To unleash the potential of all employees in your organization, you need to create an environment where they feel safe enough to offer new ideas, speak up about risks, and bring their unique perspectives. If your culture lacks psychological safety, you could be missing out on opportunities or running headfirst into costly and avoidable risks.
Today,Minette Norman, speaker, consultant, and co-author of the Psychological Safety Playbook, defines psychological safety and how it’s intertwined with inclusivity and trust, and what role empathy plays in creating such a culture. We discuss clear markers of a psychologically safe culture, and what organizations miss out on when they punish dissent, failure, or authenticity. Finally, Minette shares fabulous and actionable ways you can work toward a more psychologically safe culture where your people do their best work. Today’s episode is full of so many gems, take a listen.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- If people do not feel psychologically safe, they will not feel like they can speak up. Their amazing ideas will go unheard. Their points of view will go unseen.
- Disagreement without personal attack is a sign of psychological safety.
- It is important that leaders are more equipped and trained to have these conversations, with the correct vocabulary and understanding to talk about psychological safety.
“You don’t come into a room and say ‘This is a safe environment.’ It happens over time when people see repeatedly that there will be no ramifications from speaking up. It takes time, consistency, and practice.” — Minette Norman
Episode References:
- The Empathy Edge Podcast – Kathy Klotz-Guest – Trust, Improve, & Humor for a More Innovative Culture
- Amy Edmondson – The Fearless Organization
- Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas – Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life
About Minette Norman:
With decades od experience in the software industry, Minette Norman now focuses on developing transformational leaders who create inclusive working environments rooted in psychological safety. Minette has extensive experience leading globally distributed teams and believes that when groups leverage diversity, breakthroughs happen. Before starting her own consultancy she was VP of Engineering Practice at Autodesk, where she transformed how Autodesk developed software. Responsible for more than 3,500 engineers around the globe, she focused on state-of-the-art engineering practices while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture.
Minette is a keynote speaker on inclusive leadership, psychological safety in the workplace, and embracing empathy. Named in 2017 as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times and as “Business Role Model of the Year” in the 2018 Women in IT/Silicon Valley Awards, Minette is a recognized leader with a unique perspective.
Minette has co-authored he Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human and her second book, The Boldly Inclusive Leader, publishes August 2023.
Connect with Minette Norman:
Website: https://www.minettenorman.com/
Book: Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human https://thepsychologicalsafetyplaybook.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/minettenorman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minettenorman/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/minetten
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minettenorman/
Don’t forget to download your free guide! Discover The 5 Business Benefits of Empathy: http://red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy
Connect with Maria:
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. To unleash the potential of all employees for the good of your organization, you need to create an environment where they feel safe enough to unleash that potential, where they can offer new ideas, speak up about risks, and bring their unique perspectives, even if that means contrary opinions. If your culture lacks psychological safety, you could be missing out on opportunities or running headfirst into costly and avoidable risks. Today, my guest is manette Norman speaker, consultant and co author of the psychological safety playbook. She brings decades of leadership experience in the software industry to her consulting practice, which is focused on developing transformational leaders who create inclusive working environments with a foundation of psychological safety. Manette has extensive experience leading globally distributed teams, and believes that when groups leverage diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs happen. Her most recent position before launching her consultancy, was vice president of engineering practice at Autodesk, where she transformed how Autodesk developed software responsible for influencing more than 3500 engineers around the globe. She focused on state of the art engineering practices, while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture. Today manette defines psychological safety and how it’s intertwined with inclusivity, and trust, and what role empathy plays in creating such a culture. We discuss clear markers of a psychologically safe culture, what organizations miss out on when they punish dissent, failure or authenticity, and manette shares fabulous and actionable ways you can work toward a more psychologically safe culture where your people do their best work. Today’s episode is full of so many gems, take a listen. Big welcome and net to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you about this idea and this concept of psychological safety because it is out there and many of us don’t understand it. So welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Maria,
Minette Norman 03:25
really happy to be here with you.
Maria Ross 03:27
So before we kick off, can you tell us briefly what brought you to this work and to becoming an expert in psychological safety? Ooh, well, it’s
Minette Norman 03:36
a rather long story that I’m going to try to make short. I spent 30 years in the software industry. And I started out as an individual contributor, I actually got my start as a technical writer. And I then worked my way up through various management positions, I ended up the last five years in the industry as the VP of engineering practice at Autodesk. And I was leading really large teams, you know, like 3500 engineers around the globe. And I had this interesting charter and my charter was to get people to start working together in a very fragmented and siloed company, to use common tools and to share code. And what I realized in this, you know, five year journey of the job was that this was not a technical problem. Although that we had some technical challenges. It was about human behavior. It was about a willingness to listen to other viewpoints and not be right and not be convinced that your way was the only way. So that was part of it. It was like how do we get people to collaborate? So I was just getting myself in education in collaboration and listening and communication and empathy. And all of those things came up for me at the same time. Here I was I was the first woman who had lead engineering. I felt very much like I wasn’t part of the insider’s club. I’ve been mentoring a lot of women. I was increasingly working with people from other underrepresented communities and I was we were just starting to really talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. She’s in sort of the preliminary days of it. And I was finding myself just being more and more of a champion for all of us who felt like we didn’t have a voice. And I cannot tell you how many meetings I was a part of, and probably many that I led myself, where I didn’t feel I had I could speak up, or I could really, you know, challenge when I disagreed, and I’m sure people in my organization didn’t always feel that way, either. So I came across, I think, I can’t remember the order. But I was doing some research for a keynote that I was giving. And I found the research that Google had done on psychological safety project, Aristotle, which is well known. And I also found Amy Edmondson is work which Google found when they were doing their research. And her book came out sometime in that timeframe, the fearless organization. So I just started realizing that, oh, psychological safety is a term I didn’t know before. And yet, it is just fundamental to all of the things that I was trying to work on, including collaboration, and including inclusion and equity, that without this feeling, and maybe I’ll just define it right here. So we really are on the same page. Without the feeling that in this team, this is a safe place for me to ask a question, speak up, if I disagree, challenge, the dominant viewpoint without fear of being excluded, being embarrassed, being marginalized. So that’s basically it. And although it sounds like I kind of don’t like the term because it sounds so geeky and academic, but the way I come back to it is it is a deeply human experience. And all of us really need to feel heard and seen and valued and respected for who we are. And without that foundation of psychological safety, where, yes, I can have a different viewpoint I can dissent, I can challenge, then what happens is we all hold back, and we don’t, we don’t share our gifts with the world, we don’t share what’s unique about us, we don’t share our experience and our unique mind. And the organization doesn’t benefit from everything we have to offer. So that’s how I came to it. And then ultimately, you know, I won’t, I won’t share the full story. But I felt that my voice was no longer really welcome. After a certain point, you know, leadership changes, things change within an organization. And I felt like the way I was challenging was maybe a bit much. And I left, I left in 2019. And I had to do a lot of soul searching about what’s important to me after I actually didn’t think I would start my own business, because I’d been inside for 30 years, right, kind of institutionalized in working for a company. But I felt like you know, what’s really important to me is everything I have learned over these decades, I want to share with other leaders, because I actually believe most managers and leaders want to do the right thing. They want to have high performing teams and engaged employees, but they don’t know how you and I feel like you know, we don’t train managers, I was never properly trained. As a manager, I learned through, you know, a few classes here and there and watching role models, and also seeing really poor role models and what I didn’t want to do, I felt like we should just do a better job of training managers. And so you know, I started this work on inclusive leadership, and I do speaking and, and workshops to try to help more managers do better. Wow, so much to unpack there. But yeah, I
Maria Ross 08:12
