Jo Wright & Stephan Wiedner: Psychological safety, empathy & interpersonal responsiveness

[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Jo Wright and this is the Coaching Culture podcast where we discuss how to make work better. Hello and welcome to the Coaching Culture podcast. Today I am joined by a fabulous guest, somebody who is an expert in psychological safety.

[00:00:29] I came across only recently and felt fascinated and drawn to interview on today's podcast because I think we have a lot in common. We have a passion for people, coaching conversations and how we can make the work better, how we can make work places better for organisations.

[00:00:45] But today the topic is Psychological Safety and I'm delighted to introduce Stephan Wiedner, Stephan. Hello, welcome to today's podcast. Jo, thank you for having me. I'm excited.

[00:01:00] And, and, Stephan, you're over in somewhere near Vancouver in Canada. So we've got our bit of a time delay on our last system but that's all it's morning to you and good afternoon to me.

[00:01:11] So we're on this, we've somehow found each other from across the, across the oceans, but here we are today to have a really good conversation.

[00:01:20] So, Stephan, well not only psychological safety you've just told me also focus very much on health and safety but we might get into that because I'm going to ask you more about yourself in your backstory.

[00:01:33] So for the listeners for their benefit they're interest tells a bit about yourself in your story because I think you've got a really interesting story to share. Well, I'll say what's first top of mind as because we were just talking about them.

[00:01:49] I'm a volunteer firefighter in my little local community so I live in a smaller community about 10 minutes out of a bigger city center and 15 minutes drive and we're about 2,000 people and so we have a volunteer department.

[00:02:03] We don't have a full time career department. So that's something I've taken on in the last, I think it's been about 7 years now.

[00:02:10] So that's one of the things I do and it's also a really interesting playground for me to look at psychological safety in that particular lens right because psychological safety is everywhere and in particular in an environment where there's life and death at risk.

[00:02:29] So we are when we're responding to calls we're mostly dealing with people's worst days and we have to operate as a team in a very high functioning high stress environment.

[00:02:44] That requires psychological safety and so it's a it's a fun little playground for me to see the dynamics and all the different players were a team of really different people we have women and men and old and young and a real variety of people from different professional backgrounds.

[00:03:02] And so I think it's really fascinating playground and I love this concept of psychological safety and how teams work together. It's always been a real interest to me. It started probably back in my university days.

[00:03:14] I studied business and commerce and the courses that I just loved the most were organizational behavior and Iocyke and these types of courses.

[00:03:25] I'm sure finance whatever accounting whatever marketing whatever the things that really got me going were discussions around team performance and organizational efficiency and you know this kind of stuff the softer stuff of business. I guess you can say.

[00:03:43] The softer stuff that doesn't often end up being soft at all does it's actually super powerful and I mean literally super powerful and unbelievably important and it seems that you know maybe it'd be really good to share further about who you are what you do.

[00:04:02] You've got a number of interest and a number of businesses and I know obviously today psychological safety but be lovely to understand a bit more about yourself and how you've seen how you've developed your interest in psychological safety because I know you've been part of research project projects.

[00:04:18] You've got a wealth of focus in this area and background in this area. So tell us more, tell us more. Sure, I'm a little bit modest so I don't love talking about myself but I'll share with the journey nonetheless as requested.

[00:04:35] So I started my first company in 2006 with my business partner Kurt and it's a coaching business and this is what now is newme.com. We started that company because myself I had hired a coach and was going into coaching and really curious about it.

[00:04:56] It seemed like a natural extension from all of my other interests around organizational behavior et cetera. So I go into that chosen field and then a friend of mine was visiting another friend of ours.

[00:05:11] So a mutual friend of ours Kurt and he was in London at the time because he was completing his MBA at Cambridge and he was writing up a business plan.

[00:05:20] He'd go to the park every day and sit there working on some business plan and then our friend, our mutual friend Jenny visited him while she was touring through Europe.

[00:05:29] And she's like, what are you writing your business plan on? Oh, I'm that's e-coaching. I'm writing a business plan about e-coaching.

[00:05:37] I'm going to put coaching online figure that out somehow. So she gets home and tells me about it and says well you should talk to Kurt and Kurt and I were we were friends but we're like mostly we had mutual friends like we weren't that close.

[00:05:52] But we knew of each other for sure. And so we had a conversation then next thing you know we're starting up this business together and then that rolled into new me.com and we have now a network of thousands of coaches all over the world and we're delivering coaching in organizations and yeah it's a great work I love it.

