Season 4 Episode 2: The Word on Coaching - Psychological Safety Part 2

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.
 
This is the second part of our discussion with Steve.  We hope you enjoyed the first episode. 
In this episode, we continue exploring the concept of psychological safety - what it looks like and sounds like and how to recover if psychological safety is violated.

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

0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the word on coaching podcast. I am Kevin Fuselier and I'm here with Debbie and JoAnn. We are coaches three, three friends with years of leadership and coaching experience who want to share our passion with others. Our podcasts are for leaders, whether you have the formal title or not. Focus on one word that relates to leadership and coaching. We along with our guests, giving tips information, sometimes a fresh perspective and always a lot of support because we know leadership is hard. This episode is part two of our conversation with Steve cannon about psychological safety in the workplace. We hope you enjoy part one. As we continue our conversation with Steve we'll start talking about. Psychological safety in a hybrid working environment.

Kevin 0:48

I know that we're in a time where a lot of people, are working in remote or hybrid work situations. Does psychological safety look different in a hybrid or a work at home environment? Or is it the same? Like what do you, you think about creating safety in this hybrid world we're entering into?

Steve 1:12

You know, I, I think the stakes go up I think the idea of growth mindset, emotional intelligence, psychological safety, they can manifest themselves in person or in a virtual environment. But I think the stakes are higher in a virtual environment. I know people who have people on our team they've never met. Probably folks are listening to this call. They either work with project teams or own teams that are around the world. Maybe they're global, they're in different time zones. They may be in different cultures. They may be different religions. They may be who knows what they are, but they're very, very diverse. And what those teams don't have the beauty of is walking to get coffee together. Before we go to the meeting, they don't, you know, their, their kids don't go to school together. They don't see each other socially. They don't play the volleyball together. So the work of the leader, all those things we talked about and the willingness of the team members to understand these concepts and, and bring them to the virtual environment. Are even more critical. So probably Kevin, the way it would be different for me would, I would say might be, we have to be more overt about it. Yeah. We have to create space in the meetings. One of the things that was good and bad about COVID and when we went to zoom so much, is that meetings started on the hour, cuz that's when the zoom call started and the, and the meetings ended on time. But because of that, one of the downsides was we thought, oh my gosh, I've only got 60 minutes. I gotta shove everything in the kitchen sink into this 60 minutes. So I stopped worrying about the relationships in the team and we saw a lot of that happen. We saw a lot of those team relationships really diminish and people were. Now I don't have to walk down the hall or across the campus or, or to another building. So I can just fill my calendar up with meetings with no breaks. And so we were just back to back to back and a lot of those things that we, maybe we did them in some ways more naturally when we were in person fell by the wayside. I think we have to ramp up the intentionality. We probably have to spend some time talking about these concepts and letting everybody understand what they are and how they manifest themselves in a zoom, I would say your cameras need to be on so I can see facial reactions and those kinds of things. So probably just a heightened risk and heightened need for intentionality. Yeah. I love that, Steve. I mean, when talking about this concept, no one unintentionally creates psychological safety. It takes intention, you know, not tending to psychological safety is not going to create psychological safety. You have to be in intentional about doing it. I love the fact that you emphasize that it's going to take intention. So as a leader, as a leader, who's coaching putting forth that intentional in scanning the environment to say, what is my role in creating this? And then setting forth those intentions. You know, maybe you call a, there's gonna be 15 minute gap between these meetings. Someone has to come out and say, we need to do something culturally to make sure that we can have that time to be intentional about connecting and doing those different things. I think that's on well. And so many times. So many times things happen unintentionally. And one of those things is that every situation typically again, as humans, we are sort of wired to look for the power source. So anytime we get into the situation, there is some differe of power. Somebody's demonstrating that they're the alpha. I'll give you a few examples just to, that might seem extreme where the risks are really high. We see it a lot in the cockpit of a commercial airliner. There are so many shows on television. Now my wife watched them all the time, these air disaster programs. I would encourage you if you wanna think about psychological safety, watch some of those because there's one, person in the cockpit with four stripes on their shoulder, and there's one person in the cockpit with three. And a lot of times they show up and they don't know each other. So things will happen like this. Kevin, you and I show up, we climb in the cockpit, I'm the four Stripe, you're the three Stripe. And so there's immediately some deference to experience deference, to tenure, whatever, a from the three Stripe you to me. And then I say things like, Hey Kevin, I'm Steve. It's good to meet you. You know, I've done 40 years with this airline. You know, in fact I helped write the training for this plane. Where you've been where you come from. And you're like, well, you know, I just got outta training and I was crop dusting for a while and now I'm over here. And so I just laid out for you all this experience that I have. Then we take off, we get in turbulence and something goes wrong and you're like, gosh, I'm seeing this gauge go wacky, but you know, who am I to tell Steve that the, if the gauge is wacky, he, he wrote the training. So we have this sort of deference to some authority figure and then the plane crashes and shows up on the news. Right? And, and then they go back and they listen to the cockpit tape and they're like, oh gosh, if the co-pilot had just said something But, but what I said, when we got on the plane did not, as we talked about earlier, begin to set the stage for how we're gonna work together, we have different roles, but what are the expectations of giving each other feedback and sharing and how do we share responsibilities to look out the front window and get these 180 souls home safely? So then something goes wrong, things, blow up, things, get bad. We also see it in the medical field quite a bit where we have, have the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the nurse, and there's this deference to degrees the letters behind your name and, and the oftentimes, you know, how many times have you heard that surgeon kind of has God complex, cuz they have their hands down in your chest and you know, and so if I'm the nurse standing there and maybe the doctor has made sure, I know that, he's in charge and he's got all this experience and he lays the, the tweezers in the, inside me and the nurse sees'em but I've already been yelled at so I'm not gonna say anything. And then the patient me gets sewed up with, with tweezers inside me cuz nobody said anything. Because we defer to this power source. In our work teams and our knowledge work, often the risks are lower, but we still defer. And, and when I defer, I get this dangerous silence that occurs. Now information's not flowing anymore. And that can be the real risk of not having psychological safety. As information stops flowing on that growth mindset continuum, I've stopped learning. I'm just now knowing. And I've so I'm, I'm not taking in information. I'm not asking for it. I'm not open to it. And if I behave badly, I set a course for never getting it. So it can really, it can really go, it can really kind of go south.