mean, I think it’s so important. I too, came from having worked for other people my entire career, and having great success with that, and then sort of got thrust into entrepreneurship. And when you think back, you realize that so much of when you you felt like you were in a dysfunctional environment, was really about not feeling psychologically safe. And I kind of equate that I don’t know if this is wrong to do this. But I feel like it’s so closely linked with trust. Because if I trust the people I’m working with and my manager, I know, I can take risks. I know I can play devil’s advocate. I know I can disagree. And so I never in my mind thought of it in terms of safety before but it is true. It’s about what do I feel okay with revealing about myself with contributing to the conversation, and we lose out I mean, if we need to make the business case, it’s similar as it is for empathy. We lose out on innovation, we lose out on engagement, like this is not just some like woowoo fluffy thing. It’s if people don’t speak up, they don’t contribute their gifts. And if they see a project going off the rails, they don’t warn you. They don’t say anything because they don’t want to be that person. That is doom and gloom, right? So but if you have a trusting environment, you can say what you mean, you can mean what you say, you can be okay, with a little bit of conflict, a little bit of disagreement. And most importantly, from an inclusivity perspective, you can feel okay with being yourself and bringing yourself to work and any of your identities, whether you’re gay or straight or trans, whatever religion you are, whatever nationality you are, whatever race you are, and then you’re able to contribute that point of view to make better business decisions because you might see thinks differently than another person does. So I love the work that you’re doing. And I want to talk about, I actually have like a quirky question for you. Yeah. Can you have an inclusive culture? If people don’t feel psychologically safe? And vice versa? If people don’t feel like you have an inclusive culture? Can they still feel like it’s a psychologically safe place to be? Or do you have to have all or none?
Minette Norman 10:25
So first of all, I love that you asked that I don’t think it’s quirky at all, I believe, and I’m not alone in this. But I really believe that they are intrinsically linked and that you do not get inclusion without psychological safety. And vice versa. If you had to put one first, I guess, I would say that maybe the safety is the first level of getting to inclusion, right? Because you do have to feel safe to show who you are and how you think. But they’re very, very closely linked. And I think, you know, there’s so much emphasis on diversity and diversity hiring. But what companies and organizations and often managers forget about is that, are you going to really benefit from the diverse talent that you’ve hired, if you don’t work really hard on creating that safe and inclusive culture? And my answer is no. And in fact, work on that culture as your starting point. Because anyone who comes in and sees that this is not a place where I can actually challenge things and speak up, they’re not going to stick around or they’ll they’ll check out.
Maria Ross 11:23
Absolutely. And I know that you know, with your book, the psychological safety playbook, it’s I love that it is a playbook because I think there’s many leaders nodding their heads going, okay, yeah, I’m on board, I want to create a psychologically safe culture. How do we do that? Exactly. That’s why we wrote the book. Well, number one, where would you start? How could you start? Realistically, and without doing harm? Assess if you do have a cycle, like assess the level of psychological safety in your organization? Because I would, I would imagine that the first step is to get the pulse of
Minette Norman 11:57
where we are now. Yeah, and there’s a very simple assessment. In fact, how I came to end up writing this book with Colleen Helbig, who’s in Germany, is that we got a certification in running assessments based on Amy Edmondson has worked there seven questions, essentially, she includes them in her book, The fearless organization, and they have basically give you a score of psychological safety across four dimensions. And it’s a great place, especially I found for any organization that feels that data is important. It’s a great data point to say, this is where this team is today, in terms of psychological safety, I don’t recommend doing an assessment and then saying, Okay, we’re good, right? Because the thing is, really, what do you do with the data? And so, for me, it’s like, okay, what are we going to do, even if you have a relatively high score, there’s always something to be done. So without action afterwards, you know, it’s just data data for data’s sake. But it’s a great way to come into an award totally an on premise. You know, practitioners like me, and they’re there. I don’t know, there may be 100, people who are now certified in the methodology we can come in, it’s utterly anonymous. We’re the only ones who have access to the data. And then we can come in to facilitate a conversation with a team. And I think it’s really for me, it’s funny, like, it almost doesn’t matter what the data is, it’s having that first conversation, and opening the door to talking about what’s really going on here.
