Know Your Place

One of our Perth footy teams has been copping a heap of flack lately. They have had a woeful season, plagued with injury and losses. As always, there’s a bunch of armchair coaches with plenty of views about what could or should be done to fix it.

One player has been copping more criticism than usual. It’s been based on how much contact he has with the ball (Nowhere near enough apparently). In a radio interview another player was discussing the issue. His view is the player is doing exactly what his job is on the team, and doing it well. Apparently the position has wildly variable ball stats because it’s oriented slightly behind the play to create opportunities and turnovers. Depending how the game unfolds this means either lots of contact, or none. He could easily rush into the play and increase his stats, but hanging back is precisely what he’s meant to do.

There are several lessons from this interview that relate to Psychological Safety and high performance in any team:

• Clarity and willingness . The roles are clearly articulated and understood. People are willing to play their role for the team, even when there’s external pressure to do something different.

• Support roles are crucial. There are roles that are specifically about support. The people in these roles are unlikely to be the central figure or superstar (many times they don’t want to be either). Their support is part of the recipe for success. The highly visible roles in any team are surrounded by people who make it possible for them to do their best work.

• Support for support roles is crucial too. In a high performing team their essential contribution is recognised and celebrated in ways that make sense to the people in support, and the culture of the team. If those in support roles are not properly recognised, they either rush into action to improve their ‘stats’ or they become increasingly disengaged as their hard work goes unnoticed (or worse, others claim credit for it).

Without role clarity, none of this will happen well. What can you do today to increase clarity for the people in your team dedicated to support? How does recognition happen for them? Could that be improved?

If you’d like some tips and strategies for improving Psychological Safety in your team, feel free to be in touch.

Disclaimer - My knowledge of AFL is possibly the lowest of any human in Australia (at some point I’ll tell you about my own woful start and very short footy career). While my interpretation of the nuances of the game is way below the average armchair coach, the observations derived still stand.

The Gap

Some Aussie front line workers colourfully describe the office as ‘Bullshit Castle’. The castle might be HQ in another city, or the supervisors office. When they tell me more, the story is always about directives issued with no operational perspective. In the same organisations, leaders are often looking back the other way with low confidence about how business is being done on the front line. Clarity is low. Frustration (and/or scepticism) is high. Do-overs are frequent. It’s hard to get a complete picture of what's going on, because trust is like unicorn horn!

There’s a continuum at play. At one end, I reckon just about every organisation experiences some mild form of the above. It doesn’t cause major issues, but it slows everything down. At the other end there are highly toxic environments where people rarely bring their best and collaborative work is non-existent.

Where does your organisation sit on the continuum? Whether you have a vast icy wilderness to cross, or already great pathways, enhancing psychological safety will move you in the right direction.

I’d love to hear what’s working for you, and where the frustrations are.

The View from Here

How clear is the strategic view in your organisation? Most of the leaders I am working with are experiencing 3 factors clouding the view:

• Staff shortages - For many this means time off strategy and on tools to keep up. It means employing people you might not employ in different times. It means pressure on induction and training processes as people try to get staff up and running in the shortest possible time. It often means frustration as the combination also makes for low engagement and lack of clarity = do overs, or new people leaving before they are even up to speed.

• Fatigue - the cadence has been high for ages. To-do lists grow so fast you know some items will die there, never seeing the light of day. People are worn down.

• Short horizons - some have got into a habit of reacting to whatever comes up. It started with COVID when Friday’s plan was torn up on Monday because the rules had changed - reactivity was the only choice then. Combined with staff shortages and fatigue it’s leaving many feeling as if they are perpetually chasing their tail.

It all obscures the view. How do you know that your business is delivering on what it promises? Are you experiencing a greater than usual gap between front line efforts and high level strategy and planning?

If you answered yes to either of the above, sing out. I have some solutions that are working well across a number of sectors.

What it Takes

I was invited to observe a team meeting today as part of work building on their already robust psychological safety. Four significant elements of how they work together really stood out.

1. Recognition - All sorts of things were recognised. New hires, project milestones, people’s skill and contribution, a recent big push on a project involving lots of extra time and covering for people who are away. No rose coloured glasses here though. Fatigue, mental health, a significant safety incident, concerns about links between HQ and operations were also openly discussed. There was ample celebration, but also deep dives into real and significant issues that deserved attention.