Debby 8:55

I feel like another word that's come up a lot has been intentionality. And to me in that hybrid remote environment, intentionality is ramped up even more. I mean, I hear a lot of employees say, well, my boss is saying these things. They're saying, they want me to ask questions. They're saying they want me to admit my mistakes, but I don't believe'em based on what I'm seeing the clues I'm picking up on. So I feel like in those environments, a leader has to ramp up that intentionality because the people are only getting snapshots of you, right. They're not around you in the office where they're picking up clues or they're observing you. So they're only seeing snap little snapshots of you. And I think that intentionality to do the, the inquiry that you were talking about and the listening, making sure people get that. Yeah. You know, I wanna hear what you have to say that they do feel heard. I feel like that intentionality is even more important when you're in that those hybrid remote environments.

Steve 9:50

Yeah, let me take a minute and talk about some of the benefits of this that really can show up and, and some of the risk of, of not having it when you, have these environments. I would imagine now that we've been talking about them, describing them, everybody on the call has been somewhere where they felt this way. It's a good feeling. I'm excited to come to the meeting. I feel valued. It's way beyond how much you pay me, it's it really is. I'm contributing, I'm contributing to the purpose. I'm help moving things forward. I'm feeling you know, an equal partner are in the room, equal thought partner. And I think you can be equal thought partners and have different roles, right? So I think, I think those things can exist at the same time. And then the work is invigorating. We will work longer. We will. Do extra things, because we just feel connected to the purpose of what we're doing. And I, you know, and I am having this feeling of value when you don't have it, then you get this dangerous silence you get you're not getting the best ideas from your team. You might even have a retention problem because you've hired these people. You've told'em how much they can bring to the table. And then you don't create an environment where they can deliver to that. they're tired of coming to meetings. The meetings don't seem to have a reason. They don't seem to have a place for me to contribute. All you're doing is just kind of one way communication and just telling, telling, telling. And so I become frustrated and I may go look for another job. You know, we've all heard people join companies and they leave bosses. This is a way for the leader to create and model and encourage and advocate for this kind of team. And people want to be on those teams. Those teams get great results. We've all probably been on bad teams where we've had bosses like a couple that I mentioned we can't wait to, find an off ramp to get off that team. We're trying to get out. Some of us might, we might even leave the company because it's just not a good feeling. This is a critical piece for leaders for, or retention, especially in today's environment where good. Employers are so hard to come by. This can be a retention strategy for the leadership, but I think also what it does create that rising tide of leadership. Everybody has agency leadership can happen across the board, way beyond formal leaders, people with titles. I think that's a great thing for a company is to have this feeling of leadership exists everywhere. Because if I really underst where we're going, what we're trying to accomplish, I don't need to run to my boss for every decision. I can feel like I can make decisions and if I make it and it wasn't right, I'm not gonna get, beaten up about that. I'm gonna be able to go, well, what did we learn? I'm gonna understand end how to evaluate risk of decision making. Cause we've talked about it. it's this rising tide of leadership that I think is such a valuable outcome of being this way. Some of the clients I'm working with, we're seeing that happen where people you didn't think wanted to be a leader, they don't wanna be in management. All they wanna do is run that machine or do that. And you create this container. And all of a sudden this person rises up that we never knew existed. Cuz we kind of put'em in a box, we'd kinda labeled them. And so again, it's this rising tide of leadership that can fuel so much, so much good stuff.

JoAnn 13:43

I you've made some really good points. Steve. One thing that I really appreciate that you said is when, you're creating that psychological safety, there's certain things that you see. And one of the things you mentioned was an engaged team and engaged work for force if I'm a leader really trying to figure out where we are are with the psychological safety. And I feel like I've been doing a pretty good job. What are some other things that I could look for that would tell me where we are in psychological safety? How do I test for that? Or how do I look for that?

