Your Brain at Work

The Neuroscience of Psychological Safety

Episode Summary

Organizational survival in the midst of accelerating change and complexity depends on employees' sense-making, adapting, and taking risks. Psychological safety can effectively facilitate each of these processes. In fact, psychological safety is the critical foundation for high performance, as it acts as the accelerant for both employees and organizations to innovate and push boundaries. Join Drs. Brigid Lynn, Director of Research Design and Emma Sarro, Senior Director of Research as they discuss its particular importance now, the indicators that can signal environments lacking in psychological safety and the challenges organizations face when working to create environments that foster robust healthy debates. This promises to be a rich discussion that is both science-based and tactical as they offer tangible strategies for organizations to create the innovative and exciting environment that psychological safety enables.

Episode Transcription

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Emma Sarro: Hello and welcome.

 

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Emma Sarro: I'm seeing people join. I'll wait a few seconds for more people to join. Hello, Happy Friday, all right.

 

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Emma Sarro: all right. Welcome to another week of your brain at work. Live! I am not Erin. I'm standing in for Erin this week. I will be your host and the moderator. My name is Emma Sorrow, and I am the senior director of Research at Nli. We're happy to have you back for our regulars and for any of our newcomers. Welcome. We're excited to have you here with us for the 1st time

 

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Emma Sarro: in today's episode, we'll be discussing psychological safety, its particular importance. Now, the indicators that signal environments lacking in psychological safety and the challenges organizations and leaders face when working to create environments that foster what we're calling robust healthy debates.

 

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Emma Sarro: Now, as I quickly share some housekeeping notes, I would love to hear where you're coming in from today. You know the deal. If you've been here before find the chat. We love this to be as social as possible. I'm coming in from just outside in the suburbs outside of New York City. It's beautiful. I don't want to be inside right now. It's been an amazing week. I love seeing all this. Thank you all from all over.

 

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Emma Sarro: This is great, and keep them coming. So we suggest that you put your phone on. Do not disturb. Quit your email and messaging apps. I take my watch off because I know it'll buzz while I'm in here. So anything just to not distract you and try to get the most out of today. We love interaction, as you know. So keep dropping things in the chat. We'll try to answer as many questions as possible, but we'd love to hear your thoughts, and we do have a few questions that we're kind of polling you on today as well.

 

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Emma Sarro: So just keep them coming in. And so I'll introduce our speaker today. It'll be myself. As you know, I received my Phd. From Nyu, and I lead the research team here at Nli. One of my fabulous team members is Dr. Bridget Lynn. Now she is our director of research design, where she helps clients achieve goals through targeted research and measurement design. Prior to joining Nli, she applied inclusion research to develop leader tools in order to improve military force, readiness.

 

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Emma Sarro: She holds a master of public health and a Phd. In community psychology so so excited to have you here with us today. Bridget.

 

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Brigid Lynn: I'm so excited, too. I I love working with you, and this is so fun for me to be able to have these conversations with you. We've done so much thinking on psychological safety. So it's great to be here.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, and primarily, you, for anyone who doesn't know, analyze, resident expert of psychological safety is Dr. Bridget Lynn. So this is going to be a great discussion. Anyone who has questions on it. I'm sure she'll answer them along the way, but also drop them in the chat.

 

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Emma Sarro: and I'm just going to kick this off. Nothing new for me here other than we're all feeling it rapid change, complexity, chaos, maybe really facing the need to be agile, adaptive. We're hearing a lot of this from our clients are asking, How can we be more agile? How can we be more adaptive? And I think because of all of this change and complexity. And in order to create a high

 

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Emma Sarro: performance culture that can really handle that change and the increased competition sometimes organizations react by thinking they need to raise their standards, which is great, raise their standards. But can you do that and also have psychological safety? So is this an either, or can you have both?

 

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Emma Sarro: And before I pass it over to Bridget, I'd love just to get the chat continued warmed up here, and just thinking about your own organization and what you know about psychological safety. Do you think your organization and your leaders truly understand the importance of psychological safety, especially as it refers to high standards and high performance like, can you have both? Do they see them as 2 of the same thing?

 

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Emma Sarro: And you know as people are thinking about this.

 

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Emma Sarro: and in dropping their thoughts in the chat. You know I'd love to pass it over to to Bridget, and just set the stage. What is psychological safety? I'm sure many of you in the group know. But.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Oh, yeah, that's great. And you know, and I think it is so important to

 

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Brigid Lynn: always start with definitions. I feel like when we can get to the point of we're all talking about the same thing. It helps us build our understanding. So I love starting off with a definition. And

 

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Brigid Lynn: I was seeing in the chat. Come in like it, you know, it depends on departments and things like that. But in general, psychological safety really is that shared belief that people won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. And I like to clarify sometimes

 

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Brigid Lynn: that. Really, we're talking about a climate construct when we're talking about psychological safety. And that can be kind of tricky. So essentially, a climate construct is really thinking through like more about how we are interacting together, and what we observe as a group, and how that shapes our behaviors. And it's less about like my personal

 

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Brigid Lynn: experience or my personal kind of response to it. So even when we're measuring psychological safety, it's important to be really careful about how we ask people the questions right? So it's much more about like, what are you observing? In general? With how people are treated when they do speak up? Not you specifically. So, I think that's that's a really important part. And that environment shapes like

 

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Brigid Lynn: how I believe I should be acting at work. And so I think that's an important piece.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that's so interesting, I mean. And so that suggests that depending on where you go, you can feel psychologically safe. You know, our team, I think, has a good level of psychological safety, or I hope it does. But then, maybe other teams that you've that you've been on in other organizations, you might not have had that same sense. So so it changes, and change is not necessarily something that you are doing individually, but you walk into the

 

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Emma Sarro: environment, and it will change how likely you will be to respond to certain things or react in certain ways.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Exactly. And I love that. You bring up the team concept, too, because 1 1st of all, our team is amazing.

