Building psychological safety in nonprofit organizations with Michael Randel
7/29/2025
“Psychological safety... is being in a place in your team, in your organization, where you’re able to speak up, raise questions, [and] challenge what’s being said... without fearing consequence, right?
Without being worried about negative repercussions should you do so; this is particularly important because many organizations, even ones that are more progressive in their political orientations, will talk about wanting to have low hierarchy, flat organization, listening. You know, all voices matter. But the reality is there is always a hierarchy, right? And particularly for people who are in a lower position in a hierarchy, [it] can be quite challenging”
In episode 128 of Nonprofit Mission: Impact, Michael Randel joins Carol to explore how psychological safety—often dismissed as a “soft” concept—plays a critical role in nonprofit team performance, learning, and innovation.
They discuss:
The connection between organizational readiness and the deeper human dynamics that shape effective leadership and collaboration.
What psychological safety looks like in action,
Why it’s vital in today’s polarized climate,
How nonprofit leaders can foster inclusive, high-trust environments where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and learn from mistakes.
Episode highlights:
[00:08:55] 🔍 What is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety is defined as the ability to speak up, raise concerns, and challenge ideas without fear of negative consequences. He connects this to his earlier work on organizational readiness, emphasizing how healthy team culture complements strategic clarity.
[00:12:05] 📉 The Cost of Silence
The risks when psychological safety is absent—especially in politically diverse or hierarchically structured teams. The result? Superficial agreement that masks unresolved tensions, which eventually undermine mission impact.
[00:15:05] 📊 How Do You Know It’s There?
Ways to assess psychological safety using indirect markers like team innovation, resilience, and error recovery. The conversation leads into the origin story of the concept from Amy Edmondson’s research on surgical teams.
[00:17:55] 🧠 Insights from Surgery Rooms
Effective surgical teams reported more mistakes—not because they made more, but because it was safe to name them. This counterintuitive insight underscores how safety enables learning and better outcomes.
[00:21:05] 🤝 Belonging Happens in the Small Moments
Psychological safety shows up at the team and one-on-one level. While toxic workplace cultures get a lot of attention, the real levers for change are often found in daily interactions and relationship quality.
[00:23:55] 🛠️ The Five Practices of Psychological Safety
Michael shares five concrete areas leaders can work on, adapted from The Psychological Safety Playbook:
Listening deeply
Communicating courageously
Managing reactions
Embracing risk and failure
Establishing inclusive rituals
[00:28:55] 👂 More Than Lip Service
Saying "I want to hear your ideas" isn’t enough. Leaders must model openness, narrate their intention, and practice new habits consistently—especially when old patterns are deeply ingrained.
[00:32:55] 🔁 Inclusive Rituals in Action
Simple practices like rotating meeting roles or using “no one speaks twice until everyone has spoken once” help reinforce equity and participation. Even changing where people sit can shift group dynamics—if done with intention.
[00:37:55] 🧩 Are Leadership Teams Actually Teams?
Michael critiques leadership teams that function more like “shop stewards,” each advocating for their silo. He encourages stepping into a collective mindset—putting on a “whole-organization” hat when gathering as a leadership group.
[00:40:55] 📈 Safety and Accountability Aren’t Opposites
Michael busts the myth that psychological safety undermines accountability. In truth, safety allows people to admit when they’re stuck and ask for help earlier—improving follow-through and strengthening trust.
[00:42:55] ❓ Two Powerful Questions for Leaders
He leaves leaders with two deceptively simple yet powerful questions to build safety:
“What am I missing?”
“Tell me more.”
Guest Bio:
Michael Randel helps leaders and their teams move through Change and Growth with Calm and Confidence. He developed the RCA Seasons of GrowthTM framework to help people understand and move through the three common phases of change. This allows leaders to navigate the challenges of change and bring about transformational results. With 30 years of experience, Michael works with philanthropic foundations, nonprofit organizations, corporations, and public sector agencies to help them navigate change with success and poise with his expertise in organizational change. The influence and impact of Michael’s work has been recognized with multiple global awards, and his clients include Amnesty International, AstraZeneca, NASA, United Nations, and the World Bank.
