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Bram Lagrou: Hello and welcome back to yet another episode of the Commercial Leader podcast. My name is Bram Lagrou, and today we're unpacking the topic of psychological safety in a workplace and how that actually impacts business results. As a salaried employee, I've experienced two very different workplaces and bosses to work for.
And it's a good example of what we can actually do and what the impacts are on people. The first time when I graduated and went into the workplace, I remember how there was just always a feeling of belongingness, of being part of a great team, feeling privileged, and so on and so forth.
The feelings are just very soft tokens. But what it enabled [00:01:00] us to do as a whole team was to give our best and go the extra mile and contribute a lot more than what we probably would have done if we didn't have those feelings.
Then on the flip side of that, I've experienced a workplace where I felt not safe, where I felt, that people were doing stuff behind my back and I didn't know exactly what to expect. I was questioning what was going on. And so I was more, in a space and a frame of mind of protection and trying to figure things out rather than actually focusing on doing an excellent job.
And the difference for a business to really thrive and for a team to thrive versus for people to protect their patch and don't do much at all, really. And if you guys remember one of the previous episodes about psychological safety, what [00:02:00] does it really look like from a brain's perspective, the neurological pathways, and how organizations either make the most of that beautiful thing called our mind or where they actually sabotage its functioning?
If people detect the slightest thing of threat, the crocodile brain or the reptilian brain, gets fired up. And then depending on who we are as people, we will fall back in three typical patterns.
Some of us have a tendency to fight and push back. So we might fight with, disagreeing with people openly and directly. We might raise our voice. We might fire back snippy emails. We might challenge people on their ideas and do it very publicly for everyone to see. That's the fight response. We all have heard of fight, flight, freeze.
But let's just say that some of us have that more so than [00:03:00] others. Others will then, for example, withdraw. They don't like to upset people. They don't wanna step on people's toes, and they basically just walk away or shy away from having a discussion or just don't do anything at all, so some people walk out, some people don't do anything at all, other people push back. Imagine now that- In the example that I shared earlier with you where in the environment where I felt that I didn't know what my boss wanted.
Or I felt like he was withholding stuff from me. And then I would go into a, a shared workplace where my colleague, who I previously was very open with and chatting with and laughing and all of that, and suddenly I could tell that something was off, and she was not saying much at all anyway. And you started thinking about automatically the brain goes into this threat detection mode.
You know something's off, [00:04:00] and you're trying to figure it out, which means you're focusing on that over anything else that you could be doing at work. So getting goals met, looking after clients in my case 'cause I was in sales. If you're a leader, looking after your team, being there for them, being present and being available rather than being focused on your internal world.
This is, I think, what a lot of organizations don't really seem to be aware of how much this idea of psychological safety sabotages business performance. So then for example, when organizations struggle with the implementation of change, which, a lot of organizations do, or people are not adopting certain things part of that is potentially questionable.
Are people feeling safe enough to come on board and give their best? Because when they do, we have goodwill. [00:05:00] So level one of the brain elevator, if there's no threat, it doesn't try to protect because there's nothing to protect. There's nothing to defend. It goes more in growth mode. The second level of the brain is where trust is built.
And I think leaders today need to fully understand that what drives one person and what motivates one person and what makes one person trusting you is not going to be necessarily the same of what somebody else will do. So there's cultural dimensions to consider. Example, some cultures don't like being spoken to very directly and being provided direct feedback, and they like it to be done more indirectly.
So that's basically one example. Whilst others really appreciate and value direct feedback and see it as the breakfast for champions, which is something that I personally subscribe to because that's my cultural heritage. Then we also [00:06:00] have these personality styles and communication styles that you guys have heard me talk about over and over again, which is DiSC, which I personally love as a framework because it makes you understand that what makes a D trust you is that you can speak openly what you think, and you ask very directly for what you want, and you don't fluff around, so to speak, and you make the most of your time.
