E066_Is Psychological Safety just a buzzword? Why a Masterclass helps the discussion.

Welcome to our latest episode, where we explore the essence of Psychological Safety and our Masterclass on the subject. We aim to spark curiosity and provide actionable insights to enhance team dynamics and workplace culture.

Why should you consider joining our masterclass on Psychological Safety (PS)? For whose benefit is it anyway?

Karin regularly holds webinars on Psychological Safety - contact Karin here

Whether you're seeking to strengthen your team's sense of belonging, encourage open dialogue on safety observations, foster team cohesion, or deepen your understanding of vulnerability, our masterclass has something for everyone.

Boosting Your Team's Sense of Belonging:
Belonging is the cornerstone of a thriving team. Leaders play a crucial role in creating an inclusive environment where every voice is heard, valued, and celebrated. Through activities and celebrations, we reinforce the bonds that unite us.

Getting Everyone to Share Safety Observations:
Sharing safety observations isn't just about ticking boxes; it's about preventing accidents and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. We provide strategies to overcome barriers and create a safe space for sharing without fear of retribution.

Making Your Team More United:
A united team communicates effectively, shares common goals, and builds trust through shared experiences. By investing in team-building activities and setting clear expectations, we cultivate a culture of collaboration and mutual support.

Embracing Vulnerability in Teams:
Vulnerability is the foundation of authentic connections and growth. Through personal stories and actionable tips, we empower leaders to create a culture where vulnerability is celebrated and valued.

Designing a Safety Culture on Purpose:
Safety should be ingrained in your team's DNA, not an afterthought. We explore practical steps to design a safety culture that promotes well-being, efficiency, and excellence in all work aspects.

Thanks for listening!

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This episode was produced under Safety Collaborations Limited and now continues as part of Karin Ovari Limited. While we are not currently releasing new episodes, the entire library remains active, and the topics covered are just as relevant today as when they were first recorded.

To learn more about my current work in leadership and communication, visit karinovari.com and the leadership community, The Supervisors Hub.

Connect with us on LinkedIn:  Karin Ovari, Nuala Gage,

If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word and leave a review on your preferred podcast player. 
 
 Stay Safe, Stay Well
The Safety Collaborators

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:12

Psychological safety A buzzword or is there merit in understanding psychological safety? Why a masterclass helps the discussion? I am Nuala.

Speaker 2 0:23

And I'm Karen, and we are the Safety Collaborators. Our mission is to help people have better conversations and change the way they think about safety.

Speaker 1 0:33

Consider us your thinking partners, sharing expertise and wisdom in everything safety, safety culture and psychological safety, the topic of today.

Speaker 2 0:44

From time to time we run complimentary masterclasses, and recently we did one on the very subject of psychological safety. Caveat here, let's be a little realistic. These are only one hour long and just enough to create curiosity. Well, that's certainly our hope. The feedback, which we'll share in a little bit, seems to suggest that it does. So why run a masterclass on psychological safety? It's certainly a hot topic. It's been around for a while, but I think it's gaining healthy momentum in many parts of the world, so not just locally, and we believe it is core or even underpins a healthy organisational safety culture.

Speaker 1 1:27

And, as you mentioned so often, it's all about the team culture, which I think I interrupted you when you were about to say. So whose benefit is it for? Anyway, that's fine.

Speaker 2 1:38

That's fine. You know, I think we have a few sorts of our ideas, but you may have some other ideas. So if you're looking to improve your team's sense of belonging, if you want people to speak up and share their safety observations, you're looking to improve team cohesion, you want to understand better what is meant by vulnerability, or you're simply interested in creating a safety culture by design and not by accident, then you might think about adding psychological safety to the repertoire of your conversation.

Speaker 1 2:10

It's around team leaders, right from executive levels down, understanding what it is, absolutely. But it's also it's about you know, the people on the ground and involved in this, not having to be worried about the jargon and the buzzwords. And I think we've decided we will be doing a not having to be worried about the jargon and the buzzwords and I think we've decided we will be doing a bit of a discussion coming up on jargon, because psychological safety you know it has become a buzzword, but do people doing their day-to-day jobs really need to know what the buzzword is? No, they need to feel the impact. Exactly. Let's dive into those a little bit deeper, yeah, and actually have a look at, well, what underpins that. And should we start off with? If you want to boost your team's sense of belonging, yeah, I mean, why does belonging even matter in a team?

