Initiating and Sustaining Safe Space

So, hi, guys. This is a JOC event which can be found on the JOC YouTube channel and your subscribed podcast channels. At JOC, we focus on holding conversations that produce desired results. This series is on relationships and results. And this episode is called Initiating and Sustaining a Safe Space. It focuses on the importance of having a safe space to have discussions within a group, to express thoughts so that ultimately the team wins. My name is Vince Starks. I have with me today my colleague Colleen Sullivan. And before we get started, just like to have a brief introduction. I'd like to tell you one interesting fact about my colleague, Colleen. So we're moving out of the holidays. We're here in the month of January, and we've all had families and people visit. So Colleen had her sons visiting from college, and as we were going into the holidays, she was so excited about having her boys with her. And now the holidays are over. We were talking this week, and she's so excited to have them going back to college and going on to where they are. And so this is my really non emotional, stern friend who today I saw shed a tear because her son left. But that is my colleague, Colleen. She's a wonderful, wonderful educator, wonderful teacher, and I'm very pleased to be here with her today. Colleen.

Thanks, Vince. I appreciate that. And I'm sure a lot of people are going through the same thing. You know, they're so excited, and then it's like, okay, it's time to go home, right? And so bittersweet. And this is my buddy Vince, and I've had the pleasure and honor of working with him for quite some time. And one of the things that I did learn about Vince that I didn't realize is that he is a tiny bit of a baham bug around the holidays. While he was, you know, I'm sure he was happy to celebrate his daughter's 18th birthday. Happy to go ahead and have those experiences with his family on the other side. He's kind of going, all right, let's be done with this. Get the tree out of the house, and let's roll forward into January. So it's an honor and a pleasure to work with you, and I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Outstanding.

So before we dive in, just wanted to say a piece on gratefulness. We know everybody has, you know, time is the commodity of the 21st century. And so just taking a moment to really focus on yourself and learning, we're grateful for you to take the time out of your busy day, and we're hoping you Find just a few things that you can really apply immediately to help you in your everyday conversations, whether it's in your own personal development journey or whether it's in applying them to lead a team. And so today, as my colleague mentioned, we're focusing on initiating and sustaining safe space. So we hear a lot of conversations around trust. And let's be candid, Vince. Let's talk about what's on our mind. How can we really be this high performing team? While all of that sounds good and well, what does it really look like in practical application? So today we're going to be talking about how do we initiate and sustain a space where people feel comfortable in, in truly saying what's on their heart and mind. And at the end of our brief conversation, our hope, Vince, and I hope that you walk away once again with just maybe one or two things that you can implement immediately to hold more effective conversations that truly initiate, sustain safe space and produce trust. So before I move forward, kind of outlined our focusing statement of what it is we're going to do today and I'd like to go ahead and close the loop with my colleague, Vince. Vince, what did you hear me say we're going to be doing today? And also what other aspects would you like to add to that focusing statement before we move forward?

Yeah, thanks, Colleen. So I heard you talk about creating an environment of trust, right? If you're going to have a space, a safe space, you have to have trust. And if you don't have trust, then you're not going to have a team and you're not going to get to the outcomes. And also heard you say that what we're going to strive to do is provide the participants maybe some tools or an approach so that they can create such a space where they can have open dialogue and so the team can get to and obtain the desired results. Is our opening statement as a goal, Can I capture your thoughts?

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And I think, you know, we hear these words all the time and yet many times, you know, trust and high performing teams and all this. And I think unless you are exceedingly intentional and have a lot of self awareness of how you show up in conversations and the words you choose sometimes that in itself can crush the safe space. So to your point, really hoping that people can walk away with a couple of things moving forward. So. Excellent. Anything else before we push on, Vince, that you wanted to add?

No, I like that. Let's get to it.