[00:06:12] And so around 2019 is when I first got introduced to the concept of psychological safety and I really glummed onto it right away because in part of our work around coaching I wanted to demonstrate the efficacy and the ROI of coaching.

[00:06:30] And even though we were really bought into coaching there's this healthy skepticism that we have like does it work? Why does it work? How does it work? You know there's a real curiosity there.

[00:06:45] And we wanted to be able to measure and demonstrate the effectiveness of it to potential clients. And that's when psychological safety came in because I realized oh this is what we're trying to achieve when I read about it learn the definition of like pretty much every leader we talk to.

[00:07:04] This trying to build psychological safety I'd never heard that term before but it's pretty much what they're trying to do. And so this is great now I get to measure it before and after.

[00:07:14] And so that was the the initial seed and it's blossomed beyond that because what we realize is sure coaching can help facilitate and foster psychological safety but there's so much more there.

[00:07:29] There's so many other ways and this concept is so much bigger than 101 coaching in my mind. So that's how it's really blossomed and now we're measuring psychological safety and organizations and doing a variety different things to try to boost psychological safety within organizations.

[00:07:51] Now like you said so back in 2019 was when you first came aware of the term. How would you describe psychological safety? So what you know somebody sat on in I'm going to I think I know what that means I've got a few ideas what would your definition be so that it's really simple for people to understand exactly what it is.

[00:08:11] Yeah. So our definition the one that we use in our training to support leaders and facilitating and fostering psychological safety is it is.

[00:08:22] The environment where everyone has the courage to speak up. Yeah and the confidence to know they'll be hurt. So we repeat this over and over again and that both both have so really important I think often we think of it is just a speak up culture so that first part like the courage to speak up.

[00:08:42] And I don't think that's enough because if you look at say people that are protesting.

[00:08:48] Do they have that second half sure they have the courage to speak up they're saying we want this we want that but do they have the confidence that they're being hurt and appreciated and understood.

[00:09:02] And so that's the second half of our definition of psychological safety which I think is fairly actionable.

[00:09:12] I would also feel somewhat remiss if I didn't mention the other definition the more I guess clinical definition I don't know if clinical is the right word but academic definition by Amy Amonson so she's the individual that is really doing leading this the research and she's the thought leader in this space.

[00:09:32] And her definition is that psychological safety is a belief that within your team or your work environment you can speak up you can say what's on your mind.

[00:09:42] And you can do all of this without the fear of reprimand without the fear of some sort of negative social consequence so those social consequences might be you get fired. Which is not that is true that is a consequence that we often think about but as humans.

[00:10:03] A consequence we're probably all thinking about more if not consciously it's certainly happening subconsciously is we're worried about things like well I don't want to be that person that speaks up and asks a stupid question then people think I'm not knowledgeable.

[00:10:19] So when you are mentioning gel they the you know not wanting to ask a stupid question and proficing your question with a statement that it's not a stupid question.

[00:10:29] It makes me wonder where did that come from like why why why did you feel the need to profess your question as such. Oh great question. I'm getting coaching coaching on my own coaching culture podcast.

[00:10:45] I can looking back I can only imagine it was lack of confidence from my perspective and whether other people had been shouted down when they'd asked other questions in the past. I can't remember I don't ever remember feeling that the environment wasn't safe.

[00:11:03] I remember feeling that I was personally wasn't confident in myself. I think it was more about me than the environment. Yeah so I think what that's pointing to is that we're all different. Yeah and your experience of psychological safety is going to be different.

[00:11:22] And I do believe that even though you're attributing your sense of psychological safety is something kind of internally. I suspect there are some environments where you felt a lot more safe than others which we also find so within an organization for example many people are in multiple teams.

[00:11:41] Right and I think the most common scenario is you have a team manager who is a team they have their own team right they have a set of folks that are their direct reports.

[00:11:52] And they also are part of say a management team so where they have a bunch of colleagues and peers that are also managers and they report to their their boss or supervisor who ever that is.

[00:12:04] And so you might feel psychologically safe within your own team and not so much within upper management team for example or maybe it's the other way around.

[00:12:14] I also know there's some managers that don't feel that psychologically safe within their own team because they feel like well because I'm in a position of power have to be particularly mindful of what I say and I tend to have.

[00:12:26] But you know a wicked sense of humor and I know I can make comments that are hurtful even though they're not intended that way but it just might sense of humor and so now is a manager I need to be super mindful of it.

