Welcome And Meet Helen Sanderson

Speaker 0:13

Hi, and welcome to The Fulfilled Leader. I'm absolutely delighted to invite my friend Helen Sanderson MBE back here- for a second time to the podcast. Welcome, Helen.

Speaker 2 0:28

Thank you. What an honor to be invited for a second time.

Speaker 0:31

Let me introduce Helen for those who didn't listen the first time round. We first met, it's now 25 years, I had a look, Helen-

Speaker 2 0:39

Wow.

Speaker 0:39

Wow when we trained together with Nancy Kline, and we spent 10 very intense days learning- Mm to work with the thinking environment. And I know for both of us that had a huge impact on the way we- Mm-hmm. Completely work to this day. Still- Mm-hmm sits with me. And we became good friends, and I also think- feel very good thinking partners, and we have wonderful calls where I feel really inspired always when I come away from you reading ideas and some woo-woo books And

Speaker 2 1:12

I, I always have a new book to buy. Yeah.

Speaker 1:15

So, so I really value that. So a bit more about Helen. Helen works with teams and organizations on the practices that make it safe to speak up so that people know that they matter, understand what's expected of them, and say what needs saying. And her new book, Psychological Safety and Practice, is published in October 2026, and we're going to talk more about that today. Helen began her career as an occupational therapist and has worked across health and social care for over 30 years. She was the UK Department of Health's Expert Advisor on person-centered approaches, completed a PhD on person-centered planning and organizational change, and has written more than 20 books. She has an MBE for services to health and social care. Couple of other things. Helen hosts a podcast, Practices for Psychological Safety and Autonomy in Teams, and has a TEDx talk on self-managed teams, which has just been named today- Yes. Yeah as an important TED's- Mm-hmm talk on workplace practices. But there's one other thing that you might like to know about Helen, and that's that she's the co-founder of the Ras Megy Gin company in Wales, and it is a community initiative. And the- Mm-hmm profits from the gin go back into the village. And, uh, so let's get drinking. That's Ras Megy. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 2:48

Gin For Good is

Speaker 2:51

our hashtag. #ginforgood. So, thanks Helen, for coming and spending time with me. Always wonderful. Oh, it's a delight.

Speaker 2 2:58

Thank you.

Speaker 2:59

It's always wonderful. Today we're here to talk about your new book. And, I firstly just want to really congratulate you on it. I don't think it's because I'm biased. I think this is a really practical, helpful book about how to lead and work alongside people to create psychologically safe organizations. And huge congratulations. That's really- Thank you fantastic. Um- Thank you very much and when it comes out, I will make sure that I post when it's, released in October on my socials. I would really encourage people to get it because even if you do one or two of the things mentioned in this book, y- people with, you work with will feel safer. And so it's brilliant, Helen. Well done. Thank you.

Speaker 2 3:44

Thank you.

Speaker 3:45

As I was reading it, I was thinking, "Wow, this, this was a lot of work, this book." It's packed full of really helpful, practical, uh, ideas and practices, but also deeply rooted in research. And so it's great. So I'll stop going on about it And maybe ask you to say a bit about, just very briefly to start, how do you define psychological

What Psychological Safety Really Means

Speaker 4:10

safety?

Speaker 2 4:11

I think you've just given a beautiful explanation of it, that it's feeling safe enough to speak up, and knowing that there won't be retaliation for that. And it's to speak up with sharing problems, but also ideas. So are you safe enough to speak up without thinking something bad's gonna happen as a result of it?

Speaker 4:28

Mm. Okay. That's helpful and simple in a way-

Speaker 2 4:32

Mm-hmm

Speaker 4:32

to

Speaker 2 4:32

do that.

Speaker 4:33

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:33

And that definition is from Amy Edmondson's work.

Speaker 4:36

Okay, great So when I was reading it, I could see so many threads from the work that you've done over the years. It, and it felt,, almost like the work that you've been doing had brought you to this moment from all these different things that have been- Yes woven in to bring you to- Yes this moment of writing about psychological safety. It would be really lovely if you could share a bit of that journey.