Maria Ross 13:17
Can you actually assess if the environment is not psychologically safe, though? Will people be honest in their answers?
Minette Norman 13:23
Well, it depends if they believe in anonymity. Got it? Yeah, it’s you know, that’s the thing like I that’s also true on employee surveys, like, I remember back when I was at Autodesk, we would run these big surveys. And some people were like, I don’t believe it’s anonymous, right? So if that’s the case, that’s going to be the case everywhere. But if if they can really be convinced, honestly, it’s anonymous, no one’s going to know. The other thing that’s interesting about it is that if there are extremes in the data, the way this survey works, is that you throw out the extremes when you show the team their data, so that no one’s gonna be there. Like, okay, what if I scored zero, and they’re gonna know who it is? So if there’s one person who score zero, we’re not going to show that when we write.
Maria Ross 14:02
Right, I think well, I mean, you know, not that the show is about plugging. But I think that it’s important to have someone external come in and conduct that and facilitate that data, someone who doesn’t have any skin, political skin in the game. Exactly. I think that that’s important for accuracy of the data. Right. So tell me a little bit about how you see psychological safety, manifesting itself. So can you give us some examples of markers of if you see this are folks listening? No, this is part of their environment. They can feel somewhat good about the fact that there’s aspects of psychological safety happening in their workplace. Yeah,
Minette Norman 14:44
there’s some there’s some really, I would say they’re almost tells about so Yeah, exactly. So one is like if a leader of a team, you know, can be a sea level, it can be a first line manager. It can be anyone in between, but if a leader of a team actually invites dis intent and other viewpoints. I mean, I’m really actively invited in and like we in our playbook, we actually say, if you’re a leader, one of the things you should do is ask the question, What am I missing? Right? Because you really want to get those other points of view. And then if those leaders actually listen without getting defensive, eventually, yeah, yes, exactly. With curiosity, exactly, wanting to understand and seeking to understand as opposed to refute, or to put their viewpoint forward. Those are so that’s one tell, you know, another Talon, I remember, this is something that I remember from early in my career, and I didn’t know at all what it was at the time, but it was so special. I was part of a team way back in the early days of Silicon Valley. And we had a super high level of psychological safety. And these were the markers of that team. We were cross functional, we all have different talents, we were very egalitarian even in how we ran meetings. So without anyone coming in and telling us to do this, we took turns taking notes. And you know, you certainly probably know this Maria. In many settings, it’s the women and the marginalize people who do the office housework, which is a Note taking is one of those things, we were a group of men and women and we all took turns taking notes, no one had the burden every time, we also, without formalizing it, we really had equal talking time. And that’s also a marker of psychological safety, that every single member of the team speaks more or less equally. But what’s and here’s the opposite marker, which is really common is that you’re in a group of 10. And two or three people dominate the conversation and the other seven or eight, hold back, you can even see in their body language, they’re sitting back, they’re not speaking up. And that’s generally a sign that there’s something going on here. And it’s probably not fully safe. Another marker of an unsafe environment is that you have the meeting, and I talk about meetings, because so much of how we live out our culture is in meetings, right? And that manifests, like, what happens in meetings is kind of what’s the culture is all about, if you’re going to meeting and you know, let’s say the leader got up and said, This is what we’re doing this quarter. And you know, this is what I expect of all of you. And everyone nods their head and said, you were ever on board, and you walk out of the room, or you have the slack afterwards. And it’s like, there’s no way in hell this is ever going to work. It’s the meeting after the meeting. Yeah, it was comfortable speaking up inside the actual meeting. That’s a lack of psychological safety. Right? Now, I could go on and on. But I’m gonna give one more, which I think is important. And that is a sign of a psychologically safe team. And that is that people do disagree with one another. And that they can argue in a respectful way. So it’s not. And this is where the fine line is, is that people are not being unnaturally polite with one another when people are super polite, and cautious. It’s probably because they don’t feel safe, when you can have a heated argument. But it’s not personal. It’s like, Maria, I see things from a totally different point of view, is it okay, if I share that, but I’m not attacking you and saying, Ray, you’re an idiot for saying that right? Sir. I’m not making people feel badly about their perspective. But it’s like I have a very different viewpoint, it can be an argument, and we have a way to get through it. And no one feels hurt, or rejected or marginalized after that, right?
