One of my deepest wishes is to always create a safe space where everyone's voice can be heard and matter. It's more like a horizon to reach for than a shore I arrive at. And I go off course plenty.
Fostering psychological safety in groups is essential. How else can we ensure that people feel truly able to say what needs to be said, to offer their deepest creativity, to challenge the status quo?
The work of folks like Amy Edmonson and Ed Schein make it clear: When people don’t feel it’s safe to speak up, then things can become unsafe fast. Mistakes happen. Standards slip. Lives can get lost.
Without a deeply safe environment, people also literally can't think: Stress marshals the body's resources for survival, leaving everyone with less energy to bring their best selves.
If you are trying to innovate or get your team to be creative, an unsafe environment is the opposite of what you want to foster. Without safety, teams are living in an environment that focuses on survival, not excellence.
The core of creating safety for others is creating safety for yourself.
I don't think we can create safe spaces for others unless we know what safety is for ourselves. It can be challenging to lead people deeper than you yourself have gone. And we can't continuously foster a safe environment if we don't understand how fragile this state can be for ourselves. This is about applied empathy.
I posted a painting I made about these ideas on LinkedIn and Twitter...I'd love for you to join the conversation and share what helps you create safety for yourself and others.
Some ways I create safety for myself:
1. Slowing Down. As the Navy Seals like to say “slow is smooth smooth is fast”. As Mario Andretti says “If everything feels under control, you’re not going fast enough.” So, slowing down, taking a breath, taking a break, always helps create more safety, a deeper sense of control, and ultimately, smooth speed.
2. Connecting to my own body. The best way I know to slow down is to ask myself and others to “Mentally arrive where we physically are”. I learned this simple, direct and powerful phrase from my friend Uli Beutter Cohn, who hosts the Subway Book Review. Mindfulness is a concept that can attract some people and repel others, so I use this phrase to make it simple and straightforward.
Everyone has a lot going on. We don’t know what people had to endure before turning on their video chat…so it’s great to take even a single minute to connect with where we are now: together.
3. Being curious about what other people are experiencing. What is their world, right now? If I can slow down, I can ask to know more about what someone meant or intended to mean before reacting. I can connect to others and empathize with them if I can first do that for myself. Then, we can explore: What is their current mental model? Empathy and curiosity reduces any need for being defensive, which is an unsafe feeling. Find more on exploring mental models here.
4. Resistance is Information. Recently I was coaching a CEO of a startup who was struggling with a conflict: to work on his product-market fit or to do a fundraising round. In this case, it wasn’t about making the right choice…it was about understanding why he was conflicted. Getting to the heart of the conflict helped him realize how to solve the challenge, not as an either/or choice, but as a set of values to live.
Being curious about conflict helps in conversations with ourselves and in conversations with others. I create safety for myself in group situations by reminding myself that conflict isn't bad, it's information about how other people are feeling and thinking. Getting curious about their position (see above) can be transformative. Curiosity can help show that the way forward can be better than either of us could imagine, if we work together from a place of safety.
As I mentioned above, I posted a painting I made about these ideas on LinkedIn and Twitter...I'd love for you to join the conversation and share what helps you create safety for yourself and others.