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Kathy Stoddard Torrey

~ Leadership Coach and Trainer

Kathy Stoddard Torrey

Category Archives: Psychological Safety

Forcing Intimacy in the Name of Psychological Safety

20 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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#gettingtoknowyou, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays, #psychologicalsafety

getting to know you 800 px cropped

My youngest son knows that psychological safety is one of the things that I talk about most often. He sent me an article on it that was in an online magazine called Inverse. You can read it here.

As always, I have some opinions about the article. I like the authors’ description of psychological safety: the feeling of trust that you are free to be you. I associate psychological safety with a feeling of freedom. When we feel psychologically safe, we feel free to disagree, voice another perspective, ask questions, and take reasonable risks. We aren’t worried about other people’s reactions or retaliation. Psychological safety is a wonderful thing at work and at home. It’s no wonder that exceptional, high-performing teams foster psychological safety.

The article states that familiarity engenders the trust needed for psychological safety. I agree. So does Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Trust is the foundation of his pyramid for the qualities of exceptional teams. He advocates building trust with a few questions that he has researched:

  • What is your birth order?
  • What was a major childhood challenge?
  • What was your first job?

Where they lose me in the Inverse article is using the infamous 36 Questions That Lead to Love to build trust at work. You can read the NY Times article about the 36 Questions here. Some of the questions are fine for the workplace, but some of them are just too personal!

We walk a fine line at the workplace when creating relationships. Leaders can’t keep themselves and their personal lives completely separate from their coworkers. We don’t generally trust people who won’t tell us anything about themselves. We feel that they don’t like us or trust us.

Of course, those individuals could just be intensely private, but we all know that we interpret situations through our Frame of Reference. What we assume or guess isn’t always what is true. In my dealings with organizations, I have seen a distinct distrust and resentment toward people who refuse to share any of themselves with others.

In looking at the graph in the article, it looks like a couple of people were alienated by the exercise. Their dots move out further from the group. I’m not surprised. Forced intimacy at the level of the 36 Questions was bound to insult and maybe even infuriate a few people.

At the end of the article, the authors say that no one should be forced to take part. Refusing to do a team-building exercise takes a lot of courage, especially if there is a lack of psychological safety in the group. Making workers stand up against something that is clearly inappropriate for the workplace isn’t helping the situation at all.

However, as I stated earlier, it’s a fine line. There are a few people who feel that answering questions about their first job is too personal. When I do trust-building exercises that involve some personal disclosure, I make it clear that people don’t have to share anything that makes them uncomfortable. If they don’t want anyone to know what their first job was, they can talk about their second or third job. We definitely don’t want any oversharing in the workplace.

I’ve created my own list of questions. Some are from Lencioni. Some are from the 36 Questions. The rest I made up. You can get a copy of those questions here. Click on “Getting to Know You.” I print these out on both sides of card stock. Then I cut down the middle to create bookmarks.

The foundation of any healthy relationship is trust. The more we know about a person, the more likely we are to trust them – if they are trustworthy. Every now and then, a particularly negative or mean-spirited person will give answers that push people away rather than draw them closer. 

In our personal lives, we can avoid these people. At work, we must accept that psychological safety with this particular person is not going to happen. As a leader, it’s important to realize the damage that the negative person can do to a team or organization.

Trying to get to know someone better is always worth the effort. Ask some friendly questions, and know that every response is an okay response. Whatever level of intimacy a person is comfortable with is the right one for him or her.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Designing an Alliance: In-Depth View

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Psychological Safety, Team Building

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#Communication, #DesignedAlliance, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays

Ideally, we want our people on our teams and in our organizations to behave a certain way. For example, we want them to be respectful, efficient, and productive. We can create a culture that defines and supports those behaviors. Creating a culture intentionally makes a leader’s job much easier. The culture that we create at our level may not exactly align with the organization’s culture, and that’s okay. We can decide that within our group there are certain behaviors that are important to ensure individual and group success.

We can begin creating the culture that we want by having our group or team design an alliance together. The Designed Alliance is a guideline for acceptable behavior for the group. Sometimes the agreement is called Ground Rules. When we get the group together to design an alliance, we want to make it clear that we are going to decide together on some standards of behavior. Handing down rules about acceptable behavior is not as effective.

First, we want to decide on the sort of atmosphere or emotional field in which we want to work. The group can list qualities that they want to bring into conversations. “Respect” is usually a good start. Many groups list “open-mindedness” and “humor.” Make sure the qualities are reasonable and attainable by everyone. Once the group has discussed the atmosphere it would like to create, it’s important to consider which behaviors would help the group achieve that atmosphere. For example, one ground rule could be “No sarcasm” in order to support a positive work environment.

