Category: Listening

Importance of Psychological Safety

7/24/2018

July 24, 2018
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #75
From the Greenbelt of Boise Idaho, Summer heat

Psychological Safety provides a foundational element for Team Success. Google researchers found it to be the most important dynamic of their effective teams.

Unfortunately, during times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, people can resort to reactive tendencies that make it difficult to maintain. It requires constant tending by teams and leaders committed to providing the necessary conditions for team success.

The term Psychological Safety describes a climate in which people feel free to express relevant thoughts and feelings without fear of being penalized. Although it sounds simple, the ability to ask questions, seek help, and tolerate mistakes while colleagues watch can be unexpectedly difficult.
– Amy Edmondson

In her book Teaming, Edmondson outlines seven benefits of providing Psychological Safety:

Encourages Speaking Up
Enables Clarity of Thought
Supports Productive Conflict
Mitigates Failure
Promotes Innovation
Removes Obstacles to Pursuing Goals
Increases Accountability

Here is a quick check you can do:

Are your team meetings dominated by one person speaking, or do all team members take turns with the time spread more evenly?
Are people empathetic to the challenges and issues team members are experiencing, or not?

Taking turns speaking and having empathy creates bonds between team members, providing Psychological Safety, the cornerstone of effective team norms.

I assist teams and leaders to create better results by developing the practice of team leadership, including Psychological Safety. To learn more visit here. Let’s create a better future today!

Previous Posts in the Series:

The Power of Deep Listening

3/6/2018

March 6, 2018
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #65
From the Greenbelt of Boise Idaho, Sun defrosting the morning chill

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
– Karl A. Menninger

I was discussing Listening with a participant of the Leaders Who Coach Program I co-lead. We encourage leaders to listen three-quarters of the time when they’re coaching.

We quickly jumped through several levels of listening:

hearing and ignoring because I’m focusing on something else,
hearing and thinking of what I’m going to say in response,
just hearing what the other person has to say.

We acknowledged that it is easy to be caught in the first two levels, and not really hear the other person. Then we dug a little deeper to explore what it means to go beyond hearing the words to listening deeply.

To listen deeply, our intention shifts from an exchange of information to seeing the other person. Listening with our whole selves we actively reflect and paraphrase what we perceive back. By doing this, we create a sense of being seen and understood, a sense of belonging and connection that Karl Menninger describes “creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”

This kind of listening for what someone cares about, what they feel and sense, and what is unfolding for them can have a transformative impact.

Later in the day I received an email. She’d gone on a walk with a friend who was dealing with a very challenging situation. She practiced and shared deep listening, and it led to a significant shift enabling her friend to create an action plan.

We all experience challenging situations, and need someone who will deeply listen. Cultivating our capacity to deeply listen, develops leadership in ourselves.

I work with teams and leaders to create better results through the conscious practice of leadership. Let’s create a better future today!

Our Words Create Worlds

9/13/2017

September 13, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #51
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, Leaves turning colors

Language is primarily generative and creative.
– Chalmers Brothers

Language helps us both to interpret and make meaning of the world around us.
– Doug Silsbee

Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right.
– Henry Ford

I was in a conversation regarding the world we live in today. Here are some views:

The world is flat. No, the world is round.
The earth rotates around the sun. No the sun travels around the earth.
The earth is a dynamic living sphere traveling in an elliptical spiral as it follows the sun moving through an expanding universe.

The words we use in the narrative of our minds and in what we express to those around us create and reflect our perspectives. I share the examples above as a metaphor for many conversations that occur today, in which arguments arise from taking a simpler point of view and holding firm that it is “RIGHT”.

Reality it seems is more complex than we’re willing to consider and discuss. Yet finding ways to discuss the complexity, and create generative approaches together, are what we need most urgently to address the challenges we face.

To paraphrase Einstein, we can’t solve today’s problems with the same level of thinking that created them. We must evolve our sense-making and conversations to survive and thrive. I encourage:

Acknowledging and simply describing the complexity we live within.
Discussing how together we can discover creative solutions that support all of us.

Let’s face and discuss the complexity of where we are, and create a better future today!

Finding What We Care About

6/9/2017

June 9, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #41
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, 50° temperature swing, 95° to 45°

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
– Maya Angelou

Sitting in the darkened living room I listened to stories being told, full of emotion, loss and loving memories. The shades were drawn on the windows and the lights down low as family, friends and people from the community came together.

A fifteen-year-old Latina, sophomore in my high school, had been abused and murdered on her way home from school. The stories I heard, were about how she cared for her family and friends, and found ways every day to make a difference in their lives.

As a sixteen-year-old white kid, all I could do was listen and reflect on what I heard. It is incredibly unfortunate that it takes tragedies to remind us what we care about. How did I get there that day?

I grew up listening to stories sitting at the table and on the porch with my grandparents (English and Dutch, French and Italian) and family and friends. One grandfather was a Methodist minister who found a way to weave Peanuts comic strips into his sermon. Something always happened to Charlie Brown, and my grandfather always found a way to illustrate, it is what we do with what life brings us that makes all the difference.

It was fall of my junior year that a Jewish friend of mine persisted in encouraging me to play water polo and join the high school newspaper staff. The first story I was assigned to write was about Paula.

I was at a loss of how to approach it. My mom suggested I call Louise.

My memory of Louise is of a powerful presence, full of love, laughter, and stern advice about the realities of life. As a Black woman who led family social services, she knew most people in town, and knew how to respond to most any kind of situation.

Louise said, come with me. She also told me, when we get there just listen and be willing to offer what you’ve heard that she really cared about.

Life can bring a lot of uncomfortable things our way. By entering into the situation, and listening to ourselves and those around us, we can discover what we care about.

We create a better future by listening to the many people around us that may appear to be different, and finding what we care about together. It most often is a common set of interests for family, friends and making a difference in the lives of those around us.

As leaders with our families, friends, organizations and communities, entering in to listen and find what we care about together is now more important than ever.

Let’s create a better future today!

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Importance of Psychological Safety

The Power of Deep Listening

Our Words Create Worlds

Finding What We Care About

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