Important Links and Resources:
RCA Resources for Psychological Safety
The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmonson
Related Episodes:
Episode 58 Building a feedback culture
Episode 62 Healthy organizational culture highlights, part 1
Episode 63 Healthy organizational culture highlights, part 2
Episode 86 Building cultural competence for nonprofit leaders
-
Carol Hamilton: My guest today on nonprofit Mission Impact is Michael Randall. Michael and I talk about how to cultivate psychological safety in your nonprofit organization and why it's so important. Psychological safety is often dismissed as a soft concept, and yet it plays a critical role in nonprofit team performance and learning and innovation.
We discuss the connection between organizational readiness and the deeper human dynamics that shape effective leadership and collaboration. What psychological safety looks like and what it is, and what it looks like in action, and why it's really vital, particularly in today's polarized climate. How nonprofit leaders can foster inclusive high trust environments where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and learn from mistakes.
I appreciated the five concrete areas leaders can work on. Michael shared, adapted from the psychological safety playbook. These are first listening deeply. Two, communicating courageously. Three, managing your reactions. Four, embracing risk and failure. Five, establishing inclusive rituals. And each of these steps sound pretty straightforward, yet each one of these ways of being a behavior actually invites you to step out of how we are typically thought to show up as defined by the dominant culture.
They are fundamentally counter-cultural. This is especially for men, but also for women in leadership, as they are often encouraged, maybe not consciously, to lean into more traditional masculine ways of being in leadership roles. So let's talk about that first one. Listen deeply. Listening deeply requires you to slow down.
Yet in our culture, it really wants us to hurry up and stay in urgency all the time. So it means as a leader letting the other person talk first so that you can really hear what they're thinking about before what you say shapes their thoughts. It means reflecting back to folks what you've heard to check for.
Understanding even when it feels, it can feel a little awkward to do that, but in our rush, rush culture, just slowing down enough to actually listen might be the hardest. The second is communicating courageously. Communicating courageously means engaging in challenging conversations. Instead of just letting them slide.
It means taking some risks, and it might be engaging constructively in conflict instead of just avoiding it. Now, our dominant culture is essentially conflict avoidant, so speaking up and saying the hard things is really just not encouraged. Politeness is. But just avoiding hard conversations, as we all know, doesn't actually make those issues go away usually.
Instead, they fester and get worse. What's a hard conversation that you've been avoiding? So the third one is managing your reactions. And when you're managing your reactions, you're really engaging in emotional intelligence. Any meditating that you've done will really come in handy here.
What helps you react non defensively? It's about the proverbial space between stimulus and response. Can you put a beat in between so that your conscious mind can be part of the reaction instead of just your automatic and unconscious? Fourth is embracing risk and failure. Now, many organizations say they value innovation and yet they punish people for mistakes.
You cannot have innovation without some risk. Now, the innovation literature encourages everyone to take small calculated risks in the form of small experiments, but it has to be okay to make mistakes. And the more mistakes are seen as a learning opportunity, the more willing people in your organization will be to try new things.
And the fifth and final is inclusive rituals. One way to create these is to ask team members to think of a time that when they were part of a great team where they felt really safe, what did that team do differently that helped them feel that way? And based on that brainstorm, what approaches or habits might you adopt to create those , inclusive rituals?
A simple one is to include a check-in at the beginning of meetings. This enables people to connect relationally before you jump into the content of the meeting. Now, this does not have to be prolonged, even just two words saying, how are you, can do it. Another thing is to have different people lead the meeting.
Michael also talked about being aware of where people sit in meetings and how that reinforces or disrupts the power dynamics. Which of those five behaviors could you try out to cultivate psychological safety at your organization?
Welcome, Michael. Welcome back to Nonprofit Mission Impact.
Michael Randel: It's nice to see you again. Thank you for the invitation.
Carol: Yeah. Yeah. So it's good to have you on the podcast again. You came on earlier to talk about some research that you had done about organizations that had received gifts from Mackenzie Scott, and that episode actually ended up being one of my more, more popular over the course of the podcast.
So that's awesome. And yeah, really some very interesting results there about what kind of things help organizations be ready to receive a gift like that. But today we're gonna talk about something different around psychological safety and when we were talking to get prepared for this it seemed like a topic that was particularly relevant given everything that's going on around us here in the US at least.
And, and what we're going through right now. But let's just start with some definitions. So how would you define psychological safety? And I guess, is there anything that would be unique about it within the nonprofit sector?
Michael: Yeah, it's a great opening question, Carol. I'd actually like to preface it by making a link between the theme from my previous episode with you and this one. yes, I spoke about my research with that received gifts from Mackenzie Scott, and typically. You cannot apply for them. You know, they did do one open call, but typically you don't apply. So what I had found from my research was the importance of being prepared as an organization, not for McKenzie Scott per se, but how you are aligning and clarifying what you're about, your strategies and things like that. So whatever opportunity comes along, you're ready for it. Okay. That frame sort of speaks to some of the, if you will, structural, managerial leadership kind of things to put in place. And so I really believe that psychological safety as a topic is a very important compliment to the elements I had spoken about in the prepared organization framework. So psychological safety to give you a definition is the being in a place in your team, in your organization where you're able to speak up, raise questions, challenge, what's being said. But, and, and doing so without fearing consequence, right? Without being worried about negative repercussions should you do so this is particularly important because many organizations, even ones that are sort of more progressive in their political orientations, we'll talk about wanting to have low hierarchy, flat organizations listening. You know, all voices matter. But the reality is there is always a hierarchy, right? And so, particularly for people who are in a lower status position in a hierarchy, it can be quite challenging to confront people in the higher power in the position. And this is true, even for executive level C-suite leaders who might be hesitant to directly challenge a CEO or executive director. You also asked about why this matters now and how it shows up in nonprofit organizations? Well, we are recording this in May of 2025, so the last few months here in the United States, but this has reverberated around the world, have a real highlight on, polarization, different points of view and the ways that's playing out in society at large, but it also plays out in organizations. I was talking with some leaders recently who are working across the whole country and they believe because they can't necessarily ask this question of people, but they believe that some of their staff, some of their supporters, volunteers, may be supporting the administration that's in power at the moment. They themselves might have a different take on things. So they're very sort of sensitive showing up in ways that don't let me say, how do we put it this way? Let me frame it positively. There. Interest to sustain support for their mission, right? And people may have a whole range of different political perspectives. But if they have a shared mission orientation, that gives you a point of commonality and something that you can work with in that kind of setting. But even then, within teams, the ability to be able to speak up, be frank about things, to feel that you can offer ideas, to bring good questions, to name things that are not being named is really important.
Yeah, otherwise the risk is that you have a veneer of agreement. But the reality is underneath that, there may well be differences that if they can't be brought to the surface at this moment, continue lurking. And at some future point, they're going to interrupt the work. So it's always better to try and preemptively, proactively surface issues and work through them. It has a negative repercussion on the work that you're doing on your mission and the impact that you're trying to make.
Carol: Yes. You talked about a number of different kinds of aspects of how people are feeling safe. They behave. How, how that shows up. I think it's easy to kind of see the signs when it's in the opposite direction of, you know, if you are afraid of making a mistake or, you know, have to cover those things up or that being able to speak up in a, in a, in a, in a real way.
Being able to challenge especially folks kind of, you know, higher up in the organization. Ask, ask. Not just questions that are like, let me tell, have the leader tell you more, but questions that, that question something, if you know what I mean. Are there other, other, other kinds of characteristics or things that people can see to be able to see that an organization or a team kind of has that psychological safety with each other?
