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This episode is about the benefits of safety & trust and why they are foundation of all teamwork.
Is your team not quite clicking and you can't put your finger on why? Are you carrying the weight of holding everyone together while the business keeps moving? Do you wish you had a way to actually understand what's going on around your people and fix it?
You're in the right place.
This podcast helps leaders understand the signs around their team and change them intentionally; so performance, engagement and trust follow naturally.
I'm Josey. I was part of a fractured team and chose to do things differently. What we built together turned out to be what the world's top 30% of organisations do consistently. I spent two years sitting on it before deciding to share it. Now I can’t wait to share it.
If you're ready to lead differently people-first leadership is the better way to have a better day.
Ciao.
Next steps:
Step 1: Take the Leadership Self-Assessment - www.theolivetreemethod.com/leadership-self-assessment
Step 4: Listen to the episodes - we start with aligning to the Leadership Self-Assessment - 26 core areas to make the difference
Step 2: Sign up and make the The Olive Tree Method yours - www.theolivetreemethod.com
Step 3: Reach out if you have queries - josey@theolivetreemethod.com
Welcome back, continuing on from the previous episode, how did I learn that some people call their work home and how it humbled my outlook on difficult conversations. Hang in through the intro, I've got a story that taught me what it feels like when safety and trust are completely missing within hours of walking into a new job. I'm stoked you're here.
Podcast Intro
Checking in on you. How did you go reflecting on where you're at? Did you see ways you may be affecting your team? Did you watch the YouTube the line, below the line? I trust you got some great insight from it.
For now, our episode is on safety and trust. Safety is a human need. The safety I'm referring to is psychological safety. And if I say psychological safety too many times, I feel like we'll both switch off. So when I'm saying safety it totally refers to psychological safety.
Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is ancient. Used in psychology, it illustrates a five basic human needs model. And it states that safety is number two behind the air we breathe, food and sleep. The research on safety in the workplace is now epic.
Amy Edmondson is the leading voice on psychological safety in the workplace. She now has over 25 years of research into what makes teams effective, so she is the GOAT. Amy's research in her now famous book, The Fearless Organization, revealed that psychological safety is the number one predictor of team effectiveness. Google's Project Aristotle found psychological safety was by far the most important of the five factors that make teams effective, above skills, experience or individual performance. It's epic. It makes but it's also mind blowing that in many of our organizations, safety is not nurtured or prioritized or when it is present, not present, it's recognized.
Trust is difficult to win back once broken. No doubt you would have experienced someone breaking your trust and it can be heartbreaking. There are things that people can do to us that takes trust off the cards immediately. There are smaller things that can erode trust over time. Do you do any of these things?
Make promises and not keep them, even small ones.
You're a little or a lot inconsistent with what's said and what's done.
After conversations you feel like you may have managed someone rather than supported them.
When you know you have things that would benefit from positive change with you or your team, taking a risk to try things and being transparent about it can be the beginning of a winning formula. Stepping out is vulnerable and that signals trust first.
I think safety is known to come before trust generally when it's talked about, even in these episodes I'm saying safety and trust so it must ring better.
It makes me think of abseiling. You have to know you're safe first with the harness before you trust anything and go over the edge. But in psychological safety, in my experience, if you build trust first, safety then follows. Stating to your team that you're looking into things differently opens the door and that vulnerability and curiosity isn't threatening.
What happens when it's not around?
A new job for me, new company, owners seem fantastic. Physical environment looked great. I met several of the team I'd be working with and the role looked challenging. I'd done my homework, there was murmurs of conflict, but I was told it wasn't an ongoing issue.
My first morning was going smoothly. A few laughs, met more of the team, far all good. was in an open plan office, which I like. I sat and I was about to start training with the person I was going to support. The owner came to check on me. They were going off site for a few hours. The person I was supporting chuckled and said, geez, off again. How do you find the time to work? And laughed.
A hard laugh, not a funny ha-ha laugh. Nobody else laughed. Nobody else even reacted. The owner said to me, see you later. All smiles. My eyes popped out of my head. I was thinking, that's different. No reaction, no recourse. The tone in what was said was hostile. Nobody else in the office reacted. They would have definitely This person then starts to talk about how bad the place was and how ridiculous the owner was.
