that time got free food. So no, it turns out it was not free food.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 3:43

Well it's gotta be big box 'cause who, who doesn't love some, some big money.

Track 1 3:48

I really wish, because if that was the case, boy, you better believe me, I'd be asking for more. No, they found that none of these things mattered. What mattered was how the members of the team felt, the fact that they felt they could bring their authentic selves to work each and every day, and where they could have constructive arguments over finding the best solution. So. People could say no and they wouldn't be slapped down. When they looked into it deeper, they came across Amy Edmondson, who had been doing work on psychological safety in the healthcare field. And they realized that her ideas of teams where everybody felt safe to bring up problems and admit failure is actually what they were seeing in their high performing teams. So Amy Edmondson called the Psychological Safety and Google's like. We don't have to invent a new word. Let's go with it. But why should you care about psych safety?

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 4:49

That's true. We can all feel in our hearts that we do great when we're on a team that we feel very comfortable with. But when it comes to talking to, say corporate about why psychological safety is so important, you gotta start talking about bucks. You have to talk about money and how having it. Makes more money and how not having it makes less money. So in 2017 there was a workforce survey and we'll have a link to it in the show notes that dove a little deeper and looked at the economic impacts. I. Regarding psychological safety and when you don't have it, what they found is that there would be a $600 billion a year loss in employees having turnovers, checking out, all those kinds of things. That was the impact to industry. But if you do have it, the benefits. Are fantastic. You have employees that feel great. They feel like they have work-life balance. They're 74%, less stressed out. They feel 29. More percent, having better life satisfaction. They feel like they are more likely to collaborate. About 57% said they were more likely to collaborate and 50% said that they felt more productive. So this sounds like great stuff, Deanna. So how do we get a sum? How do we get a sum?

Track 1 6:17

That's a really good question because you know, obviously psychological safety is awesome, so why don't we all have some, how do we get there? And honestly, we weren't sure. So first thing I did was I went to the internet and I started looking up articles and it turns out there's lots of 'em on psychological safety, but I really. Felt they were missing something. Most of these articles dealt with psychological safety as something you could sort of switch on or off at Will, and they gave people tips, like ask questions, but that doesn't always work. Have you ever been on a team where your boss starts asking questions and you feel like it's a Spanish inquisition so there was something missing?

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 7:03

So I, I have to say, full disclosure, I do call Deanna my digital raccoon, and whenever I wanna find something online. She goes out and she finds it. So if we weren't satisfied with the articles, it's because there wasn't really anything satisfying there. So we're like, all right, we can't use these short little, tidbits. They were great, but they were just small tidbits. They didn't feel like they really kind of gave of, overall satisfactory answer. So then we're like, alright, we both have library cards, let's. Exchange our library cards with each other and let's start digging into the books. And so we read a lot of the really major books out there that are quoted when it comes to psychological safety. We, speaking of Amy Edmondson, we read the Fearless Organization was kind of really started the conversation around this, but there have been a number of others like the Culture Code or Sooner, safer, happier. And again, they all. They felt pretty good, but we still felt there was a little something missing. They just ring a little hollow. So what did we do next, Deanna?

Track 1 8:10

We kept looking and we finally stumbled on the four stages of psychological safety by Timothy Clark and this. This was sort of the revelation that we were looking for because he talked about psychological safety as something that built that. You started with none, and then you got a little bit of psychological safety and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and eventually you reached Nirvana. And this helped us realize that we'd been sort of looking at psychological safety wrong. We'd been looking at it as end users where you just flip a switch and it works, but we should have been looking at it. As engineers and seeing what all happened behind the scenes so that when that switch got flipped, it actually worked. And this is when we developed full stack psychological safety.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 9:00

That's right. We are engineers and we can't leave well enough alone. But truly we decided that there was a piece even missing from Timothy Clark's four stages of psychological safety. And the big piece that we felt was missing was the part about. Organizations and how they overall contribute to team psychological safety. So almost everything else that we read had everything to do with the team. How was the team doing? How productive was the team? How safe was it in the team? But it just didn't talk about the general surrounding organization's culture. We felt that that was really important. We are, both from a. Organization that has eight to 10,000 people and we find day to day that what's going on in the broader organization can have impacts on the team. So we decided to add that in there, to create five levels. And Deanna, what are those five levels?