Another good discussion is about what would help the individuals in the group and the group itself to do a good job. It might be a weekly meeting or a commitment to provide information quickly. The group might decide that daily progress reports are needed. The discussion might include a request for a less hostile attitude toward necessary requests. The Designed Alliance should address the individual needs that are going to help the group succeed. It’s a great time to remind everyone of how their actions support the goals of the group and the organization.

A specific discussion of how the team wants to behave when things get difficult is crucial for the Designed Alliance. Many groups have trouble handling conflict. Generally, groups avoid discussing differences of opinion, or they yell. Of course, the yelling is what encourages avoidance. Sometimes it helps to talk about how an ideal team would handle disagreements. How would The Perfect Team handle conflict? Having the discussion in terms of how an ideal team would handle conflict can make the discussion less personal.

In creating guidelines for behavior, a discussion of what the group doesn’t want to happen can lead to some specific behaviors that they want to include. A group normally has pretty clear ideas about behaviors that they don’t want to see. When writing out the Designed Alliance, we want to state the opposite positive behavior, rather than a negative behavior. For example, if the group says it doesn’t want dishonesty, we would include “Be honest.” If they don’t want yelling, we could include “Use a professional or respectful tone of voice.”

The Designed Alliance isn’t useful if no one adheres to it. The group must decide what they are going to do if someone breaks one of the agreements. This Designed Alliance belongs to the group, and it isn’t the supervisor’s job to enforce it. It really is up to the entire group. Many groups decide to gently remind the person about the agreement. Often, they also explicitly add that no one will get defensive or angry when reminded. There are many different ways for a group to remind each other about the Designed Alliance.

If the discussion feels like it could go further, there are a couple of other questions the group can discuss:

  • What can you rely on from each other?
  • What will you commit to for one another?

Once the entire agreement is written, it’s important to make sure that everyone agrees to the rules. The final task is to have everyone look at the list, and ask if there are any questions or problems. We want to give everyone a chance to disagree with the items on the Designed Alliance. Ensure the group understands that they are committing to behave in alignment with the Designed Alliance. It’s easy for everyone to nod their heads or just be silent if they disagree. It’s a good idea to ask the group to stand if they agree to act in accordance with the agreement and to hold others accountable as well.

At this point, someone could refuse to stand, and that’s okay. In that case, we all sit down and talk about the person’s reservations. If one person refuses a guideline, it’s best to take it off the list. If the action in question is a part of the person’s job or common professionalism, we want to schedule a coaching session on that topic privately.

There are a few things that can be included in the Designed Alliance that are useful. If these guidelines don’t show up in the discussion, it’s a good idea to mention them to the group. The group can reject them in the end, but it’s good to at least talk about them.

We agree that everyone’s perspective is, at least partially, right.

In agreeing that everyone’s perspective is partially right, we are explicitly acknowledging that there is usually more than one valid way to view a situation. There isn’t, necessarily, a right and a wrong. This perspective makes the discussions and the disagreements a lot easier because we don’t paint someone as totally wrong. As a result, the discussion continues, and we foster the positive relationships that help the group function more effectively.

We will listen to each other’s ideas and perspectives with an open mind.

This guideline means that we are open to being influenced by others. We will go into the discussion with the intentional perspective of looking for things with which we can agree. In essence, it’s agreeing to listen and being open to changing our minds. If people are resistant to the idea of being open-minded, we can remind them that listening with an open mind does not require agreement in the end.

We will always be respectful to one another.

Being respectful is usually brought up pretty early in the discussion. However, if no one mentions it, it’s a good idea to bring it up for discussion.

We won’t leave a meeting where a decision was made and complain about the decision to others if we didn’t speak up in the meeting.

Finding someone to complain to after we haven’t spoken up in a meeting is called triangulation. The group is agreeing to bring up their reservations and complaints in the meetings when the group can discuss the point of view together. It also means that when approached by someone wanting to complain outside of a group meeting, we will remind them that we’ve agreed to discuss issues as a group, not privately and individually. If the group agrees to discuss things together in an open way, that is a huge step forward for the group.

We will share our thoughts and feelings on a topic.

If the group agrees not to triangulate, a person could avoid the situation by never talking to anyone about his or her ideas or reservations. The solution is a separate guideline that requires everyone to speak their minds. The group can’t deal with issues unless they are brought out into the open for discussion. The Designed Alliance helps to create an environment and a culture where people talk and solve problems and share perspectives in a positive way. However, ultimately, it’s up to us as supervisors to maintain a safe space where people are comfortable proposing opposing views. If people believe that they will be harassed or ignored, no amount of coercion will get them to share their opinions.

We will presume good intent.

Instead of assuming that someone is being mean-spirited, we will first assume that their motivation is positive. It saves a lot of emotional pennies and hurt feelings. The only way to know someone’s intent is to ask. Until we ask, we presume good intent.

The Designed Alliance is a powerful tool that helps to create the psychological safety that a team or group need to excel. We work better when we feel free to share our ideas, disagree, and take reasonable risks.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Building and Rebuilding Trust

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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Tags

#buildingandrebuildingtrust, #EmotionalIntelligence, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays, #learning, #trust

trust chain 600 px

Think back to the leader that you consider to be a role model. Do you trust that person? Participants in workshops always answer yes. We trust the people who we are willing to follow. Great leaders need to be trustworthy in order to have the personal influence needed to get people to follow them. We build trust by being consistent. Great supervisors are consistent and reliable.

Honestly, none of us are going to be reliable and consistent all the time, but we need to manage it most of the time. Our employees need to know that we aren’t going to yell at them when they come to us with a problem. They need to feel confident that we are going to be calm and reliable. We’re going to ask questions and figure out how to fix the situation. We want our employees to feel that we are a stable, reliable force that is going to help them. Until employees feel confident that their leaders are reliable and consistent, they are going to be tentative and watchful—maybe even subversive or dishonest in order to avoid an unpleasant confrontation.

Fortunately for us, people tend to extend trust to people at the beginning of a relationship. Trust is a gift that we need to appreciate and work to keep. We want to avoid breaching trust because once it’s gone, trust is difficult to gain back. However, all is not lost if we lose someone’s trust. There are things that we can do to regain it as quickly as possible.

The first thing to do is to admit that we’ve done something disappointing. If we made a bad decision, forgot something, or lost our temper, we should admit it. The second thing to do is apologize. Some old-school thought states that leaders should never apologize. It’s based on the belief that leaders have to be perfect to be great leaders. The problem with that thinking is that none of us are perfect. We are human, and we make mistakes. We only make matters worse if we don’t admit them and apologize.

We also need to do whatever we can to fix the problem if that’s possible. An apology goes a long way, but we also want to do what we can to make things right. If we forgot to do something, how can we get it done and deal with the results of forgetting? If a plan doesn’t work, it’s time to regroup and try again. We help to rebuild trust when we do what we can to repair any damage that we’ve done.

After we have broken trust, we will have to continue to behave in a consistent, reliable manner until everyone feels comfortable again. It may take some time, so we need to be patient.

In summary, when we break trust, it’s important to acknowledge it, apologize, and do what we can to fix it. Then we continue to be trustworthy until whoever was affected decides that they can trust us again.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Leadership Simplified: Be Here and Be Kind

10 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Leadership, Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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Tags

#KeepItSimple, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays

leadership simplified 600 px cropped

No topic grabbed me this week and said “Write about me!” So, I searched online for inspiration. I googled “leadership” and got a plethora of lists and how-tos. I even have my own comprehensive leadership list that you can read about here.

They all felt overwhelming and complicated. Charisma isn’t on my list, but it was on some of the others. How do you become charismatic? “Translate vision into reality” includes a bunch of moving pieces that I could list off the top of my head. I began to ponder, “What is one thing that everyone could do right away to become a better leader?”

The first thing that popped into my head was Be Present Now. I know, the “now” isn’t really necessary, but it’s a reminder to pay attention to the things and people that are with you now. And now. It’s an all-the-time thing.

One of the greatest gifts that you can give someone is your time and undivided attention. I have one friend who calls and then doesn’t listen to what I say. She is talking to baristas or unpacking her briefcase. Her mind is not on our conversation. It feels demeaning – like I am not important enough to deserve her undivided attention.

In workshops, when we discuss good and bad leadership qualities, someone always complains about a boss who won’t look up from a computer to have a conversation. I get the same complaint year after year. People want to be listened to, understood, and respected. When we aren’t present in the moment, we aren’t doing any of those things. We are not creating the positive relationships that are the hallmark of exceptional leadership.

We want to lead with personal influence rather than positional authority. People follow us when we are in the room when we use positional authority, but not so much when they can’t see us. When we cultivate personal influence by actively listening to people, we create positive relationships that motivate people even when we aren’t in the room.

So the one simple thing that everyone can do right now, both at work and at home, is to Be Present Now.

Now, if you asked me, “Kathy, what is just one other thing that I could do to become a better leader?”, I would answer, “Be Kind.” Kindness goes a long way when creating personal influence and positive relationships. Exceptional leaders are kind.

Being kind does not mean being soft or wishy-washy. I can still maintain boundaries and hold people accountable while being kind. It just means that I treat them the way I would want to be treated. If I mess up, I don’t want someone to yell at me. I want someone to point it out and help me figure out how not to do it again. As long as I feel it’s fair, I can live with consequences, and all of us can dole them out and be kind.

Inevitably, someone mentions Steve Jobs. He was a genius who led Apple to success twice, but he wasn’t a nice person. People did not like working for him. Success depends on the ruler that you use to measure it.

In my book, exceptional leaders create a positive work environment and make people feel valuable. Yes, we want to create success for our organizations, but one of the reasons that we are here on the planet is to help each other. As leaders we are in a powerful position to influence the quality of people’s everyday lives. I say we use that power for good and create places where people want to work through positive relationships that we create by being present and being kind.

 

Psychological Safety: Final Answer (5)

29 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Leadership, Positivity, Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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Tags

#Consitent, #Google, #KathySays, #LeadershipRules, #LeadYourselfFirst, #ProjectAristotle, #Reliable

sunrise coffee 600 px

I have been discussing my leadership list in depth, and we are up to number five. Only one more to go after this one! My list is a response to Google’s research on the qualities of exceptional teams, as described in Project Aristotle. Here is the list with the bullet points that I’ve discussed so far.

Kathy’s Leadership List

  1. Be present, and show that you care.
  • Focus on keeping your mind present during conversations and meetings.
  • Use good nonverbal communication to assure people that you are listening.
  • Show interest in people’s activities outside of work.
  • Maintain appropriate boundaries for personal discussions.
  1. Enforce and model respect for self and others.
  • Watch vigilantly for situations that make a person or group feel a lack of respect.
  • Talk to employees and peers about disrespectful behavior in an appropriate setting.
  • Behave scrupulously, in a way that always shows respect for others.
  • Establish Designed Alliances whenever possible so that respectful behavior is explicitly defined, expected, and required.
  1. Include others in decision-making as much as possible.
  • People like control. Great leaders give others control as much as possible. Autonomy is motivating.
  • Meeting people’s personal needs to be listened to, understood, and respected creates positive relationships.
  • We make better decisions with more information. People who don’t agree with us can have valuable information to share.
  • After making a decision, a leader should share the reasons behind the decision and their feelings about it.
  • Inclusive decision-making saves more time in the long run.
  1. Ensure individual and team goals are clear and in alignment with organizational goals.
  • Leaders must understand how their group contributes to the overall success of the organization.
  • It’s important to make sure everyone in the group understands how they, as a group, help the organization achieve its goals.
  • Roles and responsibilities must be clear to everyone in the group.
  • Each individual needs to know how he or she makes a difference.
  1. Be consistent, dependable, and positive in your actions, attitude, and mindset.
  2. Make curiosity your default.

So, let’s discuss number five.

Be consistent, dependable, and positive in your actions, attitude, and mindset. There is a lot packed into this one. Let’s start by discussing what it means to be consistent and dependable. We want to be like Horton the elephant in Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss. Horton agrees to sit on the egg of the feckless bird Mayzie, who promises to come back. She doesn’t, and Horton stays fast on the egg through all sorts of trials. He stays until it hatches, all the while saying, “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.” We want to show that same determination to keep our word.

Of course, things come up, and life challenges us in ways that make it difficult to do what we way. However, great leaders are careful with their words and only promise what they are sure they can deliver. If we can’t for some reason, then we must apologize and make it right in any way that we can. It’s ok for leaders to make mistakes as long as they acknowledge those mistakes and make sure they don’t happen again.

Behaving in a consistent way can also be a challenge. We want to stay calm and reasonable as much as possible, but we have bad days and trying times in life. However, even through the trials of life, we want to show some emotional maturity and not lash out at others.

We could be consistently awful and negative, but that’s not what I’m going for. That’s why I added “positive” to number five. We want to be reliable and positive. Think about leaders whom you admire and follow without question. Any of them negative people? Mine aren’t. I had one woman in my life who I felt was a wonderful leader, and then something happened and she turned negative. She immediately lost her influence over me.

Just to be clear and complete, I specified that we want to be consistent, dependable, and positive in our actions, attitude, and mindset. Actions are easy to define. We want to act in a positive way that proves to others that we are reliable because when people have faith in us, we build trust and personal influence.

I don’t want to quibble too much about the difference between attitude and mindset. In general, I think that we can have a positive attitude about one thing and a negative attitude about something else. We want to cultivate a positive attitude about as many things as possible.