[00:12:39] And so they don't necessarily feel as psychologically safe. So it's really an interesting dynamic and you really have to explore every individual and every work environment and try to ask the question what's underlying your your sense of psychological safety here.

[00:12:54] And what are the things that your researchers found that's there. What what you know what would you say or the key pointers towards that because you just highlighted there that you may feel different in different teams and I can visualize that myself.

[00:13:08] You may have humor but you've got to understand what somebody else takes as human may not be funny to them. So there's lots of different dynamics here in I mean what you talking again as well is it's human behavior isn't it in human behavior and dynamics when people come together in a group so what are the things that you're finding that are the sort of.

[00:13:29] Well there's the research and then there's the you know anecdotal evidence and observation and then there's a research study that we're actually doing so I'll tell you about some of the research that we're looking at that's really kind of driving some of.

[00:13:46] The lens through which we're looking at psychological safety and it goes back to the research being done in counseling and it seems like why you looking at. That's weird. What is counseling have to do with business but I'll tell you why.

[00:14:01] So in counseling what we know about counseling is that you have two people typically are unless there's group counseling you have two people in a room and the counselors helping the other individual.

[00:14:11] They're facilitating outcomes right if I'm the counselor and you're the the client then I want to help you get better outcomes and and a team environment in an organization as the leader my job is to.

[00:14:26] You have a collection of people and I'm trying to get better results for for the group for the organization for each of those individuals.

[00:14:35] And so I think that skills that are required there's got to be some parallel there and so when we look at the research that's being done in counseling.

[00:14:45] There's really good researchers that have asked that question like what makes an effective counselor and when you look at all the different types of counselors that are out there because there's a whole bunch of different ones with different.

[00:14:57] Philosophical backgrounds and methodologies that they've trained under and there's always good ones and bad ones no matter what type of counselor you're looking at there's always good ones and bad ones right so what's common among all the good ones.

[00:15:09] They've identified these things called common factors or it's basically their interpersonal skills and a very clever researcher by the name of Tim Anderson developed an assessment to measure these interpersonal skills.

[00:15:22] And at the core of these interpersonal skills we believe is number one empathy and number two interpersonal responsiveness.

[00:15:33] This is the really critical component. So yes, we always want to start with empathy because if you're going to lead a team you need to be able to be willing to put yourself in the other people's shoes to sort of understand and look at the world through their eyes.

[00:15:46] And then you can do that the more you can adapt to their needs and desires.

[00:15:52] And then the second thing is interpersonal responsiveness noticing that and what is that it's the awareness when there's some sort of a rupture not necessarily between you and someone else but maybe between team members and being able to approach it like hey I'm noticing something going on here and being able to do so in a way that.

[00:16:14] So that opens the dialogue as opposed to shuts it down. And so what we're currently doing then is we've developed our own performance based assessment to measure these same interpersonal skills but in a manager as opposed to counselor.

[00:16:31] And then we're in the study which we just got approval by the ethics board. So that's like literally as a week on Monday we got approval by the ethics board that we can move forward with this study as designed.

[00:16:46] And then we're going to be measuring the interpersonal skills of a manager and then correlating that with their team sense of psychological safety. So we're going to have their teams assess psychological safety and we're going to have the managers assess their interpersonal skills.

[00:16:59] We're going to see if there's a correlation there and we know that in counseling those interpersonal skills are predictive of client outcomes. And so our hypothesis is that there is going to be a correlation between interpersonal skills and the sense of psychological safety felt by the team.

[00:17:20] Now I mean, I talked to a lot of people about this and. In fact one of our research sites the learning and development manager there says, well, duh like so obvious do we even have to measure it? Well, I think we do have to measure it.

[00:17:35] And we know that a manager and a leader like the team leader hasn't outsized influence on psychological safety. We do know that from previous research.

[00:17:46] And yet we don't know how much because one other hypothesis is that it's not the level of interpersonal skills of the manager that's really driving the overall psychological safety but instead the lowest wrong on the ladder if you will.

[00:18:03] We all probably familiar if you know that one bad apple in the team and you have that one person was really challenging everything just kind of shuts down is maybe it's maybe that's the more driving factor is the lowest.

[00:18:18] And we're going to run on the ladder if you will don't know I mean these are all really good hypotheses and that's why there are there questions that we can answer and get answers with.

[00:18:29] And I envision, I think in terms of what you described in so it's a kind of measuring it sounds fantastic as does a fantastic support for organizations.

[00:18:39] We all know that the successful organizations have got psychologically safe teams operating within them and you know they foster a fabulous culture of belonging for people and all the great things that you would expect.

