men and women discussion around a table

Building Psychological Safety Starts with You

You’ll rarely have the perfect mix of people on your team. But keep in mind that the very best teams are based on how they interact with each other and with stakeholders. So keep recruiting the best people you can for your team, and if you really want to build a better team, create the conditions for greater psychological safety and start with showing up for your team a little differently.

The Importance of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is a team member’s belief that they won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with questions, concerns, ideas, or mistakes – by you or by other colleagues. In short, it means that team members believe other team mates will give them grace when they take the risk to look silly, uninformed, or just plain wrong.

Psychological Safety is critical to have, especially with work that is complex, uncertain, cutting-edge or creative, and requires interdependence with other parties or groups. Research shows that it is the “gateway” condition for creating a high-performing team. So, without adequate psychological safety in place, your team members won’t give you their best.

Without psychological safety, your team or organization will fall behind when trying to create high-quality products or services that meet or exceed your stakeholders’ expectations. You’ll know you have work to do when you see low or even mediocre employee engagement, innovation, growth, customer satisfaction, and by extension, profitability.

There is no one thing that will magically make your team perceive more psychological safety. So, stop waiting for a magic bullet or for something or someone else to change it for you. You must take responsibility to do something different to improve the psychological safety on your team.

How to Show Up for Your Team to Build Psychological Safety and Move Toward Better Performance

Whether you’re a team leader, middle manager over a department, or executive, work on these aspects of your own self-development to create the conditions conducive to better psychological safety and a high-performing team.

Be Authentic

 Being authentic is about being your genuine self with others. To become more authentic, embrace your uniqueness or “weirdness”  instead of trying to fit a cookie cutter idea of who you need to be at work. The concept of being “weird”, a word that comes from a Norse word (wyrd), refers to one’s individual experience and expression. So, express your own “wyrd-ness”. (Watch a video I made on this topic.)

Also, to show up more authentically, you it takes the self-awareness and self-development work to get a handle on “your stuff” and increase your EQ. A good place to start is to look at the things or people that “set you off” and how you react when you are triggered. You might not realize that your reactivity impacts those around you, and your status as a leader magnifies that impact. These triggers indicate beliefs and behaviors that aren’t working for you anymore and that you might want to let go of.

Adopt a Learner Mentality

 When work on showing up more authentically, you’ll become more secure and centered, which means you can admit mistakes and be open to ideas from others, which is key to learner mentality. The qualities to tap into for a learner mentality to include:

humility – knowing that you aren’t better than others, which allows you to admit when you don’t know something;

fallibility – knowing you’re not perfect or all-knowing and will readily admit when you’re wrong and will share your mistakes and what you learned from them;

curiosity – having a desire to learn, which you can harness by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions of your team that are both broad and deep; and

putting focus on learning as they execute – helping team members discover what they need to learn to be successful as they pursue the tasks required to reach a team objective or goal

Respond Effectively

You can encourage more team member participation, thoughtful discussion, and better questions from your team when you:

Assume good intentions – suspending judgment of something a team member does or says until you more fully understand where they are coming from. (Watch a video I made on this topic.)

Express appreciation for sharing bad news or failures – thanking team members for their contributions, questions, and broaching difficult to hear topics by. That means you’ll listen thoughtfully, indicate that what they shared matters, and acknowledge or thank them for bringing up the topic, idea, mistake, or question.

Put mistakes or failure in perspective – based on the nature of the work…

Celebrate failures that helped the team learn something new – avoid “shooting the messenger” when a team member delivers bad news to you and offer help or support when team members experience failure or mistakes

Address clear violations of policy and procedure – Clarify boundaries from the start, so team members know what is blameworthy and respond appropriately to clear breaches of policy or procedure in a timely and appropriately serious manner to influence future behavior

Building more psychological safety starts with you. No matter how good or discombobulated your team is currently, realize that you personally have some work to do.  After all, you are a powerful role model for the rest of your team. So, become more authentic, adopt a learner mentality, and work on responding more effectively to encourage team members to take the risk of disappointing you to create psychological safety. When you become the type of person who routinely creates the conditions for psychological safety, team performance and relationships will improve.

See more videos on psychological safety on my YouTube channel here

woman leader with hands on hips in front of team

How Well Do You Handle Power? Leadership of Entitlement Vs. Responsibility

What’s more important to you — the status you get from being in a leadership position or the responsibility to serve others?

The quality of your leadership is shaped by whether you emphasize the status and privilege that you get from being in a leadership position versus the responsibility you have toward others.