 

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Brigid Lynn: it is great. I love it. We have high psychological safety, and I know we do as we'll talk about later, because we're allowed to disagree with one another, and we're allowed to openly do that. And a lot of times we're really focused on making things stronger and getting to excellence versus being right or wrong. But psychological safety is strongest at the team level. So exactly what you said. So, moving from different

 

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Brigid Lynn: teams, you can experience it differently.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that's great. And that and that's really come from the research that a lot of fantastic researchers, especially Dr. Amy Emmonson, about later, have have directly measured and and determined right compared.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah.

 

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Emma Sarro: Team versus other other levels. So organizations that want high performing teams. Why is it so important? Like, what does the research really suggest? Like what comes out of psych safety.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah. And so what's neat about research with psychological safety is that it's been replicated many times. And so you can really find that there's

 

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Brigid Lynn: robust

 

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Brigid Lynn: research and outcomes that show again and again that this is a powerful piece of getting to high performing organizations. Psychological safety is a powerful piece. And just. I answered a question in the chat. Just the definition I used. I put it in there really quickly, because I saw that being asked. So some of the benefits that come up time and time again are more engagement.

 

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Brigid Lynn: a higher probability that employees will not only learn new skills. But apply them right? So it's 1 thing to learn something. And we often find this at conferences, too. You know, people go to a conference and they learn lots of new things. But there's a gap between coming home or coming home, coming back to work your home office, your you know, your home base and applying those things and psychological safety helps people actually experiment and apply new learnings. Also, people with

 

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Brigid Lynn: working in psychologically safe environments are more likely to collaborate.

 

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Brigid Lynn: They're more productive in general, which I find very interesting. They report greater life satisfaction.

 

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Brigid Lynn: They have greater skill, preparedness. So they're learning at kind of faster rates when they feel psychologically safe. A lot of times, people working in psychologically safe environments report less stress. And you also see a reduction in turnover. So for me, these are really impressive outcomes.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. And you can imagine how how they lead to teams actually doing things at higher levels of performance. I mean, not only are they, you know, able to have those discussions discuss more ideas, more facts, more things

 

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Emma Sarro: to actually, you know, solve problems in different ways. It might not have been the usual way. It's like the wild idea that's presented, and maybe that's the thing that's going to drive performance. But actually having the discussion about all of the ways of doing something and finding a better solution. And and absolutely in my mind, I imagine what it takes

 

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Emma Sarro: that that risk it takes to that. You're kind of navigating socially, and when there is a high risk of sharing and taking that risk that's going to cause a stressor.

 

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Emma Sarro: On on yourself, on your well-being, and so you can imagine if you don't have that like that that is going to lead to better well-being.

 

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Emma Sarro: right? Like. So

 

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Emma Sarro: like that's exhausting to have that in in your environment. So, not having that, you can imagine how it can lead to better life, satisfaction.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, cause you're not saying, should I? Shouldn't I? It's always I should and like you said, even like speaking up with wild ideas like, maybe the wild idea is like, so off the church. But the point is, it can generate different thinking. And there's this generative kind of component to it, and you don't have to be afraid to speak up the wild idea. And so that you almost have. You know, it frees up some of that cognitive capacity because you're not trying to decide.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah. You know, this is a great question that dropped in the Q&A that I think you know kind of speaks to the team versus individual sense of psychological safety. Brian asked if the community construct, shape the individual sense of psych safety as they move from team to team. So like does a prior experience influence future experiences like, does it make it easier, harder for them to

 

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Emma Sarro: feel a sense of psychological safety as they move from, let's say, a low psych safety team to a high psych safety team. Do they.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yes, but.

 

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Emma Sarro: Them.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Totally right. And so here's the thing that's so interesting about climate, right? Which is like

 

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Brigid Lynn: So we think about climate. And we think about culture and culture is really kind of at the organizational level. And that is like the why are we doing things like it really drives that the values the vision. And then climate, which is more at the team level, is influenced, of course, by culture. But it's a little more dynamic. It's able to

 

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Brigid Lynn: shift a little differently, and it's not totally like

 

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Brigid Lynn: easy to manipulate right? It has to be very intentional. So your experience of psychological safety in one team will absolutely kind of like.

 

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Brigid Lynn: follow through to another. And it can be shaped right because you're going into an environment. So my individual behavior. Yes, I might have some things happening isn't shaped by a team that has, like the shared norm. And I adapt to the team norms, and whether that is higher or lower, psychological safety is is where I adapt. Right?