Once we’ve done that, we’ve gone a long way to developing a positive mindset that encourages us to see challenges as opportunities and have faith that things are going to work out for the best. Great leaders have positive attitudes about people and things at work. They also have positive mindsets about life in general and confidence in themselves and the world. A positive attitude and mindset help us to cultivate personal influence that invites others to follow us.

Here are the bullet points to remember:

  • Great leaders are reliable in word and deed.
  • Consistency builds trust.
  • Positive leaders build personal influence.

We are successful leaders when others have the same confidence in us as they do in the rising sun each morning. Bonus points if we create a positive relationship that conjures the warm fuzzies that coffee drinkers feel towards their first cups. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – leadership is all about creating positive relationships. Positivity, reliability, and consistency are the foundation.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Psychological Safety: Final Answer (4)

22 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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Tags

#ClearRoles, #Google, #KathySays, #LeadershipRules, #LeadYourselfFirst, #ProjectAristotle, #psychologicalsafety

clear target 600 px

I have been discussing my leadership list in depth, and we are up to number four. My list is a response to Google’s research on the qualities of exceptional teams, as described in Project Aristotle. Here is the list with the bullet points that I’ve discussed so far.

Kathy’s Leadership List

  1. Be present, and show that you care.
  • Focus on keeping your mind present during conversations and meetings.
  • Use good nonverbal communication to assure people that you are listening.
  • Show interest in people’s activities outside of work.
  • Maintain appropriate boundaries for personal discussions.
  1. Enforce and model respect for self and others.
  • Watch vigilantly for situations that make a person or group feel a lack of respect.
  • Talk to employees and peers about disrespectful behavior in an appropriate setting.
  • Behave scrupulously, in a way that always shows respect for others.
  • Establish Designed Alliances whenever possible so that respectful behavior is explicitly defined, expected, and required.
  1. Include others in decision-making as much as possible.
  • People like control. Great leaders give others control as much as possible. Autonomy is motivating.
  • Meeting people’s personal needs to be listened to, understood, and respected creates positive relationships.
  • We make better decisions with more information. People who don’t agree with us can have valuable information to share.
  • After making a decision, a leader should share the reasons behind the decision and their feelings about it.
  • Inclusive decision-making saves more time in the long run.
  1. Ensure individual and team goals are clear and in alignment with organizational goals.
  2. Be consistent, dependable, and positive in your actions, attitude, and mindset.
  3. Make curiosity your default.

So, let’s discuss number four.

Ensure individual and team goals are clear and in alignment with organizational goals. Leaders can avoid a lot of conflict and create a lot of motivation by ensuring that individual and team goals are clear and linked to organizational goals. Leaders can start by examining their group’s or team’s goals and then asking, “How do these goals help the organization achieve its goals?” In theory, every department, group, or team should be doing something that helps the organization accomplish its mission. So, it’s up to the leader to determine why his or her group matters. Why are they paid? What do they contribute that helps the organization?

Once the leader has figured out how the group helps the organization achieve success, he or she should make sure that every individual on the team has that information. Everyone needs to know what the group’s goals are and how they fit in with organizational goals.

People like to know that they make a difference. It’s motivating to be part of a team effort to accomplish something. We are more content when we feel that we have and provide value.

The next step for a leader is to look at each individual’s job on the team. It’s important to be able to answer the question “How does this person in this position help our group be successful and meet its goals?” Theoretically, no one should be on the payroll who isn’t helping the group and organization reach their goals. Once again, it’s motivating to know how our contributions fit into the bigger picture.

Next, leaders need to make sure that every person is clear about his or her responsibilities. We can’t be successful if we don’t know what success looks like. Of course, a clear and specific job description is ideal. In the coaching segment of my leadership workshops, I remind leaders that they can only expect people to achieve the minimum performance level outlined in the job description. So, it’s imperative that the job description includes the responsibilities and tasks that contribute to the group’s success. We use our personal influence to encourage higher achievement, but people are only required to do what is in the job description.

Lastly, leaders need to ensure that there is no overlap of duties. I often see conflict in organizations that stems from two people each believing that they are responsible for a task or area. It’s important for a leader to make sure that everyone knows what their lane looks like and that they stay in it – unless they are stepping out to help someone else.

Here are the bullet points to remember:

  • Leaders must understand how their group contributes to the overall success of the organization.
  • It’s important to make sure everyone in the group understands how they, as a group, help the organization achieve its goals.
  • Roles and responsibilities must be clear to everyone in the group.
  • Each individual needs to know how he or she makes a difference.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Psychological Safety: Final Answer (3)

15 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#beinclusive, #Google, #humor, #KathySays, #LeadershipRules, #LeadYourselfFirst, #ProjectAristotle, #psychologicalsafety, relationships

female supervisor 650 px

I have been discussing my leadership list in depth, and we are up to number three. My list is a response to Google’s research on the qualities of exceptional teams, as described in Project Aristotle. Here is the list with the bullet points that I’ve discussed so far.

