Season 4 Episode 1: The Word on Coaching - Psychological Safety Part 1

In this episode, we explore the concept of psychological safety with Steve Buchanan of Buchanan Consulting LLC. Steve has served as a leader and consultant both inside and outside of organizations. He brings years of experience and expertise to any situation.

We discuss what psychological safety is, why it is important, and the leader's role in creating an environment for psychological safety to exist. Steve shares his philosophy on the combination of having a growth mindset, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety.

This is the first part of our discussion with Steve.  Make sure to listen to Part 2 on this important topic!

Some of the resources we mention in this episode include:

Google Project Aristotle paper

https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/

Amy Edmondson, TedTalk 'Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoLuui9gX8

The Fearless Organization - Amy Edmondson

Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman

Growth Mindset - Carol Dweck

Make sure to check out more of The Word on Coaching podcasts and follow Coaches3 on Facebook for more resources and tips for being a leader-coach!

Transcript

Debby 0:05

hi everyone. Welcome to the world on coaching podcast. I'm Debbie. I'm here with Kevin and JoAnn. Hey Kev. Hey JoAnn.

Kevin 0:13

Hey,

Debby 0:13

hello everyone. We are coaches three. We are three friends with years of leadership and coaching experience who wanna share our passion with all of you. We wanna share it with others and our podcast is for leaders. Whether you have that formal title, or we know a lot of you out there, are leaders without the formal title, this podcast is for you. And what we do is we focus on one word that relates to leadership and coaching. So we, along with our guest, you know, our goal is to give you tips, give you information, hopefully a fresh perspective or revisit a perspective and always a lot of support because we know leadership is. Tonight I'm really excited to have as our guest, Steve Buchanan of Buchanan consulting. Steve is a leader, a consultant, a coach, a brilliant strategic thinker, a get or done person and just a, a great human. And I have to share my past life, Steve and I work together. And what I really appreciate about Steve is how willing he is to teach and mentor while also appreciating the strengths and differences that everyone brings to the table. So that's my spin on you, Steve, what, what would you like our audience to know about you?

Steve 1:25

Well, thanks Debbie. I'm really excited to be here tonight. in fact, I've had probably a chance to work with, with all three of you at some point, or at least we've been connected through some work. And so I'm really excited to be here tonight and talk about something that's really important to me and really frames up how I see how I see leadership. Yeah, I did. I spent more than three decades working for a huge company with, with Debbie and. And Kevin and JoAnn and, and, you know, I had the pleasure of working with some really great leaders and and leading some teams and, and I've also had the pleasure of working for some real stinkers. And, and I say that because, you know, we learn so much by living in, we don't like, and experiencing things we don't like. And most everybody I talk to will say, if I ask'em what kind of leader they want to be, it's easy for them to tell me, Hey, here, let me, well, there's some things I know I don't wanna be. I've, so I've had that pleasure. And, you know in my job, I got to work with some of the highest level executives and some of these folks are they're such good people and they really live and embody what we're gonna talk about today.

Debby 2:35

Great. For today's episode, our word is safety, and obviously we want people to be physically safe at work. That is a goal, but today what we're gonna talk about is something a little different and that's psychological safety the phrase psychological safety has been a hot topic in the leadership world really for the past few years. Steve, will you start us off? What exactly is psychological safety and why is it

