Employing Differences

Employing Differences, Episode 207: Is this a safe space?

Karen Gimnig & Paul Tevis

"It's very difficult for me to assess for other people, 'Is this a space where it is safe for them to take risks?' Because they may have very different risk profiles and very different things that make things dangerous. And they may have much more severe consequences that could hit them as a result of things that they bring up. And so I think that I can say that I feel safe in this space, but I don't think I can ever say that for anybody else."

Karen & Paul discuss risks, consequences, and safety in group discussions.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:10] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:11] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:13] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, is this a safe space?

[00:0020] Karen: So this term safe space comes up a lot, and I most often hear it in the frame of someone asserting, this is a safe space. And right away, I start to ask myself, is that true? And what does it mean that that person said it? Because in general, the person who will say that is a person who, whether formally or informally, has more than the average amount of power in the room.

[00:00:56] Karen: So it could be they're the boss or the manager or the principal of the company or something like that. It could be that they are an outspoken person who often sways a group in a less formal hierarchy situation. But that actually, very often, that is the person least likely to know whether it's true.

[00:01:14] Karen: And so we want to explore today about what does it mean for there to be a safe space? And how do you know if that's true? And maybe even a little bit about how you might make it true and the limits on whether you can. 

[00:01:29] Paul: Yes, when I hear someone say, well, this is a safe space, that to me, I always read it as an announcement of an intention, like they're actually saying, I would like it if this were a safe space and also that they're unlikely to recognize that it isn't, that the belief that they can simply declare that it is or or having observed things, you know, be able to say, I've determined that this is a safe space is almost never true, right? That if I because what I can say is, for me, this is a safe space because I can do that assessment, but I can't necessarily assess it for other people. And so that's why I think that announcement, you know, isn't particularly useful and in fact, is sometimes a really dangerous sign, because to me, it's sometimes a sign that this person saying this so doesn't understand the situation that they believe that that statement would be useful.

[00:02:27] Paul: And in my experience, it's not. I do want to be clear about where I generally hear that and what, what, I what I think people mean by it. Like when we talk about safety in this context and the way I tend to approach it, you know, there's been a lot in the in the in the literature and in the Zeitgeist recently about the idea of particularly psychological safety, the idea that a space is safe for interpersonal risk taking, that we can share ideas, that we can admit mistakes without fear of repercussions, right, that we can honestly talk about, that we can be candid about what is going on without having to worry about what will happen to us if we say what we're noticing, what we're seeing, what we're experiencing, that the idea is and a lot of organizations sort of rightly understand this, that like we need spaces like that where people can speak up, where they can have voice, where they can say the things that maybe are hard to hear, because that's how organizations learn, how we get better, how we improve.

[00:03:28] Paul: And, and I think that and people want that. But, but I can assess whether or not this space for me is one in which I feel not comfortable, but safe to to take those interpersonal risks, to say things that might be hard for, for other people to hear, because I think there won't be repercussions for me. But it's very difficult for me to to assess for other people.

[00:03:55] Paul: Is this a space where it is safe for them to take risks? Because they may have very different risk profiles and very different things that make things dangerous. And they may have much more severe consequences that could hit them as a result of things that they bring up. And so I think that I can announce, I can say that I feel safe in this space, but I don't think I can ever say that for anybody else.

[00:04:19] Karen: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And, and I think this is a lot of what you were just saying in slightly different words, but I think that very often when a person with some authority says this is a safe space, what they mean is I want to from my position of authority, I want to assure you that nothing that you say here is going to get you fired or show up in your annual review or be marked against you somehow in your career or your professional life here in this company. And I think they mean it. 

[00:04:54] Karen: And I think it's very likely the case that if somebody said something hurtful in that meeting or whatever it was, that, that person of authority who had declared it a safe space would very diligently make sure that thing didn't ever show up or have an immediate reaction. The difficulty is that they're thinking of what they can control, which is the actual formal action that they might take about that person related to a thing that they said in this safe space, so to speak, this next hour or whatever, however it's defined. What they aren't thinking about is what's very real for anybody else in the room, which is what I say here will have a lasting impact on my relationships.

[00:05:44] Karen: It is guaranteed to have a lasting impact on how I engage with other people and what people think of me, because as much as we can say, okay, we want this to be a place where everybody can just say things and we and we say it's okay to say anything and you won't be judged for that. In fact, if you say something that's hurtful or that's shocking or that, you know, if I said, for example, I don't actually believe in this project we're working on, like I'll keep working on it, but I don't actually believe in it. Nobody in the room is going to forget that I said that.