[00:18:51] But it's interesting what you've just said about that one bad apple or that one person who's kind of throwing things in that may not be helping the team then it'd be really interesting to understand kind of what's going on with them.

[00:19:04] You know what's causing them to behave like that what's going on for them and that's where I suppose the coaching conversations can help you know actually really understand what's going on for this person because then and this is where feedback comes in and goes back to your empathy understanding what's going on for them at this moment in time because.

[00:19:24] Anything could be happening couldn't they for them you know they may not be about apple at all but they may be being disruptive or causing challenges because of something outside of work whatever it may be so this sounds a fascinating subject and I've really interested to hear how you get on with all of this and.

[00:19:42] Whoever laughed at you and said it's obvious I think it's really fabulous piece of work that hasn't been done before so that's the case and it's like you will know this but we're now proving this.

[00:19:55] More specific or we're attempting to anyway we're attempting and I think what's what's really what I'm most excited by by this research is is really the assessment. Assessing interpersonal skills and I think it.

[00:20:11] I mean we're just standing on the shoulders of giants right the previous researcher to Madison what he did is he they identified challenging moments in counseling.

[00:20:21] And then they had actors act out that scenario and then they showed those to counselors and said the instructions were fairly basic it just said watch this clip of an actual session of what someone might say in a in a counseling session and then respond in the way that you feel is most appropriate.

[00:20:43] And they recorded those responses and then they codified the responses so ahead of collecting those responses they said okay here's what we're going to look forward here's sort of five out of five looks forward looks like and here's what one out of five looks like.

[00:20:56] Human coders and they had high levels of interrate or reliability so they made sure everybody's trained looking for the same thing etc etc. And and that is a performance based.

[00:21:08] Assessment unlike you know a self report and because interestingly when they assess those interpersonal skills they also use the SSI which is an assessment for basically empathy.

[00:21:20] Because they thought well the core of this is empathy we really think it's empathy so then they ask folks how empathetic are you basically in the assessment and the the empathy scores did not correlate with outcomes whereas the performance based assessment scores did.

[00:21:38] So how someone reacted to these stimulus clips was different from how they said they would basically. Which is not surprising right like everyone if you ask someone to fill out an assessment about how empathetic they are I know what the right answer is.

[00:21:56] And so I think that's a really clever form of thin slicing and what's interesting about is these clips remember they're the hard ones because it's easy to be a good manager.

[00:22:10] When everyone gets along we're hitting our numbers you know things aren't too challenging it's when you start to have interpersonal conflict when you're not always in agreement maybe you have external pressure right there's.

[00:22:22] And you know what you're doing and you're doing it or something other while in crazy how then do you do manage the team and can you rise to the occasion so what we are do is we have these engineered scenarios that are really challenging and we see how people respond.

[00:22:35] And the idea being those who can rise to the occasion in this simulated engineered environment are the ones that by and large are going to be better performing as managers in the long run.

[00:22:48] Wow, so it's a predictive tool related to see how you know as a as a manager this person is going to perform that is really really fascinating and wow that sounds like gold or spare because. So there's a lot of recruitment challenges.

[00:23:06] I mean, I'm guessing therefore it's just a moment in time because actually things may change for that human being as well or the managers that things may change along the way.

[00:23:17] That's right because because it's a performance based task it's not like personality which is tends to be relatively fixed. And what I mean this is the first study where we're looking at correlation.

[00:23:33] And if we can fast forward a few years will eventually if we can provide some results there that are meaningful where there is a correlation there then the next real phases to look at causation.

[00:23:46] And you do causation by saying, can we boost one side and then effectively boost the other right can we boost interpersonal skills and therefore boost psychological safety that's a lot harder of a study to conduct and it's an open question still like can we in fact boost these interpersonal skills.

[00:24:06] And the belief is yes and there's a lot of momentum in the counseling world to support. That these interpersonal skills as being skills that can be improved with practice and to what extent are you know that's still an open question like we need to answer that.

[00:24:24] We need to talk don't wait in there in two or three years time and I'll say come on then Stefan show is the results what's going on. Because this sounds fascinating it really really does.

[00:24:36] And actually having that sort of hard evidence that kind of absolute proof this is what we think we feel but let's prove it.

[00:24:45] I can't get away from the words emotionally intelligence popping into my head right now because you keep talking empathy and interpersonal skills and when I in my own mind when I wrap those two together I'm thinking people who are emotionally intelligence.

