The CARE Equation – What stops people from being vulnerable and speaking up?

In DX’s own quest to build a culture of psychological safety, I have often questioned why we find it so difficult to set the right example. I stand on stage for large keynotes and facilitate numerous leadership training experiences to educate and motivate others to join in the quest and movement.

I must be honest. ?Every time I start a session, I am very transparent and say…..

”We are not there……yet. This is harder than any of you can imagine.”

We are more than likely to never get “there” (“there” is a utopia that doesn’t exist), but I know we can be a better example and a shining light in the fearful corporate cultures that are more prevalent.

The quest at DX Learning has been going on for over 5 years. For an organization whose sole purpose is to build organizations worth working for by operationalizing psychological safety into the existing cultures of our clients, we are intrinsically connected to the WHY. We have studied, researched, and clearly know the WHAT. More importantly, our whole business is focused on the HOW to do it (book will be out April 2024!).

Yet in some cases, team members still come to me with mistakes and issues they need to bring up with the whole team. Or I come to them with mistakes they have made when it should have been they admit (and celebrate) their mistakes to the team.

This is the difference between trust and psychological safety. Something we mix up regularly.

I have spent years gaining the trust of my team. Teams evolve. Organizations evolve. Culture evolves as the macro environment evolves. The relational capital you build with humans can stand the test of time. So, in a 1-on-1 setting with someone who trusts you, honesty, authenticity, and transparency can prevail more often than not with the right internationality, focus, and consistency.

In a group setting with multiple humans all with different experiences, preferences, and personal challenges, well that is a different ball game altogether. That’s my biggest struggle, and one I know I share with thousands of other leaders and teams.

“How do I get my team to admit to their mistakes, and challenges and share ideas in a group setting?”

Psychological safety cannot be taken lightly. I highly recommend reading this blog from my friend and our guest social scientist, Ryan Aguiar. It takes you on a deeper dive into psychological safety so we are on the same page and not different books (clarity): https://www.dx-learning.com/blog/psychological-safety-a-deep-dive

Do you want to create “that” culture?

A culture of psychological safety. An environment where every day is a learning day and people are in a place to do their best work and be their best selves.

To increase the likelihood of someone feeling comfortable speaking up either in a 1-on-1 setting or a group setting, we need to feed their brains the nutrients and ingredients they require to be cognitively at ease. We need to put their brains at rest and reduce cognitive stress. From what we have researched, those ingredients include:

1.????? Clarity (C)

2.????? Autonomy (A)

3.????? Relationships (R)

4.????? Equity (E)

CARE. The CARE Equation.

To understand CARE is to know we are human and all have basic needs that have not changed since the day of dawn. We've just swapped out Sabre Tooth Tigers for bosses! We still have a hunter-gatherer mindset.

100,000 years ago, we needed to know where it was safe to eat (clarity), otherwise, it meant death. We’ve just swapped our Sabre tooth tigers for bosses. Our brains dislike ambiguity. So, reduce it!

100,000 years ago if it was cold, we’d build a fire. We feel safer when we are in control (autonomy) as we are less likely to freeze if WE build the fire. Our brains dislike being controlled. Stop trying to control people and give them a little freedom.

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100,000 years ago if our skills, personality, and attributes (relationships) were not valued in the tribe, we could be kicked out leading to death. Our brains dislike not being valued. Stop making everything about work/results.

100,000 years ago if we were equal in our distribution of food, resources, and energy, those that needed more would suffer, and we needed the whole tribe to be at their best (equity) to survive. Our brains dislike seeing unfairness. Stop treating everyone the same. ?

Starve the brains of your team with these ingredients, and it will trigger cognitive stress and some degree of flight, fight, or freeze. When the brain gets stressed it triggers a complex cascade of responses (adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones) to help the body cope with the stressor, and its likelihood of feeling safe to speak up in a group setting about mistakes, tough challenges, and ideas, diminishes. Silence and emotional stress prevail over honesty, transparency, and vulnerability.

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Our own psychological safety case study.

Culture is a mirror of leadership. What people experience at DX is a mirror of what the CEO (me) thinks, and that will drive how I behave, which is then felt by the team. The leader of a team is, as we either create or destroy cultural value, instrumental in creating the right environment for others to feel safe or fearful in.