Speaker 2 5:01

Thank

A Career Built On Person Centred Work

Speaker 2 5:02

you. I started off, working with people with learning disabilities, and I'm a perpetual learner, as, as you know, Jean, so always looking for what to learn about next. Curiosity is one of my values. Learning is one of my values, so I want to, keep doing that. And I became a bit obsessed with something at the time called person-centered planning, and at the time it was, it, it was developed in the US. This was before the internet. I feel really embarrassed saying that. We are so fabulously old. But You were trying to get hold of handouts from courses that people have done. There wasn't a great way to learn about it. So I persuaded the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to let me research person-centered planning and, and do that with an advocacy group, um, uh, in the place where I was working, which was in Manchester. And that then led to a book called People Plans and Possibilities. And about the same time, the government started to become interested in person-centered ways of working with a piece of, uh, legislation called Valuing People, and I had the joy of being in the right place at the right time. The book had just come out and, um, ended up writing the guidance for the government about that. And if you work in health and social care now, this would just feel like old hat. You know, we, we talk about what matters to you rather than what's the matter with you., And that kind of shift started from the year sort of 1999 to 2000 onwards, and I was delighted to be in a place where I could contribute to that. And that was really about not just person-centered planning, but different practices or person-centered thinking tools we called them at the time, which is, you know, do we know, what matters to each other, the people we support,? Do we know what good support looks like? And it's a bit of a kick in the face to the golden rule, which says treat everybody the same way that you'd like to be treated. And of course, yes, be kind to each other, be respectful, but also recognize that I'm a massive introvert and, and please don't phone me and expect that I'm gonna pick up the phone happily. Please text or message me because that works best for me. So it's recognizing and celebrating individual differences. So the, the threads for all of this work were there. And then, um- My, my dad died in his early fifties. I was coming up to that milestone birthday and thought if I only had three years left like Dad, would I still want to be a consultant? And my other value is courage, and I thought, "Well, what if what if we could really get skin in the game and all the practices that we've been teaching people as consultants, what if we actually did it ourselves not just with people we support but also as a team? Um, and, you know, let's make it even harder and do that as a self-managed team." So that was biggest learning curve of my life but it also gave me the experience of putting all these practices in place and then I learned that there's a massive crossover between practices that support Person centeredness and practices that support psychological safety. And most of the writing about psychological safety at that time, a couple of years ago, was based on, um, the, the research that, that this is a great thing, can make a really big difference, but much less about how do you do it. And, um, originally an occupational therapist, as you know, Jean, so how to put it into practice is, is the stuff that really drives my behavior. Mm. So that's really where it came from.

Speaker 8:28

Mm. And perhaps you could say a little bit more about the wellbeing teams, because in, in a way, that was where it really.. Working with you through that time, that was where the rubber hit the road. It was a, that was a bit of a fire, but could you say a bit-

Testing Self Managed Teams In Home Care

Speaker 8:42

It's crazy about that? Oh. It's because it was such a rich thing- Completely and a rich learning experience.

Speaker 2 8:46

It was. It was. So the place that we decided we had the best opportunity to try and serve people in w- is, is home care. And that means supporting people, usually when they come out of hospital after having, you know, an accident, and usually older people, um, helping them live well in, in their own homes. And traditionally, home care is, is a time and task way of working. Um, it's usually delivered by women. Women aren't on a salary. Um, and it's, it's a very difficult place to work in, uh, for, for lots of reasons, and, and is lonely for people. So, so you'd be going to somebody's house, and then going on to somebody else's house, et cetera. So, so very, um, rich and rewarding work at one level, but the way that home care workers are treated, not so much. So how could we recruit teams of people, of about 12 people? And we were inspired by an organization called Buurtzorg in the Netherlands. But how could we support people to bring their whole selves to work, um, and, um, focus on relationships? In most health and care organizations, they pr- they'll have policies and procedures that says, "Professional boundaries, really important. You're not here to develop relationships with people in, in that kind of way. You need to keep your distance." A- and we decided that wasn't what we wanted to do. We think this is about love. I would want my mum, uh, when she was alive, to feel loved by the people who were working with her and, and treated, in that kind of respectful way. So we work really differently, and that meant we had to reinvent recruiting people so that we could recruit people for values rather than experience in health and social care. Mm. That then created other opportunities or challenges about how do you train people who've never had any experience in home care to do this well. But it also meant that we could say things like, "Your relationship with the people you support, the people you serve, is the most important thing,, and that's what we're going to be, be focused on. And what we want you to do is make their day." So we did things like I did some experiments to see how long it could take somebody to put nail varnish on somebody's nails. Clearly, that's not something I still put into practice, but I learned that Rimmel do a 60-second nail varnish. So we created, um, pamper packs for, for all our team so that if I had five minutes left at the end of, of a visit, I could do your nails for you, do your toenails, give you a foot massage, et cetera. We put a spa music on team's phones, so if I'm washing your hair, I see it as a spa experience. We put spa music on, and I'm really mindful about how I'm washing your hair. And, and usually we were commissioned to spend 30 minutes with people, but we made sure that those 30 minutes were some of the most significant minutes in that person's day. Wow. A lot of people didn't see anybody else the day, so it was so important that we were making that investment with people in relationships and in trying to make people's day.

Speaker 11:41

Mm. And you didn't just deliver the service. You were awarded by the Care Quality Commission, who judges these services. How, how did they see this?