Steve 2:59

important? Yeah. Thanks Debbie. So let me start by sharing a bit of context. How I get to psychological safety and where it sits. In my view of leadership for, me first of all, I'm a believer in raising the tide of leadership. really appreciate what you said in the opening that it's really not about formal leaders necessarily. It's about leadership. And so I believe in any organization on every team that everybody has agency, and everybody has a responsibility to lead at their level to lead right. Where they are in that moment. That's where I come from. And then when I think about, for me, the three legs of the stool of leadership, there really are growth mindset, emotional intelligence and psychological safety. I think we're gonna talk today about sort of how they fit together and then we'll go deep on psychological safety specifically. But, you know, I think it, it's important to know that everything starts with mindset. I get a chance every, every time I'm faced with some sort of situation. I get a chance to be, be whatever I wanna be. So we know about growth mindset, just talks about, you know, we talk about fixed mindset and growth mindset, sort of as a continuum and as humans, we're wired for safety. So we're wired to, when we see a situation or experience thing, take in information. Our first, inclination is to go to safety. We tend to get a fixed mindset. It is what it is. How can I protect myself? And growth mindset is something we can choose to have by being open to other possibilities. I wanna be, what else is there be curious, be open you know, recognize that things can be better and the possibility of that. So I get to choose to have that sort of mindset and there's some, and there's some things you can do. To train your brain, to be a little more growth mindset. I always laugh. If you Google growth mindset, there'll be somebody out there offering an assessment. Take these 10 questions to see if you have a growth mindset. Well, it's a very fixed mindset view of growth mindset. so cause cause it really, it really determines. It's really determined by every interaction we have. Every time we get a chance to, to be something we get to choose, then we think about emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence, again, closely connected, but it really is. You go back to Goldman's work. We think about self-awareness so I know who I am. I know my tendencies. I know my tendency's under stress, which is most important. Then I need to be able to kind of scan the room. What's my situation around me. What's my environmental awareness. And then what does that environment need from me? For me to be most effective. And that's that middle piece of emotional intelligence that self-regulation that self adjustment, so I can be really effective. For me, growth mindset and emotional intelligence are really things that I start inside my own head and my own decisions. So I come to a situation of a team being a formal leader, being a team member. I come to those situations either emotional, intelligent, and somewhere on the spectrum of maturity in that and my mindset. I bring that to the table and then we show up in a team and psychological safety is a team sport. I can't be psychologically safe and nobody else on the team. It can't work that way. It's a team sport. When we get there, it really just is this, place where I don't feel like I'm gonna have retribution if I say something wrong, but again, we're wired for safety. So oftentimes when I'm in those kind of, I'm thinking about how how's my behavior, my words, how's it gonna affect my status? How's it gonna affect my performance review? How's it gonna affect my boss? How's it gonna affect relationships outside this room? Am my friendships with these people? Am I gonna look foolish? So I'm always, so I'm making that risk assessment all the time. And so when we think about psychological safety and whether or not it exists in that team container, if you will it's my individual willingness to take those interpersonal risks. And maybe say something, be vulnerable. Ask a question of my boss, tell'em that something's not clear. Tell'em something. I don't agree with it. There could be all kinds of things. I'm I'm thinking about in my head. And am I gonna say, am I gonna speak up or not? And so you ask a question about, does it exist or not? How willing are you to speak up? That's really the barometer for an individual to say, this is a place where psychological safety exists. Let me stop there. Maybe, maybe that causes a question or you guys have a thought about that or wanna add some color to that?

Debby 8:25

Yeah, I think another component that I see when you were given, well, Steve is the admitting. When I, you made a mistake. Right. I find a lot of times that people don't feel willing to admit, Hey, I, you know, I think I messed this up. They try to hide it because they don't feel that psychological safety to admit that they made, made a mistake too. But I love how you brought in the emotional intelligence, the growth mindset, because the psychological safety, right. It doesn't exist by itself. They're it? It is connected to other things.

Steve 8:56

In an ideal world, all the members of the team or whoever's involved in that moment, the project team, the formal team friends at dinner, right. It can be, that can be a container as well. They all have to come with the right mindset with the right emotional maturity because one of the benefits of psychological safety is this critical thinking and sharing and challenging. And we need to be in a place where we can accept that without judgment and be able to take some feedback. It can really, it really needs to be all hands on deck and we're all coming to the table with the right mindset.

JoAnn 9:35

Yeah, I totally agree. We all contribute our take away from psychological safety don't we Steve, what does a leader do to create that space, that safety for their team? What are some thoughts about that or tips you have for a leader to create it?

Steve 9:55

The first thing I would say is a leader by themselves. Can't create it. But a leader wears a powerful hat. They have a, they definitely have a role to play and they have some formal power. So they have to maybe kick the first domino or be the model for that. There are a few things though that a leader, a formal leader can do to, to get it going down the road, if you will. And I think one of those things is to build that container for safety. Folks you might wanna go out and check out some work by Ray Jorgenson. He does a really nice job of giving you some tools to create a container for a great conversation. So when we think about that though, like on the team, we would have clear expectations. We would have clear roles. There would be clarity about how we're gonna deal with uncertainty the need for interdependence, right? We need each other. There would be these things that the leader is articulating as goals for the team. Making clear that we need everybody's voice and in the room we need those voices. For example, there was a years ago there was a steel company and these two, these two guys been working there forever. And when the steel would be rolled out, it would get down to the very end end. And they would, you know, they would kind of, you know, cut it off and move it. And one day an idea came of how to save money, how to save waste from this steel. And so then the consultant. Finally gets down to these guys and says, well, why didn't you say something earlier? And they said, well, nobody asked. Right? they had this idea forever, but nobody had told'em everybody's voice was important and given them a place to share it. Leader can do that. Leader can begin to create that at container. Making sure everybody on the team understands the purpose of the work. I use a metaphor when I'm working with folks. I'll do my best to describe it. So people who can maybe get a visual in their head who are listening, when we stand face to face, that's a bit of a, kind of a confrontational stance. We're we're talking to a friend we're in the boxing ring. We're face to face, especially if we're disagreeing, we're face to face and it really can become about, about each other. Metaphorically speaking, what we wanna do is turn shoulder to shoulder and look at the work. So we think about on our teams, if we're just sitting there talking to each other, it can become about us. And when we have this psychological safety and clarity of purpose, we can literally stand shoulder to shoulder and work on the work. We look at the work together. Now our interactions become'em about the work and not about us. And I think when that happens, then, we're doing our critical thinking. We're coming up with ideas, we're being innovative. We're giving feedback, we're asking questions. Cuz the work now becomes more important. So clarity of purpose about the team I think is a critical part of that. I got a couple other thoughts Joan, but let me see, stop there and see if that maybe causes a question or maybe you guys have a thought.