Steve 14:16

If you wanna just reflect listen to yourself, first of all, you know, listen to what you're really saying in those meetings. I had coffee this morning with a leader. She owns her own company. We were talking about this very topic. So she's like, gosh, I hear you say that. And you know, I'm doing all that. I'm like really well, tell me about that. And she goes, well, I tell Susie, I expect you. If I do something wrong, I expect you to tell me. She was sort of, in some ways she was kind of commanding psychological safety. It felt good to her. She was saying that. We talked about it and I was like, yeah, but that's just like the first thing. Right? You can set those expectations. But I said, what are you doing on a day to day basis to make that happen? And she's like, well, at the end, end of every meeting, I say, what can I do better? And I'm like, why don't you just make that the meeting? What can we all do better to make this work better? And she's like, oh my gosh, I, you know, I run these meetings and we're just talking about the work, the work, the work, what have you done? What have you accomplished? Oh, we're almost out of time. Hey, right before we go, can I just, what can I, what can I do better? I was kind of playing this back to her so she could hear what she's and she just sat back and she's like, oh my gosh, I got so much work to do. Cuz she wants that. She wants to do that. She feels like she's doing the right things to do that, but it was falling short because she hadn't packaged it all. So I began to lay out for her thoughts about growth mindset and how she shows up and emotional intelligence and how, how she can moderate her behavior and make these adjustments and be open to, taking in what the environment needs from her right now. What's her team need from her. She was like, oh my gosh, I need to go back and think about this because I, I want this, I need to go back and do it. I need to go back and do it more completely. It's really kind of funny. We start by just being open to maybe I think I'm doing it, but I'm not. So there's that then in, in Amy Edmonton's book the fearless organization, and I think we're gonna have that in the show. Note that book, Amy is one of the foremost thinkers on psychological safety. Her book, she actually offers some questions for the team or questions. Individual team members can ask themselves. And so I'll paraphrase a couple of them, but it really is. How willing am I to speak up when I don't know, what's. How willing am I to speak up if I don't agree with what the boss wants? So it's this, you're testing your team's view of willingness. Cause again, it's a team sport, so I've gotta be willing to engage. What's the likelihood of basically, getting in trouble if I speak up. So it's questions like that, where the team can, you could actually kinda ask the team, you can get these questions out on your team and say, Hey, here's my intent. Right? Here's what I, here's what I'm working to create for us. And here's why we're doing this. But I want you to think about our team. Here's a few questions that I want you to think about. And then can we talk about that? There are these kind of testing questions that Amy puts out there that a team can. But again, if you are not building your agendas for the meeting, and this is what Dr. Jorgenson does so well is he gives some tools for crafting those agendas, which can include everyone. So a good check in, a good checkout, really focusing on the most important work in the meeting, getting everybody's voice in the room. If you're that leader think about last meeting you had, how many people did you not hear from? Cause there's probably people in your room that did not say anything in the meeting. Well, that that's kind of concerning. That tells me I'm not paying attention in the meeting cuz in the, in the meeting, I should be saying, I'd like to hear from some of you that I haven't heard from yet. So, or Hey Debbie, I know you like to process and think, but I'd really like for you to tell me what you're thinking about. What's on your mind. So again, we're acknowledging that some people process internally, but just telling'em, we'd really like to hear from them and giving them, I know myself, I'm an introvert. And so if I'm in a meeting with a bunch of extroverts who just love to, they're just, I will not, I will not fight for airspace just will not elbow my way in. So the, the meeting could go by and I would never say anything, but I've got a lot of thoughts in my head. But if the leader again, maybe somebody, it doesn't have to be the formal leader. It can be any of us. If we're really practicing this to say, Hey, wait a minute. I haven't heard from, Hey, Kevin, I haven't heard from you. Okay. I know you got a lot of good things to say, so, Hey, let's, let's all stop. I'd like to hear from Kevin for a second. So you clear that you kind of clear the airspace to bring that person out in a, in a valuable way. So those are some things you can do. That's how it sounds if you're doing it in the moment. But again, I think the leader can model all of that, but everybody on the team has to be willing to play.

Debby 19:48

Yeah. I have to say Steve, that hit a little too close to home, for me we were talking. So everyone knows I'm a big introvert, but what was interesting when you were talking about it? I did think about one of the best high performing team where I would say our level psychological safety was so high and you're right. The, the leader had a lot to do with that setting the environment and the expectations. But my team learned very quickly that I was the introvert and they, and the whole team would do that. They would say. We're not gonna, we're, we're gonna let Debbie talk first or Debbie, they would prompt me and they wouldn't do it in a way that felt threatening, you know, at or challenging at all, like in an unsafe way. It was just very much like, Hey, we know we talk a lot. We, we wanna hear what you have to say too. It hit home what you were saying how that is and how important it is that the team, like you said, that it's a team sport and it's not just the leader that, that plays that role.

Steve 20:42

So if you're, if you're a leader and you think back on your last meeting and you realize I wasn't even running the meeting, everybody was taking leadership roles in the meeting, everybody, you know, a lot of different people took, took point on different conversations and they were making sure everybody was heard. And, you know, you could even have some. There needs to also be some referee going on. I mean, if we're, if we're a team that's really safe and I'm running the meeting and I'm powering through, Kevin might say, Hey, Steve, slow down, man. We haven't even heard from Debbie and JoAnn yet. And I'd really like to hear what they gotta say. I'm like, oh, oh, Kevin, thanks for, thanks for breaking the cycle, man. I really appreciate that. Cuz I was just so focused on getting through everything, but yeah, I I'm sorry about that. Yeah, let me just, let me just stop talking for a second. You gotta jump in. Kevin might even call me out as the formal, you know, if I'm the formal leader and I'm not giving space, Kevin might say, wait a minute. We're not this. Isn't what we're talking. This isn't how we run our meetings. Oh yeah. Sorry. I got a lot on my mind. Sorry about that.