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, yeah. And maybe you become more or less sensitive to these environmental triggers. So maybe when you're changing levels of psych safety, we we have, you know, sensitivities based on earlier experience. We might sensitive to them. But you're absolutely right, we're constantly updating our expectations of the environment. And so as that evolves and changes, we evolve with it.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yep.

 

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Emma Sarro: So alright. So we talked about you know what happens? What are the outcomes of, you know? Team, high psych safety? What about when we don't have it. What are the, you know, like what happens? And are there examples that we can speak to on this.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, sure. So

 

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Brigid Lynn: you know, sometimes low psychological safety manifests in silence. Right? And that can be a little more difficult to kind of pick up on it can manifest with high anxiety. And again, you can see people are anxious, maybe, or sense it, but it but it's a little more difficult. One of a clear indicator, I think, which is is

 

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Brigid Lynn: often common and low, psychologically safe environments, is finding culprits right? Like this person did. I. It was not me, it was this person. And so there's this like blame factor that happens. And it's really focused on individuals versus processes. Right? Hmm, I need to do that. So I think that's an important part of it.

 

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Emma Sarro: Oh, it's so interesting, because, you know, we'll come to this later. But how intertwined psychological safety is with like developing accountability in

 

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Emma Sarro: and how you can imagine where, when low psychological safety exists, you might more likely get that kind of blame. Accountability.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yes.

 

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Emma Sarro: Forms of accountability. Yeah, that's really interesting. But what about? So you, you've been kind of thinking through examples of like.

 

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Emma Sarro: like, what do you see what tangible examples can you share with us.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Sure I'll talk through one that I was thinking about recently. In the banking industry. That kind of displays. What happens when you have a low psychological safety, and then I'll talk a little bit about like

 

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Brigid Lynn: psychological safety research beginning in the medical field and kind of like how we came to it, and what high psychological safety looks like. So just an example of low psychological safety. A few years ago, A well known bank, experienced repercussions of creating high pressure sales, situations with really high performance standards and low psychological safety.

 

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Brigid Lynn: So so what this looked like for the employees at the bank is that they had almost like impossible sales targets like it was really difficult, if not impossible, to to reach them.

 

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Brigid Lynn: and if they did not hit the sales targets. They actually face disciplinary action. So you have the super high pressure situation likely not to achieve what's being laid out, and if you don't, you get in trouble.

 

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Brigid Lynn: So a group of employees started raising concerns about seeing fraudulent sales practices right because people couldn't reach the sales numbers with their regular work. They actually started to open unauthorized bank accounts, unauthorized lines of credit like they were really like

 

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Brigid Lynn: doing anything they could to show they were meeting the sales target and and so these employees raised concerns like, Hey, we're starting to see people do things that we're not supposed to be doing, and those employees that raise concerns were were either just ignored, or they were also punished. For kind of bringing this up. And so ultimately what happened is that,

 

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Brigid Lynn: A Federal investigation was opened, and there was a highly publicized scandal that resulted in the CEO resigning. It resulted in millions of dollars in fines and settlement costs, and really the bank's reputation is still recovering.

 

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Emma Sarro: Wow! And I'm sure some individuals might know. You know the story that we're talking about. But it's it's really like, what are what are these huge impacts that can happen when you kind of stretch individuals too far and into a corner? Right? I mean that, like, what are they making decisions based on. I want to keep my job. And this is the only way to do that.

 

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Emma Sarro: And so and and I think bringing us back to the Star. We talked about how organizations, you know, really need to raise their standards in order to compete, and if they're doing so without thinking about the social consequences. This is an example of high standards and.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, take it.

 

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Emma Sarro: Psychological Safety.

 

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Emma Sarro: Because they raise those standards without thinking about all of the other things that that happen so.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah. And as soon as people raised the flag they were, they learned. Others observed them get in trouble, and that that led to silence.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that's a great point by bringing it back to, not the individual. What individual, what we're observing.

 

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Emma Sarro: Learn so fast, I mean, so this is another decision that somebody makes. Well, I can't speak up because no one will listen. What's the point, or I'll I'll be punished or.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Exactly.

 

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Emma Sarro: So this is the way it is around here. Now, this is the current.

 

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Brigid Lynn: That's what it takes to succeed. Yeah.

 

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Emma Sarro: All right. So let's bring it back to really understanding. You know what like, what happens and how to create, what are the behaviors of psychological safety, and a lot of that stems back to Amy Emmonson. Her work, you know her work so well. You've read all of it. So let's talk about her like where it started. What was the field that it began in.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Sure. So Amy Edmondson's Psychological safety research. And she really is like, I mean, when you hear psychological safety, a lot of people immediately think Amy Edmondson, by far most published researcher, done lots of and organizational research. And

 

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Brigid Lynn: you know, real world research. So anyhow, her research actually started in the medical field where there's high stakes. Right? It's life and death that we're talking about in the medical field. And what she actually found in her initial research was that higher error rates

 

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Brigid Lynn: which were those error rates were determined through which I think this is important. Voluntary reporting and voluntary. Chart Review. So those higher error rates were actually so associated with higher performance. And when Amy got that she's like, huh, like what's going on here? And so that's really what led her to to dig in and say what's happening on the teams.

 

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Brigid Lynn: that if they're like these higher error rates are here, but they're also performing way better what's going on. And so what she really found was in the teams that were willing to go in and voluntarily report voluntarily review is that those teams actually had this this wonderful willingness to

 

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Brigid Lynn: discuss any errors in these high performing teams. And so basically, they were like, not only are we going to discuss errors? But we're gonna actively look for them. We're going to try to detect errors, and then we're gonna get better at correcting them.

 

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Brigid Lynn: And so it wasn't that those teams that were reporting more mistakes were making more mistakes. Right? I think that's so important to say it's that they were looking for mistakes. And they were actively reflecting on them and working to learn from them and improve from them.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that's interesting. Because that also, you know, really points to another feature of this. That's so intertwined. Which is this like solutions focused growth mindset piece, you're able to kind of embed that that mindset when you are feeling psychologically safe because you're rewarded by, you know, solving and being solutions focused, looking at the mistake and looking at all the other possible ways to solve.

 

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Emma Sarro: But you're less likely to be that way if you're not in an environment of psychological safety. You're a bit more fixed right?

 

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Emma Sarro: This is where I am, and I can't improve, and I can't even take the time to learn from my mistake, because I can't share it.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Exactly exactly right. And it's also becomes an environment very much of right or wrong.

 

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Brigid Lynn: And it's not about like improving. It's about like I I have to be right. I have to be, or that person was wrong. Instead of like focusing more on like, what? What can we do better.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Something. An interesting question came up that I think you know, thinking about all members on a team. And this this feeling of psychological safety and observing psychological safety. Is there a case where you have some members feeling high psychological safety on a team where some do not like it? Or is that something? Do you know of that being.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Sure. Yeah.

 

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Brigid Lynn: So that is kind of what we talked about really, briefly, at the beginning. And that's the difference between individual kind of experiences and psychological safety versus team, level psychological safety. So what you might see with that is, if one person

 

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Brigid Lynn: felt their experiences weren't going well right.

 

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Brigid Lynn: But you gave them a group or team level psychological safety measure.

 

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Brigid Lynn: You would likely see if you're asking the right questions. What do you observe?

 

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Brigid Lynn: They may be observing things that are high psychological safety right? And so you would imagine that in general that they would say, when I look around.

 

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Brigid Lynn: this is what I see right. However, if you ask them, what are you experiencing? That's a bit different, because they can look around and say, this is in general, what I see happening here.

 

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Brigid Lynn: I do not experience that. And that's the difference. Right? That's the the shift. And so when you say I am not experiencing the psychological safety that I am observing others. That is the individual level piece of it. Now, it's it's a little bit of a different piece, right like there, you would say, there's different.

 

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Brigid Lynn: antecedents or things that are driving to that outcome of like the individual. Experience, those will be different than things that are driving towards the the team level psychological safety. So where you intervene would also be a little bit different. So I'm not sure if I totally answered that question, but I think that's a good piece of it.

 

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Emma Sarro: That's so interesting. And it really speaks to, you know, we could probably talk a lot about those differences in like individual observations, and how they differentiate their own experience from what they.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yes.

 

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Emma Sarro: Especially if they're able to kind of talk to both of those.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Okay.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, so well, okay, so let's think about the this idea of debate. So one of the big outcomes of being able to have psychological safety is, you can have a debate, and it's not always an argument, but a debate, as we know, is critical, especially for teams that are innovating and that are.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah.

 

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Emma Sarro: In developing like research teams, teams like that. You need to be able to have discussions like ideations. What does this look like? And how does it feel?

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah,

 

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Brigid Lynn: I think this is so important, right? So healthy, robust debate. And I. And I remember actually, when we were having and discussions with Amy. So so I, personally sometimes have a hard word, a hard time with the word debate, right? Because I immediately think of like people in their corners. I'm much more of like a discussion and discourse person. However, like, when we were

 

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Brigid Lynn: working on our psych safety solution team with Amy it was so interesting because she challenged me, which was a whole piece of psych safety in and of itself to think about it a little differently right to think about debate in a little bit of a different way. And so I really learned from that experience

 

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Brigid Lynn: what healthy, robust debate looks like. 1st of all. It's not about being nice, right?

 

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Brigid Lynn: It isn't. It's about being transparent. It's about communicating. It's about high standards. It's really all about managing that interpersonal risk which we've been talking about and and making sure that people clearly understand the importance of speaking up so like, Hey, this is important, and that there's an expectation that everyone is speaking up.

 

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Brigid Lynn: And so really, this healthy, robust debate is an indicator of psych safety, because it means that people aren't afraid of speaking up with their different opinions. There's this like piece of exploration that's happening. There's diverse perspectives being put out there. It's really about the robust debate is really about

 

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Brigid Lynn: thinking deeply and challenging ideas and concepts and really trying to surface things that are underlying assumptions. And ultimately it gets people to more effective solutions faster, right? And and one thing I will say is that this is

 

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Brigid Lynn: uncomfortable. It's not super comfortable sometimes, but it is productive. And it's also energetic a lot of times. So you see, people like building off each other. You see that not everybody totally agrees yet which is usually an indicator, that we need to more deeply understand something or get on the same page about what we're talking about. So I think that's kind of a piece of it.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that positive friction idea. It doesn't always feel we wouldn't necessarily default to jumping into a debate right? Because there are so many social factors that want to either. Be on the same page completely agree, because we all belong then, and everyone is like feeling good. It feels easy. It's like a

 

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Emma Sarro: a bit against our natural tendencies. But when we're in it, when you think about some of those like best teams that you've been on, there are always those exciting discussions where you do find some new solution to something, and it might not have been your idea. But.

 

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Emma Sarro: Oh, it! In that discussion you might be back and forth a bit. But you come to some great new idea, and it's exciting, because you're on that team. You all feel rewarded by that new idea. So it's not that. Oh, this wasn't my! This wasn't my idea, but it's the team win.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Exactly. And oftentimes it's hard in those situations to say exactly whose idea it was.

 

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Brigid Lynn: There really is such this like generative component to it.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah. And I think on teams that you know, maybe not. Every team needs to have these kinds of debates depending on what your team is working. But for teams that need innovation and that are solving problems that are in development and research teams you do need. And especially in this constant state of, we need to stay competitive, and things are changing so fast. So we need to change with them. How do you change? You need to

 

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Emma Sarro: these discussions to figure out the best way to change. So a lot of teams need to be able to be willing to have this, this positive, healthy friction.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Exactly.

 

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Emma Sarro: So why is it so? We've kind of talked about this. But why is this so hard to do.

 

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Brigid Lynn: So I I would like to say, like a few things that I would love to get your your input as well.

 

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Brigid Lynn: So for me it's it's difficult. And and I saw something go by in the chat. It's like, How how do you?

 

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Brigid Lynn: I'm getting the paraphrasing wrong. But it was like, How do you like embrace discomfort and and feel safe at the same time? Right? Yeah, right? It's it's hard. And at the same time it is possible. You know, disagreeing with someone in general is not comfortable. Right it is. Is it like, I don't agree with what you're saying right now.

 

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Brigid Lynn: but it gets more comfortable. And so even like, I think about Emma and I have been working on a lot of projects together lately, and both of us it it is a lot more comfortable for me now to say I don't agree with that.

 

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Brigid Lynn: and I also feel like I don't get for lack of a better word like my my feathers ruffled when you say to me, I don't, just I I don't agree with that exactly, or I have a different take on that. I don't have that same kind of reaction. It might be uncomfortable, I might see like, Oh, okay, I need to think about it this way, but I don't feel in any way

 

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Brigid Lynn: and

 

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Brigid Lynn: not safe, and I think that's the difference, right? It's like I in no way feel. I know you have my best interest in mind. I know that you have the team's best interest in mind. I know that as a team we are expected to talk about these things because we are striving for excellence. And and I think that to me is is where you can be a little uncomfortable

 

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Brigid Lynn: which can be normalized and still feel safe. But it's hard, because this is a constant state of being.

 

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Brigid Lynn: You're holding a really specific intent.

 

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Brigid Lynn: You're constantly reflecting on that intent and you're you're working to ensure that psychological safety is being fostered right? Are we using behaviors that foster psychological safety, and all of that's kind of hard. And then, on top of that, the behaviors of psychological safety, like we were just talking about speaking up and disagreeing and standing out. They don't come naturally to us. And and this is where I would love for you to kind of walk through. A bit of the neuroscience behind. Like.

 

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Brigid Lynn: why is psychological safety and these behaviors not our our default state? And why do we have to be so intentional?

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, it's it's so true. I mean, it is a constant, it's a it's a constant, intentional set of behaviors. But it becomes easier over time because you develop it's with each other on how you interact. And and you have this foundation of of trust, as Maria Maria put in that that's built over time in the relationships within this team, right of how they tend to behave. But a lot of the reason why we we by default

 

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Emma Sarro: avoid anything like this, especially a social interaction like this. A social risk is that we are organized. Our brain is organized to avoid anything that could be potentially a threat we and it really stems back to when we did this research

 

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Emma Sarro: it. You know, a lot of times our work does at its core stem back to our organizing principle of avoiding threats. And we talk about this often, for anyone who joins this webinar is that our response to threat is so much stronger and more sensitive than a possibility of reward. And so in social threats being excluded.

 

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Emma Sarro: you know, being, you know, you know, having a threat to a relationship being told that you're that you're wrong, or that you know, not being approved of all of those things. And it speaks to our scarf model a bit, too, like all of those features.

 

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Emma Sarro: come back in our social interactions. And so taking a social risk is a huge step for individuals, especially if there's an unknown of what's on the other side of that step. Right? And there's plenty of research showing all the different factors that go into that decision like? Do I say anything? Do I voice my opinion in general? Individuals won't voice their opinion if they have the minority opinion, and that's just across the board. Unless

 

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Emma Sarro: so, it just really suggests the intention of that environment need

 

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Emma Sarro: order for someone to say, Oh, I don't agree with this. I have this opinion that no one else has. I have this perspective that no one else has, and in saying that to the group, so it requires something really intentional to be in place. And so what happens in the brain in cases of low psychological safety is a threat state, and we observe it in ourselves and in others we observe, what's the environment like is this environment one?

 

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Emma Sarro: I need to be avoiding doing those behaviors that make that social risk. And it all stems back to that threat circuitry. But on the other side we have a whole system. That that is, that tells us when we're safe.

 

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Emma Sarro: and it's different than the reward system. The reward system is great. We go towards rewards, but the safety system engages when it tells us this is a safe environment to explore in. And it's really basic. It's a basic system that we have developed over time. And for us as humans, it's based a lot on our social relationship. So when we're around those individuals that give us that social buffer.

 

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Emma Sarro: we can experience things we couldn't when we're by ourselves and plenty of research has shown that when we're near individuals that we have a social relationship with, we have that sense of safety with, we can even experience pain and not feel that pain to the same level as when we're alone. Even looking at a picture of an individual we have that relationship with, we report less pain in these studies that

 

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Emma Sarro: I'm referring to. So the social relationships and the safety, the sense of safety that we get can buffer the risk that social risk. So we can take those social risks at work that would. Normally we normally wouldn't if we didn't have that buffer in place. So it's really an amazing dichotomy. We have this sense of threat

 

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Emma Sarro: that drives our behavior. But in the presence of Oh, this is a safe environment to experiment explore. I'm going into an area that I wouldn't. Normally, I can do that in the presence of these individuals. And that's why it makes so much sense that psychological safety is measured at the team level. It's these individuals you have this sense of safety with or built trust over time. I know the way that they respond to me. When

 

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Emma Sarro: do these certain things? And this is the way they respond to each other? I can. I can jump in and do that thing, and I know that I won't get excluded from the group.

 

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Emma Sarro: be, you know, broken off from this group. It won't affect my relationship with them, but I can throw this idea out.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, and then.

 

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Brigid Lynn: I love it.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, how does that make sense? Given the research?

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, it makes it makes great sense. Right? It's this idea that really we when we feel threat, our cognitive capacity gets taken up like we can't think about innovative ideas or ideas in general, because we're like, what do I do to get out of the situation, or like? How can I survive this, you know.

 

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Brigid Lynn: even at work like, Keep my job. And so you know all the you cascade or spiral, you know. But when you feel safe and and just as you were saying, and it can come from the individuals around you like, does our team protect each other? Yeah.

 

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Brigid Lynn: And guess what? That's great? Because then when you go to collaborate, you don't have that underlying kind of scanning your environment of is it safe happening? Because you already know that? And so now your cognitive capacity can go towards generating ideas and kind of thinking through like. The next thing which I think is wonderful.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah. And and this has been coming up a lot in the chat. But is there a bit more of an onus on what leaders do then? It's not just everyone can start creating psychological safety. But what is what does this mean for leaders.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah. And and so I think this is such an important point, right? Everyone is responsible for psychological safety. And

 

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Brigid Lynn: leaders really do kind of have that outsized responsibility. And that's because oftentimes leaders are setting the tone they're saying, what's being prioritized. They're the ones giving feedback. They're the ones role modeling. So I think there is an outsized responsibility. So really, leaders have that responsibility for setting expectations about the importance of the work that the team is doing.

 

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Brigid Lynn: And also hey, not only is this work important, but this is how we do our work. This is how work gets done. This is what the expectation is, you know, that our work is interdependent, and that if you're doing your work well, I can do my work well and together. Our work is better, you know, and we really think like, Hey, there's this need and an expectation that we're

 

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Brigid Lynn: all contributing our expertise. We are in this group because we have crucial knowledge and insight that is going to make our work even better. I think leaders also have the responsibility to guide the group through kind of creating the strategies for input like, how? How are we making sure everybody feels like they can give input, or are empowered to give input or giving input in a way that they feel comfortable.

 

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Brigid Lynn: And then also, how are we dealing with things when they don't go right? What if I fail. What if I am in experimenting? And I make a mistake? What are the guidelines there? And so I think that's that's really an important and then

 

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Brigid Lynn: just kind of recognizing that

 

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Brigid Lynn: failure is a natural byproduct for experimenting. And if we're in a psychologically safe environment and we are innovating, we have to kind of understand that failure is a part of it, and you can plan for failure right? There are appropriate failures. And then there's a failures that aren't quite appropriate and so I think that all of this shows that that really leaders are

 

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Brigid Lynn: focused on good processes. And that's kind of what's setting the stage.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Another thing for for leaders to somewhat own it's a huge responsibility, but the outcomes are worth it. Right? The outcome.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yes, right?

 

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Emma Sarro: You know this performance, and you and you and you just said it, you know, setting yourself up for for what to do when mistakes happen. It's not that, you know. Let's just make more mistakes, and it's fine. It's.

 

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Brigid Lynn: It's not.

 

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Emma Sarro: You know mistakes are going to happen. Let's talk about what to do with.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yes.

 

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Emma Sarro: And then that will buffer you for hopefully for those for not actually having those big ones right? And

 

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Emma Sarro: you're setting yourself up. So I think this has been coming up a lot, too, in the chat, too. And talking about the current state of organizations, I mean, is it harder now to create psychological safety or like, why do you think that is like what's coming up for for you now? And and I think, as you're thinking about that I know we do have a because we and we're going to dive into this, too. We've built with Amy a behavioral

 

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Emma Sarro: framework to really create. How do you create psychological safety and your team? We're about to dive into it. But I'd love to. You know, I know we have a we have a poll for you just to see how we can help you going forward. And and I hope you stay around because we are going to we are going to dive into? You know, how do we begin creating this? And what? What are the steps? What are the habits?

 

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Emma Sarro: So if we can drop in that poll now and then we'll

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm waiting to see the marketing poll come up. There it is. And this is just an idea. If you kind of want to talk to us more about it. But, as Emma said, we are definitely gonna talk a little bit more about the habits of team and why is it hard? Right now? You know, this is a great question, and I think

 

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Brigid Lynn: to me it it's it is. There is a lot of change happening. There's a lot of vulnerability happening. There is over the last few years we have really seen

 

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Brigid Lynn: the employer employee relationship kind of interrogated right? Like, by by both sides, like, what's happening? What are we asking of each other? What are we providing each other? And I think there's a sense of vulnerability on both both parts, and I think that is why sometimes it can be difficult right now, because, as employees, we might feel like extra vulnerable. You know, we're not sure. Is this a behavior that's wanted? So so yes.

 

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Brigid Lynn: I think there are influences happening. And yes, there are outside things like, you know, Socio, socio, cultural things happening that then influence organizations, that and then influence teams that influence individuals. Right? There's that kind of. We are all in a system type of behavior. And and right now it it. There's a lot of pressure. So so yes, I do think it's challenging right now, and I think it's possible.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, right? Because again, it is something you can create in your your own team. So you can have pockets of psychological.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yes.

 

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Emma Sarro: Within your team, even though there might not be so much so outside of that team. Because leaders think about this like this is the. This is a task to happen that you can encourage and foster on your own team at least. So you have that environment in place when we've talked. I know you've talked to clients about this like, what is the as as leaders try to build this? What is the thing that they have the hardest time doing.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, so so what's been interesting, right? Is that we do have the team solution. And and some of the data that's coming back is one of the hardest things for people to engage in is sharing that they've made a mistake. It's very difficult. Either. People do not share that they've made a mistake, or they share mistakes that don't necessarily impact

 

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Brigid Lynn: excellence or are ones that will improve work right? It's maybe not related.

 

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Emma Sarro: It's like is the wrong.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, exactly.

 

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Emma Sarro: Be safe!

 

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Brigid Lynn: Exactly exactly. It it because it's hard to say. Look, I I messed up, and I'll be honest. We just had this conversation a few weeks ago I was trying to innovate on our team. I messed up pretty big. I was so like like, Oh, my gosh! What just happened? And I brought it to the team like almost immediately, like, Oh, my! Gosh, you all!

 

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Brigid Lynn: I just like derailed one of the reports with all this data we had, and I didn't mean to, and I'm not sure how I'm going to fix it. And everyone's response was so supportive, right? It was like, we're going to fix it together. We're gonna figure it out. It's alright. We're gonna learn something from this and and we did. And not only it took

 

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Brigid Lynn: a good week to fix, and I'm not gonna lie, that's, you know, uncomfortable. I was never uncomfortable to say I messed up, and I'm afraid right. And I was feeling so afraid. And I got comfort and support from our team. But I'm finding in our data from clients that component is difficult for people to say I'm feeling afraid.

 

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Brigid Lynn: and I don't want it of my mistake, and I am also afraid to speak about it right. I felt afraid about my mistake. I did not feel afraid to speak up, and that's kind of like where the difference is. And I think that's very important. So people are afraid to say I made this mistake.

 

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Emma Sarro: Which seems like a clear, clear sign that that is, that's the lacking of psychological safety. Right? Being okay, saying, knowing that I can, you know, I I made a mistake. I messed up and but really, like, okay, so let's focus on that mistake because I'm worried about why I made a mistake. To begin with, how did I miss this thing?

 

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Emma Sarro: So in thinking about. You know, we've been kind of like teasing this framework. So we worked very hard with Amy Emmonson on this. And you know, looking at her framework and based on that.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Okay.

 

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Emma Sarro: One that was underpinned in neuroscience to make sure it really aligned in what she was seeing. Let's talk about that. What are, I know we, you know, we don't have so much time. So let's talk those 3, those 3 main behaviors. And it really speaks to what we've been talking about for the last hour.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as you said, we don't have a whole bunch of time to go for the details. But we'd love to introduce the 3 main behaviors of our team solution and team is the neuroscience of psychological safety. And and these 3 behaviors really do help us think through how to leaders foster psychological safety, and and I will say them, and then I'll kind of walk through. So the 3 behaviors are set the stage.

 

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Brigid Lynn: invite people to participate, so invite participation, and respond thoughtfully

 

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Brigid Lynn: right. And and we have talked kind of about all of these things, but set the stage really? Is that like outside leader responsibility of saying, Oh, thank you, Ollie, for putting that in the chat of saying like, Hey, this is what we're doing. Our work is important. This is our expectations for how we're gonna interact inviting participation. And that is making sure that people have the avenues they're most comfortable with to be able to speak up, to provide feedback.

 

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Brigid Lynn: and responding thoughtfully, so that when Bridget comes to Emma and says, Oh, my God, I don't know what I just did.

 

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Brigid Lynn: but we'll figure it out and having a thoughtful response of like Yes, and let's kind of like tackle this and figure it out together. I want you to come to me. I I mean, like one of the things you said, which I thought was good is, you're not alone in this.

 

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Brigid Lynn: It's not only your responsibility right? And that thoughtful response makes it so much more likely that I will come again to our team to you and say I made a mistake, and it was a kind of a big one, and I'm nervous

 

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Brigid Lynn: right? And that response is like reinforcing again all of those behaviors, you again start with the cycle of setting the stage, or you reinforce the stage. You set. You invite people to participate by saying, you're not alone what other people think about this where your expertise, and then you respond thoughtfully, when people do bring things up.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. And and it really encourages that you can. You can see both of those other pieces that you know that we kind of incorporated into this is like ensuring people follow through making sure

 

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Emma Sarro: isn't the fear of blame. It's more the you know what this is. This is your your role, and you're going to be able to follow through on this and taking that ownership, but also the encouraging the growth piece of this is.

 

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Emma Sarro: How can we learn from this? And so that it doesn't happen again? But yeah, Amy's work is fantastic. And I research really supports it the neuroscience that we added, these behaviors are absolutely doable, but they do take intention, and they take practice. And over time, though it's not something that you know, teams have to be thinking about very you know intensely. Once they start developing those habits, it becomes more natural.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yes, exactly. And one thing which you've been doing so much research on, and I think it's important to kind of pull together, and we've peppered it in throughout is that you've been doing a lot of work on the link between accountability, growth, mindset and psychological safety.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah. And it's so it's interesting because these these pieces, as we were building psych safety. And we've we've started working on accountability and built a solution around. Accountability is, we keep seeing these pillars of each of each of them kind of intertwined. So we've done a lot of work on growth, mindset understanding how to learn from mistakes and be rewarded from them. But then psychological safety necessarily involves.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Solutions focused. Piece of it, you know, being able to, you know. Look at new ways of working and not being fixed in a mindset of competition, or I can't grow from this. And then the accountability piece, how can you follow through on your tasks and and be and find a way to get something done and not blame others if you don't have a growth mindset. And so it's interesting about.

 

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Emma Sarro: Is that Amy's work. Actually, some recent work has shown that teams that have high levels of psychological safety, but also high levels of accountability with each other. Outperform teams that just have high accountability or high psych safety. So those 2

 

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Emma Sarro: necessarily go together. And we've been starting to talk about these 3 pillars of leadership as Gpa. Which is kind of like an interesting and fun.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah, I love it.

 

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Emma Sarro: If your leaders embed high levels of growth mindset, have high psychological safety on the teams and encourage an environment of accountability, these are the 3 pillars of great leadership in organizations. And we started to think, you know, can we kind of ask leaders to reflect on their own Gpa, their own.

 

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Emma Sarro: Gpa, are they encouraging all 3 of these things? And so we've been talking about this for a while. We've we've put out some articles on thinking about the leadership pillars. And we just finished a really fun, really brief quiz, our measurement team built this based on what does it take to build each of these? And do you have these in place.

 

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Emma Sarro: Think you know, where are you missing? Are you missing, or or is your Gpa. For anyone in the Us. We have grade point average. And so this is something that's kind of like fun to think about. How are your leaders? Gpa.

 

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Emma Sarro: A high Gpa. And I'd love to know, you know, for anyone who, before you take the quiz. How would you kind of imagine your leadership. Gpa, to be? Is there something missing that something needs to be worked on? Or do you think you know you have these pillars in place? We'd love to know.

 

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Brigid Lynn: Yeah.

 

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Brigid Lynn: I I love that. And I dropped the quiz link in the chat. But yes, exactly like Emma, saying, Tell us, where where is your organization strong or or less strong, your organizational leaders in growth, mindset, psychological safety and accountability.

 

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Emma Sarro: No.

 

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Emma Sarro: yeah. So we've been doing a lot of this work. I you know, I know that we're we're almost almost set to close up. Now this is discussion, and I'll you know. Tell everyone that we had a lot more plan for this session. But we ended up, you know, having too much content for for just 1 h. We hope that you all got a lot out of this, and I'd love to pass it to Bridget one, you know. Quick time. Is there anything anything else that's coming up for you before before we close up.

 

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Brigid Lynn: I think the only thing that comes up for me is that psychological safety is intentional, and you know you got to kind of wrestle with some stuff, and as we talked about, it's really worth it. And at the same time little steps make a big difference. Starting with asking, you know good questions that are truly genuine and come from a place of curiosity like really understanding that, like, I have a set of expertise, and so does everybody else I'm

 

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Brigid Lynn: working with, and kind of like just letting that be the guide to how we interact with each other.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I hope you all got a lot out of this. Bridget is fantastic. She's done a lot of work in this area. So I definitely learned some more today. Even after helping develop this session.

 

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Brigid Lynn: I know right? Me, too. I love this conversation. I think there were great chat questions, too. I really always appreciate the questions, because I think we learned from you all too.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. So just so everyone is aware. Next week we, David Rock, is back and we'll be talking about cognitive bias. And you know how to make these better business decisions. So we'll talk about more of that foundational. Thank you, Bridget, for this discussion, and we so appreciate your time and all that you share today. So for anyone who enjoyed today's conversation, you'll love our podcast show. If you haven't seen it, make sure you subscribe.

 

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Emma Sarro: look for your brain at work wherever you listen to your podcast like spotify. Now, this is where we officially say farewell for the week. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and get outside if you're in some place that's nice and behalf of myself and the rest of the analy team behind the scenes. Thank you for joining us, and we will see you here same time next week.

 

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Emma Sarro: Thank you.