Speaker 2 11:54

Oh, I, I was terrified that if we got a poor rating for our first rating, be- because we were trying something very different, and we were doing it without traditional leadership and with coaches, that, that if we didn't do well, it would send the death knell to health and social care, that you can't do self-management. This will not be accepted from CQC. So when we were rated outstanding, which was incredible, only 2 or 3% of home care organizations in their first year get that, and they're usually private organizations. We were serving people through the public purse. Um, that was amazing. What was more incredible is we got outstanding for well-led. Yeah. And to do that as self-managing team was just, you know, absolutely amazing. I was so delighted that, that I even contemplated having the, the, the stars tattooed on my body because it was just so overwhelmingly brilliant. I didn't, but it was, it was that kind of, um, a highlight of my, my working career really Mm was having all the effort that we'd put in, recognized by CQC as outstanding. But if you go to the report, and it's still on CQC's website, going back to psychological safety, one of the team members said, "You weren't just asked to speak up. It was an expectation." And I think that's- summarizes what I want to support people to create where, of course we speak up, it's the expectation of where we are, that's just how we are together. And I think that's really the epitome of psychological safety for me. Of course we speak up. Of course we speak up.

Speaker 13:32

Fantastic. It was such, an amazing thing to see because it was the proof that creating psychologically safe teams was delivering outstanding service- Yes and that the two could be there. So you can have a happy, fulfilled workforce who are delivering an outstanding service, and I think we often hear that's not possible,

Speaker 2 13:55

um- Yes, ab- absolutely. And at the time I probably wouldn't have said, "And we're doing all this to create psychological safety." That was kind of afterwards I could see that that is what we'd done, and that's what the report said, and that's what people's experience was. When team members joined us, we had something called a progress document which meant you self-assessed where you were up to on the domains that, that mattered to us. And one of those was speaking up at meetings and, and how often you did that and, and then what support you needed to do that more. We were treating people in a person-centered way, and by doing that we created a psychologically safe environment. And therefore that's the overlap of some of the practices that I talk about in the book are also ones that we've used for decades in person-centered work.

Speaker 14:41

Yeah. And that was the beautiful thread that I could see running- Yes through this work was that without knowing it, you've been working around psychological safety-

Speaker 2 14:50

Absolutely. Absolutely all your career. I'm glad you could see that.

Speaker 14:53

Mm. Thank you. Yeah.

The Five Foundations Framework

Speaker 14:55

So let's come on to, the components of the book now because you've structured it so helpfully and you have five foundations of psychological safety, and I'm gonna briefly share them and then- Great. It would be great if you could bring them to life a bit. Yeah. They made instant sense to me. So the first is mattering, and that's the question is, do I matter here? And y- you can perhaps when you talk about it, talk about the difference between mattering and belonging 'cause I really love- Mm-hmm that, that difference. The second is clarity. Do I understand what's expected of me and how I contribute to decisions? The third is voice, what we've just been talking about. Can I speak up and will it be taken seriously? The fourth is connection. Do we know what is expected in how we behave together? And that's a particularly unique part of this, I think.

Speaker 2 15:52

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15:53

And then finally, learning. Do we use our experience to improve how we work? So, so they are mattering, clarity, voice, connection, and learning

Speaker 2 16:05

Thank you. It's also been an opportunity to bow to the people that I've learnt from. My appreciation of mattering has come from the work of Zac Mercurio, who, who I highly rate, and his book's called The Power of Mattering. You know that I'm a big Brene Brown fan. I'm one of her trainers. She says clear is kind, so the clarity is, is part of that. We're big, um, fans o- of Nancy Kline, and a lot of her stuff has been about speaking up and voice. So one of the joys of, of writing this has been nodding to,, my masters, to the, the people that I've learnt from over the, the past decades. But in terms of belonging, and mattering, you can feel like you belong to a group but without feeling like you matter to people. So, so it's something that's often confused as, as the same thing, but actually they're two very different things. Do I matter here is different to do I feel like I belong in this group or this, this team?

Speaker 17:00

Mm. So let, let's start there then around the five.