Maria Ross 18:18
I’m wondering too, if this is bringing to mind the role of humor in the workplace. And I had a lovely guest on the show, about two years ago, Kathy coats guest who you may be familiar with, she speaks a lot about being human, and injecting principles of improv and comedy into your culture, but for the purpose of creating trust, but she also talks about the fact that you can’t just inject humor into your culture, if there is no trust. So they’re very closely aligned. I’m wondering if that’s one of your markers at all, if colleagues can joke around with each other, if managers and their direct reports can joke around with each other and sort of kill each other and roast each other? Is that a sign that it’s psychologically safe?
Minette Norman 19:02
Yeah, generally. And in fact, we have that in our book that in there’s there’s good evidence about that. I thought you were going to mention Naomi by Jonas and Jennifer acre, who have a book about humor at work, and I forget what it’s called, but we referenced it in the playbook. But yes, humor is a sign that we are safe, especially when you know we can make fun of ourselves, for our leaders to actually laugh at themselves. And then at one another, and any night, go back to that same team. I was mentioning that I was a part of we joked around all the time all the time, like our little ways of kid and each other and he’s like, you know, it would be about my quirks and their quirks but it was never hurtful. It was because we cared about each other. We knew each other we trusted each other. And I will come back to your your mention of improv. So improv. We include sort of that. Yes. And you know that yes. And concept from improv in our playbook. I’ll tell you a story of when I was leading a team I was leading a really senior team at at Autodesk and I had one of these leadership offsides and I had a group that was, honestly we were pretty fragmented, I had inherited a bunch of functions. So I had like, senior directors who all reported to me and they all lead different functions. And we couldn’t figure out how to come together as a team. It was just like a bunch of silos. And I had this off site. And one of the people in my organization was an improv actor. And she actually, he’s in San Francisco and does improv regularly on the weekends. And I invited her in for a half day. And we did improv. And you know, the funny thing about it is that I had a group of some very, very serious introverts and engineers who like, if I had said to them, we’re going to do improv tomorrow, they would have called in sick, they wouldn’t have shown up on our agenda, we just had like team activity. Right, right. Right, right. But it just like we all laughed in the most outrageous ways, because, first of all, we all made ourselves look like idiots. But it was also it was very low risk. So you with humor, I think part of like getting levity into the environment and making it safe, it has to be very low risk, and you have to be like, we’re either all going to be embarrassed together. Round, no one’s going to be very, you know, intimate, right? Doing was like very simple, silly things. And then we all laugh together. And it was incredibly bonding. And, and the result of that, so it wasn’t just that we laughed for half a day, and then went back to work. Yeah. But the result of that was every time we had a staff meeting after that, when we started to get into a conversation where someone was like putting someone down, which would happen, or not listening, or like talking over, we had this code language that we started to use, and we would just all say, yes, and, and just to remind ourselves of like, the power of building on one another, as opposed to tearing each other down. And the Yes, but it’s never gonna work. Yes. And it’s just like from improv is such a powerful way to really be inclusive to all the ideas into human human voices. So we we took that forward, and I think it really made a big difference in our team dynamics.
