Psychological Safety - Unlocking the Keys of Kaizen - Feel At Home (Part 3)

In the previous two articles, we explored the relationship between Psychological Safety and how systemic conditions unlock the keys of Kaizen by aligning our actions towards achieving a common goal of a system. Then, how to surf on top of our vulnerability waves, dive deep into the depths of the emotional intelligence ocean, and become an anchor for any psychologically safe relationships.

This is the final article of this series that shares insights into different frameworks and practices used to nurture the psychological safety of a learning organization. As these frameworks and practices have various layers of profundities to be covered in multiple articles, we will have a bird-eye view and experience the beautiful wisdom they offer!

“If Light Is In Your Heart, You Will Find Your Way Home.” - Rumi

Cultivating the Psychological Safety Environment :

Frameworks:

1.The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety? :

This wonderful model of Timothy R. Clark is a universal pattern that reflects the natural progress of human needs in social settings. Teams progress through the following four stages and create a culture of "rewarded vulnerability"

Stage 1 - Inclusion Safety :

Do I feel included?

Inclusion Safety satisfies the basic human need to connect and belong. It is a human right which is not earned but owed! Inclusion activates and releases the power of diversity. It eliminates junk theories of superiority which rationalize exclusionary behaviour and give weightage to the worthiness test rather than a worth test to each other.

Stage 2 - Learner Safety :

Can I grow?

Learner Safety satisfies the basic human need to learn and grow. It allows us to feel safe in all aspects of the learning process like asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, experimenting, and even making mistakes. Learning is both intellectual and emotional. It's an interplay of the head and the heart. Learning involves risk and Learner Safety is to create an environment in which we can detach fear from mistakes. And, it brings a competitive advantage.

Stage 3 - Contributor Safety :

Can I create value?

Contributor Safety satisfies the basic human need to contribute and make a difference. The more we contribute, the more confidence and competence we develop. When we create contributor safety for others, we?empower them with autonomy, guidance, and encouragement?in exchange for effort and results. Contributor Safety invites discretionary efforts. It’s a matter of personal discretion to contribute or to slack off. And, one of the powerful things we can do to foster Contributor Safety is to help others to think beyond their roles.

Stage 4 - Challenger Safety :

Can I be candid about change?

Challenger Safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better. It provides respect and permission to dissent and disagree when we think something needs to change and it’s time to say so. Challenger Safety allows us to overcome the pressure to conform and gives us a license to innovate and be creative. It has to increase the intellectual friction - the raw material that we need to solve problems, create solutions, make breakthroughs, and most importantly, innovate and decrease social friction - that we are getting temperamental, we're getting defensive, and human beings have a tendency to do that. the disruption question sequence allows for inquiry in organizations and consists of three parts

1. Why do we do it this way?
2. What if we tried something else?
3. How might we do that?

By asking these three questions, leaders signal to their group that there are no limitations or constraints in challenging the status quo. The disruption question sequence is the heart of innovation, and it fuels an organization’s ability to engage in divergent thinking and developing Challenger Safety.

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety? is the first practical, hands-on guide that provides a research-based framework to help leaders transform their organizations into sanctuaries of inclusion and incubators of innovation. Tim Clark encourages readers to become cultural architects in their social spheres.

2. An Integrative Framework for Psychological Safety :

I really love this framework from Viktor Cessan . The framework considers the Scale on which we are trying to create psychological safety (System or Individual) and the Perspective we are looking at (External or Internal), i.e. our interactions with other people or those with ourselves.

The Axes of Psychological Safety :

On one axis we have System and Individual Scale. The System side revolves around collaboration while the Individual side revolves around communication and interactions. The difference lies in whether there is a goal or not.?

On the other axis, we have the External and Internal Perspectives. The External Perspective includes things that happen outside of minds and emotions

The Four Quadrants :

External Systems Quadrant (ES): ES is about building an environment with safe interactions. This means that people feel it’s safe to take personal risks such as saying how they really feel, proposing their own ideas, and raising risks and concerns. This is done by removing and reducing negative consequences such as blame, punishment, and humiliation. Some of the underlying principles are to listen more, encourage curiosity, employ an open mindset, and make it safe to take risks.

In the ES quadrant, we need to:

• Understand what makes an environment safe and unsafe.
• Learn to recognize whether an environment is safe or unsafe.
• Learn how to shift/turn an unsafe environment into a safe one.

External Individuals Quadrant (EI): In the EI quadrant, it’s about experiencing safety in all interactions which are not focused on a goal.

For the EI quadrant, we need to:

• Learn to understand the array of needs and wants that different people have.
• Understand how we affect other people. This is called literacy in diversity and culture.

Internal Systems Quadrant (IS): The IS quadrant focuses on managing ourselves at times and in environments and situations that we perceive to be unsafe.

For the IS quadrant, we need to:

• Learn what environments are unsafe to us and how to recognize them.
• Learn how to navigate safely in such environments (i.e. self-management).