[00:25:01] Have I thrown in a curveball saying that or do you like to keep them all very separate. Oh, I definitely think there is there's something relevant there. You know one thing we could potentially do too. Which would be perhaps an easier study of once.

[00:25:20] Is you could measure the interpersonal skills of the individual and then measure their EQ scores. Yeah, yeah actually those things correlate or they wildly off like we know that.

[00:25:34] The interpersonal skills and the SSI didn't correlate that strongly that's a side being basically a measure of empathy a self report measure of empathy.

[00:25:44] And so those didn't intersect and so I'd be curious yeah to what extent the those interpersonal skills the ones that we're measuring and looking for do they correlate with motion intelligence.

[00:25:56] Wow, that's a great question or any other you know it'd be interesting to look at there's various other assessments like the leadership circle or whatever you know we can get a number of these assessments and look at how these two findings correlate if at all I don't know.

[00:26:15] This is fascinating stuff and and I think it's brilliant that that you know people like self looking into this to really start putting some hard evidence behind like you said before the soft skills when actually they're not really you know they're super powerful.

[00:26:30] They say the powerful soft skills and and that's the point that the truth behind it. Yeah, and not even super like I'd say yeah sure they're their soft skills and they're super powers.

[00:26:41] I would say that they're also measurable right that that's the beauty like because we can measure them and we can train people to look for these skills they know what to look for.

[00:26:51] Then we can train people in being able to improve them that's our philosophy that's our approach because you know it's it's similar to think of sports I'm a hockey fan and. I used to watch hockey when I was a kid and I coached my son's hockey and.

[00:27:08] And now watching the pro game it's amazing and I think this is probably true for almost all sports where the quality of players now compared to 23 years ago.

[00:27:19] It's it's night in day like if you took a protein today and played against the best team 30 years ago it wouldn't even be a contest.

[00:27:29] Not even a contest because we know so much more about psychology perform what's driving high performance all the ingredients I guess that's both it's all that is.

[00:27:42] Yeah I think you're right we know a lot more now I think the part that's really moving at the needle is I see it on that like at this skill level with the kids is the level of coaching that we're receiving is fascinating where we're taking this.

[00:27:58] Like for me growing up as a kid it was sort of like all right let's do some skating you know warm up all right let's skim it you know everything was just let's just skim it you know let's get into a basically simulated game and use some skills whatever you think is.

[00:28:14] And now it's like you got all these very specific skating drills and then specific passing drills and the point is we're taking all of the skills that you use in a game and breaking them down.

[00:28:26] And that's what sports does really really well okay we're going to work on skating we're going to work on skating forwards we're going to work on passing passing on the move passing malskating backwards you know you break down all of these skills and you work on them independently.

[00:28:41] And then what do you do in a game and again that's where you have to dynamically determine what skills do I use now and you're just you're sort of responding in these micro fractional decision making process that we have and the best athletes can make those micro decisions like.

[00:28:57] Instantly and they see the game better than all the other players and so they're responding in the smartest way possible in that very moment.

[00:29:04] And but they've practiced those skills so much that they don't have to think about executing the skills like they're not thinking about how I'm skating or how I'm moving my body they're just going to move their body naturally because it's now muscle memory so.

[00:29:19] We're trying to do that same thing so we just think of soft skills as like soft skills again into a game and just just talk I guess say stuff. And we're we're recognizing that we can break that down we can okay what are you doing for example.

[00:29:36] One of the skills one of the very first skills we teach is reflecting content what is reflecting content mean someone says something you paraphrase back what they just said try to use slightly different words.

[00:29:47] So you're not parading what they're saying and if they speak for one minute try to keep your response to 30 20 seconds right if they speak for a minute and you speak for two you're not paraphrasing you're not you're not reflecting content you're adding more to it.

[00:30:05] So and we do that all the time. And yet often we will do it poorly.

[00:30:13] And so that's just one skill and we start with that one then we go to reflecting feeling what is that well if someone's communicating to you there's some sort of emotion there so just reflect back to them oh I see you're struggling with this and that.

[00:30:28] I can tell there's probably some frustration there they get that right. Right that's reflecting feelings and and maybe I get it wrong and you say no it's not really frustration I just feel kind of sad feel kind of bound about it. Oh okay perfect it's moving.

[00:30:44] So now so that's what we're really trying to do is take all of the skills that were. Intuitively using all the time and sharpen them up and make them really explicit so people can practice those skills and then in a game they're.