Mattering Through Noticing And Appreciation

Speaker 17:05

W- what can people do to increase how people feel that they matter? This,

Speaker 2 17:13

this is,, the one that I often recommend to leaders, say, "Start here, and don't tell anybody." Don't do a big announcement that says, "Now we're gonna look at psychological safety, and the first thing we're gonna look at mattering." Don't do that. Start quietly just by changing your practice, and then introduce. So, one of them, um, that the practice is noticing. So I've been learning about micro-affirmations and how just nodding hello to people, making eye contact, using people's names, those, those sort of micro-affirmations help people start to feel seen, and that's really important. Zac tells a lovely story in his book about a, a woman, who was a supervisor who had a mattering notebook, and when she was with a colleague during the week and they'd said something about their weekend or their holiday, et cetera, she'd make a note of it in the, the mattering notebook. And then the next week she'd make a point of, of reminding person or saying, you know, "How was your kids' football on the Sunday?" Or, "The thing that you're a bit worried about, how did that go?" So, so I think there are tiny things like that, um, but that's not tiny. But, but actually in terms of how much ta- time it takes is having something, your equivalent of a mattering notebook, which could be on your phone or whatever. But the thing that, that you and I have been familiar with that really helps with that is something called a one-page profile, which is like a record of what matters to you, and the first, um, part of it is what people appreciate about you, your strengths. The second is what matters to you, which is the day-to-day things, the people, the places, the what you do for joy and fun that matter to you. And then the last bit i- bit is what does it take to support you really to be successful at work? And one-page profiles are kind of like a, a matching record. So if, um, if you knew, for example, that on my one-page profile, and, and this is true, that you know I love to run, you know, one of the things that you might say to me if you bumped into me having coffee on a Monday is, "Are you running this weekend?" Or, "Do you have a, um, a, a race in mind over the next six months?" And that just tells me that you've noticed that's something that matters to me, you- you've mentioned. So again, a tiny thing. Or just saying, you know, um, "I'm sending you an email, Helen, because I'd really appreciate 20 minutes to pick your brains on X, and I know emails work better than, for you than me picking up the phone." So, so these, again, I keep saying they're tiny, but they're really significant, and it's just paying attention to who the person is and how they, they like to work. So, so that's the first one then. Both of those come under noticing. But the other thing that we've learnt from, from Nancy Kline is if you don't speak up in the first five minutes of a meeting, it's much, much harder to speak up. And Nancy, invited us, to share with each other something that's going well or something that's going well about home or work. But through the, the research for the book, I, I learnt the power of other kinds of check-ins as well, which might be as simple as, you know, "How are you doing on a red, amber, and green spectrum?" And of course, if people are saying red or amber, you then have to do something with that information. Um, I was working with some colleagues in Northern Ireland, and we had a whole day together And, um, I did the traffic light check-in, and a significant amount of people were amber. No red, but amber. And I said, "Well, um, what's, what's it gonna take for today to help us shift out of amber? Shall I put a few more breaks in? Shall we do a stretch break? What should we do?" They said, "No, it's just that we've bounced from one meeting to another." So I said, "Okay, let's do a two-minute breathing break just to recenter ourselves before we start." And it's those kinds of tiny adjustments that say, you know, I recognize that, that people are amber here. So I've been looking at different ways of doing that. So check-ins. You know, am I noticing how I'm feeling a- and sharing it with other people? And then I think the other two, uh, from this foundation are appreciation and recognition. And you might be listening thinking like, "Yay, I do that." But the difference between appreciation and recognition is appreciation is appreciating you for who you are and saying something about the qualities that you display, and recognition is about what you do. And actually saying thank you to people is a wonderful and very important thing to do. But saying thank you for inviting me to join you on the podcast is different to thank you, Jean, for giving me the opportunity to speak about the book and talk about it in relation to my values and give people an opportunity to know where to buy it, because that helps me think that I can get it into the hands of people who might use it. Mm. And that, that's a completely different way of experience my gratitude. Mm.

Speaker 21:56

It's grounding it in, in real things. Yes. As, as I was preparing for this today, I, I recently found an appreciation notebook That you and I, um, did together when we were working with your team. Wow. And I remembered that I had had it and went to it, and there were some beautiful things in there. And they meant so much- Mm because they're very specific, they're very unique about me, they're contextualized and, yeah, so that's so- And- it's really wonderful.

Speaker 2 22:29

Thank you, because that is something that we used in, in wellbeing teams as well. So if you joined us as a new wellbeing worker, instead of asking for your CV first of all, we'd ask you to create your one-page profile, and obviously give you instructions to do that. We didn't do interviews, we did workshops, 'cause we wanted to see how people were together. One of the exercises in the workshop was reflecting back on your one-page profile and seeing if you'd learnt anything else about yourself in the workbook. And then in the first two days of induction, we would give you an appreciation book with your name on it, so personalized to you. And one of the things we'd do at the end of induction is we'd pass the notebooks around to each other, and we'd each write an appreciation of what we had appreciated about that person in our week of induction together. And then regularly at team meetings, we'd say, "Bring your i- your appreciation book. Tell us something that you've added over the last month." And it's also a place when, when we got appreciation cards from people we supported or for families, they would slot in there as well. So, so all of this is how do you make it part of a culture, not just a one-off thing that happens occasionally.

Speaker 23:33

Mm. Yeah. Yeah. That's brilliant. And it's helping people feel good about themselves in these moments where sometimes at work that can be hard.

Speaker 2 23:41

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 23:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:41

Mm-hmm.

Clarity With Roles And Decisions

Speaker 23:43

Let's move on to clarity.

