First up in my series of blog posts on psychological safety is the dimension of open conversations and dialogue.
Defined as:
‘the degree to which difficult and sensitive topics can be discussed openly’ –
open conversations help your team take advantage of opportunities. It gives you invaluable insights into each other and can help you move past challenges. Quality dialogue is necessary for the team to learn and stay engaged.
In contrast, if the quality of the conversation is low it can stop you from speaking up about risks or challenges. As an organization you might lose out on business-critical information and miss opportunities. One of the symptoms can be that your meetings are very short or often rescheduled.
“The quality of your conversations will determine the quality of your outcomes” – Amy C. Edmondson
Here are some tips for encouraging open conversations:
Share your learnings or take-aways from conversations
Ask twice as many questions as you tell. Replace “I think” statements with “what if” statements to invite voice and limit self-promotion
Make yourself available and listen with curiosity & empathy
What meetings do you reschedule regularly? What is causing that change and what is the impact on the team?
colleagues went the extra mile for each other, and
you capitalized on everyone’s differences?
Then you’ve probably experiences the potency of psychological safety.
Photo: Fabian Gieske
Defined by Amy C. Edmondson as “a belief that the context is safe for interpersonal risk-taking – that speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes will be welcomed and valued”, Psychological safety is a critical ingredient for groups to be engaged, to learn and to succeed.
Why psych. safety matters more than ever
Today the work many of us do is highly cognitive. It requires us to solve complex problems and find creative solutions to new challenges. Collaboration and the ability to get the best out of a diverse group is one of the biggest leadership challenges we face. In this uncertain and fast paced world, everyone’s voice could be business critical. Leaders who fail to create a climate where that voice can be raised freely, without fear of the consequences, risk missing out on opportunities and disengage the organization’s best people.
Employees who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report. That’s equal to 11% of global GDP.
On this flipside companies that report high psychological safety experience:
76% more engagement
50% more productivity
74% less stress
57% workers more likely to collaborate
“No one comes up with a good idea when being chased by a tiger”
How to build Psychological Safety in teams?
Psychological Safety is gained over time through intentional actions. It is something that is built in drops but lost in buckets.
I work with vastly different teams who want to improve their collaboration – from leadership teams to startups and global HR teams. In my experience, teams can significantly improve their level of psychological safety in just a few months by making it a priority.
I’m certified in the Fearless Organization tool – a method for measuring and developing psychological safety, based on over 30 years of research.
The work I do with teams usually follows these 4 steps:
1. 1-1 meeting with the team leader
2. Team completes the online Fearless Organization Scan
3. Debrief workshop when we look at specific areas for improvement and develop an action plan. The team then works intentionally with the identified behaviors.
4. A follow up online scan after 2-4 months followed by a new workshop to discuss and learn. Regular measurement, support and dialog.
“Start with the common goal. Then make psychological safety a common project.” Amy C. Edmondson
In the coming weeks I’ll post about the 4 dimensionsof psychological safety, highlighted in the Fearless Organization book by Amy Edmondson, and tools to improve them:
Open Conversation
Attitude Towards Risk & Failure
Willingness to Help
Inclusion & Diversity
I hope you’ll join me in discussing ways we can build open, engaged and effective teams.
So, you’ve come a long way in your personal development. Your self-leadership skills are well developed, you’ve made friends with your values and know your overdeveloped strengths. You know what drains you and what makes your dopamine flow.
Suddenly the growth stops.
Your coping strategies become ineffective, the stress management techniques useless and you fall back into negative habits.
Behavioral scientists call them dysfunctional core beliefs, the often-toxic life-rules that cause negative stress and stand in the way of your development. They are deep-rooted principles telling you what you ’must’ and ’should’ do to be successful, loved, or happy. These beliefs are often inherited or formed early on in life. They are central to your self-image and breaking them can be both painful and necessary to continue your personal growth.
Some common dysfunctional life-rules
If I don’t succeed, I have not put in enough effort
If I express my needs, I am selfish
I must be strong, whatever it takes
If I have a lot going on, I am successful
If I say no, people will not trust me again
If I fail, they won’t respect me
I can certainly relate to many of these. Throughout my career in fast-paced consumer goods organizations, I was convinced that if I only worked harder and showed up stronger, I would climb faster than everyone else.
It worked well. Until I crashed spectacularly.
Today I am an Executive Coach, speaker and leadership consultant specialized in helping high performing individuals and teams find a more sustainable way to perform. Many of my clients call themselves achievement addicts and want to learn how to be successful on their terms, go the distance and become more effective leaders. Without burning out in the process.
We start by taking a long, hard, and honest look at their life-rules.
Most life-rules are useful and help us make daily decisions without too much thought. However, when your core beliefs dictate your behaviors without flexibility, they are dysfunctional and can limit your growth and well-being.
The worst thing with toxic life-rules is that they appear to be truths – it’s just how the world works, right? Therefore, we are often not fully aware of them.
5 steps to challenge your life-rules
Decide to challenge a life-rule in a small way. For example, choose to go for a walk instead of answering work emails tonight (Rule: If I don’t succeed, I will be criticized)
If the feeling of discomfort creeps in, remind yourself that it is not bad or dangerous to feel uncomfortable, on the contrary, it means that you are challenging a rigid rule.
Breathe, observe what is happening without judging (and keep your hands off those emails!). When the stress reaction goes away, you can focus on enjoying the walk.
