#86: What Is Psychological Safety?

Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded February 7th, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. And today my guest is Claire Herring, CEO of Blue Ocean Brain, an HSI company. Claire is a writer and speaker on all things related to leveraging science to elevate people performance. Claire holds degrees in business and cognitive science and has spent the last 25 years focusing on improving employee performance by creating a continuous learning culture. Claire, welcome to the show.

Claire Herring:

Thanks Jill. Great to be here and to with all of your listeners.

Jill James:

Yeah. So I asked Claire to come here today to talk about psychological safety, something I don't think we've talked about on the show before. However, before we get there, Claire, would you mind sharing with us a bit about your professional journey? And for anyone who's not familiar with cognitive science, can you tell us about that too?

Claire Herring:

Sure. They say the typical adult professional has three careers and seven jobs. In my professional life, I've taken a couple different turns and really excited to blend all of those here at this point in my life. But right out of college, I went to graduate school and got a master's degree in cognitive science. I've always been fascinated with how the brain works. And those early years, I actually spent inside healthcare institutions, a number of different institutions, subacute centers, hospitals, rehab facilities. And so as we get into the safety conversation later on, I actually can reflect now in a number of lessons learned on the safety side.

But at the beginning of it all really was fascinated with not only how our brain works, but how it is able to repair itself. And so in my space, I did a lot of work with traumatic brain injured adults, post stroke patients. And to see the tremendous amount of progress that we can make in a relatively short period of time, I think demonstrates how remarkable the brain was. Well, fast forward several years later, I was interested in really examining how to impact teams and how to enable people to elevate and optimize their performance. So I went back to school again and came out the other side and pursued a career in organizational development, had the opportunity in big four consulting to work with lots of different organizations. And so through that process, I learned a whole bunch about what really differentiates an outstanding culture and the performance that follows and those organizations that struggle with it.

And so Jill, I'm glad that we can talk today. Our backgrounds are quite different. And yet in the short time that we've had together, I'm learning so much about how things are intertwined and talking about psychological safety, I think, today will be the bridge to that. Today in my role, I serve clients around the globe who are unified in their desire to not only retain their people, but to create an environment where they can grow and develop and where best performance outcomes can really flourish, and psychological safety is a big part of that.

Jill James:

Well, then let's start right in with that. And I think probably a place to start is really defining and doing a level set here on what is psychological safety and how would you define it?

Claire Herring:

Sure. Even though it seems like a 2022 buzzword, it's really not a new concept. It was really described first back in the 1960s, but it gained a lot of attention decades later when Amy Edmondson, who some of you may be familiar with, she's a Harvard Business School professor. She brought this concept to the masses. And if any of you have your favorite TED Talks, Amy has a couple great ones out there. I think her definition serves us well today, the idea that psychological safety is a climate where people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks by speaking up and sharing concerns, questions or ideas. So that's one way and a framework I think we could use today.

Jill James:

That makes sense, interpersonal risks. And what was the other part you said?

Claire Herring:

To speak up to share concerns, to ask challenging questions or share ideas. And through all of that, the theme behind that is to make one self vulnerable in order to do all of those things.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh. Just hearing you say that makes me think of a number of instances in the world of safety. Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You've got a couple of stories, I think, that you'd like to share in terms of maybe be setting the stage here on a case for psychological safety. Would you mind sharing those?

Claire Herring:

Sure. And the first story I think is something that is probably familiar to many of us on some level. If you were on the planet back in 1986 and you were old enough to remember, you might recall exactly where you were when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and burned. Do you happen to recall where you were, Jill?

Jill James:

Yeah. I was in a chemistry class in high school. And my chemistry teacher's name was Mr. Moss. And I do remember it.

Claire Herring:

Yeah. And you might even remember the time of day, I was in a high school cafeteria myself during school. So I think it was like midday. And some of you think about what was happening that day. I think we were sending our first teacher up into space. And so they had tuned in televisions around the country into classrooms. Everyone was watching this. There was a tremendous amount of pressure for this to go well. What is interesting and the reason I bring it up today, after the disaster occurred, there was years and years of diligence done after the crash to try and understand why. And in a physical sense, they identified the O-rings, these small sort of lightweight rings attached to the shuttle as becoming unsealed due to the very cold temperatures that were occurring at the time. So that was the physical cause. But the more important finding from the entire investigation is that there was a perception that the organizational culture and decision making processes actually greatly contributed to the catastrophe. So a lot has been written about the lack of psychological safety on the ground.

Jill James:

Tell us more about that. This is fascinating.

Claire Herring:

When space shuttles are going to take off, they're always looking at the weather. Weather is extremely important. And finding a good weather window, I think when the winds are low and the temperatures just right is really important. They were trying very hard to be able to make this launch inside a weather window. And yet, on the night before, several employees discussed the idea that the low temperatures could potentially cause a problem with these O-rings. And they shared that in a small way with one of their frontline managers. And the response was, my gosh, do you really want me to launch this next April? In other way wise, you're asking me to wait months and months and months if we don't do it tomorrow.

Other people have said after the fact that some folks didn't even raise their hand at all, but shared these concerns and now unfortunately have to live with this lifelong guilt. This is a dramatic example. But it's one, I think, many of us on the lawn today can relate to when we think about what is a seemingly small choice to not say something in the moment can or cannot have massive ripple effects and consequences to both people and process?

Jill James:

Gosh, isn't that true? Even, I mean, I'm thinking about so many little tiny decisions that people make when it feels like unpopular or maybe something won't happen or maybe they didn't have that much to drink and they're getting in the car. I mean, it's like, it's an unpopular thing to speak up about different things, like, put your phone down while you're driving, you know that's right.

Claire Herring:

Yeah. The speaking up is what people are reluctant to do and you have to sit and ask yourself, why is it human nature at times to not speak up? Why do we make that choice? And some folks would argue that that has a lot to do with what we've learned, starting with middle school. And I think it still holds true as adults is the idea of impression management. We spend so much time in the world of work managing what other people think about us and choosing, as you've heard the phrase, choosing your battles, pick your battles, because people feel like they're spending impression capital when they speak up.

And if you go back thousands of years, early humans on the planet, their number one concern was survival. And in order to do that, survival was often all about mitigating risk, how can I limit things that might put me in danger? And that primitive thinking, unfortunately, as it relates to this topic is still with us today. And so we are constantly looking to protect ourselves to be in that sort of cocoon. When you've heard people say, I like to fly under the radar, that usually is not so helpful when you're trying to build a continuous learning culture of safety.

Jill James:

That's right. A completely different way of looking at risk. I mean, for safety practitioners, we think of risk in a different way than what you're talking about with impression management.

Claire Herring:

Not interpersonal risk, right?

Jill James:

Right.

Claire Herring:

But unfortunately, those interpersonal risks impact I'm sure a myriad of things that impact physical safety, occupational safety across the workforce. And I can say personally in healthcare, I had one experience early on in my career and I'll make myself vulnerable to say my hindsight here, I should have done more. I was actually working up on the floor and I was doing a psychological assessment on a patient. And our facility had a very strong no falls policy. We were going to have zero falls in our facility for an extended period of time. And it was listed on the wall and it was talked about in every meeting. But it was conveyed in such a way that I think people were fearful of what would happen to them if a fall occurred.

And I was walking down the hall to go see the patient. And I passed a door. There were always lots of just open doors. I observed a patient and two nurses in a room and the patient was on the floor. Now I did not see the fall occur, but it very clearly looked to me like a fall occurred. And after the fact in the next few days, there were still zero falls reported. So I was left with the idea that this potentially medically frail older individual who maybe did not break a hip, but could have suffered some type of injury actually did not get the care they needed because the employees were afraid of reporting the fall. And as we talk more, we have to really think about, it's easy to point the finger at those employees, but what can we do as leaders? And what are we asking of our leaders to do to create the kind of climate where those employees feel safe to report that fall in a moment?

Jill James:

Yeah, that's right. I mean, and there are many institutions across the country who, like you said, have their board that they post there have gone so many hours, so many days, so many years without a reportable lost work time injury. And then some employers have gone to the extent of saying, if we hit these particular milestones, we will reward the employees with something monetarily or we're going to have a special lunch or people are going to get a piece of logoed clothing, things like that. That's very common. However, it's not a very healthy practice. Even OSHA has come out and said we don't support those kind of things because we feel it will lend to a culture of underreporting for the very reasons that you just talked about.

Claire Herring:

Interesting. And do you find that when you have to advise on that that it's difficult for people to change their ways or they just so heavily focused on the extrinsic need for reward and recognition for their people? How effectively can we start to make that change?

Jill James:

Right. And so think about framing it in a different way and maybe taking, I mean, if you want to record those days, hours, whatever, fine, but don't link it to a reward or find a different way to measure something else. So for example, it's rewarding employees for bringing forward things that can make their jobs more efficient, safer, or finding a certain number of hazards or better ways to do things and using that as the reward system and making that the, if you're going to have a competition, if you will, or something like that that you are asking people to make their work environment better and they're rewarded when they do, rather than the other way around.

Claire Herring:

When it comes to your brain's chemistry, we all need those dopamine hits, those endorphin rushes. All of that stuff feels good. And I think we would be well served to think a lot more about consequences and unintended consequences of setting up programs like that. And what are other things that we can do? So you made a good point, having leaders who are prepared to reward and recognize people for bringing up the safety concerns to give specific feedback. In other sessions, we talk about it's one thing to tell people, great job. It means so much more when you can specifically describe what that individual did that was so amazing. And that's of the ways, frankly, I think you can motivate without a t-shirt or without a lunch.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. Awesome. You had another story, I think.

Claire Herring:

Yes. And this is my favorite one. It's about the company Google. I think we all have heard of Google. And now this is about six years old, but back in 2015, Google did a very interesting experiment. They were curious to learn what characteristics or attributes generated or created the highest performing teams. So Google has a reputation for studying just about anything you can imagine. And for someone like me who loves organizational design, they have tons of fun things we could talk about. I'll just tell you one. All stereotypes aside, if you imagine a culture at Google where you have lots of engineers who are doing heads down thinking, Google wanted to create a more collaborative environment. So one of the things that they did is that they timed the length of the line in the cafeteria. I think you might remember Google actually used to have like a free food program. I don't know if they do anymore.

Jill James:

I remember hearing that.

Claire Herring:

Yes. And they also pushed the cafeteria tables, this is pre-pandemic, much closer together than they needed to be. The idea was they wanted people to stand in line for about two minutes and they wanted people to physically bump into each other practically as they went to sit down because they imagined and determined that that would actually create more spontaneous interactions and networking, et cetera, et cetera.

Jill James:

I'm so curious to hear how this ended up. Okay.

Claire Herring:

Yes. So but the story that relates to today is Google's Project Aristotle. They are excited to learn which teams perform best, why, and can they replicate it? And this study went over almost two years. I think it took a lot longer because the data rolling in initially did not reach any conclusion. They were studying variables like tenure of team members, IQ in some cases, performance levels as they were measured on an individual basis across Google. And they could not find any one particular variable or even an interaction of a couple that demonstrated high-performing teams. And so they went back and they looked at everything again. Ultimately what they were surprised to learn the top level teams, those driving profitability, driving innovation, those teams held a high degree of psychological safety. And when you think about, well, so really what does that mean? What does it mean when you have psychological safety? How do you know you have it?

Jill James:

Yeah. How does it show up?

Claire Herring:

Yeah. Because it's, again with any buzzword, it's great to hear it and know what it means, but practical examples I think are critical here. So I'd like everyone to think about teams that they've been on personally, professionally, or maybe how you would describe your current work culture. So you have psychological safety when people see mistakes and describe them as opportunities to learn. For example, imagine a project that does not go well at work and a leader chooses to have a post project postmortem discussion. And they set that session up to allow brainstorming, candid discussion and collaboration about all of the things that they would do differently next time. Some people use the stop, start, continue. It's sort of the stoplight red, yellow, green to utilize that. The modeling there is, look, we absolutely made mistakes, we're going to own them, we're going to talk about them, but more importantly, we're going to enable a growth mindset to say, how do we learn from those mistakes? So that's one way you know that you have it.

Speaking your mind up in meetings. Now when we are in meetings, some days I would venture to guess all of us have been a leader on a team at some point. But in a given week, I don't know about you, Jill, but I can be a leader in one meeting, a key influencer in another, and then maybe just a peripheral participant in a third.

Jill James:

Yep. Every day.

Claire Herring:

And part of that is just the recognition of where you are. But if you are a leader or a key influencer creating a meeting culture where everyone is expected to participate, it's not a spectator sport and you are creating conditions that pull people in. So imagine we're in a meeting and there's 10 or 12 individuals in a meeting and I'm being very quiet and withdrawn, whether I'm in Zoom or even in person, Jill may not be running that meeting, but she may be a regular participant in that meeting. And she might turn to me and say, "Hey, Claire, I would really love to give your thoughts on this." Or I noticed in your email last week, you shared this concern, I think we should take a minute and hear what Claire has to say.

Jill James:

Yeah. I can see that playing out in something that our audience health and safety professionals could do in practice, obviously with the people with whom we interact, but if you're trying to make change, this is a tip that Claire's talking about that you could teach your supervisory staff. So if they're doing a morning standup on safety, maybe a toolbox talk or something, you could teach your supervisors that skill to really engage with their workers, instead of saying, hey, I've got to read this statement about the right way to climb a ladder today. And engage on a whole different level, like, let's hear about the ladders you all use, could you, so and so tell me about, are you going to be using a ladder today or how many do you have access to? And just like, tell me a story about ladders or whatever it is.

Claire Herring:

You're raising a really good point and that's great leaders at every level learn that asking good questions is a very effective way to run a meeting. When people first become leaders, all well intended, they feel like they've got to know everything and they've got to do everything. And the unintended consequence often is that you have people take a step back as you progress in your career, how we ask questions closed-ended versus open leading questions. For example, if I were to say to Jill, "Hey Jill, any safety concerns on your floor today? I don't think so." That does not position Jill to go actually, I hate to burst your bubble, but there are four things we need to talk about.

Jill James:

Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. A couple of jobs ago, I was part of a management team that had all of their supervisory staff that would get together once a week from all these different locations. And the leader of that particular group started out all of his meetings the same way. And this had nothing to do with me. I was the sort of the bystander in the room, if you will, who would contribute if needed on a safety thing, but he would always ask the same question, go around the room and tell a story about something you did for safety this week. And so it wasn't like, do you have any safety concerns? People would start telling like, well, we did this, we had to make this change, we identified this. And so sometimes it was, hey, we've got this going on this week and I don't actually know what to do.

Claire Herring:

He basically didn't ask, he basically assigned everyone to share something and people need that extra nudge because they don't think you really want to know. And so how he phrased that is brilliant and the fact that he did it every week also signaled, we often hear it at companies, oh, it's the flavor of the month, or we're not going to be talking about it again next week. It's one and done. We have to prove otherwise for sure.

Jill James:

And it put everyone on, they came knowing what the expectation was, so people were prepared. So those are really great examples, Claire, of what psychological safety looks like and how it shows up at work. Do you want to talk about its impacts, what that can do over time?

Claire Herring:

Sure. Let's definitely do that. And as we think about impacts over time, I'd also like us to take a moment to consider the whole concept of unconscious bias. That's another buzzword we're hearing a lot about and that has played out in many ways in terms of shaping workplace culture. But one of the things we have to recognize is as humans, we are all biased, it's part of the nature of who we are. And when I say that, what I mean is that our brain is constantly taking shortcuts in order to conserve information or to conserve energy rather. So the typical working professional makes 200 plus work related decisions every single day. And you do not have an infinite amount of energy and an infinite amount of resilience. We also talk a lot about the need to recharge and replenish is one of the ways to build that.

But long story short, when you are under stress, when you are extremely busy or feel pressure, we are much more prone to making biased decisions. And one of the biggest bias decisions is known as the status quo bias. And I'd like you to think about, when your whole world is turned upside down, you have a natural tendency to want to keep some things in a steady state. Your brain likes it that way. It's less energy, it's less time, it's less focus. And so often problems tend to break us out of whatever status quo moment that we are having. And so as we think about the impacts to people, to places and to processes, it's always important to go back to the root cause. And if you leave with nothing else today, just recognizing that we all have bias and it's not something to feel guilty about, it's something to be acutely aware of can help us with those impacts.

I know some organizations will actually take a moment at the top of meetings to call out one or two biases in a preventative way. In other words, if you are going to review people and performance related matters, someone will say, "Well, let's take a minute and talk about the affinity bias or the just-like-me bias, the natural tendency for us to assume that people that look like us, speak like us or work close to us are more likable, more capable. Some of you know that as like the halo effect, somebody does one thing well, we assume they do everything well.

Jill James:

Yep. Tell me if this means the same thing. I'm thinking about the number of times, and our audience will relate to this when something happens and the immediate response is, but we've been doing it that way for 30 years and nothing has ever happened before or something goes sideways and the immediate first response is about, well, that's just common sense, how could that person have done that? Is that pieces of what you're talking about with unconscious bias?

Claire Herring:

I think absolutely. First, it sounds to me like those individuals you're describing who are second party to the incident, perhaps, maybe or maybe not, a threat response has been elicited in them in some way, shape or reform, because maybe they're either tangentially related to what happened, maybe it's the supervisor of someone that had an area of concern. The second we get a threat response, we are much more prone to bias thinking and we fall immediately into a self-protection mode. I'd just like you to imagine thousands of years ago, you're wandering off in some prairie or village and you are constantly scanning the environment for threats. So when we lock in on things that we perceived we could have directed at us, it eliminates our ability to have objective unbiased thinking

Jill James:

That makes so much sense. Some of our audience, if they've been listening to the podcast for a really long time, may recall that in my time with OSHA, I've investigated unfortunately many, many workplace deaths and serious injuries. And the response that I would get from leadership always fell into two camps. Now this is for me personally in my personal experience with this. And it's not a study.

But the response I would get immediately was either one of what I just talked about, more of a blame thing, well, this is the way we've always done it, it's always been done this way, nothing's happened before, or that was just common sense, why would've they ever done that in terms of blaming the victim, or it would be, oh my gosh, let's deconstruct this to make sure same or similar never happens on my watch again. And people would just gravitate to two camps and I could tell immediately which direction I was headed and what the work was going to be like for me as the person coming in on the other side to observe and collect information just based on a few interactions right at the beginning, because people would just fall into one of those two camps right away.

Claire Herring:

I'm curious, the first camp, which sounds like the camp we don't want to be in, the camp of self-protection. Either before or after you'd discovered this was the camp everyone was in, were there any other signs or symptoms that you noticed? And my second part of that question is typically, was that lack of psychological safety being driven from just the top front level manager, like the next person involved, or was it often an organizational culture thing?

Jill James:

Yeah. I mean, the clues that I would have to that would come out in the employee interviews that I would do and how willing employees were to be open with me and how much I might have to really connect with them on particular levels for them to share with me the truth of a situation. And so sometimes that would mean speaking with them not at work or them contacting me later, or people asking a lot of questions about their own job safety if I tell you this, if I say that.

I've had an extreme case where I was investigating unfortunately an amputation of a young boy's arm. When I say young boy, I mean he was underage and shouldn't have been working where he was. And this particular employer hired teenagers to work in a high hazard industry. And that was against labor laws. And he would, the owner would just leave and let kids run all of these saws and things. And something went very badly wrong one day. And I came in to do the investigation. And the kids, and I say kids because they were 14, 15, 16 years old, I got them all together. A mother collected all the employees and brought them to her home because I needed to do an interview and they were not wanting to talk with me. And they were, one of the boys was saying, "Don't tell her anything, don't tell her anything. We're going to get the boss in trouble." It was this really interesting dynamic, though their friend had lost a limb.

Claire Herring:

Yes. Wow. And that does show you just how rational and strong our threat response and our need for self-protection is. I think I'm curious to know this, Jill, we are always in my line of work, when we're thinking about creating psychological safety, we're wanting to give leaders the tools and the talking points to signal the very things we're talking about to make it over into camp two, to let people know it's okay to make a mistake. Not that we want mistakes, but that it's okay to talk about it. And that I too, as a leader, am fallible, that I too am imperfect. In your world, do you see leaders receiving that kind of coaching and training or is it more specific to the physical aspects of safety?

Jill James:

I think it really depends on where you work and the company culture itself and its value, what are its values? What are the values? Are the values on productivity? I mean, obviously everyone has that value, but what outpaces one or the other, or what sort of coaching has a leader had in, well, I mean, you used this word before vulnerability, right? Or just seeing people as human beings and having those conversations. And safety and health professionals, most of us are wired to care deeply about human beings. So many of us are going to try to connect with people because we're trying to influence people to perform the way we want them to perform to be able to stay safe. So we might come at that a different way. Maybe we're not being coached like that. And maybe that's not the belief system of where we work or maybe it is.

I often would meet with employees and instead of observing their work, they'd get nervous, like, oh my gosh, here comes that safety lady, she's going to watch to see if I'm doing things okay. Before I even, was just quiet and observing them, I'd introduce myself and say, "Tell me about your job. How does this thing work that you're doing? What is this all about?" If they're on a particular machine or something, tell me what this does, how long have you done it? What's the output on the end look like? Tell me what this is like for you. And get them excited to tell me about their work and how they do it rather than them thinking, oh, here's somebody with a binoculars who's really going to try to find all of my faults.

Claire Herring:

And what you just did there, it's so disarming when you want to talk about like the speed of trust, you connected with them human to human, you had a genuine curiosity for what they were doing. I think leaders need our support right now. They also need continuous learning opportunities to do what we're talking about. Leaders have a lot on their plate and many of you out there, that's what you are. So you have all of the functional logistical execution kind of work. And then you also have to garner a following of really committed, engaged people. And I would say that while we want people to raise their hand about safety concerns and say that is one of their core elements of their job, for a lot of folks, it takes a little bit of extra energy to do that.

And so we talk a lot now about a knowledge economy, right? So yes, we have many, many frontline workers who are engaged in physical tasks, but we also have thousands and thousands of people whose job it is to make decisions every single day and creating the conditions to enable those people to become better decision makers, extremely powerful. Unfortunately, we don't take them out of the job and sit them for days and days in training often, we're having to learn how to do that in short bursts and moments. And I've learned from you and from some of my clients the importance for the stand up safety moment. We've also talked about how to bake into that a moment of inclusion or a moment of trust where we actually talk briefly with associates about what we are intending and what we value in order to make that connection.

Jill James:

Right. You used the word trust a couple of times now and it's different than psychological safety, can you talk about that just a little bit?

Claire Herring:

Sure. So think of trust typically is more of an interpersonal action or trait that you develop. So I could trust Jill and Jill could trust me. And there a lot of things that we could do over time to really build that trust. Psychological safety is a close cousin to trust, but it also means that the group norms support a level of trust. So psychological safety says, would it be normal to raise my hand in the meeting with that particular leader and let people know something that's not such great news? Would it be normal for me to speak up and say something when I don't think something looks just right? And maybe most of all, if I make a mistake, if I do something wrong, would it be pretty normal for somebody to actually own their own mistakes? Psychological safety, I think is extremely contagious, just like other emotions. When we think about emotional intelligence or stress, we talk about toxic work cultures, negativity breeds negativity. And I think creating these psychologically safe environments can perpetuate themselves once they're firmly rooted and starting to sprout.

Jill James:

And drives human behavior then.

Claire Herring:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you shared, I had the opportunity to be with Jill last week and just Jill shared a number of things that are in her head when she rocks around on the planet. And when you talked about it, you talked about all of these different safety concerns that you have and the lens that you look through things with. One of the things that you hear a lot today, and maybe some of you are involved in are efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion at your organization. And there are many reasons that diversity, equity, inclusion is something we should be talking about more. But one thing we have to recognize is that diverse lived experiences actually help us achieve better outcomes. We're less prone to groupthink, we don't see things through the same lens. And so Jill, while we are two white females of similar age, professionally, your lived experience is so different than mine. I can only imagine if we spent time together, our problem solving aggregate ability would be much greater.

Jill James:

Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's the joy of working in high-functioning teams where you have that psychological safety and trust where you know that I can bring this piece to this project, this team, this problem, and know that my fellow teammates excel in these other areas that I don't even have to think about because they know they're going to bring it. Those are really fun teams to work on.

Claire Herring:

And would you agree, it doesn't mean that those teams are necessarily your besties and you're chummy with on every level?

Jill James:

That's right.

Claire Herring:

When people say dynamic teams, I think having different points of view can create candid debate. And unfortunately some well-intended organizations have created these cultures of nice to the degree that Jill might not speak up if I did something that it was unsafe because she wouldn't want to hurt my feelings or get me into trouble. And that's not at all what we're talking about when we think about this safety.

Jill James:

That's right. I had a team that I worked with a few years ago where one of the people always designated himself, though he didn't necessarily like the designation as I think he called it the conscientious objector or there was a term for it. And so we'd all be rocking with what we thought was a really great idea. And then he'd be like, "All right. Now here are the things that I see that could go wrong with this or sideways with this." And really challenged everyone's thinking, but said up front, like, this is my role in this particular group.

Claire Herring:

Yes. And if you're a leader, you can actually ask someone to play the role of conscientious objector. Some leaders that they go into a meeting, they mean well, they absolutely do, they let everyone know what they think in a persuasive way. And then pretty soon, everyone on the other side of the table or a Zoom call is nodding up and down and the session is over.

And so you remind me of a good story. So Warren Buffett, who some would consider one of the most brilliant investors of all time has been known when he goes to make an investment change in his portfolio, he actually assigns the team around him to come in and try and talk him out of the decision that he's about to make. He wants 10 conscientious objectors to fully vet the decision. And I think sometimes it seems odd to have a meeting about the meeting, but if you think about it, if you're in a weekly meeting, you're meeting every five business days for a whole year, that is a lot of time. And if we don't take the time to redesign those dynamics and those discussions, I think it's a huge missed opportunity.

Jill James:

Yeah. Interesting. Great conversation. So in terms of psychological safety's role in enabling safety culture, a safety climate, Claire, where do you see people can make some incremental changes or inroads?

Claire Herring:

Sure. And this is the call to action part. This is the payoff of spending to with us today. First and foremost, consider your role in the organization and how you think you can help best. We always think about what is the highest and best use of my time? One of those first steps I think is to observe and baseline. And even if it's just a qualitative assessment on your part, look at where you feel people are and the organization is on a safety culture journey. We talk a lot about journeys these days because you just can't flip the switch. So I would encourage you to baseline within your sphere of control.

And then the next part would be to begin to have some conversations with key individuals about the concept to build awareness and starting with the few key leaders. Some people already familiar, they know Amy Edmondson, they love the concept of psychological safety, they're ready to talk and move on it. Others may not. And I think, Jill, you've alluded, not everyone really talks about this. Once you've built awareness and you're almost having to do some internal marketing here, you're ready to take some phased action steps. And part of that is embedding a continuous culture of learning around these as well as maybe other safety related topics. Typical adult professional only has about 15 minutes a week to focus on learning that's not mandatory. And while we could certainly send people to mandatory psychological safety training, we've got to find ways to inject these moments into the flow of work. And I imagine, Jill, some of the biggest challenges are how do frontline managers reach a frontline workforce that's on the go all the time.

Jill James:

That's right.

Claire Herring:

In fact, I'll ask you, I think you shared a story last week, we were talking about maybe a meat packing plant and imagining that meat packers may have a daily standup with their supervisor. How do you affect or coach that leader so that they are more in tune with their people and create a higher degree of psychological safety?

Jill James:

Yeah. And I hope my answer isn't commingling the word trust and psychological safety. But I think about managers who have coached me, frontline managers who've coached me, particularly in diverse workforces in which the meat packing industry is certainly a diverse workforce, but I've had frontline managers say, "Hey, Jill, if you want to get to know these people, there were several suggestions that people would make." I remember one manager who said, "In this particular area where we work, we have people from who are new generation, first generation, refugees from this country, this country, this country and this country." And he said, "In terms of pride, if we could just have their flags hanging in this area, that would really help us connect to one another." That was a suggestion.

I had another frontline manager who I was doing a post-mortem like you were talking about with some training once. And I'm like, that just fell so flat. I'm like, what did I do differently? I had just done this same sort of training with a group of people in one state, traveled to another state, did the same thing, it worked great in the first state, second state fell flat. And the manager said, "Yeah, they don't know you. You didn't do anything. You come here and you represent the big company." And I'm like, "I do. I thought I was just like the safety lady. I am everywhere." And she's like, "Nope, you represent the big company." And she said, in this state, and this was in Missouri, she said, "This is different. If you're going to work with people, they need to know you. You have to tell a story about who you are, where you grew up, where you came from. You need to spend a lot of time explaining that and then getting to know them on the same way before they're ever going to absorb anything you had to share."

So I took that to heart and I started taking notes. I would meet these teams of people, I would write their names down, I would write down facts about their families, things that they told me about where they were in their life's journey. And then I'd save those notes. Next time I'd come back, I could ask them questions about themselves. And pretty soon, we were knowing each other as human beings. And then we're able to move toward what we needed to for safety initiatives we were trying to take, questions that I needed answers to, bringing in new ideas, but it was completely different than how I did it in another state.

Claire Herring:

And you know what you're describing here, when we think about emotional intelligence at the highest level, you are giving of yourself and you are walking into the next meeting and the next state and wherever you're headed next with a genuine curiosity about how can this go best. And often time, we don't learn that until it doesn't go well or we need to adjust a couple times. I have to circle back on the flag comment. The fact that in a very small, quiet way, people had a chance to feel honored as individuals, I think we forget sometimes just some of those moments can make a world of difference. And that does bring up the whole of what may make you feel safe could be very different than what makes someone else feel safe. And I was born and raised in America. I'm from North Carolina. I felt a strong sense of belonging my whole life. I'm not a huge extrovert, but I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I'm an ambivert. So I assume that the conditions that make me feel really safe are the same conditions sometimes that would make everyone else feel good.

Just using introversion and extroversion, let's imagine you have a team and you have a few folks that seem really engaged, their voices are loud on the team, maybe mostly positive. And then you have others that really never communicate or participate. As a leader, it's on us, I think, to step back and think about what is the best way to bring out the natural skills, talents, and the communication that we need from that person.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. That team in Missouri, we ended up building our own cadence and rapport. And so every time I would show up, they would wait for me. It was like a quiz. They wanted me to say all of their names from memory. So I would stand in this room and before we said anything, they knew like, okay, here she goes, lets see, do you remember me? One of them would start with, "Do you remember me?" And then I'd say, "Yes." Whatever their name was. And then I would go around the room and name each person. It was like this high stakes quiz every time I would go in there.

Claire Herring:

That is just fun, impressive, amazing. And don't try this at home or come up with your own secret cheat sheet. We could talk about like brain games to help memorize because names and faces are hard. That's really cool.

Jill James:

It was really hard. It was cool. But yes, it was high stakes and a little bit tricky. Oh man. Anyway, Claire, I know that we're running a little bit short on time, but any other things? You were talking about things that people they can take away today. You mentioned a number of them with observing and conversations about the concept and then embedding the culture of learning. Are there more things to add to that?

Claire Herring:

I would just say, number one, you are not alone. And I know as sometimes as safety experts and safety professionals, you may feel that there is not a circle around you that is considering these things that we've talked about today. There are parts of organizations, whether it's in the learning side of the house or even in HR that can help with this. Identifying psychological safety is something you think needs some work in order to optimize safety outcomes, find out what tools and resources are available across your learning ecosystem and be sure to ask about opportunities for continuous learning moments.

And then finally, I would just say, oftentimes, our HR professionals and learning professionals only feel like they can reach those tethered to technology every day. Ask questions about how to make these connections and these learning moments available to people that never touch a computer during their particular shift and then be willing to be part of that to go first. There's a ton of great information out there in psychological safety. That's something for me at Blue Ocean Brain that we do. What we do is we provide these micro-learning moments of psychological safety and some of our frontline leaders will just grab them and then use them for that like 60-second standup. But there are other tools out there. I just encourage you to make sure you're injecting this conversation into the daily flow of work.

Jill James:

Thank you, Claire. Thank you so much. This has been such a fun and enlightening conversation. Really appreciate you sharing this.

Claire Herring:

Likewise. Enjoy what you do and to all of your listeners, really thankful and appreciate the protection that you're affording all of us in the world of work. So thank you for having me.

Jill James:

You're welcome. You're welcome. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player that you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes, it really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals. Special thanks to Naeem Jaraysi, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.