Michael: Yeah, that's a good question. There's a lot of work being done around how you, how do you assess? I. The presence of psychological safety or the, or the quality, if you will, of the psychological safety that's present in, in a group. I think we have to look for indirect markers. Right. Well does the team perform? How well is the team able to identify and recover from missteps or to changes in its environment? How innovative is the group able to be? Right. So it's, so, it's, it's things that we're not necessarily looking at. What are the interpersonal dynamics, although those matter, and we can come back to that, but what are the consequences of the team's work? And really interesting actually, that, that illuminates, this is the origin story of psychological safety. So. Amy Edmondson, who's a professor at Harvard Business School, she's done some really, really interesting research over the years. When she was a doctoral student, she was studying teams and team effectiveness, and so she arranged for her research to study surgical teams at one of the hospitals in the Boston area. They had good data about how the teams were seen by their members as being more or less effective. But she, being a good researcher, wanted to really quantify this. So she was able to get information about mistakes, error rates happening during surgery, right? And so when she began comparing the number of reported mistakes with the sort of assessed levels of team effectiveness, she was really confused by the data. thought she'd made a mistake because things were inverted. In other words, highly effective teams made more mistakes, less effective teams made fewer mistakes, this didn't make sense to her. She thought, no, no, I, I must have put it as a negative sign in summary and just flipped all the data. But when she did some follow up interviews with members of those teams, here's the interesting thing that she discovered in effective teams, I. It was safer to point out mistakes, to name mistakes. Right? Now, think of the environment of a surgical unit. It's a really, really high stakes environment, right?
Mistakes can have very, very serious, even deadly, literally deadly consequences. And it's typically a place with a lot of power hierarchy, right? The skilled surgeons have gotten to that role after perhaps 15 years of study. I. further specialize. are not used to being challenged by somebody who might be a junior nurse. Right. It's precisely in the places where the surgeons invited everybody in the room to be able to speak up to point things out, that's helped the culture of safety come about. And the culture of safety didn't just mean zero errors, it meant that errors were caught. And rectified before further harm was done. And the opposite was true in this effective team hierarchy was strongly present. People felt intimidated and unsafe to speak up, so they didn't. Fewer mistakes were reported because they weren't being caught, and therefore there were negative consequences for the patients. Unfortunately. Not all of them obviously would've died, but there could have been complications and, and sort of various other things as, as a result.
Carol: Sure, sure. So it's interesting that it goes to like the, the, the origin story actually goes to what I was talking about, you know, the ability to, well, we all have the ability to make mistakes. The comfort with admitting to them or. Pointing them out and then working through them versus just covering them up.
Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: What's also interesting from the origin story is that she was looking at surgical teams, and so I think the level of a team. Right, five to 15 people is actually quite significant for psychological safety. Many of us work in bigger organizations, right? Where there are multiple teams, multiple departments, and I wanna kind of put out the idea that psychological safety is something that we experience at the interpersonal and intimate level. So in our one-to-one interactions and in our team level interactions, right? What we might experience in other parts of the organization, right? What might sometimes be labeled in worst cases as a toxic work culture. There's a whole bunch of other things that go into making up that workplace culture, but it's at the team level and in the one-on-ones where people can experience a sense of and belonging. And I think those are really important elements with psychological safety. invite people and enable them to speak up to name things. You know, again, questions, observations, new ideas, different ways of looking at things, that those are welcomed in that setting, right? That doesn't mean that those inputs need to be selected and acted on, but being able to name them and to be considered. Think is the key that matters, that people feel heard, they feel they've been able to use their voice to inform and influence the process and the decisions that are made.
Carol: And I feel like, you know, those of us who work in this arena might see all of those as an obvious good. But I feel like there's a lot of different ideas. Well, this is just all fluff, you know, we don't need it. It's just soft stuff. Although the surgical example gives very, very concrete and, and the, the opposite of that in terms of, you know, possible impact on outcomes.
But what are some reasons you would say, you know, this is important for any organization?
Michael: Well, every organization is working in a complex, challenging environment, Things are never stable. No one person has knowledge and experience of everything that's going on, and so you do need at a basic level to tap into different experiences, different sources of information to help you steer your team and the organization. Through this, through this environment, an arrogant leader is less likely to be open to other perspectives. Right, and that means they're shutting down different points of view. They are excluding certain things from their decision process, and so it might look like, you know, is being made. I think there will be a counterfactual, we could argue that would be about. And how much further could they have reached?
How much more quality, effectiveness impact could have been accomplished had they taken on a broader set of considerations while they were planning or implementing an initiative? Right? So that experience of being shut down, you know, not just dilutes and diminishes the quality of the ideas, the discussion, the decision making, it also people out. And so one of the sort of unintended consequences that I would suggest is things like higher rates of turnover or this term that we, people are using these days of presentism. So they're at work, they're not engaged. Right? Check. I'm present, but I'm not showing up. I'm not bringing my best ideas because I've learned that they're not welcome. So the practices of psychological safety. Right, and there's five of them that I can talk about. The practices of psychological safety are actually really quite important to inculcate and foster a sense where inclusion and belonging are valued, people's ideas and contributions are invited and welcomed and considered.