Speaker 2 23:48

I've been doing a program with two hundred leaders in, in health and social care on, on the, the Five Foundation. So when I introduce it, I say, "Welcome to my nerdy side," because, 'cause this doesn't feel as sexy and as exciting as, as mattering does, uh, for, for some people. Uh, I've become pretty obsessed about job descriptions. And I usually say to people, "When was the last time you looked at your job description?" People usually say, "Not since I've joined," or, "Recently, if I'm looking for another job," or, "Only if there's a dispute." So if you're not using your job descriptions to reflect on how well you're doing, how do you know if you're doing a good job? How do you know exactly what's expected of you? And of course, job des-descriptions usually end with, "And anything else we ask you to do." So there's always that, you know, my manager can ask me to do anything else that they want. So I spent quite a bit of my time going from job descriptions to roles. So you might have a title like,, in wellbeing teams, it would be recruitment coordinator working with us around that. One of mine is a storyteller. Um, so it's-- each of the roles has a title. And then it has the purpose of this. So my role as storyteller, uh, with my team is to share examples of what we're trying and learning, through social media, mainly LinkedIn, so that people can learn from and with us. So it, it's, it's about sharing learning. And then it's what would you see me doing to deliver this role? And it'd be some very specific tasks. So it might be some things I do daily, some things I do monthly, some things I do weekly, and those will be listed. So for me, it would be posting on LinkedIn, you know, three times a week. And then metrics, what would you see if I was doing that well? So it's what would you see? So it might be you'll, you'll see me posting three times a week. Um, I'd be able to share stories of the comments that I've made on other people's posts and the comments they've made on mine. Um, and I'd say I'm confident that I'm representing what we're learning well. So that's completely different way of, of thinking about roles. So when Brené says clear is kind, one of the things that's really stressful for people is not knowing exactly what's expected of them and going from- Vague job descriptions to really clear roles is, is one thing that you can do.

Speaker 26:00

Mm. And I would actually add to this. So I think it's not just about the individual and their expectations of themselves- Mm-hmm but so often when conflict arises in teams, it's a lack of role clarity-

Speaker 2 26:15

Yes

Speaker 26:15

I think, that also- Yes gets in the way of that. And- Absolutely I was so pleased to read it, because I often, when I'm coaching, will work with a leader around some- perhaps somebody who's underperforming, for example- Mm-hmm let's say. So how- Yeah clear is their role? Yes. And how much do other people- Yes have clarity about their role?

Speaker 2 26:34

Absolutely, the other thing is decision-making. So most of my work is in health and social care. There's a belief in health and social care that consensus decision-making is the best and the only form of decision-making we should pay attention to. What consensus decision-making does is lower, brings the decision to the lowest denominator of the least, the person who's able to accept the least amount of risk. So it means all the time we're doing that, whereas actually there are six ways to make decisions. And what I encourage leaders to do on an agenda is to say, "We need to make a decision about X. The decision-making process we're going to use is this. So actually this is my decision to make in my role, but I want to hear everybody's perspectives before I make that decision." So being clear about that, and sometimes this will be a decision that we want to make, make by consensus or sometimes it'll be the majority decision, but let's not just keep assuming that consensus is the only good way to make decisions.

Speaker 27:33

Yeah, I agree. And well, I could add a lot about that, but I, what I will say is often we pretend it's consensus and actually it's not. So let's be transparent- Yes about it. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 27:45

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 27:46

Okay.

Voice That Includes Dissent And Follow Through

Speaker 27:47

So what about voice? This is the piece about, you know, can I speak up? We've already talked a bit about that. What else would you bring to how we can create the space for people to do this?

