psychological safety — Teaming With Ideas

Psychological Safety

“If I could help every leader learn how to practice self-coaching instead of self-criticism, we could change the world…There’s tons of research on loneliness, the stressors of being a leader, ways in which we bring our own biases to the workplace. If, instead of negative self talk, I focus on speaking to myself with kindness, I’d change the structure of my brain and how I respond to challenges.

“I am better able to support others and have more citizenship behavior, caring for others, when I practice self-compassion. How? How do I create psychological safety as a leader AND maintain my boundaries, take care of my needs, listen to myself?”

That’s what Dr. Polizzi and Verdant Consulting starts with when working with their clients: start with yourself first.

Team LeadershipCarlos Valdes-DapenaOctober 22, 2022psychological safety, team behaviorComment

Humility, Vulnerability and Leadership with Mark Ippolito

In this complex world that we live in today, employees, leaders, customers, shareholders - we all have opinions, and we all have experience we draw from, but, boy, I tell you, in so many industries, we’re creating new pathways, new endpoints. So we all have to be willing to say we don’t know the answer.

Look, machines, AI - it is here, it is now. It is not some future state, it’s not something that you should be thinking about and planning for in five years, no. It’s right now. It’s transforming our lives today. So just (a.) recognizing that, but (b.) not being afraid of it. What machines don’t do is deal with unconnected or unrelated scenarios, which we humans do very instinctively.

I have strengths. I have weaknesses. I’m very clear about where they are, and I articulate those to my team all the time. And what I reinforce with them is, “You have strengths.” Focus on what you can enable this team to do, and then put all of your efforts, all of your intellect, all of your emotion, all of your heart into supporting strengths and letting those people flourish around their strengths.

Gratitude Infusion with Kerry Wekelo

Brené Brown.
She’s such a good storyteller, but she also is such a researcher. She said that the number one thing when people are having extreme hardships in their lives - from losing a child to a house burning down to losing a high-figure job - she discovered with her research was that the people who moved through the quickest are the ones that are focused on gratitude. What they were still grateful for. “Maybe my house burned down, but I’m alive.” That simplistic of a thing, that was the number one thing. And she was blown away that it was gratitude.

Michael Steger, I’ve looked at his research. You can have twins where one twin would be more predisposed to be grateful, and the other one is more negative, having a more negative connotation. It’s just kind of how you’re hardwired. It’s almost like you’re working out, you have to work out that gratitude muscle. And I always say there’s this cumulative impact if you always go to gratitude first, or always go to “How can I move out of this situation in a positive way?”

If you breathe and have a moment of gratitude, you’re going to feel pretty good pretty quickly.

Team LeadershipCarlos Valdes-DapenaJanuary 31, 2022Gratitude, psychological safetyComment

Bringing Your Whole Self to Teams

“I discovered early on was that people were in a different place. When we meet as a team, we allow more time for the check-in, to talk about their personal lives with their families and about their business lives.

“Early on, when I was a team member, I’d had a very difficult week personally and was worried about both my kids. In the team meeting, I was having all these conversations with people and I realized at the end of the week that I hadn’t shared with anybody how I was feeling. And the reason I hadn’t shared it with anybody is because nobody had asked.

“What I’ve discovered is when you create that space to check-in at the beginning of the meeting, it brings a presence and a sense of connectedness, even over long distances, that I think has sustained us.”

Read more to discover how and why checking in authentically at a team meeting’s start is deeply beneficial and, to Sylvia, essential.

Team LeadershipCarlos Valdes-DapenaSeptember 30, 2021Trust, psychological safety, MarsComment

Micro-behaviors Can Determine Team Effectiveness

Bobby Parmar, U Va professor and team behavior researcher, discusses results from his escape room study. “Teams relate through behaviors, even micro-behaviors. How a team communicates is highly predictive of their success. For example, one of the things that we find is the amount of humor, laughter on a team is highly predictive of the number of hypotheses that a team throws out when they're solving these puzzles. Laughter is one potential way of getting to psychological safety, but there's lots of ways of getting it. Psychological safety, being inclusive, being trusting, having integrity: all of those things are mechanisms by which we can draw others out and say, "your ideas matter. And I want to hear from you how to make things better.

“We found that people who spoke with certainty, struggled in the escape room. Even a little bit of certainty from someone made it a lot harder for me to say, ‘Nope, that didn't work’ because it feels like I'm judging that individual or I'm going to cause a negative emotion in that individual. And that makes it harder for the team to provide that disconfirming data and makes it difficult for the team to be effective.”