Kevin 21:54

Tell us more about that. Steve. When a leader actually violates psychological safety, how do they recover? How, how does a person recover from that? I mean, you were given some examples of just keep going with that line of thought. You know business owner you talking about before, what does she do next? How do you recover when you haven't been creating psychological safety?

Steve 22:13

I think service recover is a critical thing in a lot of business, right? We can even have service recovery in our team. I live in service of my team, so I need to, you know, I I'm violating my own. Cause again, we talked about, I've set this up. I've said, this is what I want to happen. This is why it's important. We've gotten the, we've moved along. We've gotten some agreement from the team. This is how we want our team environment to look and feel and now somebody violates it. First of all, you gotta have clear expectations, maybe it's ground rules. It's all those things. We all understand. We know we're all equal voices in the room. Then when somebody cuts somebody off, it could be the leader. If it could be anybody on the team. Right. First thing you gotta do is somebody's gotta call it out because it's a clear violation. And the only way we know it's a clear violation is cuz we had clear ground rules, right? If we don't have clear ground rules, I'm not sure if I violated or not. Now we're off course, but if you have good clear ground rules, violations become clear. So somebody on the team is calling that out again. They're not calling it out to, to punish it's. Hey. That's not what we want and how can we now regroup, move back shoulder to shoulder? What did we learn? And so if I'm the violator, I've gotta show some humility. I've gotta acknowledge. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. I was totally like focused and not paying attention or I've got something else on my mind from home or, and so I I'm so sorry about that. So humility some contrition. I gotta be contr and, and, you know, and apologize. And then, but, but we, but we need to stop right there and say, Hey, what did we learn? Cause, cause just, we wanna keep building this container stronger and stronger. So take that opportunity to say, well, what did we learn? Well, I can tell you what I learned sometimes when I got stuff going at home and I come into our team meeting, I'm sorry, but my focus is not on all of you. And I get a little, become a little selfish, cuz I've got things going on my head and I need to figure out a way, where I can exist effectively in the team while having problems out, out here. We might decide, Hey, let's, you know what, let's change our process a bit, have a check in where if somebody's got a sick animal or sick kid or their car broke down, they're frustrated. They can at least say, Hey, just so you guys know today in the meeting, I got a lot on my mind, let's build a check in into our processes. So at least then the team can have empathy for me. And if I make a misstep, so we might even make a process change right in the moment, right. By asking, what did we learn? Well, that's demonstrating the very thing we're wanting to do. And then just get right back on the horse. Don't dwell on it, it's like, okay. Okay, great. We're good. We're good. Let's go again. Turn shoulder to shoulder, focus on the work, back to the ground rules move forward. That's the nutshell kind of service recovery, in any good team environment. Yeah,

Kevin 25:31

I think you're right on. And the whole thing about apologizing and having contrition I've talked to some leaders and I've told them, I said, an apology can be an influence mechanism. I said, and I want you to listen to me. I said, because if you violate something and your team knows you violated it, but you won't acknowledge and you won't apologize, you start to diminish your influence on your team. Because they all know that you owe them something because you violated one of the rules that you set out. So I said, don't try to blow past that thing. Stop, acknowledge it, apologize and move forward. And your team is more likely respect you more and you can be more influential if you can go back and apologize. I said, but I want you to understand if you try to ignore it or pretend it didn't happen, you're diminishing your influence with your team.