Speaker 2 2:58

Until you have belonging, you can't do much else. I mean, people will do their job, but they'll just go there, do what they need to do and that's it. So it keeps everybody feeling like they're part of the team, improving happiness and work performance. But I think what's really important, it's about knowing that you're valued and that your contributions matter. But I think, even before, that sense of belonging is something that it should happen regardless. We shouldn't have to earn that right. We have worth. So how do we bring that worth into the team right from the beginning?

Speaker 1 3:35

And it's not always easy, and it's not easy for leaders.

Speaker 2 3:38

No.

Speaker 1 3:38

Because we were speaking earlier. We really are doing a big focus on leadership at the moment because it is so critical and crucial to everything in an organization, and I loved when you mentioned Maya Angelou where she said you know people will always remember how you make them feel. They won't remember what you said and you know that's about. It's about how do we make people feel included. So, as a leader, are we approachable? Do we listen to others? Do we ensure everyone's included? Or, if we see people aren't being included, what do we do to bring the team together to celebrate diverse views, celebrate the things we do differently and to help everyone feel valued and that their contribution matters?

Speaker 2 4:29

I think following on from that is you know, how can we make that bond stronger within the team itself? So it's not just the leader, but the leader has to kind of model the way I think. So how do you keep communication open? There's other things you can do. You can have buddy systems, mentorships, you can do those types of things, but really I think it's keeping the communication opening, encourage working together on different projects and some of the other things around team bonding are the things that we really enjoy doing. What a social event, a team away day. Some of those fun elements can be really really helpful in developing the team bond and that sense of belonging. It makes me realise, I mean, one of the things we've done for years is run crew development programs. Why? Because we want people to feel that they belong to something from the get-go.

Speaker 1 5:25

Before they actually have to get into the serious shit.

Speaker 2 5:28

Absolutely, absolutely, and I think it actually leads really nicely into the next bit it does.

Speaker 1 5:37

But even before we get onto that one, you know, sometimes it's something as simple as being there in the coffee breaks as a leader yeah. Pulling people aside on their smoke breaks, having some one-on-one session, yeah. Finding, when you're working, you know, away from home, on sites, whether that's onshore, offshore, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 5:57

What are?

Speaker 1 5:57

the little team rituals that you do. Is it playing the guitar at night? Is it, you know, having the evening tea and debrief of the day? So finding that sense of belonging. And now we can lead on to the next one.

Speaker 2 6:13

We want people to share their observations on site. You know we want them to be observant around the work that they do Now, and it's not just looking for oh there's a, you know, somebody's not wearing their PPE or there's something on the walkway. I mean that's part of it, but it's more than that. It's about you're your brother's keeper in some ways. You know, how do you observe what everybody's doing so that we all work together safer? How do we share our observations so that it helps the whole team learn and improve safety practices?

Speaker 1 6:47

This is such a difficult one.

Speaker 1 6:49

It's that everyone is expected, on most places that we work, to share a safety observation, and so often it ends up being a numbers game and they end up being toilet observations, which is so frustrating because that's not the intention.

Speaker 1 7:02

You know, the intention is to, because you're, as you said, being your brother's keeper you looking around, you, paying attention, you going, oh, hang on, this could be an improvement, that could be better. But if that initial sense of belonging isn't there and you don't feel that your contribution will be valued, who cares? Because you know what? Then I'll just fill in the piece of paper because I need to, whereas when that sense of belonging in your team is there and your team feels safe to come up to you as a leader, or even amongst the team, and say you know what, karen, I'm not so sure what it is I'm doing here or I'm concerned that someone could get hurt by doing it this way. Is there another way of doing it? People are then sharing their safety observations and having the conversations that matter about improvement, about getting things done, about contributing. Without that sense of I've got to step on eggshells or I might get blamed if something does go wrong, so I'd rather just keep quiet.