Speaker 2 27:59

So absolutely using rounds, a la Nancy Kline in meetings, so we hear from everybody. Uh, we can take rounds even further to dissent inviting rounds. Mm. So a leader might say, "I want to do a round and hear from everybody about what from this conversation may I be missing or I haven't noticed yet? So it might be something like that, or it might be saying, "In the last month as a team, I want to hear from everybody about what you think we could have done better, or something that went wrong that we haven't had a conversation about." I think that's the very heart of psychological safety, is talking about the hard stuff. It's gonna be easier if it's a direct invitation and an expectation that we hear from other people. And Nancy introduced things like thinking pairs, where we'd go and you and I would talk about what have we both noticed over the last month. Um, and if I'm, as an introvert, if I'm doing that with you and I've heard myself say it, it's gonna feel me- make me feel more confident when we then do a round and I can say, "The thing that I've noticed is, is this." One of the things that's, um And are you seeing this emerging a lot more in the psychological safety literature, is about, um, how I'm managing my vagus nerve, how I'm managing my internal state, what happens when I'm triggered. So if I'm triggered, I am less likely to feel comfortable speaking up, and I'm more likely paying attention to my internal stuff, managing my exa- anger, managing my, my upset, et cetera. And some of Brené's work I found really helpful here, and also my mindfulness practice and what we've learnt from,, Buddhist colleagues as well. Um, so if, if you're experiencing an intense emotion, it's like, what's going on here and where am I feeling it, but also naming it. There's lots of evidence to say if you're able to name your emotion, it sucks some of the power. So I'm, I'm feeling anxious here, you know? And then what's the story that I'm telling myself that's making me feel anxious? I'm, I'm worried Jean's upset with me. So, so I- I'm worried Jean's upset with me. It's making me feel anxious, and then choosing my response. So I can ask Jean directly, or I can see what other evidence there might be that Jean's upset with me. So how am I going to respond to this? And that's sort of the notice, name, and, and choosing your response. Pausing and choosing, is about using your voice well. So you're in a, a stronger place, to say what it is you want. Whereas if I'm not doing that kind of process, I'm more likely To let the fact that I'm irritated or annoyed, uh, show, you know? And, and people will pick that up, and then people will be less likely to, to say difficult things to me. So how we're managing our own state is how that might be described in NLP. But the big thing about voice, is the closing the loop, and it sounds so simple. But my, my latest obsession is using the five foundations around staff surveys, and everybody seems to do staff surveys. That's a good thing. Can any team say what difference the results of the staff survey have made to their team life? I don't think so. It's usually something that HR tries to get to grips with, has some initiatives, but does it make a significant difference in the organization? I haven't seen that happen in many places. Um, and so one of the things I've been doing is taking staff surveys, the data from staff surveys where that's fully anonymized, putting it through five foundations lens, and then recommending a practice. So, um, I did this for an organization recently, and there were three things that emerged. And the thing for senior leaders to pay attention to is this closing the loop. You said this, we did this, this is what's happening next. Or you said this, we're making a decision on that, that here. The decision will be made this way. We'll get back to you here. And it sounds such a simple and straightforward thing to do, but it so rarely happens in a way that everybody can hear. Mm. So for this particular organization, that was the thing that senior leaders could do. Their data said 94% of people had an appraisal. Only 26% of people could name an action that came out of it. So using confirmation practices, which I think we'll be talking about in a minute, in appraisal would be a practice for HR teams to use. Yeah. And then what came out from most members of staff is they didn't create or take opportunities to reflect on how they were doing. So using something like an after action review and having that as an expectation or, or a way of supporting team leaders to do that every couple of months would have made a big difference there. And of course, that's part of what we'd see where there's great psychological safety is, is learning and innovation.

Speaker 32:39

Mm. Yeah. So there's, there's- Closing the loop so much richness- Yes there. Yeah. I mean, it's just that simple piece. I was with a leader recently talking about their worry about some staff survey results, and, and my first response was, "Have you gone back and said thank you for the feedback?"

Speaker 2 32:55

Yes, yes,

Speaker 32:57

yes. I said- Absolutely just start there. Yes. You know? At least then people will know that you have acknowledged what's going on for them in that

Speaker 2 33:05

feedback. Absolutely. To say, "Thank you for the feedback. This is what we're doing with it. Here's when you'll hear next." Yes. You know? Yes. "Here's where it'll be reported." Very straightforward. Massive difference, but- Creates- but such a simple thing. Often doesn't happen.

Speaker 33:15

Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Connection Through Team Agreements That Stick

Speaker 33:19

Connection

Speaker 2 33:21

So this is one of the things that I'm really passionate about and, one of the people that I've learnt from is, is a, a man called Aaron Dignan, who introduced the concept of tension cards and tension cards are the things that are annoying or frustrating, get in the way of people doing their best work in organizations. And in his set of tension cards, he would include things like, um, IT is not up to date, you know, technology is X, Y, and Z. So he would include lots of other things, and what I did inspired by him is create a set of tension cards which are about relationships and how we are together. So one might be people talk behind each other's backs, or we don't say what we're going to do, or,. nobody ever talks about burnout. We don't talk about stress. We don't hear everybody's voices before decisions are made. So those kind of things. So I've got sets of tension cards. So if you were part of a team and we were working together, we'd put all the tension cards on a table, and I'd give you counters and say, "Let's, let's look at your top five tensions," and, and then with five counters, we might find that three or four are priorities for, for different people. And, um, one of my superpowers, Jean, as you know, but you're too kind to mention to me very often, is, is my talent for making things too complicated or overcomplicated. And, um, so I used to... I would do a whole day of workshop on how to develop team agreements, and then they'd have six quality checks, and you have to put each agreement through that. So now I'm going for, "Here's how you can do team agreements in an hour and a half. These tension cards, turn the tension card over, there'll be three best practice team agreements. Choose the one that most resonates with your team." Um, because when we talk about speaking up, again, most of the literature talks about speaking up with ideas or problems. We don't usually contextualize that with relationships. Mm. It's much harder to speak up about something that's going on in relationship with the team because it can feel like a value judgment, and you're more likely to be upset with me if I've said something around that, so I think we shy away from that much more than perhaps we do from other things. Mm. And the other thing is, your experience at work, your happiness at work, your wellbeing and joy at work will be determined by your relationships in the team and with your line manager more than anything else. So why aren't we paying great attention- Two what relationships look like in a team. And the first thing is, for me, let's agree how we want to be together as a team, and that where- that's where team agreements come in