Steve 26:24

Part of this whole thing is, is kind of calling out when we violate it. Right? If your team is not calling out violations of team norms, JoAnn, that's a pretty good idea to don't have psychological safety. Cause people are violating these norms all the time we show up late. We don't prepare. We talk about things that are on the agenda. We don't cover everything that's on the agenda. I throw things out arbitrarily I don't trust some people don't trust anything anymore, or we're doing it all the time. But again, you gotta get right back on the horse. Right. And I think that apology though, it has to be sincere and it can't be one of Hey Debbie, I'm sorry. I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry. You feel that way? No, it has to be, Hey, you know what? I stepped on Kevin and I shouldn't have done that. Kevin, my intention was not to do that, but I did it. Forgive me let's get back at it. Right. Great. Right, right on. Great. You have to recognize what you did, what the violation is, right. Not just, I I'm sorry. You feel that way. yeah. So, so it's apologizing for the right things too. Yeah.

Debby 27:35

Language is important, right? I hate to end the conversation. I'm gonna take the phrase that keeps going through my head is shoulder to shoulder, shoulder to shoulder. I'm gonna take that away definitely today. Steve, before we let you go, we always ask our guests three questions. I promise they are easy questions. The first one is what is a, a book that you think a leader coach should read?

Steve 27:57

I've talked about it today. I've talked about Carol Dweck today and for me, it's growth mindset. I think everything starts with, for me and my world starts with my mindset. It's a choice I make and how I show up how I react, how I reframe and see the world. And so for me understanding how to do that and how to when I get into a swirl that's. Fixed to recognize that and have some tools to move off that. And Carol Dweck and her book growth mindset really lay out a foundation for all of us.

Debby 28:38

Great. What question have you been asked that gave you pause or just made you think a little deeper or differently?

Steve 28:47

So the coaching podcast, I have a coach she's very, very good. And a couple of sessions ago, she said, what do you really want? And the reason that question has been so frustrating and so good. And, and so challenging is because I have this habit of saying, well, I need to do this. And so when you know, need comes from the head and want comes from the heart, when I'm building my business and working with clients and in my relationships and friendships, what I want, if I want something, nothing will stand in my way. If I need to do something, I can find all kind of reasons. So it's really about moving these things if from my head to my heart and it really has been challenging me as to what I, what do I really want? And then from that, you know, sort of all things sort of, sort of happen. Yeah.

Debby 29:53

That's great. All things sort of happen. I like that. So, Steve, what is your word on?

Steve 29:59

I think mine is curiosity. I you know, live like a cat when you, asleep sleep, when you awake, be curious, cats that's, if cats are over there, but when they're up, the tail's twitching, the ears are up. They're looking around, they're just looking for something to move or something to something's going on. They're curious. And I find that for me. When I am genuinely curious with a client, with a friend, it becomes about them and, and things. I learn all kinds of stuff and, things get better. Yeah.

Debby 30:36

That's great. Thank you again, Steve, for being here today, we, we appreciate the stories and, and all the insight. And if you wanna stay connected with coaches three, cuz we're up to some really good stuff. Kevin, how can our, audience stay connected to us?

Kevin 30:52

Well, one of the things we would love for people to do is to go to Facebook and follow our Facebook page coaches three. Please go out and share and tell your friends and like the things we put out there we're on Facebook and we want you to join us in our Facebook page. And also we have other podcasts out there. We love you to tune in wherever you listen to podcasts. We can be found on all the major podcasts platforms. So please go out, listen to our podcast. And again, please share it with your friends, your colleagues, your coworkers, other leaders who wanna be coaches. We love for you to spread the news that we have out there. And so please check us out on Facebook and listen to our podcast. And

JoAnn 31:36

we have a book coming out, so be watching for it.

Debby 31:40

Soon, hopefully. Right. the world coaching coming soon to a bookstore near you. So Steve and Kevin and JoAnn, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure being shoulder to shoulder with you all tonight, moving forward. Yeah. Good stuff. I know our leaders are gonna take a lot from this and you audience for, for listening to our podcast and until the next that's the Word on Coaching..