Kathy’s Leadership List

  1. Be present, and show that you care.
  • Focus on keeping your mind present during conversations and meetings.
  • Use good nonverbal communication to assure people that you are listening.
  • Show interest in people’s activities outside of work.
  • Maintain appropriate boundaries for personal discussions.
  1. Enforce and model respect for self and others.
  • Watch vigilantly for situations that make a person or group feel a lack of respect.
  • Talk to employees and peers about disrespectful behavior in an appropriate setting.
  • Behave scrupulously, in a way that always shows respect for others.
  • Establish Designed Alliances whenever possible so that respectful behavior is explicitly defined, expected, and required.
  1. Include others in decision-making as much as possible.
  2. Ensure individual and team goals are clear and in alignment with organizational goals.
  3. Be consistent, dependable, and positive in your actions, attitude, and mindset.
  4. Make curiosity your default.

So, let’s discuss number three.

Include others in decision-making as much as possible. People like to have control over things. I have never met a person in my trainings or coaching who wants no control over how he or she spends his or her time.

When we make unilateral decisions and tell people what they have to do, it usually results in some resentment. Maybe it makes us feel like children who don’t have a say in what happens. We definitely don’t feel that our opinions or needs are valued when our input is not considered.

Including others in the decision-making process is also a great way to create positive relationships. I believe that I’ve mentioned before that creating and maintaining positive relationships is one of the hallmarks of great leadership. There are other benefits, as well.

First, we make better decisions when we have more information. When I work with groups that are having trouble making a decision together, each person has an idea of the problem and the solution. We put everyone’s ideas, feelings, and perspectives out on the table for everyone to consider. We always come up with a better solution than any one that a person brought with them because we are working with all of the information and brainpower of the group.

Second, people have more buy-in. We don’t really get behind decisions if we didn’t have any influence at all during the deciding phase. The best way to get people motivated about a decision is to let them be a part of the process of making it. In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink points out that autonomy is one way to motivate others. We want to make others feel as in control of their time and day as possible.

If you cannot take anyone’s ideas or feelings into account, make it clear that it’s a done deal. If you just don’t want to, think again. We don’t show strength when we make decisions to look decisive. We show strength when we have enough confidence and grace to ask the opinions of others.

It’s especially important to ask for the opinions and feelings of people whom we believe will disagree with us. One, they may have some really good points that we haven’t considered. Two, we develop positive relationships when we meet someone’s personal needs, which are to be listened to, understood and respected. You will notice that the list does not include “agreed with.” Most people are happy if they feel that you have fully understood their thoughts and feelings and considered them with an open mind, even if you ultimately disagree.

Once we make a decision, it’s important to share the rationale behind it. If we didn’t take someone’s suggestion, it’s best to let them know as soon as possible and to tell them why. If there isn’t a good reason not to take someone’s suggestion, I would suggest doing it. When we are open to the influence of others, we strengthen our relationships with them.

When working with leaders, the biggest obstacle that I see to a more collaborative decision-making process is a lack of time. It is much faster to make a decision and move on. However, the resulting lack of motivation and sometimes vehement objections from people expected to implement a plan on which they had no influence will take a lot of a leader’s time. A simple conversation and a few questions can go a long way toward saving time in the long run.

Here are the bullet points to remember:

  • People like control. Great leaders give others control as much as possible. Autonomy is motivating.
  • Meeting people’s personal needs to be listened to, understood, and respected creates positive relationships.
  • We make better decisions with more information. People who don’t agree with us can have valuable information to share.
  • After making a decision, a leader should share the reasons behind the decision and their feelings about it.
  • Inclusive decision-making saves more time in the long run.

Everything on my leadership list fosters psychological safety. When we listen and value the feelings and opinions of others, we are creating the safe space needed for psychological safety.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Psychological Safety: Final Answer (1)

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#Google, #KathySays, #LeadershipRules, #LeadYourselfFirst, #ProjectAristotle, #psychologicalsafety

PEA 600 px

I want to circle back to the study that started my exploration of psychological safety. Back in 2012, Google realized that not all its teams were performing equally – which is a bit odd if you think about it. Google is full of smart and motivated people. Why wouldn’t all their teams be doing great? They created an initiative called Project Aristotle and set out to study their teams.

The research team looked at the characteristics of the people on each team. They researched the effects of age, ethnicity, background, education, and interests. They compared groups that socialized outside of work to groups that didn’t. The researchers looked at 180 teams and couldn’t find any rhyme or reason to why one team did better than another – for a while.