So I just wanted to share something that I found as I was preparing for Our conversation today because I like to just offer, offer this. There's no team without trust. This comes from the head of the industry at Google, Paul Santaga. He knows the results of the tech giants massive two year study team performance which revealed the highest performing teams have one thing in common, psychological safety. And that's probably another term you might have heard of instead of safe space. A lot of people call it psychological safety and that's the belief that you won't be punished if you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk taking, speaking your mind, creativity and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off. Just the types of behaviors you need really to develop quality decisions, quality strategic plans, quality ideas of how you can move forward. And without really creating this space, truly you're going to be operating with missing data, missing information. And so I just wanted to offer that creating this space, this dangerously safe space produces trust. We talk about trust. How do you develop trust? Trust comes when we can create this space. So what's one thing that we can do? So I'm going to offer this first item. We always say making someone's thinking wrong damages a relationship. So if I'm having a meeting with my colleagues, which we did earlier, Team jlc, we had a meeting this morning and if Vince offered his thinking, if I come down in a space of judgment, oh Vince, we tried that before, you were on board. Oh Vince, no, are you kidding me right now? We've already done that. That will never work. I am making his thinking wrong. That in itself will crush the safe space and it will absolutely eliminate the opportunity for others to speak up. Now I'm going to pause right there because I put a lot on the table as far as kind of a quote, some information we learned from a giant in Google and also kind of this concept of safe space. What are your thoughts over there Vince?

Yeah, so it was pretty powerful. So I heard you talk about the head of Google really creating an understanding that the importance of creating safe space. And what an expert. Man, that company is huge and they deal with people. We're in the people business. What we're talking about. So what resonated with me was the term psychological safe space. We talk about safe space but you're talking about internally how do we make people feel right?

Absolutely.

They feel comfortable at expressing their ideas and the dangers. If we say we're creating a safe space and we want to hear your opinions and the minute that we hear an opinion that is not aligned, what my leadership principle, what I want to hear, the minute I take out that sledgehammer, man, and bash people in the head in that public place, that's the last time I'm going to hear any open thoughts, views and opinions that I need if I want to have a high performing organization. So as you talked, that's what was resonating with me. I had this big sledgehammer in my hand and I was thinking, boy, if I start whacking moles, what would happen and what would that look like?

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that sometimes people don't even realize they're doing it. I mean, I can't tell you, supporting our client base, how many times I've been sitting in a room, the meeting leaders like Colleen, you know, come in and watch and observe and give me some feedback. And I'm like, all right. And when someone offers their thinking, the first thing, the first thing, they don't even get the sentence out of their mouth. This person is offering their thinking, the first thing they do is, to your point, it's like whack a mole. They go wham. And they crush the idea that this person has just said. And it takes so much courage to speak what's on your mind, especially if it's not the same of what everybody's thinking in the group or if it's an alternative perspective. And that truly is where we really develop our most innovative thinking, our shared thinking and these great ideas and concepts. So how can we recognize that creating this safe space produces trust and enhances the quality of the relationships, which has a huge impact on the results. So I appreciate that and thanks so much and I'm looking forward to making moving forward. So we kind of landed on what is safe space and how does it impact results. I'd like to go ahead and hand it over to you, Vince, and really get down to the tactical nuts and bolts about how can our friends out there listening to us work on this actively in every conversation and in every communication that they hold?

Yeah. So what I would like to offer is just an approach. It doesn't have to be the only approach. But I really like the term steer as an acronym. And if I were a leader or a facilitator, someone who's responsible for coordinating, hosting, or running a meeting, here are some tools and strategies I think that you may want to look at that could help you. So steer stands for simplification. Right. When you're talking about agenda, you want to keep it simple. Stupid. You want to have timed conversation time periods in which you're going to Work through your agenda items, and then e, you want to engage the participants within the meeting. A is you want to acknowledge the voices in the room, and R is you want to respond respectfully. So let me just take a couple of them and then we could talk about a little bit. Maybe, Colin, you could finish a few of them as well. So I'll start with the first three. So s is a simplified agenda. There are a lot of studies out there, educational researchers, neuroscientists, you know, all kinds of organizational leaders, blah, blah, blah. And they all agree that as adult learners, we have the ability to keep about four to seven items of things in our mind any one time that we can talk about. And so when organizations want to have meetings and talk about things, you'd be surprised that, you know, I got so much information. I want people to know because all this stuff is important and they'll work an agenda Item. You'll have 10 to 12 elements on the agenda, and the meeting is scheduled for an hour. You're never going to get through that information. You're never going to get to where you want to go. You have to back off. So I would highly advise that when you start to develop agendas, you never put more than four to five agenda items, as a general rule, on the schedule so that you can really have meaningful dialogue about those things, those topics or events.