Carol: Yeah, let's actually go there next. I mean, what you were just talking about in terms of that arrogant leader, that kind of squashes all of that made, made me think about our larger situation. It's like, okay, sounds like you know what? We used to pride ourselves. In the US around innovation. And all of these things will probably be at a much lower rate as people live in the fear of what, what's going on.
But in terms of organizations what are some things that leaders can do to really, you know, foster that sense of psychological safety? Let's start there. Let's start with a positive.
Michael: Well there's five things. Five, five areas, and what I'm gonna share with you comes from a really wonderful book called The Psychological Safety Playbook. It was written and published two years ago by two colleagues of mine. They came together because they were both. I'm very interested in the topic of psychological safety as leaders and executives.
They had experienced personally, both the presence and the absence of it. So they knew it mattered, but they were struggling to find how to write. A lot of the writing and research was, this is important, this is valuable, you should do it. So they came
Carol: Right, right, right.
Michael: wrote this playbook, and it's a really great little resource. There are five plays in the playbook. And each of the five plays has five activities, right? So it gives you a total of 25 things to play with. And they emphasize that these things are independent of each other. So you don't have to go through them in sequence. You don't have to build mastery in all 25. You can sort of pick and select in a sense, as you're, as you're working and practicing and building them. But these are the five plays, and they can be divided into two broad categories. The first three make up what I would call the personal or the interpersonal set of plays and the final two fall into the collective domain. 'cause they have to do with what we do together as a group, right? Not surprisingly, the three plays that individuals want to develop and foster in themselves have to do with how you listen. Right, the importance of, of developing the art, of listening. Secondly is how you communicate and communicate courageously.
So speaking up. And then the third one is about managing your reactions. So people may be listening and thinking. It's about listening, speaking, and managing your emotions or your reactions. That's not and indeed it's not. And I think that's part of the beauty of it, because these are things that we might describe as sort of core interpersonal effectiveness capabilities. We would link them to things like emotional intelligence. We would link them into effective, you know, leadership practices and things like that. So yes, they are, but, but I want to kinda say, and particularly in the, on the, on the part of leaders. It's really important that you are seen as modeling these behaviors and not just modeling it, being explicit why you are showing up and interacting in these ways.
Carol: Mm.
Michael: Right?
Carol: Interesting.
Michael: Think of somebody, let's say they want to work on their listening, right? Somebody who's interacting with them, their team members are not gonna know. That the leader is trying to foster psychological safety by becoming a better listener because it's gonna be invisible to them, right?
So I believe that if leaders take the chance, take the risk of speaking about, you know, I'm trying to create an environment where everybody can feel a sense of belonging. Everybody can show up, my part of it, what I'm gonna be doing as a leader. I'm going to be communicating in ways that I welcome and invite other perspectives. I'm gonna pay attention to how I listen by being more fully present with you, not being distracted. And I'm going to really be practicing non-defensive reactions, right? Slow down before I respond or react to something. And when people understand what they're trying to do, they observe and experience those behaviors. It creates an environment which when they, they can really begin to feel, oh, the leader does want to listen to me. They are curious about what my point of view is. Right? And this is, again, as with all of these kinds of things, something the leader will need to be saying repeatedly, right? Not just once, but to, you know, and, and, and not to, like, I'm making a big announcement, but just weave it into other interactions and conversations, right? Again, the leader models it and other people can also develop and adopt those three plays. But in many places because of power difference and things like that, we know that if the leader isn't visibly taking the lead in, this isn't visibly endorsing this way of behaving. It's nice that other people are behaving in this way and it's important.
I don't, I don't wanna undervalue that. But it's gonna have a limited impact on the overall sense of safety in the team. So it needs to start with the leader, but not be limited to the leader.
