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Punchy, actionable insights and tips to make the life of the team leader a breeze.
[00:00:00] Pia: When Squadify looked at the rankings of the specific team tracker questions from its global set of over 30,000 team members, and then aligned it to Dr. Timothy Clark's model of psychological safety, the findings were really enlightening. It's also incredibly useful for leaders navigating challenging environments today.
[00:00:23] So today's Connect aims to give laser focus to the specific things that leaders should be on the watch-out for, and how to differentiate between a nice culture and a psychologically safe one. I'm Pia.
[00:00:37] Dan: And I'm Dan, and this is Squadify Connects. Clients often tell us that they work in a polite or nice team, but something about it feels a little inauthentic or a little off. When we probe deeper, we can find that there are trust issues or underlying behaviors that on the surface look okay, but undermine the team's performance.
[00:01:01] Aligning the specific questions inside the team tracker that relate to psychological safety to Tim Clark's model gave us another level of granular data that will provide more options on what you can do as a team leader. The results tell us the ranking of these questions are across those 30,000 team members today. So you can take a look at the show notes for a handout in full detail.
[00:01:25] Pia: Whilst positive and constructive behaviors and the question, a safe place to share ideas score more highly and are higher in our rankings, the questions regarding strong personal connections are in fact ranked 33 outta 37, which implies an issue with inclusion and reflects our experience with teams that very often people just don't feel like that they belong.
[00:01:52] Dan: The other question that stands out here is that the top end of Timothy Clark's ranking, which is around straight talking, so the question is straight talking without offense, and it ranks 30th out of 37. So these are both low scores and lower rankings of presence. This can impact challenger safety and bring out those nice behaviors where the team doesn't actively co-create or use the value out of diversity to innovate together. In times of challenge, you want your team to lean in together and not respectfully withdraw.
[00:02:24] Pia: And there's a really powerful way to look at this challenger safety called radical candor. It was created by Kim Scott and she says that radical candor occurs when team members care deeply and also challenge directly, and she's got a model that uses the two dimensions to describe the teams in other states.
[00:02:44] Dan: Yeah. For example, the quadrant where the team cares deeply but is not challenging directly is called ruinous empathy. A really good Descript as many of those nice teams that we see, we put a little guide to Radical Candor in the show notes. Take a look and watch out for the Asshole Quadrant.
[00:03:00] Pia: So if you have completed a Squadify team tracker, then a really useful exercise is to see how you've scored against these specific questions. What we suggest you do is print out a report and look at the gap analysis. Which of these questions have a bigger gap between importance and presence and which ones have a smaller gap?
[00:03:23] Dan: If you haven't completed a team tracker yet, get the team to rate in terms of presence in the team out of 10 and talk about why some of those scores are lower and others higher. That's a really important first step to making the team feel safe and included, to talk about their own dynamics.
[00:03:41] Pia: Psychological safety is such an important foundation for your team, and it's something that actually really needs regular attention as the people may change in your team and the outside world places different pressures. Using Tim Clark's model gives a simple and high practical way to include your team members and enable them to have the real conversation and support them to shoot for the stars. See you again next week.