[00:06:18] Karen: And so then when I have a sick cat and I show up for work late tomorrow, they're going to be thinking, well, yeah, because she doesn't really care about this project. There's just no way to disconnect that. And so and we know that, like as humans, we know that deeply within us. 

[00:06:38] Karen: And so the you promise not to formally take action against me based on anything that I've said in the next hour doesn't make me safe. 

[00:06:46] Paul: I think that distinction between formal and informal consequences is, is important because you're right there. There might not be formal consequences, but they're always informal consequences to anything we do. The question then becomes, like, what's the impact of those consequences? Like, absolutely. If I say this thing, that's going to impact my relationships with other people. And then what, what comes of that? What, what how does that turn out? And so I think oftentimes rather than because I, I get the intention of the of the person in charge to want to to create safety, to make it safer.

[00: 07:28] Paul: Right. What they're really wanting to do. I think they're really useful way to think about this is how can we increase the level of safety, not how can we make it perfectly safe? Because it never will be sort of as you as you point out. But how do we assess, like, where are we right now? Maybe we don't even assess where we are right now. What are just things that we can do that will in general help people to feel legitimately safer so that more stuff that is relevant to what we need to do comes out than would otherwise. And so announcing that this is safe is not useful.

[00:08:05] Paul: Instead, I think it's useful to think about what are things that that person in charge could actually do to increase the degree of safety in the room to get it to the point where it needs to be for the work that the group needs to do together. 

[00:08:19] Karen: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And I think a lot of the things that we can do to make a space safer are somewhat counterintuitive. Because we tend to think that as a person in authority, I should act like a person in authority and I should hold myself in a certain way and show up in a certain way. And the things that actually make people feel safer are about letting all of that go, like, letting down a lot of that. So one of the things that I'll point to right away is to give agency. 

[00:08:23] Karen: So I can ask a question, but I have to be careful that everybody has an option not to answer it. Right. I can frame this is a thing I'd like us to be sharing about.

And you have the agency to say you can share or you cannot share or whatever that is. Another piece that comes up right away is to do my own vulnerability work. So we talked a bit about this in the last episode 206, but that piece about I'm interested in this information because and this is how I'm going to use it. And this isn't a trap to catch you at something. This is, you know, we need this information for this reason or we're interested in it for this reason. And the reason could be emotional. It could be structural. It could be strategic in some way. But that kind of thing.

[00:09:41] Karen: And then I think the vulnerable sharing, if the people who have authority can say, I'm scared about this or, you know, I'm whatever the thing is that probably feels weak, probably feels vulnerable, probably feels like, you know, something that somebody could capitalize on later if they wanted to. If we model that, then we're saying this is a space where we can do that and people are more likely to. 

[00:10:10] Paul:  Yeah, I want to point back at all of that and slightly invert the order, which is the thing that you can do is model the behavior that you want, which is vulnerability and transparency and curiosity. Right. All of these things that, you know, that being curious about being interrogating things like that, you can you have to model that because you are formally the safest person in the room. And so if you're not doing that, no one else is going to believe that they could do it.

[00:10:40] Paul: And to get to your point about agency, you can't demand that anybody else in the room do it. You have to. And so the idea of we're going to go around, everyone's going to have an opportunity to share and anyone can pass for any reason. What that allows people to do is to gauge what they feel comfortable disclosing, what they and if they feel comfortable and safe to do any of those things. So you're not putting them on the spot. As a manager, it's very easy to say, like, well, I was vulnerable about this, so they should be right. 

[00:11:16] Paul: The tit-for-tat reciprocity thing. And that, as it turns out, makes it feel less safe. And it can also feel a bit like if I don't have that out, right, if I haven't been told like you aren't going to need to, to share, then when my manager says these things, when the person in charge, you know, kind of discloses this stuff, I'm going, “Oh, no. Are they going to expect me to do that?” Because I don't think that's going to work for me. 

[00:11:41] Paul: And so the modeling and the vulnerability and transparency is really important. And that piece of letting people gauge their own degree of self-disclosure, of saying things or not, giving people that control and that agency contributes to safety. And then sometimes because I've been given that, I now feel safe enough to actually say the thing that I wouldn't have otherwise. Right. That I would have avoided it if I thought, you know, if you didn't tell me I could pass, I would totally avoid.