Speaker 35:51

Mm. Yeah. And that's that level of clarity, and it links back to the role clarity-

Speaker 2 35:56

Yes

Speaker 35:56

I think, actually, because this is about-

Speaker 2 35:57

Absolutely

Speaker 35:58

having clarity- Yes about how- Yes we function together-

Speaker 2 36:01

Yes in a

Speaker 36:02

team. Yeah.

Speaker 2 36:02

Completely. Am I clear what's expected of me in my role?

Speaker 36:06

Mm.

Speaker 2 36:06

Role clarity. Am I clear about how decisions get made together? And then, am I clear about how we want to be together as a team, our behaviors? Now, people say, "Yeah, that's lovely, Helen, but we've got our team values, we've got our organizational values, we've got principles." But unless they're behavioral, unless you can see whether they happen or not, because if you say, "We're respectful," respectful to you might mean something very, very different to respectful for me, and again, Brené talks about that, you know, a lot. So it's can we be really clear and specific about what we expect from each other? But then can we practice what to do when an agreement gets broken? Mm. Uh, and I think that's when we really see psychological safety start to strengthen and, and be built. And in, Amy Edmondson's,, book,, there's a really lovely example. She talks about one of her colleagues from Harvard who was seconded to Uber. Uh, and that was when Uber was going through a particularly challenging time around its, its culture, and one of the issues was, um, jokes, unsavory jokes, we would- we'd say. And, uh, the, the professor said, you know, "Say something like, 'Whoa, that's seriously inappropriate. Can we have a do-over?'" Now, in, in my country, that isn't language that we'd use, but the message is really clear: that's not okay, can we start that again? And with team agreements, what we do is we create a scenario for each of the behaviors, and then say, "If this scenario happens," like somebody does an unsavory joke, "what do we say to each other?" Right. And if we practice that, it does two things. One is if I'm the person who's likely to make those kinds of jokes, I am less likely to do it because I think I'm gonna be called out. If I hear that kind of joke, I'm gonna think, the rest of the team is expecting me to say something because we practiced this. And even if my voice quakes, I'm still gonna say it. So I think that's where we can move towards, you know, greater clarity about how we want to show up together, but then better relationships. I know that doesn't automatically make for better relationships, but it could mean there's less grievances, less bullying, and less harassment- Mm in our organizations if we're taking this seriously

Speaker 38:18

And more adult behavior as you-

Speaker 2 38:20

Adult toilet behavior. Absolutely. Yeah

Speaker 38:22

talked to each other in the

Speaker 2 38:22

home. Yes.

Speaker 38:23

Yeah. Okay.

Learning Loops With Reviews And Confirmation

Speaker 38:24

And then finally, the fifth one is learning.

Speaker 2 38:28

Now, this is, uh, almost the purpose of psychological safety, but for me it's both a practice and an outcome. So one of the, um, the ways of doing this, so in, in my person-centered planning world, we'd have called it the four plus one questions. And, and the version of this that other people might be familiar with is an after action review. But the issue's the same. A blameless conversation. What happened? What worked and what didn't work? And what do we want to do differently to stop that happening again, and how do we do that? So in wellbeing teams, we do that once a month. We look at our data on accidents, incidents, et cetera. Um, but you could also do it from positive things. We've had these compliments, you know, what is it that made those happen? How fantastic. So when we get to the stage where teams are On a routine basis, stopping and saying, "What have we learnt? Um, what is it that needs to change?" And then from that, you might go to an experiment. "So we think this is what's come out of this. Let's do an experiment to test out whether that's true or not." We've talked for years and decades about learning organizations. Rarely does it come back to a team level. Mm. And I think these are just simple practices that we can do. But I think the, the main one for me is, is confirmation practices developed by Andy Brogden. So back to team agreements. You can take each of your team agreements and go from a we statement to a I statement. Um, so your we statement might be, "We raise issues directly with somebody if we've got a problem with them." Your I statement might be, "I raise issues directly with somebody if I've got a problem with them." So if you apply that to, say, your five team agreements, if we're having a one-to-one session together, Jean, you might say, "Okay, let's look at the team agreements now. Helen, rate yourself between one to five for each of the team agreements." And I do that. Takes me two minutes. And then you might say, "What's the one with the lowest score?" And I might say, "I've given myself a two for raising issues directly with people." And then you might have three or four questions. You're a fabulous coach. You don't need to be a coach to do this. You just need to answer these questions. You, you know, how does it feel to give your yourself that score? There's a couple of others, but then what do you want to do over the next month that would increase your score or make you feel more confident? Obviously, the purpose is not increasing your scores- Mm. But that's a, um, a, an indicator that you're doing better. And I might say to myself, "Okay, if I need to be braver raising issues with people, the first thing I'm gonna do is put a sticker on my computer to remind me that this is my commitment to myself. And actually, would you be my accountability buddy, Jean? And would you message me on Teams in two weeks' time to say, 'Have you raised an issue with somebody?'" So it's, it's things like that, but it comes from a growth mindset that says we can all get better- Mm. At living our team agreements,