Speaker 2 8:02

Exactly it's funny while I was listening to you, the thought of the unwritten rules was coming into play here, because unwritten rules really underpin safety, culture or any culture actually, but not just safety. But you know what are? The unwritten rules, as well, need to be taken into consideration if we want people to feel safe to speak up. Yeah, so I think we often think that you know, safety is that thing that's over there that's being done to me or I've got to do it to someone, but actually it's about do you feel okay, taking that breath and going time out? I need to think about this or we need to talk about it, and I don't want to be made to feel marginalized, stupid, silly or any other thing.

Speaker 1 8:44

I want to be thanked and congratulated for contributing ideas to make things safer.

Speaker 2 8:49

Yeah, I remember on one rig I was working on, all I got people to do was to say please and thank you. It was hilarious Because all across the rig people were going oh, please, can you help me? Oh, thank you doing. But they were really exaggerating it. I mean, it became quite a giggle.

Speaker 2 9:10

I can imagine I could just imagine people taking it to that level of well, there's a couple of people you know that might have been exactly right and uh, yeah, I mean they were taking the mickey out of it a little bit, but at the same time it still shifted the energy. It makes a difference Around appreciation, and people still walked around going okay, I feel a bit silly, but you know what I'm actually. It is better doing this. And then you'll hear oh yeah, it is. Mama Kaz says to say thank you, or Mama Kaz says that was my nickname, you know, says to say thank you, or mama kaz says that was my nickname, you know, please, and thank you.

Speaker 2 9:51

So, but it helps to build and I think that it helps us to feel more united as a team and as a group. You know, when we think about what makes a united team, it means we're communicating, and if we're having a giggle along the way, that's absolutely wonderful. We share the goals. It's easier to speak up and to maybe say look, you know you're actually a bit better at that than me, come and help me. Exactly, which builds trust and respect. You mentioned earlier the tea shack or the smoke room or the, whatever you want to call it. They've got different names around the world and different industries, but that place where you can go and hang out together for a little bit as a group, in a team. I mean. I remember when we were all working together in South Africa 10 years ago. What was the big thing that I wanted us to do? Eat together.

Speaker 1 10:36

Exactly, and we did it fabulously as often as we could, as often as you can Sit down around a table and have lunch If we were all in the office.

Speaker 2 10:43

Granted, it was hard to get Kat there sometimes, but she still showed up and we're so proud of her. But I mean that in a positive sense, because she's the one that really is great at like. No, no, you two can go chit chat. We've got to make sure this gets done, you know, and we go put it down, that you boys can wait, come on. And so it was wonderful.

Building Trust and Team Cohesion

Speaker 1 11:02

But even with the greater team that we were working with in South Africa, the once a month barbecue, or braai as we say in South Africa that was always highly attended and it was a great conversation. And it was just in the parking lot. A memory popped up on Facebook of 11 years ago when I was working with a logistics company in South.

Speaker 1 11:22

Africa Seabourn Express, and it was a poikiko, so it's like a cast iron clocked cook-off competition. Yes, and our team was the pumpkin team, in Afrikaans the pampun team. I will share this picture with you. It is so cute, because there the four of us are with our Alice bands with pumpkins on them and all sorts of stuff, and we won the cook-off on that day, the pumpkin boiki pot Brilliant, exactly.

Speaker 1 11:49

I don't think we had pumpkins in it, I can't remember what we had, but it was such a divine memory. And when it popped up, I'm still in contact with that team and I shared it and I was like, oh my word, look at this memory. Yeah, because, because I still feel when I go and visit that team, even though I haven't worked with them for many years that. I am a part of that team.

Speaker 2 12:08

And it comes back to that word feel. Yes, how did we make each other feel? And I think that's how we build trust and it's doing these things consistently. It's not just random. I mean, sometimes a random event is great, but I think it's that smaller things. I mean, sometimes a random event is great, but I think it's that smaller things. You know, we were talking earlier today as well about it's not okay. This month we're going to do this and six months later we might do it again. But it's about what do we do on a regular, consistent basis. That helps to build reliability, helps to build that sense of okay, we're in this together. Let's have conversations, and so often we hear you know some of the best conversations around the water cooler. Well, that's what happens at a barbecue slash braai or a poikipot or in the tea shack. That's when some of those really important conversations happen.