It looks like this, hurry up, Vince, there's three minutes left. You're almost done with your time. Bottom line, let's go. Right. And we try and rush and push, and so I love that. Keep it simple, stupid. Just wanted to weigh in on that because so many times people are excited about their agenda. And to your point, they're like, there's so much great information we need to share.

Yeah, yeah. I think you have to ask yourself, man, do you want to just pass information, or do you want people to internalize and understand and grow some information? You make the call, and if your agenda is too long, you're telling me what, what your intent, your true intent, your purpose is, right?

Absolutely. Yeah.

So we'll move on to T, because you talked about time, and so you don't want to rush your conversations, but you do want to provide some disciplined time, structured periods around the agenda items. But again, if you have structured agenda items, then you'll give yourself the appropriate amount of time to kind of talk about those things. And so having some time parameters are important because it keeps people from wandering off the stated agenda items off into the horizon and to other things that may seem very Interesting, but don't lead to the exact point. So having some time structured around your meeting is very, very important. It allows focus, it keeps people on topic, and it allows the receiver to hear the information and allows the group to develop a common understanding of the information that's being presented. Okay, so that's how I see the T when I think about E in the acronym. The E stands for engagement. And that engagement piece is very, very critical because this is the opportunity where you want the participants to hear the information and then you want to actually get them engaged. And you try to break them up into smaller groups or to have them turn to a partner. And for 90 seconds, four or five minutes, you have them discuss the agenda item that they heard and ask provocations, hey, what did you hear the presenter say? What did that mean to you? What resonated to you in that discussion or with this new information? What would you do differently with this new information, this new knowledge? And so that direct and deliberate engagement really, really enhances, it surfaces the new knowledge that you participated in, number one. Number two, it connects the new ideas that was presented with. What does that mean to the participant? And thirdly, it allows the participant to take that new information and decide what they want to do with it. Right, so now they are engaged in the process and they're taking ownership of, of the information. And you're building now towards an ultimate outcome. So that's a mouthful. Let me stop right there. We talked about steer. I talked about the first three letters of steer, right. Simplification, time commitment and engagement. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What examples do you have of that? Colleen?

Yeah, no, thanks, Vince. A lot of stuff. You know, I mean, I think I heard you loud and clear that especially around the agenda item and really organizing that piece and with time and engaged conversations. Many times we always say dissemination of information is the capacity for effective action. It doesn't guarantee it. You can bust through your 25 agenda items and go through them as quick as you can, checking off the box. However, if people are not developing a number one personal practical knowledge about what it is you're sharing, ping. It's just pinging right off of them and they're not getting it. So they're not. If they don't, if they can't, to your point, attach it to what they already know and understand what needs to shift or change, they're going to just say, yes, sir, and turn around and go back and keep doing the same stuff. And a part of that is because we are meaning Making machines. And one of the ways that we can process information is by having these timed conversations. So how can we. We always say conversation is the natural way we learn, not the only way. So by engaging people and having timed conversations, they're internalizing information. A. The second thing they're doing is just by doing those things that you mentioned, Vince, they are developing safe space. They are enhancing the professional relationships. So many times people come to us, hey, Colleen, come and talk about developing trust. And I'm like, okay, well, let me look at one of your meetings. Because even in a virtual environment, if you can do these first three things that Vince has outlined, oh my goodness, you start to enhance those professional relationships, develop the safe space by having these timed conversations, and then, goodness gracious, the result is enhanced because they were developing trust. So I heard those three things and really how they can impact, impact quickly the development of trust within a team. Before we finish, Vince, can you think of just from your personal experience when you maybe have applied some of these and the results that you've achieved?