2. Up for the challenge - Several times people raised challenges to decisions, processes, people. The challengers spoke openly and directly. No one took offence. More often than not their challenge was met with open and curious questions seeking to understand their perspective more fully. Contributions were welcomed and explored.

3. Marking the Boundaries - At every opportunity people shared information, purpose, backstory, decision making parameters, reasoning and more (often as part of the challenge conversations). Everybody contributed to a more complete team view of what was happening, what was expected and what value they could add.

4. People took responsibility - When action was required someone put their hand up to own it. Timelines and detail were given. Follow up was arranged. Lots was getting done. People volunteered for this responsibility without prompting. It seemed expected and normal.

This team is quite a contrast to some others I have worked in and with. The kinds of contributions made by every individual in this meeting are often nowhere to be seen. One way traffic from the ‘chair’ coupled with defensive conversation and lack of accountability are more often the picture.

If you could pick one of the points above to focus on with your team, which would it be?

If you’d like to discuss building psychological safety in your team or organisation, let's have a chat.

The Right Tool for the Job

On the weekend I did a bit of work on my old 4WD. It got me thinking. I spent about 60 minutes applying brute force and busting knuckles trying to get a ball joint out of its socket. I phoned a friend. I swore quite a bit. Nothing worked. Then I went round the corner and paid $50 for the right tool for the job. In less than 10 minutes I had done 2 joints. It was easy and even pleasurable.

Sometimes we have to make do with not having the ideal tool to hand. More often than not it's false economy. One of the effective things leaders can do to build psychological safety and create momentum in the workplace is to set people up with the right gear for success.

Are there any areas where you or your team don't currently have the right tool?

P.S. This isn't a licence to demand the best and latest of everything. I could have bought a $800 tool that would have done the same job. If I was using it daily that would be money well spent. For the one off job, it would have been overkill.

Leading Voices

Quality leaders are able to share strongly held opinions, backed by quality information. When they do it well, there’s also an acknowledgement of other perspectives and an invitation to a deeper conversation. Done well, it provides both Psychological Safety to enter the discussion and also a clear direction from the leader. Psychological Safety does not mean watered down leadership, or the lack of robust debate.

Australia is on the verge of an historic vote on the Voice to Parliament. There are a range of strongly held perspectives on this. Unfortunately, a lot of the discussion is polarised and adversarial rather than as described above. This from Braden Hill is a great example of excellent leadership as described above. What do you think? How could you emulate this kind of leadership in your roles?

Black Belt Mastery

I was learning from a black belt martial artist. The way she moved seemed like magic. One sequence flowed smoothly into another, and she was able to find advantage over much bigger and stronger opponents. She taught me about how she was using leverage in different situations. It sped up my journey because I was focussed on an important and effective principle. But there was still no magic. Using her insight speeds me on the path, but there are still years of dedicated practice to gain the same precise and fluid movement.

How can you speed someone's journey today?

A picture of Self-Reliance

I work with many organisations who provide support to people with disabilities and the elderly. At face value, their clients are not very self-reliant. The truth of it is we are all reliant on others, all the time, regardless of how independent we think we are. As leaders, recognising and appreciating the people we rely on is a great way to build a sense of team, and to grow psychological safety in your workplace.

I love Steve Jobs’ take on this…

"I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.

I do not make any of my own clothing.

I speak a language I did not invent or refine.

I did not discover the mathematics I use.

I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.

I am moved by music I did not create myself.

When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.

I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.

I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being."

(An email Jobs sent to himself in 2010. Bought to my attention by James Clear in his weekly post)

Isolation - What Does it Mean at Work? (Part 2)

We definitely want to make connection and inclusion a core attribute of the places we work - see my earlier article on that topic.

However there is a balance. Most, if not all of us benefit from isolation from time to time for many reasons. In our efforts to facilitate connection and inclusion, we also need to be aware of ensuring there is space for people. How much space is different for different people and at different times. Space is useful when:

• We need dedicated thinking or production time.

• We need to rest and recharge.

• We are digesting or synthesising large amounts of information.

• We are checking the quality of something.

• We are overwhelmed.

• We are an introvert needing to recharge.

