Why Psychological Safety Is Necessary For A Competitive Advantage

The concept of psychological safety, according to William A. Khan in his 1990 paper on personal engagement and disengagement at work, is “being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career.”

The actual term was coined as early as 1999 by Amy Edmondson but popularly cited from her 2002 paper on the subject. She explains, “In psychologically safe environments, people believe that if they make a mistake, others will not penalize or think less of them for it. They also believe that others will not resent or penalize them for asking for help, information or feedback. This belief fosters the confidence to take the risks described above and thereby to gain from the associated benefits of learning.”

It has become readily apparent in today’s technologically intensive and rapidly changing business landscape that conditions that will support the psychological safety of all employees in an organization are necessary for ongoing success. Despite this, there are companies out there that haven’t yet embraced this philosophy.

Have you ever worked for an organization that had no intention of providing even cursory psychological safety? If you haven’t, you probably know someone who has.

I know a manager who worked at an international company for three years. This organization proclaimed its values were diversity, truthfulness and trust. Posters in the hallways promoted this, and performance reviews were graded on it.

Unfortunately, it was, for the most part, a myth. When the results of the annual, center-wide, “anonymous” survey came out, middle management was routinely criticized for the dismal employee ratings for the statement, “I trust management, and feel safe expressing my ideas and concerns.” Then middle management was chastised a second time for the dismal survey ratings they gave upper management for the same statement.

Upper management never seemed to understand the irony: Middle management was being routinely reproved for expressing their ideas and concerns in an anonymous survey. Despite the obvious remedy of listening to employees without inflicting repercussions, upper management never made any attempt to solve this ongoing problem.

Elbert Green Hubbard said, “The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.” Without psychological safety in the workplace, it is all too easy to become discouraged and simply move on to a hopefully more supportive organization. Employees now have the benefit of obtaining instant information on a place of work from the internet. With employee review sites such as Glassdoor, Indeed and FairyGodBoss, it’s easier than ever to get a preview of what a company’s culture is really like, as opposed to what they claim to be like on the “About Us” page of their own website.

If a firm is truly interested in fostering innovation, teamwork and accelerated productivity, there are steps they can take to foster an environment of psychological safety.

Understand that mistakes can and will be made without fear of retribution or consequences. Mistakes simply need to be acknowledged. They can then be used as a springboard for new ideas.

Make sure everyone is heard. Do the same three people voice all the opinions or ideas at every meeting? Encourage wider participation. Reticent team members may need encouragement to speak up. They may only feel comfortable answering a direct question. In meetings, no one is allowed to interrupt or belittle another speaker. Opinions and ideas are valuable and may come from the most unlikely members.

Encourage questions and feedback. Are you unconsciously doing or saying something that is impeding the process?  If no one feels safe speaking up, you’ll never know.

Develop trust between participants by sharing. Team members can relate to personal stories, triumphs and challenges. Forming a group bond is important in developing a cooperative environment that encourages participation.

Active listening is important to really hear what the other team members are trying to convey. This is no time to be checking the calendar on your cell phone. It’s OK to ask questions or request a clarification on a participant’s idea. Be open to hearing opinions other than your own.

Diversity in mindset is necessary for success. If everyone on the team thinks the same, there is no impetus to try anything new or different, and stagnation will be the result. Having a team that includes different viewpoints is essential for innovation.

If your organization doesn’t have a culture of psychological safety, it can be a big change to implement, and a bit daunting. There are many good books and articles with information on the subject that can offer ideas and support for converting the mindset of your organization. The results of providing a safe and supportive organizational culture can be amazing.

This article has previously been featured on Forbes

 

The Benefits Of Cognitive Diversity

Now more than ever, companies are learning to cherish the valuable input created by fostering cognitive diversity in their organizations. Cognitive diversity is the inclusion of people who have different ways of thinking, different viewpoints and different skill sets in a team or business group. Many of these same companies have already realized the benefits of encouraging diversity in age, gender and ethnicity for years but are perhaps new to the idea of cognitive diversity.

Unfortunately, there are still holdouts that tend to hire employees who think alike. Perhaps they want to hire an exact replica of “Ted” from accounting because he was so good at his job. Or, there are managers who feel comfortable hiring people who graduated from their own alma mater. There are even those who attain a new position with a new employer and then proceed to hire their former colleagues from a previous employer, one at a time, until the old team is all back together.