Maria Ross 21:55
I love it so much. And I think we’ve kind of danced around it, but what, what is the importance of empathy and creating that psychologically safe environment? How? Well,
Minette Norman 22:05
you know, I think it’s so interested, again, intrinsically linked, like with inclusion, because we have to care about the experiences of the people around us. And really, that’s, you know, that’s what empathy is, in a nutshell, is that we can’t and you know, the other thing about the myth of like walking in someone else’s shoes, you can’t, but you have to try to imagine what they’re going through, you have to care about what they’re going through, in order to make it safe for them. And so like, you know, for example, like, if you’re here, I was a white woman in a leadership position, and I was dealing with people from underrepresented groups, I don’t know what it’s like to be a black man or an Asian woman in the workplace. But I know that they’re dealing with things I’m not, and I need to care about their experience, even if I cannot live their life, you know, I ran. So I think there’s just the the Caring about other people’s experiences. And trying, you know, the compassion that goes along with empathy, so often is that I want to make it better. And I care that you’re having a good experience. And I can hear that we collectively, are all having a good experience. So that’s why I think they’re very, very closely linked. So I have kind
Maria Ross 23:12
of an interesting question that I’ve been hearing from a lot of leaders who are who are sold on wanting to be more empathetic. And you and I may have talked about this in the past. But the challenge they’re having is that in their quest to be more empathetic leaders, they are finding that they’re being met with employees who are sort of using the psychology as a weapon, they’re using empathy as a weapon in terms of, you know, there’s a difficult business decision that has to be enforced. And, or there’s, you know, there’s something, something you have to do as a worker, you know, you’re being expected to do you’re being asked to do, and the rebuttal is, well, I don’t feel safe, or you’re not respecting my boundaries. And you know, they start raising all these red flag HR issues. And they’re kind of wielding it as a weapon of being able to get out of doing the thing that they don’t want to do or adhering to the policy they don’t want to adhere to. Would you have any advice for someone who is fearing that or who’s facing that? In that, you know, so where do I go from there? If I’m being met with if I’m trying all the things to create the psychologically safe environment? I’m trying to connect with my team, I’m trying to be empathetic, give them a wide berth, you know, understand their needs and their frustrations and their goals. And yet, I need them to do the work I need them to do. Do you have any advice?
Minette Norman 24:38
Yeah. And the you know, at this, I would say it’s really interesting that you said like, it’s being empathy as a term is being weaponized. So is psychological safety. Yes. Yeah, definitely. And it’s sort of the excuse for all behavior, and m&a even recently, people will, you know, with all the recent layoffs in Silicon Valley, people saying, you know, there goes our psychological safety. They did layoffs, you know, and it’s like, I think that There’s this myth both around empathy around inclusion and around psychological safety, that we’re wrapping everyone in a protective bubble and nothing bad can ever happen, right. And that’s obviously not true. And I think with empathy and with psychological safety, I think for leaders, what I would say is like, I would actually talk about these things openly, like, what psychological safety and what empathetic leadership mean, what they are and what they aren’t. So it doesn’t mean that nothing bad is going to ever happen. It also doesn’t mean I am not holding you accountable for what we’ve agreed on. What it does mean is that if you’re struggling, we’re going to talk about it, I’m not going to just give you a, you know, a terrible review at the end of the quarter, or the URI, we’re going to talk about how I can help you how I can help you be successful, how I can clear barriers, which all managers should be doing, right, and you are going to upheld, uphold your end of the bargain. And that’s true for everybody. So accountability, in some ways, is actually, if you’re in a safe environment, a psychologically safe environment, you should be able to talk really openly about this. And it’s like, okay, you’re not holding up your end of the bargain. And what do we need to do collectively to make sure you can, what’s getting in the way, but we got to talk about this, it’s not going to we’re not going to go dark, and we’re not going to pretend nothing’s going on here. So yeah, I think we need to, I think we just need to really talk about it and have leaders. This is why I think the training is so important to get leaders more equipped to have these conversations with their teams, and to have the vocabulary and the understanding to talk about it. Because I think they don’t like right now. It’s pretty scary to be called out as like, you’re not creating a safe environment, right? Well, and empathetic. And
Maria Ross 26:35
there’s fears of litigation, like, isn’t he honest. And it’s very, you know, you hear these you hear as a leader, these trigger words, and you’re like, Okay, we’re shutting this conversation down. Right now. I’ve heard of leaders that have done that, right. Yes. And so that’s difficult. And I think that, that you’re right is being able to have the conversation and sort of call it out ahead of time. And explain, let’s all agree what we mean by empathy, empathetic leadership, let’s all agree what we mean by psychological safety, and not at the point that you need to define it.