Speaker 1 13:01

So yeah, for me when I was offshore. You know a few of those were on the heli deck.

Speaker 2 13:04

Let's go for a walk, absolutely Just do.

Speaker 1 13:08

Gives you a space to have honest conversations without feeling pressure.

Speaker 2 13:12

I just had another vision of you know, a guy standing behind the cranes sunbaking their bellies. But anyway, you know I had a few of those as well, and they all asked did you bring your bikini?

Speaker 1 13:25

And I was like no, I did not.

Speaker 2 13:27

No, no, no no, thank you, but no, no. Even 10 years later, the conversations are the same. No, thank you, but no, no. Even 10 years later, the conversations are the same.

Speaker 1 13:34

There's creating a united team and there's crossing a line.

Speaker 2 13:38

Yeah, exactly, sadly for them.

Speaker 1 13:40

I didn't cross the line, no, exactly. However it did create entertaining conversations, which again builds rapport and builds trust.

Speaker 2 13:50

Exactly. It has to be done in the right context, of course, so things like horsing around and Humour.

Speaker 1 13:59

We've mentioned that many times before.

Speaker 2 14:01

Good humour, appropriate humour, you know, not taking the mickey out of somebody, because that's marginalising people, unless it's an agreed sort of way of operating. And that's where I think the cultural intelligence has come into play as well. You've got so many people on a work site from different cultures, different backgrounds. It doesn't even have to be a different culture, it could be just the next village in this country, right? And they have a different way of being, and so those things have to be taken into consideration. For example, so Sunday I'm in a WhatsApp message with a friend of mine. We're organizing lunch. Now. I'm from Australia, she's from the northern parts of England, we're both living in a village in the northern parts of Scotland. So, yep, I'm thinking to myself right, we're going to have lunch, so where should we go and have lunch? So we're trying to decide this.

Speaker 1 15:00

She goes. I don't know, I'd like dinner and I went oh okay, I can work with dinner, that's fine. Was she talking tea? Was she talking lunch?

Speaker 2 15:03

no, no, roast dinner, which is always at lunchtime. And I realized after a little bit and I suddenly thought okay, hang on, I we're on two different, we're different trains here. We have some cultural diversity going on here, some cultural differences going on. I'm thinking 6pm you're talking about a roast dinner at midday.

Speaker 1 15:25

Yes, Well, I'm glad you clarified that one. It could have been a bit awkward. She would have been sitting there by herself, well no yeah, exactly a bit awkward. She would have been sitting there by herself. Well, no, yeah, exactly. If you want to reach out to us, use the hashtag conversations that matter and we'll pick it up on the socials. Or look out for us on LinkedIn Karen O'Farrell, me, nuala Gage or our company Safety Collaborations.

Speaker 2 15:49

Now back to this week's show you have these conversations and it's not until you have these conversations. And don't be afraid to say this doesn't sound right. Let me speak up. No, that starts to build.

Speaker 1 16:03

And bringing that. We do often mention kind of the humor and things. And I was running an exercise with one of the groups and they had kind of sent the whispers around the the group and at the end of the exercise we had made these paper balls. And at the end of the exercise, well, I just got bombarded with all these paper balls just thrown at me and they had all planned. Well, they thought this was the funniest thing in the world. It was was just absolutely brilliant and it created such a lovely cohesion amongst their team.

Speaker 1 16:36

Yeah, but one of the guys was missing because he was doing his military service, Right, and he came back towards the end of when we were running all these little bite-sized learning programs and we were doing a review of what had stood out for them, as you know, kind of like their learning in moments, and this exercise came up in conversation and the guy who hadn't been there, you could see, was quite upset because he didn't know what anybody was talking about. You know, he felt he didn't feel included, he didn't feel like there was a common language. His contribution didn't matter because he couldn't give a contribution to the conversation. His contribution didn't matter because he couldn't give a contribution to the conversation. Well, it's such a heartwarming experience with his supervisor because he said right, everyone stop time out. How much time do we have, Nuala?