My heart sunk. I sat there thinking, the silence in the room tells me everything. These people aren't They just stopped reacting because reacting costs too much. I felt unsafe within hours, not physically, but in every other way that matters.
An unsafe environment doesn't announce It shows up in what people don't say, don't do, and don't react to and once you've felt it you can't un-feel it. Easy to say there was no way I wanted to stay.
Most of us would have been in environments where staff only get attention when they use the word stress, pressure or doctor certificate. Then it's on the employee rather than the conditions. I learnt in the time I was in that job that a few people had tried to say something. Why don't people say something more often?
Often the response is, it's pointless, nothing gets done, nothing changes.
I understand that when you're flat out, the last thing you want to do is ruffle feathers to create change. But once you have ruffled feathers in a people first way, you actually build trust and safety naturally and your outcomes are different immediately. Opening a dialogue about what concerns your team right across the not just in their workflow, will reveal things that you can adjust. No surprises.
You can start to draw and set clear expectations about behaviour towards each other. The team then help you to mitigate poor performance or poor behaviour and they're more likely to accept when you have to step in to manage poor performance or poor behaviour it's not aligned with the team's values.
Supporting your team and your conditions in a people first is the fastest way to transformation.
Definitely the best way to build a foundation of safety and trust.
There is a recorded 43 more sick days in an environment that scores low for safety because people would rather avoid conflict, be the odd one out, than have to sit in an uncomfortable, unproductive, toxic environment. That’s nuts.
In safe environments, it's acceptable to admit you don't know something, that you've got something wrong, or that you need help.
In safe environments people can disagree constructively rather than staying silent to avoid discomfort and there is no retribution when you do voice your opinion.
That leads perfectly into mistakes. Another shocking stat in an environment with low safety revealed that 85 % of employees have withheld important information from their manager because they feared the consequences of speaking up. As the one that fully takes responsibility for everything that happens within your team, if you don't confidently know hand on heart, your team flags things, you're making decisions without the full picture.
Teams with safety catch errors earlier, pivot faster, provide stronger creative solutions and outcomes to problems or issues. This is all research. Amy Edmondsons research found when reporting mistakes was necessary, where safety was present, more errors were reported. That's a great thing. The next episode I dive into mistakes, it's great to build safety and trust and a big one.
In my work story I stated I didn't want to stay in an environment that clearly had an issue with one staff member. It wasn't the staff member that made me not want to stay, they had been their human self.
It was the lack of awareness that the owner had that meant that that person was able to make everyone feel uncomfortable. That they were allowed to get away with talking so disrespectfully to them and create a crappy vibe for others.
Two of the biggest things in an environment with high levels of safety and is your best people stay and the energy that was going into self-protection flows into improvements and a wonderful sense of achievement that's fully shared. The vibe is good.
A team member and I were going through some truly intense performance management around their role.
During the process, a time when both of us were being very human and off the record, I became aware that work for them was their identity. It was a safe space for them more than their home and they protected it fiercely. No denying, it came out in some pretty different behaviours. With the team you're responsible for, it is within your control to bring about change and expectations about behaviour and performance without needing permission or support to do it because that's your job. Not only are you protecting others, but finding out why someone might be behaving so poorly means you're also asking them if they need help.
In several meetings where the question is, are you okay? I've had breakthroughs. That's much better to deal with than here's your three step performance management program sign here.
I found out recently that in Australia and New Zealand you can now be reported and investigated for bullying, poor support and excessive workload. Just as much as someone falling and breaking a leg or worse, this stuff truly matters.
People First leadership is so amazing: skills, belief, respect, trust are all done while enjoying the challenge that the team sets for itself. People learn with change, it's who they become. It doesn't happen overnight, but it happens. Eventually, you don't need to be there to manage that aspect of teamwork.
The longer you work together, the stronger you become.
My way of digging into the conditions around your team to gain some visibility and some key tools that will shift your team's dynamic, give them ownership of their space is at theolivetreemethod.com.
Next episode, I'll talk about things we can do to improve safety and trust in our teams and get excited about the impacts more changes in this area can make. I share my simple request to the team that I haven't seen, heard of or read anywhere else that got eyes rolling and the ball rolling in the right direction.
My invitation for further thought today. Do you think safety and trust is high or low around you? Can you notice either way?
Be blessed and I wish you the best work day. Ciao.