The Importance of Initiation for Leadership

In traditional cultures throughout time, you would have undergone initiations to mark important transitions and stages in life to acknowledge reaching a new level of maturity or ability. For example, an initiation could indicate whether you were ready to become an elder or a leader in the group. Initiation can also reveal your life purpose and unique talents to yourself and the community. Through initiatory processes, a group learns to trust individuals to be in positions of power like being a chief or an elder in a tribe.

With each successive initiation, you would examine some aspect of yourself for the purpose of letting go of qualities or behaviors that won’t work for them going forward. The idea is that you would grow into your unique self over time and to become a better person and bring your unique gifts to the community.

An African Tale About Initiation & Leadership

There is a traditional African story that illustrates the importance of initiation in terms of leadership. It involves a brother and sister, whose father had passed away.

One day after his passing, the father appeared to the siblings and waved them over to follow after him. They follow him even though they can’t believe their eyes.

He led them to down through a hole in the ground, and underneath the ground, they see an entire village. The father led the children to the center of what appeared to be a deserted village and motioned to them to hide in some nearby bushes, where they could silently watch what happened.

After a while, a crowd of people come to the center of the village, followed shortly by someone who looked like an important person. The boy and girl saw one side of this person was covered in maggots. The people of the village gathered around and started picking away the maggots and cleansing this side of this high-status person.

After they had done that , it was getting dark so everyone, including the important chief or elder, left. The brother and sister stayed hiding until dawn the next morning, when the people again returned, followed the important person. This time, the children saw their other side, which was covered in gold. Again, the people of the village gathered around and began anointing this golden side the chief with oil and polished it until it gleamed brightly. When the ritual was complete everyone departed.

Now this story points out a couple of important things about leadership:

  • Even as a leader, you have both wonderful qualities that support your work with others (gold) and some not-so-wonderful qualities that block your ability to express your unique wisdom and talents (maggots). With intention and the help of those around you, you can cleanse what is wounded and unwanted, like the maggot side, and polish your noble aspects, like the gold side.
The Wisdom Missed for Today’s Leaders

Today, you are probably not as aware of the initiations you go through in life — even if you go through a ceremony — but they still happen. Unfortunately, it’s likely you miss the wisdom you could get out of them. As a result, instead of consciously designing and debriefing initiations that prepare you psychologically for the responsibility of leadership, today’s culture focuses more on the outer material things you can achieve as you climb in status.

Thus, it’s likely that you were not adequately centered in knowing yourself and were unprepared to assume your first (and maybe subsequent) leadership position. It’s likely you hadn’t determined and detonated your emotional triggers or defined their own unique purpose and contribution in life. In other words, you probably weren’t fully aware of or worked to heal your own maggots. And you probably hadn’t fully embraced and polished your unique gifts and talents to use for the benefit of others.

The Recurring Mistake Organizations Make with Leadership

Also in my experience, most companies are not very good at creating structures to support individuals to be ready for positions of greater responsibility leading and supervising others. Instead, the assumption organizations often make is that if you are good at a job due to your technical skills, you’ll be able to lead others effectively. When that assumption is proven false, in some cases, the company calls someone like me to help polish the leader’s “gold” and become aware of and cleanse the “maggots” through coaching.

All this to say, our society bases its definition of success on outward appearances.  To this end, most companies’ repeatedly fail to prepare prospective leaders for the level of self-awareness and emotional maturity required to be effective . This leads to an over-emphasis on the outward status and the material perks of leadership by many of those in leadership positions. This superficial emphasis on the outward trappings of occupying an elevated position are a false signal of worthiness and competence and only serve to reinforce the Ego.

In all likelihood, you will focus on what’s in it for you if you haven’t done the work on yourself (been initiated). This means, your presence and leadership will not be as beneficial to others as it could be. Any inability to handle yourself appropriately impacts your ability to handle power and authority appropriately. Thus, any “maggots” will be painfully evident to everyone around you – others will clearly see your wounds and your shadow qualities even if you don’t see them yourself. Accordingly, most organization do not prepare or initiate new leaders for the psychological and interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence required to lead others effectively.

So, instead of focusing on the status and the perks of leadership (which are often really nice and you should enjoy them), a mindset shift is necessary: with leadership comes greater responsibility to others, which means the process of becoming a leader is a great opportunity for you to grow as a human being. In fact, weirdly, situations will come up (sometimes repeatedly) that require you to face aspects of yourself that you may need to question, reinforce, or even transform. These situations will seem specifically tailored  for you. Situations will repeatedly reflect old patterns and beliefs until you increase your emotional intelligence and take your responsibility to others more seriously.