Write down: when does this life-rule serve you and when are you’re better off overruling it?
Be thankful for the work you just did to build flexibility and resilience.
In short, dysfunctional life-rules can hinder your personal development, they are difficult to notice and can be unpleasant to break. These core beliefs are the root cause of many dysfunctional behaviors. By being aware of them, challenging them and analyzing your reaction, you can increase your resilience and grow into a better version of yourself.
We’ve come the end in our series Achievement patterns and strategies with the Comparer.
The Comparer lives by the words: ‘The grass is always greener… ’.
Comparison is nothing new. In 1954 Festinger came up with the social comparison theory. At the core of his theory is the idea that people come to know about themselves—their own abilities, successes, and personality—by comparing themselves with others. It’s central to our need for acceptance and belonging.
But the Comparer archetype takes this behaviour to the extremes. Comparers have a clear view of what life should be like and constantly compare themselves to others. They make sure their Instagram feeds are perfectly color coded and are at risk of being addicted to social media.
As a Comparer you also want to be perfect IRL and try to say clever things, be helpful and serve the right food at dinner parties. If people around you are unwell you risk missing the signs and often don’t observe your own signals of stress either.
Drivers and Fears:
Low self-esteem
Fear of being abandoned
Fear of rejection
How to overcome:
Do a Social media detox – really! Here are a few tips:
a) Give your digital devices a bedtime.
b) Start a new morning habit.
c) Delete your social media apps.
d) Replace social media time with a new hobby or activity.
e) Break the habit of reaching for your phone.
f) Use technology for reasons other than scrolling social media.
g) Pay attention to the media you consume.
h) Spend more time observing the world around you.
i) Track your progress.
j) Set yourself reminders to not check social media.
2. Learn to spot the bottom of the iceberg. When you find yourself comparing, turn the tables around and ask yourself what the other person might admire in you. We can never really understand someone else’s reality, struggles and insecurities just as they might not have all your strengths in sight.
3. Practice Meditation
Ok, so those were the 6 (over)achievement archetypes.
I use this model a lot in my coaching practice and it’s central to the Achievement Detox program. Often clients tell me that they can relate to several archetypes but when looking into the driver and fears it often becomes clear which overachievement strategy they use the most.
And that’s where we focus in with behavioural experiments.
Because as with all behavioural change, we need to work through the 3As:
First we need to be AWARE of our behaviours and cognitions
Then we need to ACCEPT the situation
But nothing will change unless we ACT – we need to try and evaluate new strategies and slowly build new behaviours.
I hope you have enjoyed the series. If you would like more information or would like to work with me as a coach, please get in touch
Motto: ‘winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’.
Competitors see life as a race and always try to be just that little bit better than everyone else.
If you identify as a Competitor achievement archetype you often ignore your own basic needs such as sleep and food.
You sometimes come across as judgmental and go to extreme lengths to hide your own failures and shortcomings. You often step on people’s toes.
There is a lot of shame involved in this achievement strategy and the competitor risks ending up a lonely person. If a person hinges all their value on winning, who are they when they lose or can’t even compete anymore?
Drivers and Fears:
The belief that the one who is best gets all the rewards
Fear of feeling worthless
The belief that you are only loved and accepted when you win
How to overcome:
Understand your insecurities. Our insecurities fuel competitive, jealous feelings. These insecurities may have developed in our younger years because of experiences that made us feel unworthy. Reflect on or speak to a therapist about what your family motto was growing up and which events shaped you.
Do a cost /benefit analysis. How are you hurting? Are you being productive, creative at work? Is your lack of vulnerability making you a bad leader/ colleague?
Define your own success and standards. Instead of using others’ accomplishments as benchmarks for success, get clear on what success means to you, what your goals are and, critically, how you would like to get there? (read how many toes you are willing to step on).
Where do you draw the line between healthy ambition and unhealthy competitiveness?
Overachievers can accomplish great things but always need to do more. As they constantly raise the bar, the cost for reaching their goals eventually outweigh the rewards. Although overachievers tend to do well early on in their careers, at some point they start questioning the value of their constant hustle. In addition, research shows that achievement-orientation significantly increases the risk of burnout*.
Learning how to achieve sustainably is not only critical to our performance and well-being but affects the people we work with as well.
In a series of posts, I will discuss six achievement archetypes or patterns, identified through years of coaching high achievers and from my own ‘achievement detox’.
Which archetype (if any) do you most identify with?
THE COMPARISON JUNKIE. Lives by the motto: ‘Grass is always greener…’
THE CONTROLLER. ‘If you want a thing done well, do it yourself’
THE PERFECTIONST. ‘Anything in life worth doing is worth overdoing’
THE COMPETITOR. ‘Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’
THE CONTANT ACHIEVER. ‘I will rest when I’m dead’
THE WORRYING PROBLEMSOLVER. ‘Spend 55 min worrying about the problem and 5 min thinking about solutions’
I will share the drivers and fears behind each archetypes and would love to discuss what strategies you use to balancing them out.
I would love to have your input and hear your reflections on this topic!
Importantly, it’s NOT about giving up on being a high achiever, it’s about developing a dimmer to your superpower so that you can achieve sustainably, on your terms.
I use this framework a lot in my Achievement Detox Coaching Program and when coaching business leaders. I find it very useful for identifying underlying fears and drivers and changing negative behaviors.
Happy reading!
*Canadian Journal of Nursing 2019, Vulnerability and Stressors for Burnout