[00:12:15] Paul: But now that I know actually I get to opt in or out, maybe it is useful for me to do. It's this weird paradox of giving people that giving people control over their own disclosures makes it more likely that they're actually going to say the things that they don't feel comfortable saying, but they now feel safe to say. Yeah.

[00:12:36] Karen: And I want to just give a couple of more very practical things that can help. One, which might be a self-serving advice on our parts for me to say this, but bringing in an outside facilitator so that the person in charge of the space is not a person who has ongoing authority or control can be hugely helpful. And also if you're bringing in an outside facilitator, you can hire someone who's particularly skilled at creating safer spaces.

[00: 13:05] Karen: So there's lots of stuff that Paul and I do when we come into client situations that probably helps with that. And one of those things that I think I bring, and I expect Paul, you probably do too, is an appreciation and even tolerance for silence to say, "Hey, this is an opportunity to share who'd like to, and then wait." And let people think and get their courage up and contemplate and just let there be some space there.

[00:13:35] Karen: There's a tendency to just sort of jump in and jump in and jump in. And people who might've been on the verge of saying something, if there was enough space, don't, because the amount of space that they needed to be ready was never there. And often the people who are jumping into the silence are the people who hold the most power already. I mean, that's a dynamic we see a lot. So just that use of silence and the comfort with silence and the willingness to sit with it and wait to see what shows up when there's plenty of space can make a big difference. 

[00:14:11] Paul: It really can. To track where we've been today, we're talking about this idea of creating a safe space, right? And the announcement at the beginning that something is a safe space is rarely useful and often a really bad sign, in fact. That when we're talking about safety, we're talking about a space where people can take risks interpersonally, right? Where they can speak to mistakes that have been made, where they can speak to problems that have never been pointed out, where they can point out things that may be hard to talk about, that they're worried there might be consequences for bringing those things up. Because organizations and teams need those things in order to learn and to get better, which is why we want to create a space where we can be candid about those things so that we can learn and move forward.

 [00:15:00] Paul: But recognizing that there is never going to be a perfectly safe space, right? There are always consequences to saying a thing in a group. Those consequences, there may not be formal consequences. And the person in charge who announces that this is a safe space might be completely honest about the fact that there are no formal consequences. No, it's not going on anyone's permanent record. No one's going to get fired as long as we stay on topic. But that there will always be informal consequences within a group for anything that we say. People will perceive us differently. Their relationships are going to change somehow. And so safety is always a personal question.

 [00:15:40] Paul: Do I feel safe enough to say this thing? Am I convinced that the consequences of me saying this aren't going to be so dire that it doesn't make sense for me to say it at all? And that the idea that since there's never going to be a perfectly safe space, what we really want to be looking at is how can we make the space safer? How can we make it safe enough that the group can do the work that it needs to do? We don't want to go necessarily beyond that and go, well, this is a space where anybody can talk about anything, where there are no consequences. We're getting together to do something. We want to make it safe enough that people bring up the things that need to be brought up that they might not bring up otherwise.

 [00:16:18] Paul: So what are things that particularly as a person in charge we can do in order to elevate that level of safety? We've talked about a couple of things here. One of them is modeling the behaviors that we want, which is often around vulnerability and transparency, admitting our own mistakes, talking about errors that we have made, talking about our own feelings and frustrations, and then not demanding that from other people, but giving them the agency, giving them the ability to choose how they're going to contribute to gauge their own level of safety to say things and hope that we've done a good enough job raising the level that they're going to talk about the things that need to get talked about. 

[00:16:53] Paul: And that, of course, you can also bring in an outside facilitator who is usually someone who is very skilled in doing this, often skilled in disrupting the patterns that exist in hierarchy because they sit outside of it, it's much safer for them to confront the boss about their dominating behavior, because as I sometimes say, I come into a job already fired. 

[00:17:14] Paul: So it's safe for me to point out that this dynamic is not helpful, whereas it may not be at all safe for someone within the organization to point that out. And just recognizing that another thing that facilitators bring, if nothing else, is often a great tolerance and appreciation for silence, for allowing the space to unfold, for people to think through things, to go, you know what? This feels like a little bit of a risk, but it feels like the thing that I need to say would actually be welcomed.

[00:14:45] Paul:  Maybe the consequence that I'm making up in my head is just in my head, I'm willing to put this out into the space, because it actually feels like it's safe enough to do so.

[00:17:59] Karen: And that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:18:00] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis, and this has been Employing Differences.