Speaker 41:09

So you've got a framework and a structure for us,, and the learning is built in through-

Speaker 2 41:15

Yes

Speaker 41:15

confirmation practices, which are things that are there to remind us to do what we've said we'll do. Yes.

Speaker 2 41:22

Yes. And how we can keep getting better- Mm and growing as people. Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 41:27

Yeah. So they come together beautifully., As we've heard, they all fit together in a

Where To Start And Final Encouragement

Speaker 41:34

way. They're pieces of a puzzle that if we can focus on each of these, we will increase psychological safety. And I imagine, some leaders might be listening to this and thinking, "Wow, that's a lot." So where would you encourage people to start?

Speaker 2 41:52

As I said, I've been doing a program on this, and when we did the, the session on mattering, we did a word cloud to say what gets in the way of you giving people appreciation and recognition, and in the middle was time. So it's really easy to have a belief that what stops us giving appreciation and recognition is time. So one of the things, um, I say to people is consider doing a 30-day practice, which, comes from somebody called Sean, who's done a lot of work in, in this area. And the 30-day practice is before you send your first email, before you fe- send your first message on Teams, send somebody a message or an email with something you've appreciated about them or recognition. And the amazing thing is it makes you feel great as well. What a way to start your day. Mm. It's like doing random acts of kindness that actually benefit you more than the person who might receive them, but it also starts a habit. And then what you notice is other people responding to that. So for me, if you wanted to get started on creating greater psychological sta- safety, start with mattering, whether you're a team leader or a team member, et cetera, because that will start to shift things. And then perhaps in a month or two months time you can say, "Is this something we all want to pay attention to and, and have as a part of our culture?" Um, and as part of mattering is shared recognition and celebration. So are we celebrating birthdays, cultural milestones, other things that matter to us as a team? So I'd start there, but I think team agreements would still be my go-to because of the research that connects relationships to longevity. The Harvard study says it's not about how much you exercise, it's not about long-term conditions, that the people who lived the longest, or the longest periods, they paid attention to their relationships. It was their relationships that really mattered. So all the studies that we know about loneliness being the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, I don't know why we don't pay attention to this at work, because you spend more time with your colleagues probably than your family. So what relationships look like at work could be the biggest indicator for both psychological safety, happiness, and wellbeing.

Speaker 44:08

Mm, oh, I couldn't agree more. And in fact, I was just looking at that research today, so yeah, absolutely, Helen, that importance of how we take care of, of each other at work is so fundamental. Helen, there's so much richness here, and I'm so grateful that you've put it all in your new book. Thank you. And I would, encourage people, to buy your book, and when it comes out in October. And to, go through it and start, just start with mattering. I think that's right. Yeah. I would also pick, uh, doing rounds, so going around the room- Yes and getting everybody to speak. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that makes a big impact. It's very simple to do. Yes. You don't need processes and things to do it. Yeah, completely. And I would just encourage people to, to start somewhere and then build on it. Take one practice, take one piece- Absolutely and just keep building and keep building and keep building. And remember that culture happens through what we talk about and how we behave. So as a leader, if we talk about these things, if we use, mattering language, if we appreciate people, if we invite people to speak in a way, uh, we change the culture, and we have- Completely

Speaker 2 45:23

the power to do that. Absolutely. Absolutely. There are 10 chapters in the book, 12 chapters in the book. 10 of them are for team leaders, so wherever you are as a team leader, and two are specifically about how we embed that within HR policies and procedures. So I've tried to write something that wherever you are in the organization, because a lot of the literature around psychological safety is what the leader needs to do. This is a team sport. We can all co-create psychological safety in our teams. What the leader does is important, but actually it's structures, processes, and practices that can really make a big difference.

Speaker 45:53

Thank you, Helen. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me here. Thank you so much for inviting me. And-

Speaker 2 45:56

Thank you

Speaker 45:57

i wish everyone well in leading their teams to psychological safety.