Carol: Yeah, and I appreciate the three going together. 'cause I've certainly experienced many situations where someone has. Explicitly said, you know, I want to hear all the voices. I want to hear what you have to say. But then the other two aspects, you know, or other behaviors don't really follow that up.
And so it feels like lip service. And so everybody knows like, yeah, they're saying that, but yeah, don't go there.
Michael: I, I wanna say that for a leader to consistently adopt these behaviors. It will not be easy, right? Because it may be that you, as a leader, these will be new habits for you. And habits take time to cultivate because they're taking place in a context where you've actually got different habits for communication. you, you're gonna have a tussle between your, your familiar way of behaving and this new way that you're, you're trying on. So what I want to encourage you is to not be discouraged. To keep, keep trying it, to recover when you've made a mistake, right? And be able to over time, strengthen and build that habit.
Carol: Yeah, and I think, you know, our culture doesn't necessarily support it. And so those other habits would be probably, you know, already there in terms of, you know, we've gotta get all this done, rushing through things, you know, I. Trying to do a lot of different things at once. So all often kind of people think that it's in service of the mission, in service of the work that they're doing, but not really realizing the impact that that can have.
Michael: Right. Again. When the pressure's on the interpersonal quality can be undermined, right? I have to make a decision right now. I don't have time to worry about the risks that you're trying to alert me to, right? So, yes, this is why if we take our first three kinds of individual interpersonal level plays, they get complimented by the two collective plays. So this is where we explicitly as a group name, how we're trying to be together, right? Just the three interpersonal communication forms are not gonna be enough by themselves to shift how a team behaves, right? So there's two plays here. The first one is having an approach in which you embrace risk and failure. Right. We're in a complex environment, we're, we know we're not gonna get everything right every time. And so rather than trying to get the perfect project plan, the perfect system, we're doing the best we can. This is the best we know. Now let's move forward. Be open to the feedback that will help us know whether this worked or not. And we don't expect to get everything right the first time. So now, not. Punishing people making mistakes. Asking questions like, so what can we learn from this experience? Help make the difference that cultivates. This is a place where we can indeed embrace risk and failure. So that's the fourth one.
The fifth one is about inclusive rituals as a team, right? So you, again, you're being explicit when we gather as a team. We wanna pay attention to make sure everybody's voice can be heard. Consider different points of view. We raise questions. Right? So you're being intentional about that. And then it's not just on the leader to remember, oh, I need to ask other points of view. But it becomes something in the team culture. So it might be okay, we're gonna have a ritual, a practice of having our meetings. Nobody speaks twice until everybody's spoken once, right? A simple ritual. When it becomes part of the team's culture, a way of making sure that all of the ideas can be put on the table as a starting point, right? Another idea for promoting this kind of inclusion is to appoint somebody in the team for that meeting to serve as an inclusion booster. So their role is to actually be scanning. Have we heard from everybody? people being reticent? How can we invite their ideas? Without necessarily calling them out and putting them on the spot, you know, what are different ways in which we might be able to get ideas coming forward? Again, that's not the sole responsibility of the meeting leader, but by having it as a rotating role in the team, it becomes part of a shared responsibility and a shared orientation. So we have these two collective practices that we're really trying to be explicit about cultivating as a team, then each of us trying to pay attention to our interpersonal interactions, the quality of our attention, our communication, our listening, paying attention to our emotions and reactions. five things together, I think give us a really solid foundation of things we can be doing individually and as a team. will be fostering and strengthening the sense of psychological safety.
Carol: And the last one, the kind of inclusive rituals. I mean, just the fact of the idea of rotating roles in a meeting, I think can, can do that as well because it when I. You know, one person is always leading the meeting or one person is always taking notes. It, you can just have you, you fall into a kind of habit as a team.
And so shifting people in those roles, I think, you know, kind of shakes things up a bit as well.
Michael: Right. I think for me, what's important is that these things should be purposeful and intentional. Right. I. I am sure we've all seen regular team meetings where everybody's in person. They come into the meeting room and they consistently sit in the same seat week after week after week.
Carol: I find myself doing the same thing. I've just started going to a Zumba class and I'm like, oh, I've been here three times and I'm in the same spot every single time.