So, sure. Let's see. So I coordinate a lot of meetings. I think that I went when I was an organizational leader in command. I went to my first board meeting and I was the chair of the board. But my number two, my CEO, if you will, my coo, if you will, was the operations guy who was coordinating the meeting. And we go in the room, we have this big meeting and calling this meeting went on for two and a half hours. And I was sitting at the head of the table and I could barely keep my eyes open past the first 50 minutes, you know, and just to look at the agenda item and know that we were on item number three and we had like 15 items on it. I didn't say a word. I sat and I listened to this whole thing. And I thought to myself, what a painful evolution for the men and women who had to sit around that table. And so my first order of action with business was, hey, we're never ever going to do anything like that again. And I took a deliberate action to sit and to change the entire structure of my governance meetings, because it was well intentioned. But I knew just off these very, very fundamental principles that we had to make a change. And boy, the next time we got in a meeting and we were in and out of an hour, the people were so relieved and that now I had enhanced engagement from my team. So we simplified the agenda. I had time conversations, I had a much more engaged leadership team. We were developing a sense of trust and we were ultimately able to achieve our goals. And so that was a real life example of something that I walked into a new organization and realized right away what we were doing is not going to work.

No, I love that. And it's so funny. I mean, because if you're sitting there thinking, man, this is the worst meeting I've ever been in, or, you know, I am so tired that when is this over? And you keep looking at your watch, guess what? Probably everybody else doing the same damn thing. So I love that you had that awareness to pivot that and the other piece that's really resonating with me, Vince. And I want to make sure we highlight to the people listening is trust, psychological safety, conversations. This is all interdependent. You know, I think many times we focus on one thing. Today I'm going to think about initiating and sustaining safe space. Well, yes, that is our topic. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, there's so many different ways that you can do that. And so your story really highlights how, you know, cutting down the meetings, the way you engage with people, the way you spoke to people, the way that you were just really respectful. And that really impacted the quality relationships. And so I think that that is huge. So I encourage you to think about all of these things because they are so interdependent. So thank you for that story, Vince. I really appreciate it and I'm going to push forward, if that's all right with you. And just to offer our last two, right, we've got in steer S T E, I've got the ar, so I'm bringing in, bringing in the rear. A is acknowledge. And many times I think in meetings, especially if we're crunch for time, as Vince mentioned, you know, I've got this big agenda. I'm starting to feel pushed for time. I've got the people who are using the room standing outside ready to come in. In many organizations, right, because they book these rooms back to back. This acknowledge piece is missed. And I think many times if I don't at least acknowledge someone's thinking, think about last meeting when you, you know, you created space and asked somebody their opinion. Hey, Vince, so tell me about what was the best thing that happened to you yesterday. If I don't even wait to listen to what he has to say, let alone acknowledge his thinking, I will absolutely crush the safe space. And he will, in his mind go. Colleen doesn't really appreciate what I have to say. She didn't even pause to completely listen to my response.

She didn't.