[00:30:56] And then in a game they're using them. Game being you know real life situation which we're in all the time. Well number three you said you working on three things you got reflecting content reflecting feeling.

[00:31:08] Oh well the third one the third skill I mean there's number there's quite a few skills that we practice but the third one along those veins along that vein of content feeling the third is process reflecting.

[00:31:19] This is the one that I think is like this is like the superpower for leaders to be honest.

[00:31:25] Yeah okay so reflecting content pre-basic reflecting feeling that's a little tougher right especially for people if they're thinking well jepers as a leader I don't want to be a therapist you know I don't want to be have my direct reports.

[00:31:41] Put their head on my shoulder and talk to me for an hour well we're not saying that right we're not saying you need to become a therapist or counselor.

[00:31:50] And then you know that emotions there all the time good and bad right oh wow see you're really proud of your work yeah I am high five right it just allows you to name what's in the room.

[00:32:01] Makes people feel understood and appreciated that's that second half right the curse being the confidence know you be heard so reflecting content and feeling has people feel heard appreciated understood. And then reflecting process what is that that is where as a leader.

[00:32:22] Often you ever get that feeling you're in a meeting and it's just kind of stuck you're going around and around.

[00:32:28] Yeah like we're not oh my goodness this is not going anywhere so reflecting process allows you to step outside of the meeting and kind of look at it from the grandstands if you will.

[00:32:43] And that's what we call taking on the bystander role and as the bystander role you're adding perspective so you might say.

[00:32:51] Gosh I'm noticing that we're this meeting for the last 20 minutes has felt absolutely draining and it feels like we're not getting anywhere feels really stuck how can we move forward here. So notice how I just reflected process I reflected what's happening on the field.

[00:33:12] Because often what happens is people are just sort of stuck in it and maybe they're noticing it but they're not saying anything about it and so this stuff is just kind of perpetuates.

[00:33:22] And so as a leader it's really effective to have that mindfulness to step back and just reflect back what you're noticing not because you're going to fix it you know not like you have all the answers but instead you're just going to shine a light on it.

[00:33:37] Because I think that's what holds a lot of leaders back is they don't know how to resolve it or they'll just say okay that's it I've heard enough let's move on that's not necessarily an effective solution either.

[00:33:49] So what we want to really encourage leaders to do is embrace that bystand perspective and just reflect what they're noticing and let the team figure it out right like empower the team to kind of go oh yeah we are kind of stuck.

[00:34:05] Hmm what's going on here right it's allowing them to sort of process what's happening that's why we call it reflecting process. And I'm listening to this and thinking this is absolutely fabulous stuff and I can't get away from thinking this is describing somebody who's great at coaching.

[00:34:23] Power of raising you know reflecting feel absorbing and understanding someone's feelings and then also you know being able to.

[00:34:32] Take a different perspective and looking on something and kind of team coach the way through like said let the team come up with the answers it feels like there's a a cope definitely approaching undertone here in terms of.

[00:34:46] And let's not just see coaching and everything maybe I do I'm coaching undertone in in the terms of having those skills to listen and reflect back and and observe and look around and just not be so.

[00:35:04] In the detail of that moment actually been able to take that step back I'm kind of hearing these are these are really important skills for absolutely for leaders of teams you know and just getting the best out of people and groups so I totally that's my that's what I'm hearing but I don't know and I've got this sort of absolute coaching bias I probably probably.

[00:35:25] But it's definitely some similarities here definitely some similarities in you know how that can help to people opening open and being heard because they're being you're having the words reflected back.

[00:35:39] But yeah, they have self reflected on myself have a got coaching bias probably but I do see that's a really good thing Joe you're right I think a lot of this points towards. The coach approach to.

[00:35:57] Facilitating outcomes with the team absolutely but it's interesting to what you said about counselors and kind of the is obviously the spectrum of kind of different skills. But actually having that level of empathy towards reaching an outcome as well I tell us what's kind of.

[00:36:14] Plain in my mind here a little bit what about those team leaders so senior leaders who don't have the interpersonal skills. Who are already so far up the organizational tree.

[00:36:27] They've missed any of your assessments or measurements along the way and actually they say then they just not there. That they have because we have those leaders who are creating. The environment that aren't psychologically safe.

[00:36:43] Crank you probably so can another total kind of worms really when we were probably going to start wrapping it up. I wonder whether we should have Joe and Stefan part two what happens when it's not psychologically safe what's got what goes wrong what are the indicators.