Track 1 9:58

Those five levels are culture, which is really dealing with how the overarching organization handles things. Community, which is the team level, conversation, contribution, and commitment That's really sort of the magic nirvana that everyone is trying to aim for, but. We've got a lot we have to build on first. And so the first thing we talk about is culture, safety, and what a healthy culture looks like. Ideally, people of all shapes, colors, beliefs, heck, even non-humans, if we've got any, should be welcome. Work life balance is valued and you are allowed to grow if you want, but you're also allowed to not grow if you want. I've been in places that pushed growth, growth, growth, growth, growth so much that they didn't understand that maybe that was not your focus. Maybe you're finishing up your master's degree. Last thing you wanna do is grow at work. Maybe you've got small children at home. You really don't need to do anything other than. What you need to do at work. So the whole idea of a healthy culture is one where executive management is transparent and where you are allowed to fit in the way you want to fit in. And that leads us next to community safety.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 11:17

I have to say, you just said non-human on culture, and now I'm longing for bring your dog to work day at work.

Track 1 11:26

I was thinking lizard people.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 11:29

Oh, we're gonna get, oh, we're gonna get into conspiracy theories. Okay. We'll, but we'll save that for a later podcast. We'll save that. So, community safety, this is the level where. Everybody is valued. You know, you have new people come on the team, you invite them to everything. You're prepared for that new person to be a part of your team. They have all the tools they need. They know where all the meetings are. They, you give them an overview of who your customers are. You introduce 'em to everybody who's already on the team. It's just welcome aboard. That is what community safety is all about. The next, level of psychological safety is conversation.

Track 1 12:11

And conversation is just what you expect. It's where people within the team are actually talking to each other. People feel comfortable asking questions, and people with the answers share it without making the question or feel like they're stupid. Everyone's sort of seen as individuals who aren't all at the same place in life, so they're encouraged to learn and grow if necessary. Everybody in the team is worth it, worth investing in. That brings us to contribution safety.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 12:44

So this is where everybody's significant. You feel everybody has the ability to contribute something of value to what the team is trying to build and deliver to the customer. Everybody has decided what's gonna happen. Expectations are clearly communicated. You are willing to let somebody go off and work on their stuff independently. You trust them and you know they're gonna bring something back that is of value and is gonna help with the end game. So after that is the pinnacle of psychological safety, and that is commitment, safety.

Track 1 13:20

I feel like we should have a choir of angels going, oh.

kara_2_02-25-2024_150738 13:23

Ah, that's right.

Track 1 13:25

This is what people talk about when they talk about psychological safety. This is when people can disagree with each other. Without injury, without people taking offense or smacking you down. People can bring their authentic self to the table and they're comfortable admitting failure. It's where the team can figure out what they're doing rather than waiting for a manager to order them to do stuff. It's amazing. It's wonderful. Most of us. Want to be there and we're not there now, which is why we've got this podcast going. But how are we going to do that?

kara_3_02-25-2024_152649 13:59

So what's happening this season? We are gonna have 10 more episodes, each level of the full Stack Psychological Safety model. We'll have two episodes dedicated to it where we do a deeper dive and talk about everything pertaining to that level. We will talk over some articles that Deanna, as the digital raccoon master has found online, showing how this level of psychological safety is manifesting out in industry.

Track 1 14:29

And because we're engineers and we can never let things stay the way they are, we've been tinkering with the model. We've realized that the model we came up with. It's mostly team focused with a little bit of corporation, and we've realized that there's more to it. We need to focus on the individual and how they have to contribute to psychological safety and the leader and things that they may need to do to help encourage psychological safety. As we go through this podcast, we are going to be working in the background on all three dimensions of psychological safety so that we can bring you psychological safety in 3D Ooh.

kara_3_02-25-2024_152649 15:10

So we have a cram packed season for our first season, and we're so excited to be sharing this all with you. If you have liked this introductory podcast and wanna take this journey with us, please like and subscribe, and we hope to see you next episode.

Track 1 15:25

Talk to you soon.