Michael: So there's, there's a kind of a natural, there's a natural sort of human, we look for patterns. It kind of makes it easier to enter a space when there's a familiarity. Sometimes people say, oh, let's mix up, let's go sit in a different place. It can be a superficial kind of change that doesn't necessarily invite inclusion if you don't attend to the implicit power hierarchies and relationships, right? If the boss sits at the head of the table, either sighted them or to deputies, the most junior person is either at the far end of the table or often sitting on a chair against the wall at the side of the room, right? And you say, okay, let's mix it up. Everybody's sitting in a different place. They may do so, but eyes are still gonna gravitate towards the boss and their deputies, right?
So this is why we need to go beyond just a superficial surface level shift, really be intentional about what are the practices, what are the rituals we might have that can really help us, and develop ways of supporting everybody to speak up. And to be heard by their colleagues without everybody having sort of immediate reactions against the idea, but to remain curious, to listen more deeply, to inquire, to learn more.
Carol: Yeah, and I think that's where having that observer, somebody in that role to kind of observe how the group is working. You know, who's talking, who isn't talking, and. And sharing that information with the group is particularly powerful because, you know, when you get into the content of the meeting, you, it's, it's difficult for most people to pay attention to both.
Michael: Right, right. So again, I mean, I think. As you're saying, Carol, you know that teams shouldn't be accidental in terms of how they're formed and in terms of how they behave. I do know that one of the features of effective teams is that they have really clarified and honed the ways in which they work together, and a lot of that is done by being explicit, right?
We might call it team norming or contracting. That's a great place in which to, you know, name. What are the practices we wanna have as a team? What are the rituals we want to use around how we communicate, how we interact, how we solve differences, and how we make decisions, All of those can be approached from the lens of how can we do this in ways that will be fostering psychological safety in this team that we'll get better results, better outcomes we would otherwise?
Carol: Well, and I think one team that's often is a bit accidental and then also has such an impact on the organization is that leadership team, which, you know, often just brings together whoever is you know. The heads of various functions, departments of the organization meet together. But do they actually are, are they a team or are they just a team in name?
What, what have you seen in, in that respect?
Michael: a beautiful description a couple of
Carol: I,
Michael: about these leadership teams. They're like shop stewards in a union. They each come to
Carol: Hmm.
Michael: their part of the organization and
Carol: Exactly.
Michael: it, but they're not stepping up to look at the health and effectiveness of the whole. Yeah, this is an important question.
I mean, it goes into organizational design. Again, there's this kind of default assumption that it's the heads of departments, the most senior people that will constitute the leadership team. You know, again, I don't have a sort of single prescription against that. A leadership team, like any team should engage in its contracting. What's our purpose? How do we behave with each other, right? So if it really is the leadership team of the whole organization, how when we're in this team, when we kind of come together and, and put on this hat, are we adopting the position of the whole organization rather than our individual functions and interests. Right, so that, that there's a, there's almost a ritual, if you will, that when we kind of gather as the leadership team, we might literally be putting on a hat or maybe figuratively putting on a hat as a visible reminder. I am now sitting in this place where I'm looking across the whole, right? So when they are interacting with each other, when they're bringing questions and, and challenges. from the perspective of what's best for the whole rather than what's best for my function and my people.
Carol: Yeah. And I think it's that step for that kind of team or, or any team to move from being a collection of individuals who happen to have a lot of meetings to an actual group that functions and works together by stepping back and having some of those conversations about, you know. Why are we a group?
Why are we a team? What are we working towards? How are we gonna work together? All the kinds of things that you're talking about. I think one of the other polar polarities, if you will, that that people see as kind of a, a trade off or a a we have, we can have one or the other is, you know, kind of accountability or the sense of psychological safety.
How do you see those two interacting and, and working together?