[00:36:58] I don't know. I'd love to hear. Yeah, that points to I'd say our bias here in terms of how we want to improve psychological safety because I think. You know we certainly see.

[00:37:13] A brace of leaders or sometimes they're referred to as toxic leaders right there exists they're out there in organizations and there's all sorts of harm and damage. They're even beyond you know reduce psychological safety.

[00:37:29] I think some people feel that you know harassed and various forms of harm in the workplace and that's awful I obviously don't want that.

[00:37:38] And what we noticed because we've had a number of coaching engagements of this nature where we're working with leaders that are quote of quote toxic or quote of brace of I prefer the word abrasive over toxic because toxic kind of implies.

[00:37:54] Well, your toxic you have a place to do kind of thing and that's that's that whereas abrasive is a little softer because what we know about a brace of leaders is I might be abrasive for some people but not everybody.

[00:38:08] You know it's not a quality that is solely on me. And so being less abrasive is something you can work on improve whereas I guess toxic feels a little bit more like it's just part of you so you have to work around it or something.

[00:38:26] So it's a little bit of a it is semantics and philosophical but nonetheless what we notice with most abrasive leaders not at all but most is that they don't intend to be hurtful or harmful.

[00:38:41] It's just you know it's the way they've been socialized it's the way they've been taught it's the way they think they need to be operating and they're not aware.

[00:38:53] So I'd say they lack awareness around the impact that they're having and so we need to shine a big bright light on the impact that they're having and then give them tools to help.

[00:39:05] Change their behavior change how they interact with one another and some of that is skills and some of that is just you know having a new mindset around what it needs to be a leader.

[00:39:14] Because often what we see with a lot of leaders is they think well because I've been promoted I've been promoted because I'm really good on my job and I know my technically proficient and as a leader I need to have all the answers.

[00:39:27] I'm on the smartest person in the room and I need to make sure everybody knows that. Oh, what do you make to need the thing right there?

[00:39:35] Yeah, right that's like well that's not exactly correct that is not necessarily the best approach for being a leader it's not to have all the answers.

[00:39:46] And that's where you know that points to another issue we see around psychological safety is that leaders feel like oh well if I'm going to ask my people and be curious and ask them all these questions so that they're speaking up.

[00:39:59] They fear that they have to agree with them. And that's not the case either we're not saying you need to agree you need to understand.

[00:40:08] Yeah, because if we can understand one another then we can work around the problem or whatever you know barriers might be there it's like oh I get up oh I understand now I get it you know that sensation of oh I see where you're coming from oh now I now we can come up with a much better answer or better solution that's not maybe compromising right whereas.

[00:40:31] If you're not necessarily understanding one another maybe there's a compromise where both people parties feel a little bit like I'm not getting exactly what it want. Whereas if you can see neutral understanding now we can come up with a third option that no one else considered before.

[00:40:48] It's fascinating and I think this is this topic I think at least things here I could have I could have this conversation for hours an hour as because it's such a fascinating fabulous topic you know organization people behaviours you know what what's happening out there.

[00:41:05] But I suppose if we were you know the things I'm hearing from yourself are you know we're all different so let's acknowledge that you definitely telling you we're all different and therefore what one person perceives as one thing another person wouldn't so we've got to be aware and mindful that you know we're dealing with lots of individuals here.

[00:41:23] And actually you know raising self awareness is really important so actually you know.

[00:41:29] However, you're going to get that through feedback it's probably the best way is actually let other people tell you that the impact that you're having on them and actually help people raise their own self awareness.

[00:41:41] And actually having those that the ability to understand others empathise and meet on some sort of or recognize that you've got to meet on that mutual ground to move forward in a group or a team environment.

[00:41:58] And actually just that even talking about psychological safety I think is a really is really powerful and I think you know it's the topic that's been resonating for a number of years but actually it's growing and growing and growing in the work that you're doing in the research sounds like it's really going to unlock some.

[00:42:12] Some nuggets all I certainly hope it will then we speak again in two or three years as they're fun to understand where you get to with all of that because that does sound really, really interesting.

[00:42:22] Clearly I don't want to wait for two or three years to speak again but let's definitely wait to get the research and have another podcast conversation.

[00:42:29] So if you want to you know people listening today whether they're leaders of an organization whether they're in people teams whoever they may be what are they sort of the nuggets that you would want them to go away with today and say, you know what.

[00:42:46] If I was giving you some advice on the things that you should do that have the greatest impact what would that be. Yeah, there's two things I would say we'll start the first which is measure psychological safety. Yeah, that's it.