Internal Individuals Quadrant (II): II is about interacting safely with oneself. Things such as self-talk fall under this dimension. For example, speaking aggressively to ourselves or being overly critical of ourselves creates an unsafe environment internally regardless of what the outer world looks like. On the other hand, being kind to ourselves, and listening to ourselves and our needs without judgment, helps make us feel safer to be as we are.

Finally, for the II quadrant, what’s necessary is to:

• Understand our own needs and wants i.e. when we feel safe and when we do not.
• Learn how to observe and distinguish between internal engagement patterns that build self-esteem versus those that harm it.

Seeing the four quadrants broken down and displayed visually in this way has helped us reflect on where we and our organizations are strong today and where we could use a bit more work to further improve psychological safety in the workplace.

3.The psychsafety framework for implementation of psychological safety :

This great framework from Tom Geraghty is built on Deming's "PDSA cycle and Model for improvement" and excellent work by Amy Edmondson .

Study: We begin with the study of psychological safety because it’s critical for leaders to understand what they are trying to do, and what the impacts and benefits may be (as well as the dangers). In this phase, we may also put together a business case for a programme, if we need to persuade senior stakeholders of the value of the programme. In this phase, we also build enthusiasm and energy, alongside the theory.

Measure: Discover the existing state of Psychological Safety in teams by conducting the psychological safety survey or workshop.

Build: Empower leaders and team members to define the values, behaviours and practices that build psychological safety. Target interventions in those areas are highlighted through measurement.

Maintain: Give leaders and teams the space and time to embed the practices and behaviours that foster and maintain psychological safety.

Reflect: Through personal reflection and team retrospectives, examine what went well, what did not, and what improvements could be made in the next cycle.

Measuring Psychological Safety :

?????? ?????????????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????????????????: It is a powerful experiment to measure psychological safety, and work collaboratively to increase both.

Steps :

1. Explaining Psychological Safety and its importance
2. Shared the following questions and asked the team to reflect

• On this team, I understand what is expected of me.
• I feel my ideas are valued, and I feel safe in suggesting them.
• If I make a mistake on this team, it is never held against me.
• When something goes wrong, we work together to find the systemic causes.
• I feel able to bring up problems and concerns.
• Members of this team never reject others for being different and nobody is left out.
• It is safe for me to take an intelligent risk on this team.
• It is easy for me to ask other members of this team for help.
• Nobody on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
• Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilised.

3. Asked the team members to assess their current state based on the above questions and place the sticky notes in the respective quadrant

4. Reflect on the insights as a team

25 moves - The Psychological Safety Playbook :

The Psychological Safety Playbook - Lead more powerfully by being more human is a fantastic and pragmatic book by Minette Norman and Karolin Helbig . It highlights the best practices of effective leadership, deep listening, a growth mindset and innovative culture. The playbook is divided into five major plays. Each play contains a collection of powerful moves which are practical, real-world skills that every leader can learn and practice.

Play 1: Communicate Courageously :

• Welcome Other Viewpoints: “What Am I Missing?”
• Solicit Diverse Perspectives: “That’s One Viewpoint; Let’s Hear Some Dissent”
• Open Up: Express Your Own Feelings and Emotions
• Take Off the Mask of Perfection: “I Don’t Know Yet”
• Nurture a Sense of Humor at Work: Laugh More (Especially at Yourself)

Play 2: Master the Art of Listening :

• Listen to Understand: Develop the Discipline of Not Preparing a Response
• Be Fully Present: Tame Your Wandering Mind
• Clarify Your Understanding: Articulate What You Heard
• Listen for Emotions: Hear What’s Not Being Said
• Commit to Curiosity: “Tell Me More”

Play 3: Manage Your Reactions :

• Model Non-defensive Reactions: Hit the Pause Button
• Respond Productively: Label Your Emotions
• Watch Out for Your Blind Spots: “What Stories Am I Telling Myself?”
• Appreciate Being Challenged: Thank People for Their Courage
• Build on Others’ Ideas: “Yes, And”

Play 4: Embrace Risk and Failure :

• Normalize Failure: “This Is New to Us, So We Will Experience Failure”
• Reframe Failures as Learning Opportunities: “Interesting! What Can We Learn from This?”
• Get Comfortable with Discomfort: Welcome Difficult Emotions
• Model Learner Behavior: Admit Mistakes and Share Lessons Learned
• Celebrate Continuous Learning: Implement Blameless Postmortems

Play 5: Design Inclusive Rituals :

• Upgrade Meetings: Appoint an Inclusion Booster
• Respect All Voices: Establish a No-Interruption Rule
• Take Turns: No One Speaks Twice until Everyone Speaks Once
• Check for Psychological Safety: Gather Feedback after Meetings
• Appreciate the Team: Express Gratitude

These powerful 25 moves guide our psychological safety journey with more care and enthusiasm.

Six Questions to Create Psychological Safety with Your Team Members :

Asking the right questions lead us to the path of truth. Jean Marie DiGiovanna 's wonderful list of 6 questions to increase psychological safety among our team members.