Speaker 1 17:20

And I said, well, we've got time, what do you want to do? So he came over and he's like we're going to do the exercise. He said but I want to see if the team can teach the guy that wasn't here. And he said okay, everybody, everybody know the rules. We all know what has to be done. We know it has to. Nuala's only here to help if we get stuck, but everyone knows how it ends. And he looked at me and winked and I was like so of course did the whole exercise and I only helped like a little bit.

Speaker 1 17:47

I was impressed they remembered how to make the origami and of course we finished and all of us just threw it at this guy and he was like what the hell Love you, but he was so happy to be included and that then became their team thing.

Speaker 2 18:05

Yeah, it was lovely Sometimes throwing paper origami balls is what it takes.

Speaker 1 18:10

But it also takes that skill of a leader to look and see that one of his team was feeling vulnerable Totally. And how do you embrace that vulnerability in teams where it doesn't leave someone feeling as an outsider, but you can be open, you can kind of say, hang on, I'm feeling left out or I don't know or I got that wrong and I need help, because that is a huge part in actually having a strong team.

Speaker 2 18:39

We mentioned observations earlier and that's the part that I think is really important. In the observation component, it's not just listening but watching and seeing, for what's not being said, what's the body language, what's the facial expressions, what's the facial expressions, what are those things. So, as a leader, you need to start or consider watching for all of those elements. I mean, the more we all do it, the better off we are. You know, but we get busy and you know, sometimes we don't see it.

Speaker 1 19:08

We're human. We also make mistakes along the way. To err is to be human, which makes us vulnerable.

Speaker 2 19:14

And I think what's really important when we talk about vulnerability and psychological safety, it's the more that you open up, the more vulnerable you become. So it's really important to firstly even understand what is vulnerability, and in these little masterclasses I actually do really talk about that. We do some little activities as well to just highlight what is being vulnerable. What does it actually mean? It's a big word and scary, yeah. So if you think about vulnerability in mechanical sense or an engineering sense, it's the same with people, except that the more that we open up, the more that we want to build trust, the more that we want to, I guess, learn, contribute, and then the most vulnerable thing of all is to challenge the system. I mean, when we're doing that, we are really opening ourselves up and being highly vulnerable. So we talk about the ladder of vulnerability in the little masterclass. I say little, it's not so little, but anyway, and celebrating that vulnerability is, you know.

Speaker 1 20:17

It shows everyone in the team that they are valued and they're important. Yeah, and for some people it's a really hard hard line to kind of like tiptoe over, but the more you do it and the more value you see that comes from that, the greater strength that you have in your teams.

Building Psychological Safety in Teams

Speaker 1 20:36

And a lot of this, and that's where we're talking about. Take away the jargon of psychological safety in the term of what is this big buzzword? This is psychological safety in real, practical terms. You know all of these speaking up, building trust, making a united team, boosting your team's sense of belonging, being vulnerable yourself and allowing your team to be vulnerable, because that allows you to design your safety culture on purpose and you don't have an accidental safety culture.

Speaker 2 21:07

Indeed, and everybody has a safety culture. It's just. Is it the one you want?

Speaker 1 21:12

Yep, and is it a culture of safety?

Speaker 2 21:16

When we say culture by design, it's how do you make it a core part of your team's identity and not just ticking boxes for the sake of it. So it's going deeper. It means building the habits and attitudes that will help the team grow to feel safe enough to speak up to challenge the current safety processes if they need to. And something I think is important to say here is when we talk about this, we're not saying that there's no accountability, that there's no roles and responsibilities. In fact, quite the opposite. It's actually those things are incredibly important. The opposite, it's actually those things are incredibly important and too often we see that they're a little bit lackluster because we haven't set the boundaries for people. So therefore, it causes dissent and friction and no clear path towards how do we have conversations that matter, that are important and that helps us to build that muscle, that psychological safety muscle.

