I love this cartoon. I think it captures what “team phycological safety” is about and how it can be perceived in some organizations, where we don’t want to risk being embarrassed, risk our promotability, or be made to feel incompetent.
Elvin Turner, author of Be Less Zombie and innovation expert states that 85% of us hold back on sharing our ideas for these very reasons, which may be for these very reasons.
Creating a safe environment for these types of conversations is key for idea generation. It starts with creating an environment of psychological safety. So, how do you approach psychological safety in a team? Amy Edmundson defines three straightforward approaches from her research:
· Frame your work as a learning problem, not an execution problem. Problems framed with a focus on execution tend to be more finite in their approach versus being framed as a learning problem. Framing it as the latter opens a conversation with experimentation in mind.
· Acknowledge your own fallibility. It's human to admit your limits or mistakes.
· Next, model curiosity and ask lots of questions. Agile methods based on appreciative inquiry and design thinking approach this in a structured manner.
These approaches align with agile leadership and shared decision-making that is taught in Strategic Doing. Strategic Doing teaches us how to create a safe space for those deep and focused conversations that are necessary to create change.
Learn more about an upcoming Practitioners’ Course at www.thestrategicsandbox.com
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