1. What’s the thing you see me doing that’s helping me best contribute to the team?
2. What’s the thing I do that’s distracting from our success?
3. What’s one thing I need to know about you that will improve our relationship?
4. What’s the one thing you need from me that will enable you to be successful?
5. What’s one gift, skill or talent you have that I’ve overlooked, under-valued or under-utilized?
6. What motivates you and how can we bring more of that to your work?

Designing Team Alliance: DTA is built on RSI (Relationship Systems Intelligence). It is based on Daniel Goleman’s models of Emotional Intelligence (the ability to identify and skillfully express emotion) and Social Intelligence (the ability to accurately identify and empathize with the experience of another). An ability to interpret oneself as an expression of the system. What happens is not only personal but also belongs to the system. RSI holds that the system as a unique entity has its own intelligence and information beyond that of the individuals within it.

Experiment with the following steps using the Miro board

1. Explain the purpose of Designing Team Alliance

2. Three questions and their meaning

• What atmosphere, Culture, and Climate do you want to create during this time together? And, how would you know you had that?
• What will help when things get difficult?
• What will help us excel together and collectively have a positive impact on our organization?

3. Give time for the team to reflect and share their insights

4. Discuss as a team and find the actionable insights

A simple but powerful experiment to foster trust, commitment and psychological safety within the team! It is a wonderful template for retrospectives because it is based on Habit 2: "Begin with the end in mind" from Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of highly effective people". When we visualize and work backwards, there is a possibility of doing continuous planning and meaningful experiments to achieve valuable outcomes! It is not only about the elements in the system but the?#relationships?between them that define the fabric of any learning organization!

Other Practices :

Liberating Structure's "Appreciative Interviews" (AI): AI is a Liberating Structure that helps identify enablers for success in less than one hour. By starting from what goes well — instead of what doesn’t — AI liberates spontaneous momentum and insights for positive change as “hidden” success stories are uncovered. It will spark true peer-to-peer learning, generate constructive energy and offers the participants valuable insights.

AI has great applications and we can use it in our Sprint Retrospectives or any Leadership coaching workshops.

Steps :

• Specify a theme or what kind of story participants are expected to tell.
• Ask the group to form pairs and sit face-to-face. Give everyone paper to take notes.
• In turn, interview each other about a personal success story related to the theme. Ask questions like “What happened?” and “What made the success possible?”
• Form groups of four. Retell the story of your partner. Identify and collect insights together. Focus in particular on what enabled the success;
• With everyone, gather insights & collect on a flip
• Ask the group: “How do we invest in success factors?”, “What opportunities do you see to do more?”

And other Liberating structures like "Heard, Seen, Respected", "1-2-4-All", and "Impromptu Networking" are simple and effective tools that contribute to psychological safety.

Management 3.0 - Practices :

The main principle of Management 3.0 is "Manage the system, not the people"

Moving Motivators: One of the easiest and definitely most fun ways to delve into both your motivations (more on that below) is to play Moving Motivators! Invented by the founder of Management 3.0, Jurgen Appelo , Moving Motivators is an exercise meant to help us reflect on motivation and how it affects organizational change. The Moving Motivators exercise is based on ten motivators, which Jurgen derived from the works of Daniel Pink , Steven Reiss, and Edward Deci. These ten motivators are either intrinsic, extrinsic or a bit of both.

The ten CHAMPFROGS motivators are either intrinsic, extrinsic or a bit of both. The CHAMPFROGS model deals specifically with motivation in the context of work-life.

Practices to know team members such as "Personal Maps" can also start to enable trust in the system. "Delegation Poker" can be a great way to slowly, and comfortably start holding people accountable, and evolve the model as trust and safety increase.

Feel At Home :

There is an inspiring insight about Relationships by Eckhart Tolle

If you accept that a relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world

The real purpose of a relationship is to make us "Conscious" instead of "Happy"! What a deep insight from Eckhart!

Any organization is a Complex Adaptive System whose fabric is nothing but the relationships and interactions between its people. The quality of thinking in individuals and the conducive systemic conditions to cultivate that clarity in those interactions make any organization a conscious one. Only when the parts of the system become more conscious, they can realize the sense of being with the wholeness, create a psychologically safe environment and help each other to "Feel At Home" - the "Collective Awareness" of the entire system!

Systems Thinking plays an essential role to create this awareness and unlock the keys of Kaizen that we practice every day.

When we have the light called "awareness" in our hearts, we always are at our home and expressing ourselves as selfless service for the collective good!

References :

https://psychsafety.co.uk/psychological-safety-framework/

https://thepsychologicalsafetyplaybook.com/resources/

My hearty thanks to all my well-wishers?Katrijn van Oudheusden??Gab Ciminelli?Mohammad Umar Farooq?Piers Thurston?John Sambrook?Naresh Datta HP?Sairam Venkataraman??Dr.Viswanatha Sivam Krishnamurthy?Carlo Mahfouz?for the continuous encouragement

#linkedin?#agile?#scrum?#coaching?#leadership?#lean?#flow?#creativity?#futurism?#productmanagement?#agility?#businessagility?#systemsthinking?#life?#awareness?#selflessleadership?Xebia?Xebia Agile Chapter #people #consiousness #learning #psychologicalsafety