[00:43:01] Yeah, just imagine it's super easy so it's seven questions and you can administer that and takes people three minutes to answer. So rather than speculate about what level of psychological safety is being experiencing your team or your organization just measuring.

[00:43:17] Yeah, that's what you can measure. You can change and so that's the first thing and note it recognize that.

[00:43:26] It's not going to be a uniform answer you're going to get an average score obviously but there's going to be a range of responses you're going to have some folks who feel great now their folks who don't.

[00:43:38] And what's also really fascinating about that is I just got off a call prior to this one with a woman that filled out the psychological safety assessment she thought, you know, I think we have pretty good psychological safety and then I she answered the question she came back and said, oh we're not doing nearly as well.

[00:43:57] It's like thought she was just answering it on the behalf of the organization so she's not going to take the next step she wanted to be comfortably over the questions and so on and she's going to know.

[00:44:07] And then now assess the entire organization actually get data but she had a misconception about exactly what psychological safety was so she had a belief in her mind that it's acts and it was you know, it's maybe. Not quite why but X modified.

[00:44:24] And so that's the first thing I would do and then the second thing is and this is you know maybe a little bit feels a little bit more like taking action is just start to notice especially if you're a team leader and you have some direct reports just start to notice what might be causing someone psychological safety to go down.

[00:44:44] You know notice interactions in the team notice if people are hesitating to speak up, maybe they're not saying anything at all and by the way what we see with low psychological safety is you might think it's you know a really destructive team environment.

[00:44:58] It's not a low psychological safety is often characterized as politeness when everyone just kind of is polite agreeable. There's no real push back leader says let's do X, Y, Z and everyone says okay that's good I guess. So it's very compliant then.

[00:45:17] Yeah yeah yeah it's that compliance that agreeableness that politeness that is not a psychological safe environment so that's a danger sign. So if everybody on your team is just kind of following along with you there's perhaps not enough sense of psychological safety being invited into the room.

[00:45:35] So you start to notice that start to notice why or when people are not speaking up what might why might that happen and then get curious about it.

[00:45:46] That's brilliant and so I mean it's everybody's responsibilities and it's psychological safety it's everybody's you know because it can impact a culture massively it can impact the organizational culture can impact the individual teams individuals mental health.

[00:46:02] So many things that psychological safety can positively impact but also if the lack of it how much the negative impact on the other side of that coin so. Thank you so much for our conversation today.

[00:46:15] I'm out on this at our could speak to you listen to your all day I really enjoyed it honestly. It's been fascinating and I'd love to see some more of the research that comes out it does sound really interesting.

[00:46:26] How can all listeners getting content with you what's the best way to learn more about yourself stuff. Yeah I love connecting with folks on LinkedIn so reach out to me connect with me there.

[00:46:36] I think you'll probably put a link in the show notes I would hope or just go to LinkedIn and search for my name, stuff in we'dner and I linked in URL is forward slash LinkedIn.com forward slash i and forward slash s we'dner so s w i e any are that being my first initial and last name.

[00:46:55] And also on our website so zorango.com for slash free PSI so I mentioned in measuring psychological safety if you're a member of a team. I would be delighted to measure the psychological safety.

[00:47:10] Let's get that measured I'll provide you with a report I can even sit down with your team and debrief those results with you a little bit that I would say would be step number one on your journey to embracing and fostering psychological safety and your team.

[00:47:23] So z a r a n g o zorango.com forward slash free PSI free PSI PSI standing for psychological safety index that's it.

[00:47:36] Thank you so much so they can contact you and you can get freebies from you this is even more value right to the very end of the podcast.

[00:47:43] And then our sites people in a two or three years time when all the research is published then it all gets published in his book because Stefan has got to write about this one day when he's a public showster about psychological safety that's where I want to see you go into the fun because this is this is fabulous content.

[00:48:01] Thank you appreciate free shaping given this opportunity to speak to your audience and have a conversation Joe. I'm just delighted to support anybody who's out there who wants to build psychological safety it's. I'm so sorry.

[00:48:19] I'm really thankful it's been really really interesting and really valuable and again for listeners please do contact Stefan on LinkedIn and look up with the www dot.

[00:48:29] I'm going to go dot com and definitely download and get access to that free gift that you've just been given that sounds like an absolute must.

[00:48:36] And again, please tune into more brilliant coaching culture podcasts where you get it gets here other fabulous guests but thank you Stefan for now even tremendous thank you so much. The pleasure Joe thank you.