There is no doubt that people feel comfortable surrounding themselves with others who have business styles similar to their own. Unfortunately, when you get more of the same, what you end up with is … more of the same. Lack of innovation can lead to a slow, painful death in any organization. Sara Canaday writes in a recent article on the subject for Psychology Today, “A culture that encourages (explicitly or implicitly) conformity of thought breeds stagnation and imperils a company.”

It would seem on the face of it that more viewpoints, varied experiences and different ways of approaching a common problem would be preferable to a team of “yes men,” but old habits die hard.

In the Harvard Business Review, Alison Reynolds and David Lewis wrote: “Colleagues gravitate toward the people who think and express themselves in a similar way. As a result, organizations often end up with like-minded teams.” After studying the subject for several years, they point out that unfortunately, “This lack of cognitive diversity has two impacts. First, it reduces the opportunity to strengthen the proposition with input from people who think differently. Second, it fails to represent the cognitive diversity of the employee population, reducing the impact of the initiatives.”

It may not be easy to overcome these natural tendencies but it can be accomplished. First and foremost, teams, management, and organizations as a whole must not stifle “different.” They need to encourage it. By realizing that there is a positive measurable correlation between teams who embrace cognitive diversity, and teams who exhibit high-performance levels, companies can improve their productivity by inspiring management to provide a robust level of psychological safety for their employees. For cognitive diversity to be successful, the organization needs to make it “safe” for associates to try new things in new ways without fear of repercussions.

An important part of the progression is the role that management (or the designated team leader) plays in the process of harnessing the power of cognitive diversity. If the leader continues to allow each team member to play the part they find most comfortable, the group may be missing out on a wealth of energy and participation.

For example, if one team member is naturally upbeat and easily falls into the “cheerleading” role, the ongoing repetition of this optimistic behavior may eventually annoy some other team members who begin ignoring his input. If one member is analytical by nature and wants to paralyze other members with mounting facts, figures, and research, her input may not be heard after a time.

One method to avoid this role stagnation is to shake things up by assigning different roles to different team members by project or by milestones during the timeline of the project at hand. The team as a whole will still be getting an assortment of input to stimulate their ability to innovate, but getting a certain type of input from a different individual can wake up the process and allow participants hear something fresh.

Another way to leverage the synergy of multiple viewpoints is to encourage building relationships with other teams, other departments and even people from other companies in similar fields. Working in the vacuum of your own division’s structure can cause a groupthink condition. By exploring how others face similar challenges, it’s possible to see the strengths and the weaknesses of their methods. These newfound insights can be used to bolster your own team’s successes.

If you really want to jumpstart your team, initiate some innovative brainstorming and look at things from different perspectives for creative solutions. Find some people who aren’t afraid to be different and aren’t afraid to disagree with you.

This article has previously been featured on Forbes

 

Why Poor Communication Can Slow Down Your Team (And How To Avoid It)

In today’s fast-moving world, it’s very hard to stay focused and clearly communicate and understand important information. One of the biggest components that leads to poor communication is the number of channels we use on a daily basis to discuss pretty much everything.

We’re having conversations over the phone between meetings trying to explain the details of a task to one of our employees. We’re using video conferencing to catch up with co-workers abroad, updating them on the most recent changes to a project. Not only do we write and receive emails constantly, but we instant message the person sitting two desks ahead of us and text our spouse during lunch breaks — and on top of that, we keep in touch with old and new friends over multiple social media platforms.

The number of channels we are confronted with on a daily basis is exhausting. It has the potential to lead to a lot of problems in life and certainly at work. And the ways of communicating are only going to increase. How many times are people not hearing and understanding essentials, misinterpreting messages that make them angry or not executing right? It can be incredibly frustrating to have a conversation in one form or another, only to find out hours, or sometimes even days, later that the person on the other end has misinterpreted everything we’ve said, leaving us disappointed in having to start explaining all over again.

Confusion, misunderstandings and sometimes even arguments arise from using too many different channels over a messaging window or on the phone to educate others on their responsibilities and share our thoughts, ideas and feelings. We live in a multicultural world with language and cultural challenges, which makes it even harder to get on the same page with a person or team, especially in the workplace.

Bottom line: Of the many different symptoms of communication is an overload of information with no clear structure and vague directions. Not many truly understand the foundation of effective communication — the kind that saves us hours of unnecessary texting defeated peers and more headaches. We can’t always communicate and understand the message behind the words and sometimes can’t really express what we’re trying to say. Does a smiley really take out the sting behind the message? Can we use only words to explain our intentions and expect the person on the other end to read our minds?