In the 8 years we have been in business I have always given a lot of autonomy. I have little craving for being in control, so give a lot of it to others without fear. Some have said too much!

One of my greatest gifts is to connect at the human level with people from all walks of life. I prefer to listen than talk and am naturally curious. I am quick to connect and like to build strong relationships.

My Achilles Heel is that my preference for clarity is low. VERY LOW! I don’t need much of it in order to feel safe. I am at my best when there is uncertainty and volatility. I have had to deal with so much of it throughout my life at home growing up in an unsafe household, at school where I was “different”, and throughout my career. Those battles hardened me into just dealing with it. It's normal for me. This has become a set of unconscious habits I don’t even know are happening that cause stress in the brains of those I work with.

• I talk about clarity without thinking which means the message can be confusing to others but crystal clear to me. I allow my curse of knowledge bias to get the better of me.
• I am quick to make decisions without involving the right people, which is annoying and stressful to others, but I feel I am doing what is right. I allow my action bias to take control.
• I easily operate without a strategy, as my brain does not need one as it all makes sense to me and I just intuitively know what to do, which is not efficient for others! This is my illusion of agreement bias kicking in.

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It’s not about me though. That’s being selfish and CAREless. It’s about them and being selfless and CAREing. Its about managing my biases and what makes me (and you) human.

That last bullet is the insight I have gained of late. While DX’s why and go-to-market strategy is clear to me, it is not written down and is not commonly shared and agreed upon among the team. The left hand will say and do one thing, the right hand something different, only to find out later that if only we had a north star, we wouldn’t waste so much time and energy, re-work, duplication of efforts, and delayed projects.

That leads to inequity in the team. Resources are not distributed to where they are needed, and unfair emotions are triggered. And I wonder why the team is not where I want them to be when it comes to our own psychological safety!?

Clarity. Brains won’t speak up if you starve them of the ingredients they need to feel safe.

Clarity, Autonomy, Relationships and Equity?. The four essentials of psychological safety to inspire high-performing teams. They are all needed. Miss one or more, and it’s improbable your team will be their best and do their best.

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Which component of CARE are you starved of?

Which component of CARE do you starve your people of?

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Last message. Don’t you dare fall into The Dunning Krueger Effect and let your confidence get the better of your competence. You are not perfect. Check this blog out on just how imperfect you are as a leader: https://www.dx-learning.com/blog/no-one-was-born-an-effective-leader

Nor is your team. Just reading Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson, or watching an Adam Grant TED Talk, does not make you a great leader or a great team that rips out silence from conversations and meetings. ?

There is always at least one component of CARE that is lagging. I am yet to find a team that is perfect. It’s improbable. Something is always missing as something is always evolving. We don’t spend enough time thinking about how to improve, nor do we have a playbook (you do now with CARE) to have a common language to diagnose what is holding us back from higher performance by having teams speak up often about what is working so we do more of it, and what is not, so we do less of it.

Now DX has clarity on the fact it does not have enough clarity for an environment of psychological safety to flourish, we are fixing it. We will end the year with a crystal-clear purpose and a shared understanding of our go-to-market strategy with collective goals on how to get there.

We know this will take out some of the ambiguity and cognitive stress being felt by the team and increase the chances of teams being more open and honest, leading to DX being the bellwether for what is possible in the quest for psychologically safe workplaces worth working for.

You can’t magically click your fingers and suddenly you have a culture of psychological safety. Psychological safety is the long-term goal. The leading indicator is the CARE playbook. Clarity, Autonomy, Relationships and Equity?.

Simply put, effective people-first leadership of the WHOLE team. The lagging indicator is you see and hear more mistakes being openly admitted to, more conflict and disagreement, more feedback, and more ideas being generated. We shouldn’t talk about psychological safety (like you don’t talk about Bruno!). It’s more of the inputs and outputs we should manage and talk about.

Good luck in your quest to weave psychological safety into your culture. There is no program or silver bullet for this. It shouldn’t be a “bolt-on”, it should be part of your culture. When it is great things can happen.

Hope you can learn from my lessons of how not to do it! More to come in my journey. Please like, share, and comment if you got some value from this newsletter.?

Go be more of a CAREing human and lead from whatever seat you are in. Give more, ask for more, try not to be silent.

Want help starting your quest? Take a peek here and also feel free to contact me: https://www.dx-learning.com/leadership-keynote-speaker