Minette Norman 27:05
Exactly. So I mean, I really believe like, you know, it’s great to read articles together as a team, you know, whether you read, you know, your book, or our book, or you read some articles about the topics or even like, read a report on empathy, you know, the one that right, the state of and replace empathy to work my empathy report, like or listen to podcasts, or listen to podcasts. There are lots of resources, but to do that, as a group to meet up and discuss it, it’s on the same page. And let’s talk about this. Like, let’s spend one of our staff meetings talking about what this means and what it means specifically for us as a team.
Maria Ross 27:38
I love that advice. I think that’s great. I mean, I think so many, so many leaders try different things to do as a group where it’s like forced fun activities, or like, let’s start a book. You know, let’s start a book club. But I love the sight, sort of short sprint of let’s read an article, let’s bring a speaker in, let’s listen to a podcast. But let’s do it together. And then let’s discuss it together. What did we learn? What were the insights? What did you walk away with? Can we and I feel like, and maybe this is not the way to go about it. But I’m a very process driven person. And I feel like all of these things we’re talking about when we’re talking about inclusive cultures, or psychological safety, or empathetic leadership, they’re just sort of the series of contracts with each other on how we’re going to get the work done, not just what work needs to get done. But Let’s all make sure we are crystal clear. You know, we as business owners, as vendors have contracts that spell out our terms. We need more contracts. within the workplace, I think, you know, nothing laborious or litigious, but just more of that, making sure everyone’s on the same page, and they’re committing very clearly to the same thing. I think there’s so much assumption on well, you know, I hired men that she should know that I expect this or that, I expect that or they should know, that’s how we do things around here. There’s all these unsaid rules that are just all these assumptions we make. I feel like if we could have more, you know, sub mini sprint contracts with each other around these different themes. Our workplaces would actually be better, it might make people roll their eyes a little bit, but I don’t know, what do you think of that? You know, I
Minette Norman 29:18
think you’re onto something. Because, you know, for example, here’s a really a simple example, that and it can be extended to lots of different things. But I really believe and we talk about it in our book, that it’s really helpful to have ground rules for meetings. Yes. How are we going to run our meetings? Because then we know, okay, if we want to raise our hands, are we gonna raise our hands? If we want to talk? Are we going to go around the virtual table that establish ground rules? Because then everyone knows and then the other thing that’s powerful about that is you can go you know what, we’re not actually upholding our ground. And you write all someone out in it in a respectful way, because you’ve collectively agreed to them. I first there should be much to your point. I think there should be more norms. They’re basically team norms of how we behave. How do we deal with miss deadlines? How do we deal with failure which is A really big aspect of site building psychological safety, that we can actually talk about failure and put some of these agreements. And I think, you know, they shouldn’t come top down, they should be co created with the team, so that everyone buys into them. And we agree like, Okay, this is how we’re going to do a blameless post mortem, or, you know, whatever it is, this is how our one on ones are gonna go and to agree to these things. And nobody
Maria Ross 30:21
wants to take the time to do that everyone is moving too fast. But it would actually save us so much time and heartache, if we would just have those discussions upfront of like, how are we going to work together? How are we going to communicate together? How are we going to make hybrid and in person employees, equitable in meetings, in projects, in FaceTime with executives, we skip over those things, because we think they don’t matter. But they actually are the things that matter the most to the success or failure of the initiatives?