Too often, due to a lack of information, people don’t understand what they’re supposed to do. In the end, it doesn’t matter that we have all the tools if we can’t use them properly to make them work in our favor.

If poor communication is the root of all evil, the question is: how we can change and communicate more efficiently? There are multiple ways to try to get a point across while avoiding misunderstandings:

First, choose the right form of communication for the right occasion. If the subject is important and sensitive, choose an in-person meeting or at least a phone call to discuss the matter. Additionally, always double-check that the other person understood everything, and leave space for questions.

Be aware, and don’t presume that your attempt of communicating was successful. Maybe even hit the “mental button” and think things through. Seek to gain perspective and know who the receiver or audience is, and then communicate in their language. Ask yourself how they might interpret certain information, based on their experience, language, religion or culture, and explain more detailed if needed.

When in the role of the receiver, reflect back, and don’t hesitate to ask for further clarification if something is not understood on your side.

Effective communication could be considered a long-lost art in the 21st century. Things come at us from left and right, and we often don’t take time to think, reflect and set an intention for a conversation. But if we want to speed up processes in the office, be well understood and have people execute properly, it’s important to know the fundamental principles of communication.

When we know the person we’re communicating with, we can seek to understand things from their point of view and then clearly explain the matter, leaving less space for miscommunication and disappointment.

This article has previously been featured on Forbes

 

Looking Up: The Fine Art Of Managing Your Boss

In today’s fast-paced business environment, it can be quite a challenge to excel in your position. If you’re a manager yourself, you have the added task of managing your team. It’s so easy to get caught up in the maze of bureaucracy and get buried by the mountains of paperwork.

If you do succeed in getting your team of employees to meet or exceed their stats, get all their performance evaluations submitted accurately and on time, and simultaneously meet your own goals while pleasing your boss, you should be golden. Right?

Unfortunately, there are so many managers who believe just that. They are the ones who are missing the greatest opportunity of all — the chance to manage their boss. It isn’t easy, and the thought of it can be intimidating, but with courage and emotional maturity (hopefully on the part of both parties), it can be done. 

According to Thomas J. Zuber, MD, and Erika H. James, Ph.D. in their article, “Managing Your Boss”: “failure to manage your boss can result in misunderstandings about what you expect from one another and cause you to waste time on tasks that are not in line with organizational goals. Furthermore, career progress and satisfaction rarely occur if you don’t manage your boss.” 

What does managing your boss look like? Understand that in this business relationship, you both have needs. You want to do a good job, and you want to be appreciated for it. You need some tangible proof that you are valuable to the company, be it praise, a promotion, a raise or perhaps a simple thank you. You’re keenly aware of all the things you need. Have you ever stopped to think about what your boss needs?

Here is where a little empathy can go a long way. Spend some time thinking about work from your boss’s perspective. What are her organizational goals and what deadlines does she have to meet? Is her annual raise dependent on your team meeting its goals? What problems does she face in getting her job done?

Now that you have a different perspective on the situation, what could you do to make your boss’s job easier? Instead of walking into her office with a problem you want her to solve, what if you entered with a viable solution already in hand? How about consistently demonstrating your trustworthiness? Every time you make her life easier, your worth goes up a notch. This doesn’t mean doing her job for her, but anything you can contribute will be appreciated.

Don’t use your boss as a constant sounding board for your low-level problems. You definitely don’t want to get branded as a whiner or a time waster. If you genuinely need help with a business-related issue that you have tried unsuccessfully to solve yourself and you have used your other resources to no avail, then yes, ask for help from your boss.

If you have honest, direct and relevant feedback to deliver to your boss, don’t put it off. This is where courage comes in. If you are fearful of some type of retribution, you’ll need to work on managing your negative emotions before meeting with her. Make sure you don’t have any hidden agendas or ulterior motives. 

Timing is everything. Don’t expect to have a productive feedback conversation when your boss is hungry, un-caffeinated or on a Friday as she’s trying to walk out the door. Give it some thought. Is it budget time for the department or company? Is she working on the end-of-quarter reports that are due tomorrow? Pick the time when you have the best chance for a positive experience for both of you.

