What in the world is Psychological Safety, and why do we need it? In this episode we’ll talk about cavemen, boxers, and how to help other people feel comfortable around you.
Tyler Small: I once worked with a consulting firm and heard this common complaint from individuals in the firm. They said, we teach organizations about psychological safety and within our own firm, we don't have it. I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence. So I just wanted to have an episode on psychological safety. I'll probably do more on it.
[00:00:33] It's such a fascinating topic. I first learned about psychological safety from this cool book called Crucial Conversations. And it talked about basically five steps that you'd use to master your crucial conversations. It ended up that I couldn't actually remember five steps when I went into a crucial conversation.
[00:00:52] So I invented something more simple called the Five-star Approach, but the concept is great. And it's also been popularized by this brilliant researcher named Amy Edmondson. And she talks about it a lot in her academic work. And basically what psychological safety is instead of, how physical safety you don't feel like you're any physical harm will come to you with psychological safety.
[00:01:20] You don't feel like any psychological harm will come to you. In other words, you feel emotionally safe, and that's one of the big things that emotional intelligence does for people. They feel emotionally safe. You're helping people to feel emotionally comfortable. And so when in the book, Crucial Conversations, when they talk about psychological safety, they're talking about the very first step that you have to accomplish in order to master your crucial conversations.
[00:01:52] And the biggest obstacle to this when emotions run high and stakes are high, is that humans, as we are, we go into fight or flight mode.
[00:02:03] And you might consider fight or flight mode be or this really helpful thing for an animal or a caveman. And for the modern human, the fight or flight mode is not so helpful. Because physiologically, what happens when we're in that mode is that,
[00:02:21]there's this cascade of stress hormones that has several different side effects. And one of them is that in the area of the brain, that's typically used for calm decision-making, conscious thought, and planning, the blood moves from that area of the brain into other parts of the brain they're used for slugging people in the face.
[00:02:45] Running that sort of thing. But also moves away from the brain in general and down into our larger muscle groups, which are super helpful. If we have to fight an animal or run for our lives through the woods. Unfortunately those ladder skills are not super helpful in a conversation at work or a conversation with a loved one.
[00:03:10] And so this fight or flight mode physiologically is really counter productive for us. And it makes it really tough for us to help the other person feel psychologically safe.
[00:03:25] In addition to that, I would also add that when we go into that mode and we get upset at someone, and this happens whenever we're angry, whenever we allow ourselves to be ruled by our emotions and we start to get really heated in that mode, it is physically impossible to have a productive, thoughtful, Intentional, emotionally intelligent conversation.
[00:03:57] And I'm gonna say that again, when you're in fight or flight mode, when you're really upset when you're heated, it is virtually impossible to have an emotionally intelligent conversation. So here's the emotional intelligence hack here. It is to go from fight or flight mode to. Rest and digest mode, which is a mode that we can help others feel safe and that we can feel psychologically safe ourselves.
[00:04:26] How do we do that? That's a big question, but there's a very simple answer. . Now there are many things that we can do to calm ourselves down, going for a walk, getting some exercise, taking some meditation time. We can't always do those things in the moment.
[00:04:44] And sometimes it's just hard to decide to do those things. The easiest thing that I hear recommended by psychologists after a psychologist is to take deep breaths. And I have tried this myself. It has worked very well.
[00:05:01] And I've encouraged others to do it. It's worked very well for them. It's only when we refuse to do the deep breathing exercises, that things become difficult. So what I would highly recommend for you is this, especially if this is new for you to practice doing your deep breathing before you get in that situation. Practice telling yourself I'm out of control,
[00:05:22] I need to get back in control. I'm going to do some deep breathing. And just one or two breaths over a period of 15 seconds is enough to calm down your body substantially. Now what I would recommend don't stop there. Use that period of one or two breaths to continue to calm yourself down, to continue to take.
[00:05:47] Deep slow breaths. It sounds something like this
[00:06:04] nice long breaths. So taking deep breaths can be a really good way to gain psychological safety.
[00:06:15] Of course, I'm giving you this tip because sometimes when we noticed things aren't psychologically safe, it's too late. So then we need to do the deep breathing. However, the best thing to do is to strategize about the conversation before it happens and figure out, okay, what happened last time, that didn't go so well? or what have I done before that didn't go so well, what did I do to violate psychological safety?
[00:06:42] What did I do to create a psychologically dangerous situation for others? And we can ask ourselves those questions and remember the specific things that we did. Did we raise our voice? Did we attack the other person? Was it the tone of our voice? Was it that we spoke down to the other person. Did we call them a name?
[00:06:59] What was it that triggered them to not feel safe?
[00:07:04]And then to make a plan. How can I start this out in a way that's not going to offend them, not going to excite them or surprise them or bring them to anger.
[00:07:15] And again, I found that the very best way to create psychological safety from the beginning is to go into the conversation, asking yourself, how can I make this a Five-star Experience for the other person? How can I make a Five Star Experience for them? And asking that overtly with the open step, remember the steps are open, deliver, follow up, asking how can I make a Five-star Experience for you today?
[00:07:44] Or how can I make this meeting a Five-star Experience for you? Then making that the top priority in order to build that relationship, this can keep you on track and keep you oriented in the right direction. Because if that is your top goal, to create a Five-star Experience for them, everything that you say or do will be filtered through that safety net.
[00:08:09] If you even start to think about doing something that would compromise their psychological safety,
[00:08:16] Then your goal to create a Five-star Experience for them will pull you back on track. All you need to do is write that down on the whiteboard, in the room, on the piece of paper, the side of your desk on a sticky note. In order to say to yourself over and over again, I'm creating a Five-star Experience.
[00:08:35] Now, if things get tough, then one big trick that I've learned is to just say something like I want to make this a Five-star Experience for you. So what can I do to make this a Five-star Experience for you? Or I can't do this. I can't do that part, but how else can I make this a Five-star Experience for you?
[00:08:56]You're just. Asking that question to yourself and to them. And you're using this as an opportunity to communicate and get expectations and get their ideas of how you can make this psychologically safe for them.
[00:09:12] So I hope that this gives you some ways to create and maintain psychological safety by using the Five-star Approach so that you can build your Five-star Relationships. When I first learned about psychological safety, it was this very ethereal concept. It was this thing that I was trying to nail down like a cloud.
[00:09:40] But I hope that the step of open and asking the other person, how can I make this a Five Star Experience for you? And focusing single-mindedly on that goal can help you create the psychological safety that's needed in order to build the relationship.
[00:09:59]And that you can use this to hack your own emotional intelligence. I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.