That is gonna help you build trust with a D. With an I, trust will be built very differently. It's gonna be about having fun together, being available for one another, building a relationship on a human level before you even talk shop because I's are people, and they are fun with it, and they are highly, energizing.
Having open-hearted conversations with I's and build in some fun will help you whilst then also backing things up in writing afterwards. And so that's how trust is built there. S's then, the trust factor there is going to be built by going slowly and [00:07:00] surely. It's building trust and a relationship first before anything else, and not rushing things and making sure that you cover things and you're creating buy-in over time.
Tackling concerns that people might have and giving people an opportunity to come on board in their own time without pressure, and allowing them to clarify things so that they can see things, in its entirety, From start to finish. Because they are very process-driven people, and they like familiarity.
If we give them that and we help them to really come on board slowly and surely, and we help to tackle their concerns and answer their questions, S's gradually will come on board if it feels safe. That's how trust is built there. C's then last, are the ones that will build trust by us revealing all the information and the details and the T's and C's up front in full transparency with pros and cons both tackled, not [00:08:00] withholding anything.
Which means... making things available for, objective scrutiny and analysis and research, and giving people, time to do that homework before being asked for a decision. This is how trust is built there. So again, as a leader, flexibility here is the key. It's about understanding what will drive one individual over another, and how can I motivate them and give them what they want so that they feel psychological safe. Once they do, level one is not an obstruction, therefore the elevator will go up to level two where trust and goodwill and rapport is built which we just touched on.
If that one is also a tick, thumbs up again, the brain elevator can go up again. And only there in level three, where the neocortex is, So first one was reptilian brain, crocodile brain at the bottom. then the limbic system on level [00:09:00] two. Level three, the neocortex or the executive centers of the brain.
This is where creative thinking and problem-solving happens, which means the best engineers come up with great ideas when they feel safe and when they feel that there's a good environment to be part of, and so will anybody else, really. So their best creative thinking, their problem-solving will happen once they're in that space.
And so back to the example here is the first workplace where I worked knew exactly how to make me feel both safe, create an environment of trust and goodwill, and they got my very best. Example, I had years where I spent 200 nights in a hotel covering two full territories that was normally done by two people, and I did both of [00:10:00] them simultaneously, and I was kicking goals in both.
So a territory that was initially six countries grew to be 15, and I covered the whole place. But because it was such a large territory in Europe, I had to travel to go and see clients and build the teams and, look at potential candidates to onboard and bring into our system and get onto our products.
And so talking to all of our competitors who potentially we might poach was part of the job. And then once they were on board we had to develop their accounts, strategically speaking. Provide the training, provide the consulting, provide the business planning, the marketing assistance, and so on and so forth, in order for those accounts to thrive because if they did, we did as a manufacturer and a supplier.
So help customers win, and you win as a manufacturer. That was basically the mantra. Now, you can imagine why [00:11:00] would someone live out of a suitcase for most of the year and be away from a home, traveling through different territories where they've never set foot before, and spending not just normal office time, but before that and after that with clients and prospects and so on, because that's what the job required?
You cannot ever do that with your full heart and soul unless level one and level two are satisfied, which means the business, the company, and the leadership team, and the other colleagues, they're creating the right environment for it, for people to feel a certain way.
Before, I thought of psychological safety a little bit, honestly speaking, as a bit of a fluffy sort of concept, and something that I felt was a little bit too woke-y perhaps, but that was my judgment creeping in.
As I've reflected on this, and as I was getting ready for this podcast, I started to think "You know what? There's so much merit in [00:12:00] this whole thing," and a lot of the productivity gains or losses in the workplace, which we've all heard of, through Gallup and all these other organizations that measure the productivity and the productivity losses in workplaces.
It's predictable whether there's gonna be gains or losses, whether there's gonna be success or failure more so because of how people feel. Take the second organization, for instance I've been observing them, what they've done since, and most of the people that I personally worked with at the time have moved on since. Key indicator number one. So staff turnover rate high when people don't feel good in their roles and in the environment they're operating. Two is it looks like the organization has retracted even though others in the same industries are growing. [00:13:00] Indicator two, business has diminished. Then you can also think from a branding perspective, is the brand still attractive?