To conclude, leadership is more about being mindful and humble about your responsibility to others, and that requires you to get in good emotional and psychological shape. It’s less about any entitlement to elevated status and perks. Understanding this allows you to focus on your own development into the type of person who is ready to lead others (and help them grow too). After all, when you attend to your “maggots”, you allow your healed and polished authentic self to impact your team, your community, and the world in the most positive way possible.

black and white image of three women at a table in a meeting

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence: The Influence of the Feminine in the Workplace

In today’s business world, your ability to access your empathy and emotional intelligence is a must. Increasingly, the modern workplace has changed, morphing from a bastion of masculine qualities and values to giving greater value to these and other feminine qualities. Consequently, your effectiveness as a leader is no longer simply about making decisions or delegating tasks; rather, your leadership effectiveness is about understanding and connecting with your team on a deeper level.

Empathy

First, look at the growing importance of one feminine quality, empathy. Empathy is about stepping into someone else’s shoes and seeing the world from their perspective. As a leader, it is crucial to recognize that each employee has their own challenges, strengths, and aspirations. In the old masculine-dominated paradigm, showing empathy by being interested in your employees’ challenges and perspectives would have been seen as weak because employees were mostly seen as cogs in the machine. Their job was simply to show up and “do” without allowing their individuality to get in the way. Caring about them would just get in the way of getting the work done.

The Research on Empathy

But more and more, companies see empathy as important. In a recent study, 98% of employees surveyed, considered empathy an important factor in the workplace, even though only 40% of them agreed that their employers were empathetic. To add weight to the importance of empathy, roughly 45% of consumers say they’ll purchase more from a company if it shows empathy.

Additionally, research on empathy shows:

  • leaders with empathy increase the satisfaction of their employees by 50%. Indeed, 83% of employees are more likely to stay with a company that is empathetic;
  • 70 – 80% of virtual workers state that high empathy is important for successful remote work;
  • a lack of empathy contributes to 60% of incidents in the workplace;
  • 80% of CEOs report a direct correlation between empathy and the financial performance of their business, which might be because approximately 77% of workers would be willing to work more hours in a more empathetic workplace; and finally,
  • empathy can reduce racism by up to 50%.
Showing Empathy

How do you show empathy at work? It’s as simple as asking employees how they’re feeling about their current work –whether it’s the same-old, same-old or a new project — then offering support and guidance as required. As a leader, you can show empathy by recognizing the interpersonal dynamics going on your team and taking time to talk about or check in with team members to enable them to support one another better.

Having Emotional Intelligence

Empathy goes with another increasingly valued feminine quality: emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is about being aware of your own emotions and how they impact others, as well as being able to regulate your emotions effectively.

Leaders who possess emotional intelligence can navigate challenging situations with grace and composure, instead of becoming reactive and allowing the fight-or-flight response get the better of them. By demonstrating your own emotional intelligence, you will inspire your team to do the same.

The Research on Emotional Intelligence

Research shows that supervisors who act in emotionally intelligent ways create a more positive work climate, have employees who are able to grow into their jobs, and are generally more effective. To these ends, emotional intelligence is what helps you successfully coach teams, manage stress, deliver feedback, and collaborate with others.

With emotional intelligence, you can achieve two important business goals: create an environment that supports employee well-being, and build greater team cohesion and focus – which allow teams to deliver results aligned with company and stakeholder objectives. In fact, some research suggests that you can increase productivity by as much as 20% if your employees increase their emotional intelligence, too. This is probably because with high emotional intelligence, your team is more likely to stay calm under pressure, resolve conflicts effectively, and respond to each other  with empathy.

Final Thoughts on Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Whether it’s offering support during difficult times, fostering a culture of open communication, or providing constructive feedback, your ability to harness the power of the feminine qualities of empathy and emotional intelligence is in demand. It’s not just about what you do. It’s about how you make your team and others around you feel. When you foster an environment where emotions are acknowledged and valued, you can create a culture of trust, collaboration, and psychological safety.

It’s important to lead others to do the work to achieve company goals, but it’s the teams who develop good working relationships with each other and their stakeholders who perform above the rest. To that end, empathy and emotional intelligence are qualities that everyone on your team can and should cultivate because in the end, it’s the feminine value of creating human connection that drives success in the workplace today.