Minette Norman 30:52
Yes, they do. And you know, I’ve seen it be successful you have, it has to be sustained, that says yes, and then there’s like this initial enthusiasm for it. Like, we’ve agreed on our meeting ground rules. I saw a small company, they were negative, quite smart, but they had them on the wall of their conference room. And they would start off the meeting by reading them aloud. And that’s actually great. Like, it’s It wasn’t long, it wasn’t a long list, but it’s like, okay, let’s just remind ourselves, and that’s, you know, that’s smart. Because it’s like, okay, we’re going to re establish that we agreed to this, before we get into the heart of our meeting. And then if someone you know, if we say there’s no interruption rule, then we’re going to be like, hold on, Maria just didn’t finish her thought. Let’s let her finish before we move on. And so you can reinforce the rules as you go.
Maria Ross 31:33
And you don’t feel guilty for doing it. Yeah, everyone’s clear about it. You can be the Enforcer. If you want it,
Minette Norman 31:39
it actually makes you feel comfortable. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because it you know, one of the one of the ground rules should be any one member of this team can and should call out when we’re not following the rules. So you’re empowering everyone. And it’s not like scary to do, right?
Maria Ross 31:55
Yeah, what’s sort of a last little golden nugget you would leave people with if they’re embarking on? Okay, we want to, we want to do what we can and really put focus on creating a psychologically safe environment so that our people can thrive? What’s a piece of advice you have as they start that journey?
Minette Norman 32:12
Well, I would say that starting anywhere, you don’t like the thing is, is that you can get overwhelmed, and I don’t want anyone to be overwhelmed. So start, you know, one place is start by being a better listener, and to listen with true curiosity, with full attention. And with the willingness to understand a viewpoint that is different from your own, that’s a great place to start, start by asking for dissent. You know, I mean, they’re just little things you can do. And our playbook has 25 of those ideas in them. So the the way we wrote it is that you can pick it up anywhere, like today, I’m actually struggling with meetings, I’m going to go to the section on inclusive rituals. And I’m going to find out, one thing I can do today to run a better meeting. And the idea is start anywhere, and then practice and see what works. And if something doesn’t work for you try another thing. And there are lots of ideas that we have for you. And we don’t have the exhaustive list. Of course, this is just a starting point. But be willing, I guess what I would say is be willing to try it out over a sustained period of time, because you don’t flip a switch, you don’t come into a room and say this is a safe environment. It happens only over time when people see repeatedly that there will be no ramifications from my speaking up or speaking out. And they really do want to hear my point of view. And as they start to believe that they will feel safer. And it will be you know, this virtuous circle, but it takes time and it takes consistency. And it takes practice.
Maria Ross 33:37
So good. So good. Thank you minute for all of these insights today. Again, folks, the book is called The psychological safety playbook. And you’re working on a second book that’s going to be coming out in 2023, the boldly inclusive leader, would you say that that’s kind of a companion book to the first one.
Minette Norman 33:57
Yeah, it’s a bigger book. So the psychological safety playbook by design is really short and really accessible. The moldy inclusive leader is a full length business book that I’ve been writing for a long time. And I finally finished it, and it has a safe it has a chapter on psychological safety in it. So it’s basically just a more comprehensive book on my views on what everything is in the what’s entailed in becoming a boldly inclusive leader. And that one comes out in August. Love it,
Maria Ross 34:21
love it so much. Well, thank you again, we will have all your links in the show notes for folks to check out your book and get in touch with you on social. But for folks on the go right now where’s the best place they can go to learn more
Minette Norman 34:32
about your work? Yeah, my website Minette norman.com is a great place to start and I’d love for you to connect with me on LinkedIn to wonderful thank you so
Maria Ross 34:41
much for your time today.
Minette Norman 34:42
Thank you for having me worry. It’s been a great conversation. I feel like we could talk for hours we
Maria Ross 34:46
could this topic is near and dear to my heart especially having been scarred by non psychologically safe workplaces in the past. Haven’t at all so, so much and thank you everyone for listening to another wonderful episode of the empathy This podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please rate and review it and share it with your friends and colleagues. And until next time remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources, book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.