Debby 13:27

One thing that I noticed a lot when I worked, in a big corporation with a big team was when something would go wrong, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was to blame for it. Right. And we would rehash it and hash it out and go back through emails. And so who who's to blame for this instead of step stepping back and saying. Why did this happen? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? Which to me is a great example of what you were just talking about, Steve, right? Instead of focusing on who's to blame and the, people let's face to face care you to blame are you to blame. It was let's step back and let's focus on the work. How do we, how do we recover from this? How do we make sure this doesn't happen? And I see that a lot where people spend so much time on the blame piece rather than the curiosity piece. Let's just move forward. Right?

Kevin 14:18

And I was just gonna jump in there and say when I work with different leaders at different times, and we're talking about this concept of safety, I've challenged leaders, about how safe is it to interact with you? You know, that individual leader behavior, and when. You're a person, your employee, your direct report, whatever name they have in your organization, when they approach you, how much safety is around you as a person. Can I ask you a question as Steve mentioned, can I disagree with you? If there's something I need to share,, is there enough safety that I can open up and, and share that with you? And. Each leader. I really think they're accountable for how they create that space. How am I going to react? When someone tells me, Hey, this is wrong. We need to fix it. Am I gonna blow my stack? And so people just, they hesitate to bring me problems or am I open to finding a solution? Like Debbie said, if I know that if I admit a mistake, I'm going to take the blame. I'm going to feel very hesitant to bring that up. But if I know, if I make a mistake, we're going to focus on how to fix it. That's a different kind of space that you end into. And I think as Steve was talking about focusing on the work and focusing on the outcomes that we want, is so critical and that we, you know, that standing shoulder to shoulder, I think is a great analogy of how you can move forward, standing shoulder to shoulder. But if you're standing face to face, both of you can't move forward, somebody is gonna have to rele. So great concept, Steve.

JoAnn 15:48

Yeah. And Steve, what, what I really like is it, this ties back to the three legged stool, right? For that leader, what kind of, does the leader have a growth mindset that he's willing and emotionally intelligent enough to take a look at himself? Because he, contributes. Yes. He doesn't contribute totally to the safe, psychological safety, but he's a big contributor. And so it goes back, will a leader look at himself and say, you know, do I have the mindset for that? Am I trying to grow in that area? I aware of how I, how I show up to people do people scatter when I walk past. So I, I love that you tied that together early on, because if we're not, if those two things aren't working and we're not paying attention, we're probably not creating psychological safety.

