Psychological Safety Will Never Be “Done”

Before anything else let me be clear: everyone is doing their best and there are amazing people in pockets of obstinate excellence in every organisation and at every level of every department. That is utterly true irrespective of how “ranty” the following sounds and I would urge you to remember I believe it when you feel triggered by anything I say, chances are it doesn’t apply to you.?

With all that said, last week was an exceptionally “rant-worthy” one. This article on “The Future Is Agile” took on the topic of sterile and gratuitous certifications and accreditations and this article on The Fundamentals of Psychological Safety listed the tens of objections to the human work we have heard during our journey.

Both have ruffled feathers and cost me followers but that’s ok, we need feathers as ruffled as they may get before we jointly decide on what coiffure best suits our flock:)?

There are some good signs that not all is lost and we won’t have squandered away the progress the pandemic forced upon us all when it comes to the future of work.?

• The 4 days trial being rolled across the UK;
• The “3 out of 5 workers will only do permanently remote going forward” survey result coming out last week;
• The discussion on Psychological Safety and the people work becoming more structured and starting to make its way into big agendas

But of course none of these are enough and there’s plenty to be up in arms about because let’s be honest:

• It is an undeniable outrage that we have this much active disengagement and mental health issues at every level of every organisation.?
• It is shocking that there are but a handful of companies that have cracked hybrid/distributed based on a real dialogue with their own people.
• It’s absurd and damaging that there are too many moving parts not working in concert to examine strategy and call naked emperors out and then we have L&D and talent and retention or engagement separately trying to win micro battles and not even comprehending the size of the overall war.?
• It is absolutely disastrous that we still have a major gap between the people function and technology when it comes to understanding teams and servant leadership; and?
• Lastly but most importantly, it is borderline criminal and irresponsible that the human work is still second hand citizen despite all we know. How many places mandate or at least encourage it? How many organisations insist on it and elevate it with support to where employees recognise it is now an every-day business imperative? How many go all the way and make it integral part to where they also remunerate and add it to how they judge performance?

Precious few is the answer for now, unfortunately.?

Nearly 400 articles later we probably said everything there is to say but that doesn’t mean we can stop. We won’t ever be able to until there’s no more HumanDebt to speak of and every team’s wellbeing and Psychological Safety is being routinely worked on.?

ROUTINELY.

If you ever wonder why this work can never be “once and done” and why awareness alone doesn’t work you only need to look at Google. Front-runners in people-focus and the reason why Psychological Safety became a hot topic in business thanks to their stupendous Aristotle study, they still slipped if you look at last week’s reports of cultural issues in the SRE Borg team .?

So for anyone who still thinks they can get away with a box ticking exercise to simply democratise the concept or a series of workshops to encourage vulnerability: think again. No worthwhile transformation will ever happen on the back of awareness only but by establishing a sustained habit of working on the team dynamic by the team itself. The people work. As soon as that slips, the hard earned progress slips too. And if it can happen to Google you can bet it will happen to you.?

From hereon I've asked my team to walk away from any lead where anyone says "We're good on PS, we asked about it last year in our annual survey" or "PS is high for us, we did a workshop" or "We don't need a tool, we just need to raise awareness" and simply send the link to the article above.

No human work and not distributing it to the teams aka ignoring your HumanDebt and carrying on like it’s 2011 increases your risk as a business to levels that can not be overstated. It makes staying sustainably competitive unlikely to put it mildly. It makes neither moral nor business sense, don’t do it.?

We have to brainstorm ways to shake some parts of the organisation into waking up to the urgency of the distributed people work - come back tomorrow for some suggestions but please put on your thinking hats and think what it is that YOU can do and if there’s anything we can help with be it software, advice or simply being a sounding board, let’s talk.?

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This Thursday on the Fundamentals of Psychological Safety Series : “ Psychological Safety in the New Hybrid Environment” so make sure to subscribe so you have it in your inbox.?

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are:?Understand,?Measure?and?Improve

At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us about a demo at [email protected] ?

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon link