Build Psychological Safety in Your Workplace with Gina Battye - OrdDev Episode 53

What is psychological safety? It’s a term we hear often in organizations, but what does it really take to create it? Beyond the buzzwords and platitudes, psychological safety demands a deep, intentional commitment from leaders, HR, and OD practitioners alike. It’s not a tick-box exercise—it’s about designing environments where every individual feels safe and confident to bring their Authentic Self to work, every day.

We're joined by the brilliant Gina Battye.  Gina is the Founder and CEO of the Psychological Safety Institute and a global leader in workplace psychological safety. Known for her pioneering work in inclusion, belonging, and culture, Gina has revolutionised how organisations cultivate psychologically safe environments with her innovative methodologies, including the 5 Pillars of Psychological Safety and the Hierarchy of Psychological Safety.

💼 Gina Battye - Founder and CEO, Psychological Safety Institute
  / ginabattye 
Visit Psychological Safety Institute here:
https://www.thepsi.global/
Buy Gina's book "The Authentic Organization: How to Create a Psychologically Safe Workplace"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Authentic-Or...

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

(00:00) hi and welcome to the org Dev podcast so what is psychological safety it's a term we hear often in organizations but what does it really take to create it beyond the buzzword and the platitudes psychological safety Demands a deep intentional commitment from leaders from HR and OD practitioners alike but it's not a tick boox exercise it's about designing environments where every individual feels safe and confident to bring their authentic self to work every day and who better to guide us on this critical subject than Gina batti Gina is
(00:33) a CEO and founder of the psychological safety Institute she's a world-renowned psychological safety consultant a trainer for multinational corporations Fortune 500s TV film radio and the global press as well her organization PSI is on a mission to empower leaders eliminate negative behaviors and improve communication all in the service of creating a healthy workplace culture and PSI takes a practical approach to creating vibrant energized workplace 15 years ago Gina created the authentic self-process and the five pillars of
(01:05) psychological safety which we'll be exploring today and she's also the author of The authentic organization how to create psychologically safe workplaces and the link is in the show notes and Danny you I'm sure you've got a very bookmarked book post the the bacon bookmarks is is always the highest Accolade we give to any author outside of a busy work life Gina has a deep love of chomal and nature and she's recently take the last two years to renovate a ruin her words into an oasis to escape to in Portugal
(01:35) so welcome J We're delighted you could join Danny and I on the organization development podcast [Music] today just tell us a bit about more about the work that you do yeah absolutely so um long story short CEO founder of psychological safety Institute sorry where to start all right so I guess early in my career had two very different encounters with psychological safety that literally shaped everything that I do today so I've got a background in teaching and training and I've got a range of lived experiences of psychological safety in
(02:12) the workplace it was those two different encounters that I had that brought me to leave teaching behind and to set up the Institute so in terms of our work at The Institute we are global leaders in workplace psychological safety and workplace culture our mission is to create workplaces where people thrive we Challenge and transform outdated workplace cultures and workplace attitudes over the years we've developed a lot of intellectual property around psychological safety so you mentioned there already the five pillars of
(02:39) psychological safety the authentic self- process we've got the PSI culture framework the hierarchy of psychological safety and looks which is our diagnostic tool now a lot of that stuff is in my book so if you're interested in this discussion if you want to find out more I'm just going to point you in that direction so in terms of what we do we use our own methodology and Frameworks to identify the root causes of toxicity and psychological safety issues within organizations as well as to quite obviously address them we educate we
(03:09) give people the tools they need to thrive at work and we aim to Lobby government this is our longer term goal to embed psychological safety into workplace legislation so that's it in a nutshell so no no small no small ambition there yeah yeah absolutely not yeah brilliant and just tell us a bit more about the book what inspired you to get kind of right that because that's no no small undertaking to kind of commit to writing a book and getting that out yeah right so the book I guess my motivation for writing the book comes
(03:38) from my own experiences so I had these experiences that I wouldn't want anyone else to go through in the workplace so I mentioned that I had two different encounters with psychological safety they literally shape everything that I do now I want to make sure that I'm creating something better when I leave this world I guess in terms of the book I wrote it for a few reasons the first is to make sure that no one else has to experience what I did the second is to bust the myth that psychological safety is just about speaking up or making
(04:08) mistakes we often hear that that's what it is but actually there's so much more to it than that the third thing is I'm constantly asked by organizations how to create a psychologically safe workplace and how to fix toxic cultures so this book is my way of sharing practical actionable steps based on the methodology that we've developed at The Institute and I guess part of this whole picture is I want to challenge and change outdated workplace attitudes and cultures I believe everyone has the right to feel safe at work so this is my
(04:38) kind of present to the world if you like to help to achieve that we hear the word psychological safety in the workplace a lot you know there's a lot of words in the workplace strategy agile they kind of lost their meaning and psychological safety is one of those subjects what is psychological safety like how would you define it I'm glad you've asked okay because a lot of people don't really understand what it is so there's a misconception that psychological safety is all about the belief that your team
(05:05) can take risks which you might have heard as uh interpersonal risk-taking that they can make mistakes that you can speak up you can express your opinions the key bit is without fear of judgment however psychological safety is a much bigger concept than that interpersonal risk-taking it's got a much wider scope so when we talk about psychological safety at The Institute we Define it as an individual's subjective experience of safety comfort and confidence within a specific context it refers to how safe
(05:36) and ease you feel in different settings whether that's a physical space an environment a situation or when interacting with other people so going back to this whole idea of it not being about interpersonal risk-taking so our approach is very different so we always start with the individual we look at what do individuals need to feel safe at work so how can they bring their authentic self to work and what is it that affect affects their performance and behavior in the workplace so we always start with the individual then we
(06:04) open it out into like a one-on-one uh communication so imagine Garing that um we're working together in an organization we are now having a one-on-one conversation so what do we need to feel safe in that interaction communication is key all of the social kind of skills involved in communicating is all part of that now imagine that we're bringing Danny into the mix right so we're all in a team we're working together what is it that we need to do to make sure every single person in the team feels safe so we're widening out
(06:34) that conversation into a Team Dynamics kind of conversation here you can take it one step further and you can think about lots of different teams working together from across the organization so here this is where you start thinking about uh cross functional working and how to make sure everybody feels safe when they come to collaborate on specific projects the last step to it is around organizational wide so now we're opening it out to the organization and we're starting to think about okay what do we need to have in place to make sure
(07:03) everybody feels safe when they'll come into work so that's things like leadership thinking about processes procedures decision making how do we communicate on a bigger scale those kind of things come into the conversation so you can see that just from me speaking about those five key things this is a much bigger concept than interpersonal risk-taking when you see in the workplace you can see someone enter a room and it feels like there's an air change Almost Doesn't there and you can sort of see power dynamics at Play Can't
(07:33) you where people then start to self censor what they say as well is that something that you see quite a lot all the time all the time seriously yeah yeah it's an interesting one when whenever we get called into organizations they tend to want us to go into typically talk about things like leadership issues or uh issues with Team Dynamics but very quickly when we when we go through our process uh we always start with Diagnostics so figuring out what's actually going on and not just going off what people are telling us is
(08:02) going on so we go in we spend a bit of time in the organization really get a feel for the culture and the people and how it all works and interacts and actually that what you just said is is key to it so a lot of people don't feel safe to bring their authentic self into that situation they hide the sensor they mask which then has a knock on effect to how I communicate with somebody else how I communicate in a team how I communicate when I'm working cross organizationally so yeah it has a massive impact and we usually start our
(08:30) work there with the individual before we start working out to all those other levels Jina so what's the difference between psychological safety and Trust yeah so here's how I see it psychological safety and Trust are often discussed together but there are distinct concepts with different focuses we've already looked at what psychological safety is so as I Define it it's around the confidence and comfort to express your authentic self and engage openly with other people creating that environment where
(08:57) individuals and teams can Thrive even in challenging situations I just talked through the five different levels there of how safety manifests it starts with you you go on to interpersonal safety we go on to Team Dynamics collaboration safety and then organizational safety Trust on the other hand is how can I describe it it's more relational I guess and focused on individuals so trust is the belief that someone will will act with integrity and reliability it's built over time through consistent actions and mutual understanding of
(09:29) often in one-on-one are kind of small group contexts trust focuses on specific relationships as well so for example you might trust a colleague but still feel unsafe sharing ideas in a team meeting both are critical obviously and why does it matter so much so what's the kind of business case there's so much here and I could go on all day about it so I'll keep it short I promise we yeah absolutely well the thing is right you you'll hear these things all the time in terms of people talking about the
(10:00) business case and the benefits and all of that kind of stuff these these words are branded around a lot and until you start really digging into it it doesn't kind of make much sense they just kind of words aren't there but yeah I can certainly go through some so listen healthy workplace cultures create environments where people thrive and when individuals Thrive teams Thrive when teams Thrive that's when the organization thrives remembering also we all have the right to feel safe at work so yeah in terms of return on investment
(10:28) we've got things like from a leadership perspect perspective you've got things like optimized Workforce performance increased revenue and profitability cultural agility things like enhanced Innovation and problem solving brand reputation stakeholder confidence uh Stronger Team Dynamics and collaboration enhan leadership Effectiveness you got things like Mitigation Of risks and costs sustainable organizational cultures are built um in terms of customers enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as strategic adap
(10:59) ability and Market resilience long story short I guess is the organization attracts and retains top talent it innovates effectively and it navigates challenges with resilience position it for long-term success and sustainability but in essence right all of this boils down to we all have the right to feel safe at work and for me that's the most important reason for doing this you know it's great having all those other things but actually people should feel safe when they come to work it should a basic
(11:30) right really shouldn't it nobody should go work and feel unsafe yeah so what are the organizations that have got it right so the ones that have got high Psy psychological safety what are they doing differently what is it that they're how are they achieving that yeah yes and no I guess because obviously each organization is different every industry is different but I guess the common themes across the board are they invest in their people okay so they make sure that they have the resources to be able
(11:54) to bring their authentic self to work they're able to communicate and collaborate effectively we've got to remember especially with communication skills we're not taught this stuff in school right but we expect that people are able to deliver on these certain aspects when they're in the workplace so it's really important that people do have the resources to be able to communicate and collaborate effectively and that sometimes needs to be taught they also create an environment where people feel safe to bring their
(12:19) authentic self to work and they have those conversations that many people shy away from they tend to focus on things like emotional intelligence communication Team Dynamics uh what else they invest in their leaders so they root out negative behaviors and toxicity at the core so they don't just try to fix it with a Band-Aid or a plaster or anything like that other couple of things are they measure psychological safety regularly and they're just accordingly they focus on it they don't expect it and they
(12:48) don't assume that they have it I think that's quite an important yes important aspect there is not to assume it and actually to do something about it don't just think it's there right um and I guess the key point I want to make here really is about moving away from performative behavior in terms of psychological safety so we encounter a lot of companies that offer oneof training sessions and then they fail to embed the learning or they might roll out year-long initiatives only then to shift Focus completely the next year and
(13:20) do something completely different or they might celebrate a day or a week or a month of Interest with a training session or a keynote speaker imagine like pride month for instance but that is it that's all they do and I'm really Keen to call this out because I don't think this is good enough okay so by doing those things you're not just stagnating you're actively contributing to a toxic workplace culture and you're moving the needle backwards if you truly want to create an environment where
(13:45) everyone can Thrive you need to prove it and if you want to root out toxic cultures again you need to prove it if you want to create an inclusive workplace where everyone feels that they belong prove it you need to invest in it live it breathe it you need to move move Beyond those check boxes and invest in making lasting change it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen by accident one point you said there which is um some people think they have it and some leaders often think they've they've
(14:12) done the things that they need to do you know they try and sort of in their own way do it and then your diagnostic comes along and kind of blows it all out of the water yes what is that process like of actually given the feedback because I guess there are some surprises in there aren't there yeah well what do you want to know what's it like for me or what's it like for them both both yeah so can we be greedy fair enough yeah fair enough okay well I mean in terms of the process um so we have a process when we
(14:42) go into an organization so imagine that we're called in the process is we start off with our diagnostic phase so we might roll out looks which is our diagnostic tool um and we spend a few days um or actually it can be longer than a few days it depends on how big the organization is but we spend time in an organ organization really getting to understand what is going on we look at all the data that they've got we ask them tons of questions we sit in on meetings we do onet to ones so it's a really immersive process so that's the
(15:11) the diagnostic phase and and at the end of that what I'm looking to do as part of that process is figure out what are the toxic hotpots what do they need to work on and then I give the recommendations to them so the second phase to it then is once I've given the recommendations and they've decided what they want to take up that's when we start delivering it so that's like an intervention stage really so we deliver all the interventions uh the third stage to it is once we've delivered all those
(15:36) interventions we offer them the option to work with us on a longer term basis so it's like our maintenance program if you like like our our retainer so that's the process that we take people through um in terms of how that goes down well I love it first and foremost I love delving into all the stuff that could be going wrong um and and having the conversations with people to figure out what is stopping them from thriving in the workplace so from my perspective I'm very focused on what is not working so
(16:04) well here and what can we do to fix that so I love that process now in terms of the people that get the feedback that's a different story um quite often the response is okay so we knew we had issues but we didn't really understand the depth of those issues and we couldn't get to the root cause of it but that's what we're aiming to get to we try to get to that root cause of of the issue so when we play that back there's often an element of surprise there's often an element of I don't know some
(16:34) some smaller organizations feel like a bit embarrassed almost there might be a bit of defensiveness going on because they're they're the ones that have been responsible for creating this environment you know so quite often it's it's met with a little bit of resistance but once they get past that and once everybody gets over ego and all of that kind of stuff that gets in the way in that first instance that's when the really exciting conversations happen because we're all there for the same
(17:00) purpose we all want to fix what's going going wrong in the organization um and we want to create that environment where people can Thrive so yeah as soon as we get to having those proper conversations around so this is what we found this is our these are our thoughts on what you could do to improve those things as soon as we get into that it it totally transforms the relationship transforms you know people are more open and they want to bring you in and they want to start on that process there's often at
(17:29) times um moments where people get very what's the word impatient they want things to happen sooner you know they want to push things and move things forwards uh but like I said you can't rush these things you know a lot of this has to do with trust and Team Dynamics and building those relationships again and that doesn't happen overnight so you just got to be a little bit patient and these issues potentially built up over years haven't they yeah yeah yeah absolutely every organization thinks
(17:56) it's Unique in its own way but but obviously from your perspective what are some of the common things you see when you're going in and like oh it's this thing again what are some of those things that are quite familiar for you when you see it in the in the diagnostic process how long have we got this we would make I would have make this a Five Hour podcast absolutely and now my cat even wants to join in he's very excited shall I bring him into the mix he might might see a little tail every now and again
(18:26) apologies you a model disclaimer though that's only thing there we go there he is um yeah so right yeah okay let me have a think about this so what are some of the key things I guess Team Dynamics is usually one of the big ones so as soon as we get in there they want to know they've usually brought us in because they know that people are not getting on they don't know why they don't know how to fix it there might be some sort of dysfunction within teams that kind of stuff so that that's a
(18:53) common thing that we're always seeing uh communication issues is a massive thing um things around authentic self people not feeling safe to to bring their authentic self to work so the hiding the censoring and that's impacting on other things it could cause tension in a lot of different areas that decision making so it might be that there isn't a really clear decision making uh process uh there might be a lot of ambiguity with roles responsibilities that kind of stuff even things like what do we need need to do
(19:23) here to get promoted like that kind of thing isn't very clear in a lot of organizations I guess the other thing that we see a lot is as well people get us in because they want to talk about psychological safety but they actually think it's something different they they go back to that whole thing around it being U about speaking up and making mistakes so they come they want us to come in to create a speak up culture uh but actually we we don't agree with that approach so we spend quite a lot of the
(19:49) first few sessions that we have with an organization actually educating them about what psychological safety actually is so yeah that that's quite an interesting one we do spend quite a bit of time working on that who tends to bring you in who's the main is it an HR kind of Leed initiative or is it kind of the leaders or senior leadership team or does it vary it varies actually it varies so it it can be quite an interesting process this one right so quite often we get um we get conversations with people who are like
(20:17) in eigs employee resource groups so they might have a specific day in the diary like pride month or I know it could be anything like National inclusion week for instance they've got a date in the diary they've been tasked to get somebody in to speak about psychological safety and we're brought in on that route but then after that that's when we get brought in to do other stuff it's like a door opener if you like so yeah we get a lot of conversations with ER staff we also get brought in for the
(20:41) bigger projects it tends to be somebody either in the leadership team it might be that they have uh like a culture uh program set up so they know they need to work on culture they've tried lots of stuff before it's not working so they bring us in as part of that so they tend to be people around change management specifically to do with culture HR people brings in quite a bit Yeah and and Senior leaders it could be that they've heard either me or heard me speak or they've been part of something
(21:10) that we've been involved in they've reached out to find out more about it and then they've wanted to have a bit of a private conversation at first the leadership team but then once they get a gist of what it is and what we can actually do to help that's when they start to bring in other members of the team to get involved in those conversations so it can be a mix I really like idea that fact that you're defining what they actually want so the commission gets clearer like is it a speakup culture that you want or is it
(21:34) psychological safety in your experience are there Industries or sectors where there's generally higher levels of psychological safety or or not that's a great question in terms of Industries right we get a lot of conversations with people from like loads of different Industries lots of different sectors from my experience the industries that have consistently prioritized their Journey towards psychological safety include let's see pharmaceutical biotech financial services and Investment Banking they're the four core ones on
(22:06) the other hand Industries like retail technology manufacturing they've shown intermittent uh interest so it's often characterized by like a short burst of training they want something but then they don't want to go all in and then some Industries such as transport education government organizations Public Defense and security and this one blows my mind their lack of serious engagement with psychological safety is terrifying like public security right anyway I'll leave that one for another day um Health Care marketing legal
(22:38) property engineering construction food industry these are all industries that have discussed psychological safety but haven't gone uh deeply into any sort of implementation so they tend to be the ones that do like a one-off training thing for a date in the diary that kind of thing countries do you want to know about countries yeah of course yes definitely yeah okay so several countries including uh let's see I always forget the full list but Australia Sweden Belgium Denmark Canada um there's a few ofs as well they've
(23:10) taken significant steps to address psychosocial hazards in the workplace by adopting legislation now psychosocial hazards aren't the same as psychological safety but there's this bit of an overlap between the two so we get a lot of organizations coming in from across the world wanting to talk about psychosocial hazards not really realizing it's a different thing but then we point them in the right direction so but we do get a lot of interest from there and in terms of The Institute people always think that all
(23:37) of our work is in the UK because that's where we're based but it's not most of our work is in the US Canada Australia New Zealand and Europe so what is the difference for for the audience between psychological safety and the psychosocial how can I explain this right so psychosocial hazards um think think in terms of like physical safety things that you can um see and address in the workplace right well psychosocial hazards are similar to that so there are things that you can measure things that happen and cause you stress in the
(24:11) workplace um but they're not a psychological safety issue so like a psychosocial Hazard might be something like I don't know like you're expected to work far too many hours in a really noisy environment you might be um sat next to a toilet so it stinks that kind of thing so it's the kind of thing that is like you can see it you can measure it you can do something about it and it actually has an impact on people psychologically as well as their physical health psychological safety is not that um as we've discussed before so
(24:43) yeah there's quite a distinct difference between the two and it's interesting that those countries have actually adopted legislation for psychosocial hazards but they haven't taken it that step further for psychological safety if we've got a leader listening or somebody in HR or OD thinking that you know have I got a psychological safety issue or or haven't I what might be some of the kind of kind of tails what might what might they be looking out for going actually this is something we need to think about
(25:09) listen there's so many red flags that you can look out for so I'll give you some examples and uh hopefully it won't blow you man too much um my Pen's ready is it well just get ready for the ticks right okay right uh let's see red flags so I get key one is individuals don't feel feel that they can bring their authentic self to work so you can sense that they're holding themselves back or they've got the barriers up with their colleagues for instance you might have individuals struggling to manage their
(25:38) emotions in interactions with colleagues and then that impacts on their behavior when individuals are triggered or they feel frustrated they don't discuss it instead they have that tendency to bottle it all up perhaps taking it home with them letting it Fester that kind of stuff vulnerability isn't expressed with anyone in the organization so there's a distinct lack of personal information sharing individuals might exhibit negative behaviors in the workplace they might meet the minimum requirements and
(26:04) then clock off precisely on time like I'm not giving you a moment extra that kind of mindset individuals tend to stay quiet they don't actively participate in meetings or discussions so participation is passive basically you might ask a question and experience awkward silences there might be an unwillingness or a reluctance to switch on cameras or microphones unless they're prompted that kind of thing individuals might find it challenging to navigate diverse personality types in the team this happens a lot this one actually and it
(26:35) has an impact on communication and morale in the team so you might hear discussions about or experience strained team relationships there'll probably be some disengagement among team members there's a lack of trust that kind of thing you might also find that there's consistent misunderstandings or misinterpretation of messages resulting in confusion or conflict individuals don't tend to express their expectations of other people clearly enough and and that can often lead to frustration and conflict situations unexpressed
(27:03) expectations are probably one of the biggest sources of tension in uh in a workplace so it's really key to look out for that guess other things are things like messages are over complicated there's a failure to deliver them clearly and succinctly individuals might exclude other people with their choice of language there might be a reluctance or an unwillingness to seek clarification or any sort of feedback things like uh individuals don't actively contribute to team goals objectives or projects so there's like a
(27:31) hesitance or a reluctance to collaborate with other people or even share progress on the projects that they're working on micromanagement is usually Rife in these kinds of environments you might have a blim a culture of blim which is widespread you're likely to have high rates of absenteeism and presenteeism so there'll be a steady or a large flow of people leaving your organization or your team without necessarily expressing the reasons why and then lastly I guess measurement of psychological safety is
(28:00) either non-existent or very limited so I mean there's a lot of stuff there those are all indicators that suggest a presence of a psychological safety issue the list isn't exhaustive but it certainly gives a good starting point for you to start identifying if you might have an issue I think lots of that will be familiar with for a lot of people people about 97% of people watching this how many tis did you do I should do a trigger warning on this sorry everyone absolutely so leaders heard that and they thought actually that that sounds a
(28:32) bit like our organiz where where do they start where do they what do they do to start to build a kind of improved psychological safety it's overwhelming isn't it like where and people are time poor you know one one of the constant battles that we have with our work is is to get people to stop being operational and take a step back and look at what's going on around them as well is that something that you encounter oh all the time yeah yeah absolutely and and I think like you said people are time poor
(28:57) they think that actually this they need to stop to be able to do this but actually they don't they just need to have an awareness of it whilst they're doing what they're doing um so I guess that I've got loads of different things I could talk you about here I guess the first one I would say is to learn more about what it is so really understand what psychological safety is before you start doing anything about it and commit to it personally so on a practical day-to-day level I would suggest starting with doing some inner work for
(29:24) yourself so work through pillar one which is self focuses on self awareness authentic self that kind of stuff um if you want some ideas for that there's loads of good stuff in the book I talk through pillar one in a lot of detail loads of activities in there for you to work through so if that's something you want to work on I'm going to sign por you to the book um get everyone involved so start the conversation about bringing your authentic self to work I always encounter this resistance for people to
(29:52) do this in the workplace they don't want to have that conversation in team so we we're usually brought in to facilitate that conversation um so we get people in a room and we start talking about who do you think you are um how do you think you show up at work those kind of things what's the difference between your authentic self and your identity those kind of questions are really important for people to start thinking about personally and then we start thinking about uh what's affecting your
(30:16) performance and behavior at work those kind of things we get people to do that on their own then we bring people together and they realize that actually they've got similar lists it's quite uh Revelation for a lot of people so yeah that work on bringing your authentic self to work and having that conversation is really important raising your awareness on psychological safety so what is it why is it important how can you contribute to creating a safe workplace I think other things that you can do as a leader are to provide
(30:43) training and tools to support your staff don't assume everybody has these skills and knowledge to be able to do this so provide some training on authentic self communication skills as I said before we don't get taught this stuff we need to learn it quite often think about things like conflict resolution strategies emotional intelligence and really work on Team Dynamics and how to navigate different personalities and work preferences I guess three other key things here on the day-to-day level are clarify expectations and boundaries
(31:14) otherwise that's going to be a massive source of tension within your conversations encourage your teams to establish ground rules and a conflict resolution plan when you've got those it takes the edge off any sort of conflict okay so I'm highly going to recommend that everybody does that and then the third thing is measure it so know where you are now and then measure it every year so you can really understand what's going on within your organization get some robust data on it so you know where
(31:40) to focus your attention you want to conduct regular assessments you can use looks we've got a diagnostic tool that measures psychological safety and yeah by doing that you're then going to be able to pinpoint specific areas for improvement use the feedback use the recommendations you get from looks to refine your approach continuously so that's kind of on a practical day-to-day level do you want to know some strategic and team-wide interventions or do you think that was no no no going okay trying to remember everything from
(32:12) my book now okay um right so on a strategic or a team companywide level always start by diagnosing your root causes so figure out what's actually going on what is contributing to toxicity at each of the five levels of culture that I talked you about earlier get some data on that we've already mentioned the data bit then think about those targeted interventions so once you know what your root causes are then you can start actually designing things that are going to work instead of doing that scattergun thing and pointing your
(32:41) attention all over the place wasting resources wasting time actually Target those interventions based on what you found out in terms of your root causes those interventions might include things like training leaders and managers it might be stuff around authentic self so raising awareness it might be stuff around enhancing communication skills across the board might be about understanding Team Dynamics revising policies and systems creating safe spaces there's tons of stuff that you can do there but by proactively
(33:09) addressing these areas as a starting point I think it's really essential it's going to help you to cultivate a healthy and resilient workplace culture there's a few things you can think about yeah it's so deeply practical and um obv just sort of a sidebar comment um when Danny sort of had found this book and read it and came and you were just like this is really really deeply practical book so it's a a really high recommended read isn't it yeah absolutely and I think with the point you made about
(33:35) expectations Garen and I spend half our lives more than half our lives talking about the importance of expectation setting and and doing that and I love the idea of the conflict resolution plan what does that look like in because it's really hard isn't it once you're in conflict or things have kind of started to unravel it's much harder to work out a way forward what does that look like in practice what do organizations do do it before right so write a strategy before the minute that you get into any
(33:59) sort of conflict if you don't have it it's like the conflict is 20 times worse because you don't know what to do you trying to navigate your emotions instead of going oh hang on a minute we've got a strategy here this is what we do we follow these steps and this is how we're going to work to resolve it so always get it in place in advance so when you come in when you're thinking about a conflict resolution strategy I mean some teams do it individually so you might have uh each individual team has their
(34:26) own conflict resolution strategy you could also have a companywide one if it's necessary it might not be for some organizations but um the key thing is imagine that you're doing it in a team get everybody in the team together it's something that everybody has to input into it's not something that a leader writs and then disseminates it's something that everybody has an input into so you would have a conversation about okay before we get into conflict you know we want to make sure that we're
(34:53) dealing with it in the best possible way we're taking people and personalities out of it because that's not what it's about we want to focus on what can we do to improve the situation or to resolve the issues that are coming up so then they have a a group discussion figure out what's important to them we typically give them a a few different areas that they might want to look at um to focus their attention on it depends what we give them based on their organization and what's coming up for
(35:17) them so they then have a group discussion figure out what's important to them they'll do a bit of brainstorming and then they'll vote on the appropriate ones we'll theme them that kind of thing they'll vote on them prioritize them and then after quite a bit of debate usually we come up with a a really clear plan of these are the steps that we take so typically that might look like okay so something's happened between I don't know a couple of people in the team this is the first step this is what we try to do to
(35:45) resolve it between the two of us before we take it any further so you've got a little section on that the next section would be okay so we tried to resolve it we're still at like loggerheads um we we don't know how to move past this so what do we we do next so there's a Next Step okay and that might be I don't know they might get somebody else in the team to help them have that conversation facilitate it for instance could be loads of stuff but that's an example if that intervention doesn't work then
(36:11) what's the third line intervention do we need to get a leader involved do we need to get HR involved what what does that look like um and then if we still can't resolve it what's the next step after that so it's like having three or four different steps of if this doesn't work then we do this and if that doesn't work then we do that but that when when some sort of conflict happens in a workplace when you have that the minute that you have that conflict you know exactly what to do you can take you can literally
(36:38) deal with your emotion and not have to deal with the what is the process that we have to take ourselves through so we always say go away figure out the emotion that is going on for you figure out what triggered it and this is where the authentic self stuff comes in you need to figure out what is triggering you to feel that conflict in that situation is it the person is it the words that they used is it that it's reminded you of something that happened 20 years ago that kind of stuff is is really important to dig into so figure
(37:06) out what that emotion is for you you might want to take yourself away for like I don't know 10 minutes an hour a couple of days whatever it takes for you to deal with that in the moment and then you can come to back together when you're both feeling a lot fresher when you're not feeling that emotion as strongly come back together and figure out how you're going to resolve it because this isn't about people or personalities it's really really important to remember that this is about something that's happened that you can
(37:32) pretty much always move past if you put those people and personalities out of the picture focus on the uh what's going on in front of you and start to figure out how to deal with that and these are skills for Life aren't they because so many people people just um we don't necessarily have awareness of our emotions or we don't have a name from or we have a very basic pallet of descriptions for it as well so when you're getting them to do that work that must be quite challenging but really
(37:59) quite cathartic as well yeah I think so and you know it's an interesting one because quite often people don't do work on themselves so they don't know what triggers them when they're in conversation and it could be right that they've been triggered at work like a million times by this one person for instance right but they're also triggered by somebody else in their private life or in their social life for instance and it feels quite similar but it's a different person it's a different
(38:24) situation it's different words right but it's it's the same Essence right and it's fascinating because when you start digging into triggers right and figuring out what is the thing that is making you feel that way it tends to lead back to something that's happened in the past that they have taken I call it stories so we build a story about something that's happened in the past so imagine I was bullied for being gay at work right true story I took that away I created a story about it and then when I
(38:51) went into any sort of organization after that that's what I would tell people because that's my story that's what I've put against that thing that happened to me but now if I go into any sort of situation where I feel that level of emotion that I felt when I was being bullied it might be I come across the same kind of personality it's not the same person obviously but a different person same personality it might be that they said similar words to me or it might be that they had a certain tone or
(39:20) a certain way of being towards me and that can trigger me but it doesn't mean that it's to do with them it means that I've still got stuff attached to that thing that happened to me years ago so it's nothing to do with that person or that situation and actually if we just take the time to ask them to clarify what they meant with their words in that instance chances are it's it's really like normal you know but in that instance our head has attached something to it we've got all these things firing
(39:47) off going oh my God Gina you're in danger you're going to be bullied all of that stuff when actually it's not that at all but our mind is taking us back to that so it's fascinating when you start digging into this wh people and they start understanding that what is triggering them now is actually a cause from something in their past that they can actually deal with and late to bed if you like it's mindblowing for them we ran um Retreats out in Portugal for a while we had to stop because of covid
(40:13) but yeah we took we took groups of people out to Portugal and that's what we worked on we worked on being your authentic self and figuring out what the conditioning is that you've had over the past like we have a lot of conditioning from childhood that sort of thing we unpick some of that we unpick the triggers emotion all of that good stuff they come out of that Retreat like different people like you can see a physical lift in their whole body in in their energy everything because we don't we don't work on this stuff really do we
(40:40) we don't have the time we don't have the inclination unless we're forced to do so it's too painful yeah yeah anybody watching this because the audience part of the audience here people want to be early stage OD practition is in it is about knowing yourself so everything that Gina has just said all of that and Rewind it again because you're always because you're always trying to work out what's my stuff and what's your stuff when you're at the edge of change creating it you get a lot of things
