MBA1488 Guest Teacher: Timothy Clark – How To Lead your Team Through The 4 Stages Of Psychological Safety

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Welcome to the $100 MBA show where business is our business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes I bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Timothy Clark and he'll be teaching you how to lead your team through the four stages of psychological safety. What's psychological safety? Well, it's the idea that your team should always feel like their work environment is a safe place. I'm not talking about the roof collapsing over their head. I'm talking about the ideas they bring forward. Everybody in our team should feel like this is a safe space where they can learn, where they can grow, where they can contribute without fear and even challenge the status quo without worrying of the repercussions. This is how we grow. Often in our team meetings we'll have disagreements, we'll go back and forth, but it's done with respect and with the idea. We're both trying to reach the same goal. How do you make sure your team feels psychologically safe? Well, that's what Timothy Clark is going to be teaching you today. I can't wait to get into this one. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's guest teacher, Timothy Clark is the founder and CEO of Leader Factor, a global leadership consulting, training and assessment organization. He's the author of five books and has helped organizations around the globe. He's actually a doctor. He's got a PhD from Oxford in social science, which makes him the perfect guest teacher for today's topic. Making sure your team feels psychologically safe to share ideas, to improve, to challenge what's going on in your company. Maybe there's a better way to do it. I'm going to hand it over to Timothy Clark now, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and give my insights. But for now, take it away, Timothy.

My name is Tim Clark. Thank you for joining me today. Today I'll be teaching you how to lead your team through the four stages of psychological safety. Let's get down to business. You may be familiar with Google's project Aristotle. Google studied 180 of its own teams for two years to try to identify the patterns of their best teams, the highest performing teams. What did they find? Well, they found that the number one factor in defining characteristic of the best teams was psychological safety. More than anything else, having a high level of psychological safety was the one factor that unleashed that team. It was rocket fuel for innovation. So let me begin by explaining psychological safety. Most people think of it as feeling safe in a social setting. Now that's true in a general sense, but let me break it down for you into concrete stages. Psychological safety is a condition in which team members can do four things. First, feel included. Second, feel safe to learn. Third, feel safe to contribute. And fourth, feel safe to challenge the status quo. All without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized or punished in some way. These four stages represent a universal pattern reflecting the natural progression of human needs. When teams and organizations progress through the four stages or watch out, they create deeply inclusive environments, accelerate learning, increase contribution and stimulate innovation. So let's jump into stage one, Inclusion Safety. Inclusion safety satisfies the basic human need to connect and belong. But what happens if you don't connect and don't feel part of the team? If you're deprived of that basic acceptance and validation as a human being, well, in short, it's debilitating. It activates the pain centers of the brain. On the other hand, when others reach out and include us, we're happier, more confident and more productive. Human beings want to feel Part of the team. In fact, the need to be accepted precedes the need need to be heard. So you can see that inclusion safety is the starting point. It's the foundation that every leader needs to put in place. Drain your team of fear and exclusion. This is the first order of business for every leader of every team. This is where performance begins. Inclusion safety is more than a nice to have. It's a moral responsibility. Only the threat of harm can excuse us from including someone. When we create inclusion safety for others, regardless of our differences, we acknowledge our common humanity. And we reject false theories of superiority and justifications for exclusion. Okay, are you ready to assess your own team? Here's the question. Using a 0 to 10 scale where 1 means not at all and 10 means completely, ask yourself how included the members of your team feel. Give your team an overall score by putting down a number, as I said, between 0 and 10. So take a second to do that. Okay, so now let's go to stage two. The second stage of psychological safety is learner safety. Learner safety satisfies the basic human need to learn and grow. It allows us to feel safe as we engage in the learning process. Asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, experimenting and even making mistakes. Not if, but when we make them. Think about this. We all bring some level of inhibition and anxiety to the learning process. No one is completely confident all the time. We all have insecurities. Who hasn't hesitated to raise their hand to ask a question in a group setting for fear of feeling dumb? We all have Learning is intellectual and emotional. It's an interplay of the head and the heart. So if the leader creates learner safety, it cultivates resilience and independence. In that learning process, you're more willing to be vulnerable and take learning risks. You're not worried about feeling stupid. On the other hand, a lack of learner safety triggers what we call the self censoring instinct. That means we shut down, retrench, and manage personal risk. Why? Because we don't feel safe to learn. Great leaders create learner safety for every member of the team. They give encouragement to learn in exchange for a willingness to learn. Okay, here's the question. Using that same 0 to 10 scale, ask yourself how safe the members of your team feel to engage in the learning process. Give your team an overall score. Take a second, think about that. Now let's go to stage three. Stage three is contributor safety, which satisfies the basic human need to contribute and make a difference. When a team has contributor safety, the members of that Team feel safe to contribute as full members using their skills and abilities to participate in the value creation process. They don't hold back, they lean lean into what they're doing with full energy and enthusiasm. If you think about it, we have a natural desire to apply what we've learned to make a meaningful contribution. Why then do we dislike micromanagers? Because they don't give us the freedom and discretion to reach our potential. Why do we like empowering bosses? Because they encourage us and draw out our best efforts. The more we contribute, the more confidence and competence we develop. And when we create contributor safety for others, we empower them with autonomy, guidance and encouragement in exchange for full effort and results. Let me repeat that. The leader gives autonomy, guidance and encouragement in exchange for full effort results. Okay, here's your assessment question. Using the same 0 to 10 scale, ask yourself how safe the members of your team feel to contribute. Give your team an overall score. Take a minute and think about that. All right, now it's time to go to the final stage. The final and ultimate stage of psychological safety is what we call choice. Challenger safety. Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better. It's the support and confidence. We need to ask questions such as, why do we do it this way? What if we tried this? Or I have an idea about how to do this better. Challenger safety empowers us to challenge the status quo without retaliation or the risk of damaging our personal standing or reputation. It gives us respect and permission that we need to dissent and disagree when we think something needs to change and it's time to say so. It allows us to overcome the pressure to conform and gives us a license to innovate and be creative. At the highest level of psychological safety, it matches the increased vulnerability and personal risk that are necessary to challenge the status quo. When we create Challenger Safety, we give air cover in exchange for candor. Let me say that again. The leader gives air cover in exchange for candor. Okay, here's the last question. Using the same 0 to 10 scale, how safe do the members of your team feel to change? Challenge the status quo. Give your team an overall score. You should now have four scores in front of you. One for inclusion safety, one for learner safety, one for contributor safety, and finally, one for challenger safety. I hope this exercise has generated some insight about how to take your team to the next level of performance and also some urgency to move quickly. More than any other aspect of culture, the level of psychological safety on a team is a direct reflection of the leader. Remember, the leader either leads the way or gets in the way. I hope you're leading the way by fostering psychological safety on your team. Thanks for listening. If you want to continue learning about psychological safety, visit our website@leaderfactor.com or pick up a copy of my new book, the Four Stages of Psychological Safety. Thanks again for joining me today.