Steve 16:38

Yeah, thanks. Joan. It's a lot more than probably you're not right. I mean, it's pretty, it's a pretty, it's pretty clear, but this is a great chance to bring back in growth mindset and emotional intelligence, and really talk about how they work, because remember, think about that, that continuum of fixed mindset to growth mindset, and we're kind of kind of oscillating back and forth depending on what's in front of us. When there is a problem, when there is a failure, am I, am, am I going to be open to, to a question like, well, what do we learn? What else should we know? What else, what else is there? And then on that same continuum in my work. I've put some other labels on fixed and growth about knowing versus learning. And proving versus improving. And so a lot of times when people behave this way and if you tell'em they have a fixed mindset, they may not really understand that. But if you recognize that they are trying to prove that they know what they're doing, they they're wanting to prove that the folks that promoted them made the right decision, they're proving to their team. They're the leader. Well, you can get really locked into this fixed mindset and you're really not open to those kinds of things. And it really does take some maturity to say, yes, I've been selected as a formal leader and that's my I role to play here. So my biggest role is to, to model what we're talking about, because I do have kinda an outsized power in the group. And again, the emotional intelligence. Am I gonna recognize that I get triggered when somebody calls me out in front of other people or at least I perceive that what's my emotional reaction to that? How am I gonna adjust to continue to model what we're talking about? So again, psychological safety it's a shared belief that, each of us can take interpersonal risk. And when somebody violates it, it disrupts the entire bubble. And so it really becomes critical that it really is a team sport and we're all continuing to play. And I think at some point in our conversation today, we'll probably talk about, well, what happens if we screw this up and how do we get back on track? But a couple more things, JoAnn, your question about what can a leader do I wanna share a couple more things. One is demonstrating humility. So again, I'm not trying to prove that I know everything. I'm not trying to prove that that I'm a great, that was a, that I was a great promotion. I'm not trying to prove to you how much I know about the work. I am really just being humble and saying, I have a role to play. You have a role to play. Let's, let's get to get other and focus on the work. I think we have to be curious, you know, practicing really good inquiry is something we don't spend a lot of time learning about, but guess what? There are some stupid questions and you can ask really good questions. Spending time thinking about what are some really good questions and for me, good questions are based in curiosity. I really it's really an authentic, genuine. I want to know the answer. If I'm testing you. I'm being a little passive aggressive. You'll hear that in my tone. You'll hear it. And that's not good inquiry. That's a bad question. It's not serving the purpose of moving the work forward and, and moving the work forward can be a great barometer of how good a question is. Is it helping us to learn, improve what we're gonna do next, make a good decision, provide clarity in the group, is it moving us forward or not? If it's not moving you forward you probably don't need to ask it. It's probably for a different purpose and not gonna help having great inquiry skills is another one. And again, these are things you can learn about and you can get better at but it really is about inviting others in. And, you know, I was, I was sharing with Debbie earlier. I had a colleague, an executive that I worked with and I on a few occasions when I was working with her team, she, she would say, I think you'll agree with me when I say, and then she would have an opinion. I heard Kevin's laughing. So, so you know, JoAnn, what do you think about that? You think that's a, you think that's modeling? How safe do you think those people are if they don't agree? Right. She's making it pretty clear. And again, I don't think she was doing it maliciously. She wasn't doing it to be a coercive leader. Sometimes we get in these habits of saying words and we don't even realize what they're doing. And so I think for her, it was, probably a habit. And I think, I think what she was trying to say was. We're all in this together. I think you'll agree with me cuz we're all on board together, but that's kind of at the end, that's kind of at the end of the game, right? That's not at the beginning. You're not gonna get much innovation and creativity and challenging of an idea going on after you hear that from the formal leader. I had another leader who was two levels above me and this leader wanted to have a skip level meeting. So we were all being called in to visit with this person. Assuming good intentions, those skip level meetings are to, you know, hear from the field, hear what's really going on and all that's the of, and in the email we got ahead of the meeting, she said pretty straightforward. I believe psychological safety is important. We will have it in this meeting and I expect you to come and, be truthful with me. So so we get this email commanding us we, we were commanding psychological safety, commanding us to be a certain way. And she had a long track record of something very different from that. As a formal leader, I can't command it, but I can set up the container and behave a certain way. And then JoAnn, you were really digging into that last piece, which is how do I respond? You know, it's that other piece of emotional intelligence? Where, how am I adjusting to be the model I need to be, to have psychological safety in my team, or at least promote that, you know? If somebody questions you again, I was on a project team and we were learning how to debrief a survey and we, some of us had been doing it, but this leader had been working directly with the consultant. We were to join in this phone call and observe her doing this job. And then we had a debrief call. Just said, well, you know, you said this in our training, we heard this and I do it this way. And she directly said to me, well, I can't even believe I can't, even to this. She said, she said directly on the call. Well, you're just not really doing it the right way. and everybody on the call knew we just saw her violate the, model. And she just basically said, don't ask again. So when we have things like that and, and I think, I think some of these leaders, maybe some of us maybe I've done that, you know, maybe, maybe when Debbie and I worked together long ago, maybe I behave this way occasionally. I don't know that we do it intentionally. I think we're doing it. We think we're moving the work forward by cutting off, this unnecessary, questions and whatever. But what we're doing is we're really putting up stumbling blocks toward an environment where we can really let loose and get, get after the work. So how we respond is critical. We have to keep moving things forward off ring, help those kinds of things. I mean, how can I help you? What else is there? You know, et cetera, et cetera. Building that container really is the work of the leader. And then ultimately the whole team.

25:03

We are going to pause this conversation about safety. And our conversation with Steve. As we we were recording the session, we got engaged in it and we kept going and going. And we hope you found this conversation about safety, engaging. As we started to think about editing, we realized we would need to break this episode into two parts. And for now, that's almost the word on coaching. Look out for part two of safety with Steve Buchanan and coaches three coming soon.