This conversation should be respectful, focused and truthful. Take your own ego out of the equation because it doesn’t belong here. Stick with the facts and be brief.

As Jean Kelley points out in her article, “How to Manage Your Boss”: “In the end, it’s really about understanding your boss. When you teach your boss how to work with you and hone great communication skills with him or her, your work life will be happier and much more productive.”

The important thing to remember when managing your boss is to always seek a positive outcome. You both have the same goals: to solve problems, improve processes, improve the bottom line and ultimately improve the company by bolstering its success.

 

This article has previously been featured on Forbes

 

The Power of a Team

The pioneering researchers of the Hawthorne Studies, which started in 1924 and published in 1939, discovered that employee participation improved job satisfaction more than short-term incentives. As organizations began to understand the benefits of employee satisfaction and teamwork, some fields of work began a shift away from the common assembly-line model to organizational structures that took advantage of the highly productive team environment.

In their paper “A New Vision,” Professors Michel Anteby and Rakesh Khurana point out that “the Hawthorne researchers came closer to outlining an integrated theory of human behavior than any other perspective before them and to describing a humanistic vision for workers inside an organization at precisely the time when industrial capitalism needed to be reconnected to addressing human concerns.”

Marilyn Sawyer Wesner, author of A Journey of Change: The History of Team Building in Organizations, 1900 to 1989, explains, “The frequency of teambuilding training in organizations rose significantly between the beginning of the 1970s through the end of the 1980s.” “Teamwork” became a buzzword, and team workshops became all the rage. Unfortunately, in many corporations, it was treated by upper management as a fad to be weathered. Once the workshops were over and the teams were invigorated and fired up, upper management often reverted to the comfortable top-down management style, which only served to further disenfranchise the employees and left them to return to business as usual.

Despite these initial setbacks, it has become increasingly apparent that the productive harnessing of the power of a team is here to stay. It’s never been more important than in today’s lightning-fast, idea-oriented organizations to emphasize collaboration rather than control.

Achieving effective teamwork is not much easier today than it was back in the days of monolithic, slow-moving corporations. Although one might argue that working in teams is the natural and instinctive state of humanity, our life experiences in this fast-paced, competitive life tend to produce individuals who can be more interested in self-promotion, self-protection and working independently off-site. We become overly concerned with protecting our territory and devolve into self-interest. Our level of success and level of authority become measuring sticks.

In reality, it has been proven that in the long term, teamwork is much more productive than having a few high-level managers dictating direction without any input from the people who actually perform the work.

With all the management advice available today, it can be confusing to decide on a path to follow. The advice of one expert may contradict the advice of another. However, there isn’t anything especially perplexing about successful teamwork. There are a few effective steps to keep in mind when shaping a powerful team.

Teamwork and trust go hand in hand. It’s very difficult to have one without the other. Open communication is consistently pointed to as the main facilitator in building effective teams. Relationships are built on conversations. Individuals telling personal stories weave a connection of empathy among the participants. Discussing both private values and company values is an important way team members can bond.

It is essential that colleagues feel safe and comfortable sharing honest opinions about problems or issues with others, including both team members and management. It is equally important for people to actively listen to others and involve them in team actions and team decisions. If a team feels unthreatened by resolving conflict, they are more likely to confront challenges within the project or the team itself.

The power of a team is exponentially increased by their openness and diversity. When multiple members of an organization come from varying backgrounds, whether the differences are in culture, age, sex, skill sets, talents, education or even their roles in the company, these numerous perspectives allow them to leverage their experiences to solve even the most challenging work issues.

Another key component in a successful team is the ability of the individuals to carry their own weight in a workgroup. If even one member is inconsistent in following through on commitments and promises, there will be problems with the entire group. Trustworthiness is important in the team being able to follow through and coordinate their efforts more efficiently.

One way to encourage individual follow-through is to be clear when setting expectations. What needs to be done by specific individuals, and what are the time frames for completion? Which tasks need to be completed collaboratively by the entire group? Assigning specific milestones is essential for making productive and consistent progress in any project.

An agile team requires an adaptable culture, not only in a specific division but from the entire company. Being inflexible in the face of today’s ever-changing business environment is tantamount to actively encouraging failure at multiple levels. When everyone collaborates, from the leaders of the organization to the individual associates, business solutions can be arrived at in a prompt fashion. Successful teams and successful organizations involve everyone in finding actionable answers to overcome obstacles.

This article has previously been featured on Forbes