In fact, the business also was sold off at a loss, which indicates that the feelings, by not getting them right, all of the rest suffer, too. And that is very sad because it doesn't have to be that way. So lessons learned. What can we take from this as leaders is that, first of all, you cannot look really well after your team and your business and your clients and other stakeholders if you don't feel good inside.
So what do you do to look after yourself is number one. Two then is that- As a leadership team in an organization, how are you, creating the space where people don't see threat, and where they feel that they can trust others in the workplace? Now, [00:14:00] we always say the fish rots from the head down, which means if there's something not quite kosher at the top, and where people are not getting along, and they are stressed out themselves, and they're not really concerned about the welfare of others you can imagine how that's going to ripple down and affect and fester the whole en- environment.
The other thing is that we always talk about these great notions of company values and our mission and so on and so forth, but how well does an organization truly live it, and how well do the leaders exemplify it? In the second example that I shared with you earlier where I didn't feel great in that workplace at all, and I was wary of what was happening behind the scenes.
One of the values was teamwork. Guess what? Teamwork means that people don't see [00:15:00] themselves being in competition. Teamwork means is that teams look to help each other and strengthen or basically leverage each other's knowledge, skills, experience and so on and so forth, for the gain of the organization, and there's no politics involved.
As soon as there's politics, as soon as there's stuff that people are withholding from each other, where there's no open communication, where they're not necessarily, sharing what needs to be said in order to move forward with things, and where things are handled behind people's back all of that stirs up a pot of you know what, and it smells.
And this obviously voids the whole idea of why you would have company values in the first place. So as a consultant, I very often have walked in over the years in organizations where you could just feel that either the place is humming, there's a great vibe, [00:16:00] and people are motivated, they're excited, they're bringing their very best, they're creative, they're collaborative, and things are moving.
There's momentum being built. And then you walk in other organizations and you feel like you're walking on eggshells, and you gotta be quiet, and you notice that people are not necessarily talking to one another, or they're a bit wary of each other. And all of this, it just gives you a bit of a cringe.
This just shows again that something's off, and it all goes back really to feelings because the two first levels of the brain elevator are emotional in nature, and only the top one, being the neocortex, is logical. So it means if we cannot get the emotions right, forget about getting the logical outcomes, the project management, the change management, the business outcomes, the, profit gains. All of these things largely depend on getting the feelings just below right. So [00:17:00] the tip of the iceberg versus the bottom of it, they are very much going hand in hand. And sometimes we focus so much on the top, the logical stuff. How much profit did we make? what was the lead time?
What was the closing ratio? How many calls did you make? We have all these metrics that we're measuring, and they're all very logical and cerebral, and I get it, they're important, the KPIs and the OKRs and all these metrics. The question is If they're not really working out, how are the feelings?
So leaders really need to look at both self as an individual, two, what's the environment in the leadership team, and then the next thing then that I believe is also of value is that how are we actually making ourselves available to our people to make the most of it? How much are we listening? How much are we actioning some parts of it, and also providing feedback, again, if certain things cannot be done, and why.
[00:18:00] It's like looking for that really honesty and fairness by doing it on an ongoing basis. I firmly believe after, probably now working 22 years across two different employed roles and then a lot of the time also working with organizations to implement best practices as a consultant in management, is that leadership is a privilege.
And whether you have the title and the authority or you don't, you still need to earn it. So how are you going to do that through your behaviors and the way that you engage with people? This is really an opportunity, and it's very easy to upset the cart. It takes deliberate practice and a commitment and clear intent to be a resource, to be of service, and to help people get what they want.
The [00:19:00] more we do so, the more they help us too. It's earned. You cannot expect them to give it to you unless you've given something first. I believe it's a really good way to wrap up the episode. Thank you so much for joining in, and I look forward to seeing you again next time.
