What is psychological safety in the workplace? If you follow this channel at all which is designed specifically for leaders and educators to help create and make connection easy online and off, you’ve heard me talk about this idea of psychological safety a lot. In part because it was Google’s number 1 finding, or the the number 1 indicator, of high performing innovative teams within Google internally, within their 100,000 plus employee base. That’s a pretty significant finding and I think it’s quite a relevant topic to discuss.
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What is it? In the context of the workplace is what we’re going to dive into today and I’m going to approach it from 2 angles. 1, I’m going to talk about the Google lens and how they teach and train psychological safety internally.The other lens is from a Harvard lens. Heart Amy Edmondson at Harvard did a core part of the research and partnered with Google to actually measure the psychological safety. She used a scale that was 7 items. By the end of this blog, what’s in my brain, and Google’s brain, and Harvard’s brain will be in your brain.
Google Lens
First, let’s take the google lens. This insider scoop from somebody who was onboarded into google within the last 3 years, they shall remain nameless, but since Google popularized this finding that psychological safety was the number 1 indicator of high-performing and innovative teams at Google. It’s a big part of their onboarding process. They teach people to build psychologically safe environments.
I’ll unpack exactly what that is when we get to the Harvard scale and those 7 items but the element that he shared with me that I thought was really valuable is there’s a huge element of inclusivity. People talk about being inclusive of people, inclusive of ideas, inclusive of perspectives that are not your own. That’s not- when we hear that word we immediately think like diversity and inclusion, and that brings up a whole lot of connotations.
In this context inclusion, I’m saying like no you need to be like hungry hungry hippo for all the data and ideas that are on your team. Don’t leave anything on the table. Don’t leave anything behind. You don’t want to leave a meeting, a brainstorming session with the thought that somebody didn’t share a perspective because they didn’t feel comfortable taking the risk to share this bold idea. Because that bold idea could become the next billion dollar product for Google, or in your own context, could become the next brilliant idea to kick off your event. It could become the next brilliant idea to get you a promotion. Whatever it is you don’t want to silence that brilliant idea. You want to create this environment where people are freely sharing information with no fear. Period. No fear of repercussion, no fear of judgment, no fear period. Now that said, there’s other plenty of other dynamics that are important. Psychological safety isn’t the only thing that’s important. But, that is the only thing that this video is about.
Harvard Perspective
For the Harvard perspective on this, and these 7 items- we need to not have this plan here. Harvard would not approve of that plan. I am going to hang back on the couch and read off these 7 items that are on the scale. We’ll have them listed out right here. When we get to all 7, if you want to take a screenshot of them so that you can use-One really clever way to use these 7 tools or idea, or the 7 scales is to pick 1 as the focus of every weekly meeting that you have. And just check in with people and do an exercise or have a conversation around that 1 idea or that 1 element. After 7 weeks, you’ll have done little mini-workshops to increase psychological safety just by having some transparent open discussions about these elements.
Mistakes In A Team
Number 1, if I make a mistake in this team it is held against me. And this is, by the way, this is on a Likert scale. From 1-10, and the questions do oscillate, so 10 doesn’t always mean good and 1 doesn’t always mean bad in these. Keep that in mind as I’m going through here. I’m going to speed up the pace a little bit.
Bring Up Problems and Issues
Number 2, members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
Rejection For Being Different
Number 3, people on this team sometimes reject others for being different. That just to be clear, that doesn’t need to necessarily be overt, right. We think about like discrimination is like somebody yelling a racial slur at somebody else. You can absolutely reject somebody for being different without being overt about it. That’s a big piece of what unconscious bias uncovers. There’s lots of ways that we implicitly separate or reject people that are different from us without even being fully aware of it.
Take Risk On The Team
Number 4, it’s safe to take a risk on this team. Taking a risk on this team, it’s one of the reasons that TEDx Talk that I gave was on this idea of taking positive social risks and I didn’t have this pair of psychological safety at the time when I gave the talk about 7 years ago or something. But, the idea of positive social risk absolutely has the element of promoting that psychological safety in inviting people to take risks with positive intentions. And the social aspect is at the benefit of others in your group, right. Thinking about it, is it safe to take a risk on your team to people and are people regularly taking risks?
Ask The Team For Help
Number 5, it is difficult to ask other members on this team for help. That’s a massive problem if you have people that don’t ask for help. Elon Musk recently sent out a memo to all employees at SpaceX saying, “No more acronyms. We’re using too many acronyms.” And I believe that part of the reason he did that was acronyms can become problematic in an organization when somebody uses one in a meeting, somebody else doesn’t know what it means but doesn’t feel psychologically safe enough to ask what that acronym means. And then the conversation carries on, and they leave to go through their project and they have a gap in understanding because they didn’t feel safe enough to, in that case, ask for help in that context.
Do Not Undermine Efforts
Number 6, no one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts. It’s super important to trust- you’re showing up to work and no one’s trying to like stab you in the back while you’re sharing an idea. No one’s gonna steal your idea, and take- and give it to the boss and count it as their own, right.
Utilize and Value Talents and Skills
And last but not least, number 7, working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized. Who the heck wants to work on a team where your unique talents and skills are not valued? No one. However, a high percentage of the population of the world feels like their talents and skills are not being fully utilized in their team. If you’re gonna talk about any of these as a discussion point with your team, pick number 7.
There’s a massive opportunity cost that is lost when you let the talents and strengths and wishes of your team go to the wayside.
At number 7 especially, check in. Ask people directly, “Do you feel like your talents are being used to the maximum degree? They can be.” And if their answer is no or maybe, it’s not a solid yes, then awesome. You just discovered a gold mine. Ask them how else could they contribute. Ask them what other talent skills do they have that they can bring to the team. What a useful thing for like a random Monday check-in to discover. That could change the course of that person’s career at your organization but, it could also change their own satisfaction with their job and it could definitely change the output that they’re offering as an as a contributor to your team.