The team followed a trail that started with something about group norms, to unwritten rules, to team culture. They knew that norms mattered, but which one was most influential? They found that psychological safety was the key.

We feel psychologically safe when we are sure that our teammates won’t embarrass or punish us (or anyone else) for asking a question, making a mistake, or suggesting a new idea. We are free to take risks.

I’ve focused mainly on psychological safety, but here is the complete list of influencing factors in order of importance:

  1. Psychological Safety. The team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.
  2. Dependability. Team members get things done on time and meet standards for excellence.
  3. Structure and Clarity. Team members have clear roles, plans, and goals.
  4. Meaning. Work is personally important to team members.
  5. Impact. Team members think their work matters and creates change.

I’m always trying to come up with clear, short guidelines for leaders to follow. It’s sort of a game for me, a puzzle. In a previous blog , I wrote a list of things that leaders can do to create psychological safety. Here a list that takes all of Project Aristotle’s findings into consideration.

Kathy’s Leadership List

  1. Be present, and show that you care.
  2. Enforce and model respect for self and others.
  3. Include others in decision-making as much as possible.
  4. Ensure individual and team goals are clear and in alignment with organizational goals.
  5. Be consistent, dependable, and positive in your actions, attitude, and mindset.
  6. Make curiosity your default.

We are going to explore my list one item at a time. I was going to include them all in one blog and quickly realized that I would be creating a monster blog for me to write and you to read. Let’s take it slowly. This week, we examine the first item on my list.

Be present, and show that you care. In every leadership workshop that I facilitate, someone complains of a boss who continues working on the computer while talking with people. When we aren’t fully present during our conversations, we are telling people that they are less important than whatever we are doing. It’s crucial for leaders to stop what they are doing and give others their full attention. If you don’t have time at that moment, turn and ask if you can talk when you’ve finished what you need to do. Then be sure to follow through and have that conversation.

We let people know that we are truly listening and paying attention with our nonverbal communication – facial expression, tone of voice, and body language. Face the person you are talking with, and make good eye contact. We show we are listening by reacting to what a person says; our facial expression should mirror theirs. Lastly, turn your shoulders and hips toward whoever is speaking, and do not cross your arms. There are books on nonverbal communication that are great, but these are the basics.

Leaders in my workshops struggle with finding a balance around caring for employees. It can be a challenge. First, we must always have others’ best interests at heart. As leaders, we can’t put individual needs over organizational requirements, but one of our goals is to create success for the people who work for us. We want them to succeed, and we want to help.

We also want them to know that we see them as fellow human beings and value the relationship. Know that a few minutes spent chatting is not a waste of time. People value time spent conversing with a leader. It’s time well-spent in creating a positive relationship.

However, boundaries are crucial. We want to show interest in people’s lives outside of work, but we don’t want to hear inappropriate details. It’s perfectly acceptable to say, “I am not comfortable talking about that at work.” It’s a good answer when someone asks a question that you feel is too private.

Here is item one of my list, with bullet point reminders:

  1. Be present, and show that you care.
  • Focus on keeping your mind present during conversations and meetings.
  • Use good nonverbal communication to assure people that you are listening.
  • Show interest in people’s activities outside of work.
  • Maintain appropriate boundaries for personal discussions.

Remember, people don’t quit their jobs; they quit their bosses. We do not want to be a boss that people want to escape. We create the positive relationships required for a good working environment when we are present and show that we care.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Psychological Safety: Power of a Designed Alliance

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#DesignedAlliance, #Google, #LeadershipRules, #LeadYourselfFirst, #ProjectAristotle, #psychologicalsafety, relationships

Designed Alliance 600 px

In a recent leadership workshop, I asked small groups to come up with suggestions for how to create psychological safety. Every group came up with one common answer that has inspired me to modify my list for leaders on how to create psychological safety. They all said that a leader should work with the group to establish guidelines or ground rules. It’s something I do at the beginning of each leadership series and an activity I have teams perform when I work with organizations.

People work together in groups better when they establish a clear set of behavior guidelines. In systems coaching, we call the guidelines a Designed Alliance. It’s an agreement between all group members about how they want to interact and solve problems. A Designed Alliance can help a group consciously create the culture that they want. In our case, we want to establish group norms that encourage behavior that would encourage psychological safety.

Ground rules created by the leader of the group that are then handed down as mandates are not that effective. The group has not explicitly agreed to abide by the rules. Also, it is then the leader’s responsibility to enforce the rules. The group has little buy-in around rules that they didn’t have a part in creating.