(41:08) rejecting and it's your own fears are playing as well aren't they so that's AB fascinating one question wanted to ask is where should the responsibility for psychological safety sit is this this is hr's thing isn't it surely sure no how dare you say that absolutely not right so many people mistakenly believe that creating a psychological safe workplace is solely the responsibility of one person or a group of people so you might think it's HR other people might think it's a leadership team quite often people think
(41:40) it's the responsibility of the leadership team to be honest however creating a psychologically safe environment is a collaborative effort I want to talk to you about culture just for a moment so many people believe that culture is one thing right so in an organization culture is just this thing that exists but actually there's five different levels of culture within an organization I've talked about those earlier so they were personal onetoone team collaboration and organizational right so they're the five levels culture
(42:10) is created by individuals okay so I want you to imagine this right you're in a team currently there's a there might be a bit of a negative undertone right so there might be something going on within that team could be caused by one person for instance that person leaves there's a change in the culture like things feel different now that person's left right then you bring in somebody else the culture changes again so the culture isn't changing because of the leadership or anything that anybody has done uh
(42:37) intervention wise the culture has changed because the people have changed so every individual is responsible for creating the culture and it's the same with psychological safety every single individual within an organization is responsible for psychological safety it starts with you so you need to figure out what you need to to to feel safe to be yourself in the workplace every single person in the organization has that responsibility and yes there are other things that other people are responsible for like leaders are
(43:09) responsible for certain things the organization has a responsibility to create certain things as well but in terms of whose responsibility is it I always says it's yours every single person that works in that organization is responsible you get involved in loads of things and the work that you do what brings you most Joy what what what bits of it do you find the most fulfilling oh that's a great question um let's see the bits that really excite me are working on the larger projects with organization
(43:37) so I love going in and looking at Team Dynamics and I get a bit geeky and a bit excited by watching people and how they interact and that kind of good stuff so that that's what really fires me up I love Consulting I love unearthing the pockets of toxicity and empowering them to make change as well I really like that and seeing the transformation really lights me up so that that that whole piece around going into organizations I find it very energizing teaching as well I'm a natural educator I try to do that through all of my media
(44:07) work all of the writing uh social media work as well I I try to educate wherever I can and anything to do with writing or stuff to do with the media or video recording that sort of stuff so how can people connect with you so if you've as as people were hearing your your list of potential things to be mo about and someone's been triggered and go oh my God that is is my workplace or if people want to follow your work or if they want to learn a bit more about the consulting or the public speaking what's the best
(44:35) way for people to find you and to follow you yeah great question so I guess the most uh the place where I'm most active is LinkedIn so feel free to connect with me over there happy to have a conversation with you drop me a DM if you've seen this let me know that you've watched it tell me the best bits tell me the worst bits all of that good stuff so LinkedIn is the place really if you want to find out more about our work you could go to the website which is www.the psi. Global um we're just in the
(45:03) process of revamping that so bear with us we've gone through this whole major Rebrand recently so we're just kind of getting to the tail end of that now so you'll see that change the website will change in the next kind of couple of weeks but that is a really good source of information to find out more about the the range of work that we do I guess so yeah get in touch love to hear from you thank you brilliant and everything that Gina shared all of the links and links to the book is going to be in in
(45:27) the show notes as well Gina we just want to say a huge thank you we asked you for an interview and we got an interview and a master class at the same time so there is no there's literally so much value in there for people to take away and I think we'd really recommend people just have a second reading of this because all of the things you talked about are so practical in our organizations as well and it is a really really good book Danny what what stood out from the conversation for you there loads i' love
(45:52) the the red flags you were talking about I think people are really going to resonate and kind of be a to identify those the import of kind of defining what we mean by psychological safety and people really getting an understanding of what it means and not assuming they know what it means and the importance of getting into root causes and using data to really kind of pinpoint your intervention so you're kind of precise and have got the biggest chance of making a a difference yeah so many things for me and I think like some of
(46:15) things is the conflict resolution strategy as a is the UK as a nation we are crap conflict so are we not noticed so it's one of those things that we need to do on when the sky is blue and we work out a structure and we can put a really robust process together and also the fact that all the red flags that you talked about as well and the importance of clarifying expectations Gina it's been brilliant it's been so good we've been looking forward to this conversation for ages so so thank you so much for making time and enjoy your next
(46:45) weekend that you get to enjoy in Portugal as well thank you so much thank you everyone for listening hope you got some value from that and yeah hope to speak to you soon thank you fabulous thank you [Music] he [Music]