But how safe is it? Building trust and confidence in change exhausted teams.
Supporting a VP to break through the barriers to psychological safety.
I was running a team session recently where we faced the realities to creating psychological safety when a team has gone through a significant amount of change. I’ve reflected on how complex and overwhelming it can feel for a leader to address it.
Psychological Safety
Let’s make sure we are on the same page as to what it means. If you haven’t heard, psych safety has become a pillar of great team work, popularised by Amy Edmonson amazing work. Google did a massive piece of internal research called Project Aristotle , in which they explored what was the make-up of great teams. The most notable (or the one that created the most buzz) was the need for psychological safety. Some call this trust, some call it vulnerability, it’s a very grey and intangible area that can differ by situation and by the individual. In psychologically safe teams, individuals feel comfortable speaking up and expressing their opinions, even if they differ from those of others on the team. This creates an environment of open communication, trust, and collaboration, where team members are more likely to share their expertise, challenge assumptions, and learn from each other. Win-win.
On the other hand, in teams where psychological safety is lacking, individuals may be hesitant to speak up, fearing that their ideas will be ignored or dismissed. This can lead to a lack of innovation, poor decision-making, and a culture of fear and mistrust.
Nice teams finish last…
I’ve noticed how most of us associate low psych safety teams with leaders that rule by fear (Elon style) are are “bad” leaders, defined by having low compassion, empathy and care. That’s likely true but its not isolated to just those types of teams.
A bad apple will spoil the bunch, but untouched fruit will rot regardless.
I’ve witnessed tons of “good” leaders that are caring, compassionate and empathetic and they also lead teams with low psychological safety.
So what happens?
Teams with a weak feedback muscle are afraid to rock the boat and associate “conflict” with something that must be avoided at all costs. When leaders avoid giving hard feedback they weaken that muscle even more.
Distributed teams that don’t take time to get to know one another end up with little rapport, understanding and awareness of each other, and makes “hard” feedback even more challenging and giving “praise” feels uncomfortable. To simplify “I don’t know them like that.”
Teams that dance around conflict don’t know how to voice their potentially confrontational opinions because they don’t have an example of how it will be handled. Leaders focus on creating “nice” spaces not “safe” spaces.
Most of the team time is used up to discuss “the work” and not about how we are experiencing the work and its related environment so everyone suffers in silence not knowing that they are all feeling the same way. Folks don’t voice their real concerns and teams fall into receptive behaviour patterns that hold them back.
I created this wheel a while back to help contextualise the patterns I was seeing across my clients. It helps me to help leaders connect the small behaviours with the big outcomes:
It’s the intangible pieces of psych safety that will break a team and that’s exactly what showed up with this team I was working with recently.
“Am I really safe?”
A VP of Operations is trying to turn their team around to achieve some ambitious goals within a large B2B global enterprise. They brought me in to help align their team around the behaviours, norms and attitudes needed to achieve this ambitious plan. They found that their team was falling into negative zones that were draining and didn’t move them forward.
The organization had undergone a significant amount of change (new leadership, changing (but not fully baked) of roles + responsibilities, restructures, etc) and more change was on the way. They had recently hired a bunch of new folks that were bringing fresh perspectives and energy into the team but those that had been through the constant change were exhausted, some cynical, and most of them burned out at the idea of “starting again”.
So off to the races and we start to design some sessions to help uncover the root cause in order to address it and fix it. As you’ll hear me say in almost every project:
If we don’t address it, we can’t fix it.
I make a point to design exercises that promote:
Individual reflection and sharing, and,
Enhanced knowledge and empathy about their team members
This requires a level of psych safety that I assess during 1:1s in advance so I don’t push anyone too far into the deep end, and end up making things worse.
During an exercises where I asked everyone to share what was holding the team back, one of the team members expressed courageously and honestly:
“I know this intended to be a ‘safe space’ but I want to share that I don’t know how safe I really am and I can feel I am holding back from saying what I really think as I am worried I might say the “wrong” thing or it might be used against me later down the line. “
Before we jump into any kind of judgement, let’s go back to the brief to consider where this sentiment might coming from.
The team has had an array of leaders over the past few years each bringing in their own strategies and approaches, well meaning and ambitions teams that are trying to keep up eventually hit a wall of “what’s the point” and default to “just tell me where you need me to be” through pure exhaustion.
The lack of consistency in leadership and strategy leads to a lack of context for those that have been there trying to deliver value. If we don’t take time to understand where they are coming from and what they have been through small things can feel like a big deal and often go misunderstood.
We know this team has a low feedback muscle due to constant, new leadership and new team members. Those trying to do their best to deliver value but often find the goal posts continue to change, misaligned leaders means they get sidetracked, and many projects never complete. No one is telling them where they are delivering value and eventually feel like a failure.
Constant change + lack of clear direction and focus often leads to a lot of work being done but not a lot of goals being achieved. When we don’t have lots of small “winning” moments we can easily lose sight of why we are here, what we are doing and why should I care. When we create “winning moments” on a regular basis we build up confidence and motivation.
You can imagine how hard it is for a compassionate leader to hear a valued member of their team say they don’t feel safe.
Many of us would want to jump-in and solve for them, but that is not always the right answer especially when we know more change is coming, more will be asked of them and we actually don’t know what the fix is. Leaders are also overwhelmed and overworked and don’t have the headspace, understanding or knowledge on how to show up for emotional support.
So what is a leader to do?
How to create a sense of safety in a constant changing world.
In this scenario, I find the following principles can help leaders to guide their actions and reign in their need to immediately solve the problem (or worst dismiss it).
Acknowledge the team members feelings (even if it’s an uncomfortable truth to hear) and thank them for their candor > Trying to defend, over explain, or say it will be better, avoid putting them on the spot.
Reach out (1:1) to understand specifically what is leading them to feel unsafe, what behaviours have they seen that’s reinforced this belief, and make sure you listen to understand > Trying to fix it. This is not an overnight fix, teams will be looking for consistent behaviours overtime from their leader to prove that it is actually ‘safe’. Commit to the long game.
Reflect and identify small actions you and your leads can commit to and show the team that speaking up and sharing uncomfortable truths is not a thankless or risky task but effort that is rewarded and heard > Make BIG commitments that require a behaviour change from you and your leads that you’ve never been able to role model. Be real with yourself and set yourself up for success.
Lean into making feedback part of your team’s dialogue. I make a commitment to anyone that reports to me that they will never have to guess where they stand. I’ve personally wasted too many hours wondering if I was doing a good job. > Writing off good people too quickly or trade short term discomfort for long term dysfunction. Often it’s the environment that shapes the behaviours so review what conditions you can control and ensure your leads are doing the same.
We have all been through a lot over the past few years and I know many of us are in a need of a long break but we have work to do and challenges to overcome. Don’t be too hard on yourself and commit to one change at a time instead of feeling overwhelmed with everything you should, could, would do.
You got this.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu