What did you learn? That’s the simple question that parents often ask children at the end of a school day or when things go south, and they experience a flop or a failure.
That’s a question that should have legs in business. At Slide3, we’re all about that question. What’s more, we think that speaker and author Simon Sinek would agree. “Parenting, he says, is the closest thing to leadership.”
Just think. Kids try, fail, and learn from experience… over and over again. They’re allowed to because in a perfect world filled with the caring of unconditional loving parents, they learn, grow and develop confidence, secure in knowing that mom, dad, Aunt Mary, or Uncle Tom have their back.
Have Your Back
It’s no different in business. Knowing that someone – say, your colleague, your boss, senior leadership – has your back is priceless. That’s worth repeating. Knowing that you can make a mistake, share a personal or team concern, or express that workflow is not quite right and that people will listen, respect you, and work with you to mitigate any issue is priceless.
Today, companies that have the backs of their employees are disrupting the market and logging in miles ahead of their competition. Companies that don’t are flagging, and their leaders and employees are losing sleep at night.
Individuals perform best when they feel valued, and that sense of value comes from feeling safe at work. Authoritarian, micromanaging leadership, and the default of silenced employees is out. Psychological safety is in.
Psychological Safety: Overriding the Default of Silence
That is exactly why when we are called in to help companies right the ship, we look at more than their technology and processes… what we call the lens of the mechanical. Culture that informs how individuals behave in the workplace is what we refer to as the behavioral lens, and the importance of that behavioral component cannot be overestimated.
The capability of technology and the advancements of it are incredible. But technology is only as good as the humans who brainstorm its advances. Paving the way for those advancements is where psychological safety plays a role. Plus, the uber-rapid pace of technological change has made the need for human connection more important than ever.
“Team Psychological Safety” is a term coined by Harvard Business School Professor Amy C. Edmondson in the 1990s. She used it to describe work environments in which candor is the expectation and employees can speak up without fear of negative repercussions. As Edmonson puts it, psychological safety is “felt permission for candor.”
Psychological safety results in these key benefits:
- Team members feel more engaged and motivated. They feel their contributions make a difference and that they needn’t worry about being chastised.
- It results in better decision-making. The comfort of voicing opinions and concerns broadens the perspectives heard and considered.
- It fosters a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Team members feel comfortable sharing their mistakes and learning from them.
When employees feel psychologically safe, they’re empowered to iterate, stretch their thinking, and take risks to explore better ways of completing tasks. In short, they innovate.
Risk-taking on a Level Playing Field
In theory, just like perfect parenting behavioral change doesn’t happen overnight. At Slide3, we go onsite and ease your teams into adopting new risk-taking behaviors. Facilitating interactive work groups, we establish purpose in each session, follow an agenda that supports that purpose, role model safe behaviors and set the stage for no-judgment group interactions.
Risk-taking is intentionalized in these work groups. Whether it involves asking questions – there’s no such thing as a dumb question! – recommending improvements or calling out or admitting mistakes, learning is always the outcome for present and future performance. We draw participants out to get their input and encourage leapfrog listening that’s respectful and curious, fleshing out ideas to deepen dialogue and move a conversation forward.
The only guardrails: 1) All comments must be expressed constructively and without negative emotion or inflection. 2) All voices matter… junior to senior, regardless of their level.
As sessions evolve, we
- Talk about topics like fear, change, and comfort.
- Whiteboard so that ideas are pooled to demonstrate the value of collaboration.
- Act like kids, engaging in activities like playing with Legos. Legos provide a great learning exercise for adults because they encourage creativity, problem-solving skills, and imaginative and innovative thinking that leads to a sense of accomplishment.
Build Trust. Chunk Things Down. Have Fun.
It’s rewarding to see and feel trust being built and watch as employees blossom. This growing sense of thrive contributes to improved and continuously evolving organizational performance. It also fosters individual fulfillment as people begin to feel personally and professionally valued.
An esprit de corps develops and a loyalty grows in work groups, and by extension in teams. Enthusiasm builds. People brainstorm. Colorful group names are created. Birthdays are celebrated. People have fun!
Success Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone
One irony, though positive: Psychological safety does not call for constant comfort. Identifying mistakes, particularly if they’re your mistakes, is far from comfortable!
But inherent in psychological safety is the mindset that mistakes are tools for learning. When we introduce the concept of retrospective, we return to lessons learned and apply these lessons to new situations. What went well? What were roadblocks? Openly aired, these reflections provoke discussion that become catalysts for future growth. Aha’s manifest in modernized techniques and the maximized use of technology, improved time management, increased efficiency, less spend, and enhanced performance outcomes.
We guide teams to employ the ingenious methodologies and frameworks available to them: Epic which introduces big picture hypothesis for change; and scrums and sprints that take big problems and break them down into bite-sized chunks that are quickly solvable. What’s more, people more quickly feel a sense of accomplishment.
What’s Keeping You Awake?
Ask yourself, what’s keeping you up at night and how can you solve the problem.
That’s when we invite you to learn more about Slide3.
It’s never too late to develop a plan.
We know your customers will love it.
We know you won’t regret it.
So, reach out. Then let’s talk.