Speaker 2 22:16

You don't have to call it that, but right, how do you build that muscle? So, just starting with habits of simply just listening more and speaking less, sometimes being accountable to yourself, being open and honest. How do we involve people in talks, in safety talks, in safety moments? How do we get people to feel part of the team. What is the onboarding like? What is the conversations around? Okay, we're not just telling you you've got a job today, but you're actually going to be part of something Now. I think it's really important to say that there are other elements that are involved in building a culture. It's about understanding, team development, emotional literacy, intercultural and communication intelligences, or conversational intelligence.

Speaker 2 23:01

It's complex, it's a lot of complexity to this, it's complex, but you know regular conversations, regular training, regular workshops, attending our own complimentary masterclass. It gives you some ideas on what you might like to do.

Speaker 1 23:19

Well, it starts creating a common language and it starts creating a sense of curiosity and a degree of understanding, but hopefully curiosity to want to know more.

Speaker 2 23:31

And why is that important? Reduces accidents, boosts team morale, improves your reputation, probably saves money at the bottom line. It makes safety a habit. It helps projects and operations go more smoothly and efficiently, reduces conversational waste, making everybody's job easier and safer. I mean, ultimately, that's what we want.

Speaker 1 23:55

We want everybody to go home we want everyone to go home and we want to end the day and go. You know what that was a good day. This is a good intro into, you know, making psychological safety like a bit more real and practical.

Speaker 1 24:11

Yeah, and like you said, the masterclasses are complimentary, one-hour session and what we cover in that is the general overview of psychological safety. Why is everyone talking about it, what it is and, importantly, what it is not? Because we do need to understand what psychological safety is not, what is vulnerability, and, as I'm sure you gathered from our conversation, that's a really important component Having a common understanding and the intro to the four stages of psychological safety and then a little bit of a suggested roadmap. So what do you actually do with this? How do you take it forward to the next steps Exactly?

Speaker 1 24:52

And we got some lovely feedback. We did I thought it would be a nice idea, Karen, if you shared maybe two of the bits of feedback that we got from different people.

Speaker 2 25:02

So for one person we got. I just woke up to this email. There was more in this email, but we're just going to give you a taste of what was said. So please accept my sincere appreciation for offering me the opportunity to attend the Psychological Safety Masterclass. All the meaningful assistance and insights not only offered during the Masterclass, but also from the various resources available on your website. It was something that helped me widen my perspective in the field, while I am trying to identify the interconnections and interdependencies with other relevant concepts such as emotional intelligence and cognitive skills development Awesome.

Speaker 1 25:44

Very, and he gave great feedback in the session as well.

Speaker 2 25:47

He did. Actually. Here are some really great questions and our next person, our next little bit of feedback here is thank you for your time and sharing your experience. The session was very interesting and dynamic, with polls and breakout rooms. I enjoyed it a lot and learned something new to implement in my daily work life. Thank you very much Very To those two delightful people.

Speaker 1 26:07

The big question is will there be another psychological safety masterclass?

Speaker 2 26:14

Yay, yes, thursday, 18th of April, at 1400 to 1500 UK time, so 2pm to 3pm at that time will be what we call British summertime. So for anyone who thinks it's GMT, it's not, it's one hour ahead of GMT. So hopefully some of the people that couldn't attend the first one because of time zone challenges, because it was in the morning, this one hopefully is more appropriate for, particularly for our friends over in the US. This one hopefully is more appropriate for, particularly for our friends over in the US. To find out more, register, visit safetycollaborationscom. Forward slash psychological dash, safety dash masterclass, or just go to the website and you'll find it. It's a big yellow bar at the top of the page.

Speaker 1 26:59

Yeah, you can't miss it. You can't. It's highlighted just for you, just for you. Thank you for joining us today. It's always lovely to have conversations that matter and, as one of our participants mentioned, there is a huge amount of fabulous resource on our website, safetycollaborationscom, including a psychological safety hub. You'll find the podcast there and the show notes for this episode. Leave us a message on the chat section, please, on the show notes page, and don't forget sharing is caring and we love a good share, so follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a review. Five stars would be absolutely amazing, because it will help others have a little bit of insight and wisdom into everything. Safety and doing these just helps us and helps you. Till next week, stay safe and stay well, thank you.