It’s more effective for the group to design an alliance together. The group establishes clear guidelines for acceptable behavior and agrees to follow them. The group members also agree to enforce the rules of the Designed Alliance. It’s especially important for the group to determine how it wants to deal with conflict.

Next time that I work with a team, I am going to explain Project Aristotle and the importance of psychological safety. Then, I’m going to ask them to come up with behaviors and guidelines that would help to create psychological safety for the group. Those actions will be our Designed Alliance.

If you want some suggestions for behaviors that create psychological safety, look back at the blogs that I’ve written on this topic. We’ve discussed and dissected psychological safety for 16 weeks. We’ve talked about things like trust, vulnerability, and Positive and Negative Sentiment Override. In general, any behavior that builds trust and makes us feel safe will encourage psychological safety.

A Designed Alliance is a powerful tool in creating group norms and behaviors that will support psychological safety. Thanks to my fabulous workshop participants for reminding me!


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 (Two-Minute) Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Psychological Safety: How to Create It

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#Google, #LeadershipRules, #LeadYourselfFirst, #positiverelationships, #ProjectAristotle, #psychologicalsafety

psych safety how to 550 px

We’ve examined many aspects of psychological safety and its importance. Now let’s get to the crux of the issue: How does a leader create psychological safety?

Google published a list of things that a leader can do to foster psychological safety. You can find it here. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you can download a full-page list. There are five categories with bullet points under each. Here are the categories:

  • Demonstrate engagement
  • Show understanding
  • Be inclusive in interpersonal settings
  • Be inclusive in decision-making
  • Show confidence and conviction without appearing inflexible

There is also a YouTube video of Amy Edmondson discussing her findings about psychological safety at the link above. Here is the link to the video on YouTube if you want to go right to it. She explains psychological safety clearly with some great examples. I’d read some of her work but hadn’t seen the video before now.

Edmondson says that we have a great strategy for self-protection that robs a group of psychological safety. Psychologists call it impression management. We don’t want to look ignorant, incompetent, intrusive, or negative so we don’t ask questions, don’t admit mistakes, don’t offer ideas, and don’t criticize the status quo. This list created a light bulb for me. I see these behaviors all the time in the people and groups that I work with. Edmondson says that we’ve mastered this strategy by elementary school.

Her suggestions for creating psychological safety are:

  1. Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem.
  2. Acknowledge our own fallibility.
  3. Model curiosity and ask a lot of questions.

I think she summed it up best when she said that we want to create an environment where we are not afraid of each other. Wow. That comment hit me. We do walk around most of the time fearing the reactions of others. What a waste of time and energy. Honestly, disapproval and humiliation are not fatal.

Before I discovered Edmondson’s list of ways to create psychological safety, I came up with my own. Here are my suggestions:

  1. Use verbal and nonverbal communication to show that you are present and that you care. No one cares what you know until they know that you care. It sounds like a platitude, but I find it to be very true. One of the ways to show that we care is to listen attentively.
  2. Enforce and model respect for self and others. I was a Boy Scout leader for many years and strictly enforced one rule: Nice words or no words. It was amazing to see how each boy flourished when he didn’t have to worry about being embarrassed or ridiculed. Being respectful also means being on time and doing what you say you are going to do.
  3. Be inclusive. Being inclusive means including others in the decision-making process and sharing the rationale for decisions. We want to ask for feedback and keep everyone in the loop as much as possible.
  4. Stay focused. Great leaders will keep a discussion and a process on track and moving forward. It’s detrimental to allow a group to meander around without a purpose or goal. Effective leaders must run meetings, processes, and projects with an eye to the ultimate goal and be sure the team knows what those goals and standards are. Individuals are most effective when they feel that what they do has an impact; a leader must make the connection between organizational success and the actions that the team complete.
  5. Be positive. Being positive covers a lot of territory, but it does not mean that the leader needs to maintain a constantly cheerful attitude. It means looking at people and events in a positive light as much as possible. Being positive includes actively looking for the good things that people are doing and commenting on them. It means looking at failure as a learning experience instead of the end of the world. A leader also is being positive when he or she expresses gratitude for a job well done.

I like my list and think it’s doable. From now on, I think I will grab “model curiosity” off Edmondson’s list and add it to mine. When I talk about Gottman’s list of communication toxins (aka the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in workshops, the antidote for all of them is curiosity.

Creating an optimal team environment requires a lot of the leader of the team. Usually a leader needs some help in self-assessment and behavior change. It’s important to note that behavior change is difficult if one tries to do it alone. Most people find change easier and faster if they have someone to help. I’ve seen coaching help people make amazing transformations.

If you are interested in reaping the benefits of psychological safety in your personal and professional relationships, I’d love to go on that journey with you.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

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