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I absolutely love today's guest teacher lesson by Timothy Clark. Check them out@leaderfactor.com to learn more about this topic. One of the things I learned by growing a team is one of the best ways to keep them happy is to make an enjoyable work environment. And that has a lot more to do with how they feel about the company and how their ideas are being respected. They have a voice, they can contribute, they can even challenge. And less to do with how many snacks are in the break room or annual leave. Even if they feel like they can do their career's best work at your company, it's going to be really hard to leave. And you only do your best work when you have the autonomy to contribute ideas, to have open, respectful conversations and debate, to feel like they can improve through training. Whether that's, you know, self training, reading books or online courses, or going to conferences, or maybe just a one on one look over my shoulder. Training your work is a big part of your life and if you're fulfilled at work, you're going to have a fulfilled life. So if you offer that to your employees, you're going to be winning and you're going to be attracting the best talent and it's going to give you an incredible advantage on the competition. I could tell you for a fact that at Webinar Ninja, our webinar software, we have the best customer service team, and we're able to attract the best talent because our reputation is great. People love working here. At least that's what they tell me. But the reasons that they tell me is because they feel like I have empowered them to grow. I've empowered them to make decisions. I've empowered them to have a voice, and that's not the case everywhere else they've worked. So this small change in your business can really improve things in a drastic way. A happy team is going to produce better results, which is going to produce a better product and overall experience for your customers, which then they're going to tell other people word of mouth, and. And it's going to grow and grow on its own. It's the best way to grow a business because it has longevity. You don't need to pay for that. You just need to kind of build it into your business. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love it here, hit subscribe right now. By hitting subscribe, you automatically get updates on the next episode. You also get access to over 1400 business lessons in our archives. It's the only way to get access to. So hit subscribe right now. It's absolutely free. You can do this on any app you use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Spotify or Stitcher Radio or Apple Podcasts or Himalaya or Overcast, we're on them all. Hit subscribe right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When I was a teacher, I used to work in an environment that was not psychologically safe. I couldn't share my honest opinion of things. I had to kind of just keep moving forward and kind of ignore things. And I was not fulfilled. I was not happy. And if I'm going to be honest, there were days where I was looking for another job because I would say, hey, there's got to be a better way to, you know, do this career, to work every day. I don't feel like I'm growing. I don't feel like I'm contributing. I don't feel like I'm a part of something bigger than myself. That's a reality for a lot of people in a career. You can change that for your team. You have that power. That's an amazing privilege. And they will not take it for granted because most people have had the experience where that's not what they've experienced before. That's not the norm. You could stand out. You can really give them the best gift of all, a fulfilled workplace. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then.

Take care.

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