Michael: Accountability is not anathema to psychological safety. You used a phrase earlier in our conversation about potentially psychological safety being seen as something soft, fluffy, know, nice to have, but not really essential, and I would disagree with that. Again, it's because we know that the absence of psychological safety is. The number of mistakes that are happening. decreases the quality of the ideas that are on the table and thus the decisions that can be made, right? So there is a very quantifiable impact, consequence of or limited psychological safety. Accountability at the heart of it is, are you gonna do the thing you committed to doing? Right? What do we do to support you in doing that? And what might we do? Should you not come through that thing you're committed to do? Right? So accountability shouldn't be seen in a negative way as a sanction. waiting to catch you out. I think rather, we want to look at accountability as a way of here's what I'm committing to do on behalf of our team. And when I do this well, our team as a whole benefits I. Right. So that checking in on progress is not a, it's not being monitored around have you erred, right? But it's like, how is it going and how can we support you in being able to make good progress? Right. So just think about, you know, that, that experience that, that you're a team member and your leader comes to you and says, so how's it going with that, you know, action you took last week. If you have low psychological safety, you're gonna go say something like, it's going fine. I've got it. I'm handling it right. Even though you might be struggling with how to, how to move forward, you're not that you can name, I'm struggling to make progress. Without repercussions, right? And that comes back to our definition of psychological safety.
That you can raise issues without fear of negative consequences, right? So in a, in a team where there is a higher level of psychological safety, part of that accountability check-in to your leader and to your teammates is to be able to speak up, communicate courageously, and say, you know, this is harder than I thought, or, I don't have the experience to be able to do this, and I need help. Right. By being able to raise that signal earlier in the process, you're able to mobilize the support and then the action can then be accomplished maybe sooner, maybe with a higher quality, right? Then it might be if you, if you're just trying to struggle through by yourself. And so when people are able to be supported, they're able to speak up with their needs for support. They're able to get things done right. So yes, we can check the box that accountability helped that happen, but we can also say when people deliver on their promises, it's one of the ways in which we build trust. So that's another aspect where trust is strengthened and benefits from higher psychological safety. Right. And we know that trust is a really important element to have in a team when you face difficulties, right? Many organizations are struggling right now, because of the disruptions in the wider society. They're struggling. losing revenue sources or we're not sure what our budget's gonna look like next year, or we may have to trim back or even close down certain programs if everybody's. Approaching this from the perspective of how can I make sure that my part of the organization is left undamaged? They're not gonna be speaking up with ideas, questions, insights, that are in the interest and the benefit of the organization as a whole, right? So you want to have trusting relationships where really difficult issues can be put on the table and discussed. And invite people to, to show up and, and participate and contribute their best possible selves, because that's what's gonna help the organization move through these difficult times.
Carol: Yeah. And for the record, I also believe that psychological safety is important for all the reasons that you outlined, and I think that at the other side of seeing it as fluffy or soft or a nice to have or I. And, and this question of, of seeing accountability as, as, as something different, I think comes out of really a basic way of seeing people that they, they have to be monitored or you have to punish them in order.
They're gonna be lazy if you don't, you know, put all these things in place to, to spur you know, work forward. And I, I don't come from that point of view, but yeah, it's, it's like a whole, it's a whole other, really other way of thinking about people, which unfortunately is, is pretty, is pretty prominent.
But as we close out what would you say is kind of one in, in the circumstances that we're in right now, what's one question or action that you would hope or invite leaders to be taking and thinking about as they're, as they try to work through this with their teams and with their organization?
Michael: I think there's, there's two questions that I would love to see leaders use. Moreover, the first one relates to how they communicate, right? And so the question would be asking, what am I missing? So it starts on the assumption that I'm not seeing everything. I dunno, everything. Others have got useful things to bring.
So let me invite that, right? The second question is about how you're listening and it's, it's about, tell me more. So be curious. I. Don't just accept the first thing that gets said, but try and understand more about it. And I think those things together, deliberately inviting more information, more perspectives, then being curious about what gets offered really will help you slow down and, and sort of broaden your perspective on what's going on and what you might do about it. So those are the two practices I would encourage leaders to pay attention to and try it out and see what happens in your next meetings as you, as you try those two questions.
Carol: Alright. Well thank you so much. Thank you again, Michael. It's great having you on.
Michael: Thank you. It's always a great conversation with you, Carol. You know, doing important work with your podcast and getting these ideas and resources shared out with people in the sector. And I'm happy that I could be here today and share these ideas about psychological safety.
Carol: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you.
Michael: Bye.
LISTEN + SUBSCRIBE
APPLE PODCASTS ● SPOTIFY