She had pivoted and Moved on. Ladies and gentlemen, I can't tell you, as a consultant, I get paid for my perspective and for me to support clients. And one time I was called into this, it was just a conference call and I was listening in and I listened for about 90 minutes. And finally at the 90 minute mark, and this was the client base that I was supporting, they said, geez, Colleen, what do you think? And I gave them my 2 cents, maybe a 90 second statement. And I heard crickets. Nothing. Vince. I was like, hello? I thought that something happened on the line, you know, and I. Or did I piss them off? Did I guess what? No one acknowledged me and they moved to the next thing. It was almost like they just. They just asked me the question because they remembered I was on the line. So my invitation to you, that acknowledge piece is really important. It's really important. So A is acknowledge. And I'm not saying agree. I don't have to say, well, thanks, Vince, that's the greatest thing I've heard you. You know, I really appreciate that tidbit. It's just acknowledging that. Thank you for your contribution. You know, Vince, I appreciate you offering that. And may I offer an alternative perspective? I see that slightly differently. Acknowledge doesn't mean agree. The R piece is responding respectfully. So when I just kind of modeled that, once again with Vince, it's really, really important as we go through our meetings that as a meeting leader and even as a participant, I'm looking for ways to connect and to make meaning in a very respectful way. So sometimes in Vince, you mentioned this, even you modeled it with your first ste. He's making connections throughout each time as he closes the loop. So I offer acknowledge and respond respectfully. Many times happen together. But I also want to offer that these two things are incredibly important if someone is showing the vulnerability to really offer up their thinking and we do not acknowledge and respond respectfully, once again, not agree, but at least acknowledge. What happens is people start to consciously and subconsciously learn, Right. Nobody said anything. They didn't have anything to connect my perspective to the other perspectives that were offered. And then people start to disengage. And ladies and gentlemen, that disengagement piece where I don't feel valued, crushes the relationship and crushes that space, that psychological safety and that dangerously safe space that is needed for candid, quality conversations. So, Vince, I pulled in the rear with the AR piece. Just wanted to go ahead and say what kind of resonated with you in that last piece that I offered.

Yeah. So I think that out of the whole acronym of steer, I think the A and the R are the two most important components. The first three are things that we really use to set things up is and set the conditions. But when people express their vulnerability and their viewpoint and if you don't acknowledge what has been said, I thought that really resonated with me, the importance of acknowledgment. It doesn't mean agree, it just means I heard what you said. Thank you very much for making the contribution. And then responding respectfully was another key component because it acknowledges someone's thinking, but it also helps the surface the openness with the respect. And that enhances the element of trust in the safe space. So now you have your staff and your team who willing. Even if the ultimate outcome doesn't align with what they brought forth, what it does communicate is that it's safe and it's okay for me to come and offer alternative points of view. And so that A and R component are critically important. And that's where what was resonating with me as you talked about that, wow, out of all these things, that's probably the most important component because that's the feedback loop to our people who've actually were very brave and spoke up and said, hey, here's what I offer.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just offer one more thing before we close it out, is that we always say making someone's thinking wrong is a mind killer. Making someone's thinking wrong is a mind killer. Because I'm going to sit there and tune out. I am going to turn off my mind, I am going to disengage, and no longer am I offering my perspective because if Vince cuts me off, if he doesn't acknowledge and respond respectfully and I don't feel psychological safety, guess what I do. That space is gone. So now I'm going to kick back and I'm going to watch him step into messes. I'm going to giggle. I'm going to watch him make some poor decisions that are going to reflect poor on him. And I'm going to giggle, right, because that space has absolutely been gone. So once again, this concept of psychological safety creating this dangerously safe space produces trust. And all of the things and the components of STEER give people an opportunity to engage in a way that will initiate and sustain the safe space. Vince.

Yeah. So, Colleen, I think that should do it today. We've got kind of come to the end of our time for this event. So, ladies and gentlemen, I hope that what you've been able to take away as Colleen and I kind of modeled the conversational leadership principles that we practice as we talk about our subjects and we reflect and we use provocations with one another to better understand and to enhance and bring forth our learning. We'd invite you to take some of the information we shared today and use those same provocations in your conversations. We hope that this was of value to you and we look forward to having you join us for other podcasts and other topics here at jlc. With that, Colleen, I would just like to say thank you very much for being here and taking the time out today with us today. I love steer. That was my takeaway, the importance of stir, and most importantly, the importance of the aids acknowledging and responding respectfully. And with that, I'm out.

Absolutely my biggest takeaway, I think. Vince, I really liked your story and I think it was an excellent example of how now that people have this little acronym steer, of how you can implement it. So I invite people to really begin to think about every time they're in a meeting, how can you make it even more impactful and truly intentionally develop safe space? And I'm out. Once again, thanks for joining us here and we look forward to additional conversations with you in the future.

Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.