• We are neurodivergent and need space to process people, situations or experiences.

• We are solving problems.

• We are deciding strategy.

• We are dealing with trauma.

• And lots of other reasons…

And sometimes in the situations above, it may be connection we need. Thinking and talking about the quality of our connections, inclusion, and the space we give each other at work helps build a high performing, psychologically safe environment.

Isolation - What Does it Mean at Work?

16 years ago, I did a 12 day solo survival walk. An isolated part of Western Australia was the backdrop. Sourcing food and water from the land. Sleeping on the ground in just my clothes. When I first started, being alone and unplugged was an absolute luxury, but as the days wore on the effort of doing 100% of everything and having no one to share the scene, decisions, insights etc became wearing. There were moments when I felt the impact of isolation at a deep and visceral level. Without an external reference point, my mind explored all manner of answers to the question “Who am I?”. Some of it was useful and enjoyable. Some of it had a darker edge.

Since then there’s been a regular stream of survival shows that leave people alone. There’s a consistent pattern to the exits. Early on people with insufficient skill or experience quickly pull out and retreat to home. Of the people left, many have the skills to survive a very long time, if not indefinitely. Eventually, they all quit because they crave the company of others. Assuming no medical reasons for withdrawal, it's the isolation that gets people. We are meant to be with other people.

It’s no surprise to me that isolated work (including work from home) is listed as one of the potential risks in workplace psychosocial hazards. The baseline is to consider how we facilitate connection and inclusion in inherently isolated working settings. But I reckon the gold standard is to become really aware of how we potentially isolate people in any setting.

Who has access to resources and opportunities?

Are we Cliquey?

Are people snubbed or shunned for behaviour, appearance, professional background, belief, or any other factor?

How are social connections working? Everything from casual chats over coffee to formal events.

While we don’t have to include everyone in everything all of the time (That would get really cumbersome), we should be having regular conversations about what connection looks like in our workplace. How is it at yours?

A Cautionary Tale

I was called in to facilitate a discussion between six team members from a settlement agency in a small open plan office. On a daily basis, they relied on each other for information, and to ensure timely settlements took place.

As with any workplace, there were a number of characters who would be unlikely to have much to do with each other outside work. Over the course of about two years, what started as a minor issue escalated to a full-blown investigation into bullying allegations. The heightened state of friction and tension in the office was causing significant performance issues, both individually and across the whole business. Balls were being dropped, and financial penalties were being applied due to non-delivery. The business was not dealing particularly well with the issue, and there was even the possibility of a massive escalation of the original complaint.

There were two issues that had once been minor, and had been allowed to escalate to the stage where they threatened work effectiveness, performance, peoples’ health, and the very company itself. The first was a personality clash that was exaggerated by the open plan office environment and sloppy personal and organisational management. Two people would spend large amounts of time talking about social situations and their personal lives. The kinds of conversations we all have over coffee, a meal or after work. The fact that it was during work time and in an open workspace had another colleague attempting to join the conversation. The others didn’t want to include her in the conversation. So far this is a minor issue.

Over time she felt increasingly excluded and marginalised from the conversations. She tried harder to join them. The other two increasingly shunned her and eventually escalated their behaviour to the point that a bullying and harassment complaint was made and the subsequent investigation found that they had not treated their colleague appropriately. Going forward there was considerable and difficult work required to repair the fractured relationships to the point that they could work effectively together again. Success would now require significant commitment, effort and willing participation from all parties.

In parallel, the person who eventually made the bullying complaint had several genuine performance issues with her work. Her manager had not dealt with these, and they too had escalated until the situation was untenable.

But the time I was involved, it was pretty much impossible for the manager to deal with any of the performance issues, without them being seen as an extension of the bullying the woman was experiencing. It seemed unlikely that the various players could find a space to move on from the issues. Their demeanour and attitudes suggested they would just continue to escalate their part in the drama.

Both issues could have been easily dealt with when they were hotspots or small tears. Like many in the face of tension, friction or conflict, the manager and others had avoided the issue for so long it had become largely unsalvageable.

The manager (and others) could have taken action to clarify expectations, set the bar, and catch it early. They could have:

• Addressed the issue of excessive social chat in the open plan work environment, especially when the conversations were not intended to be shared with everyone. Simply leaving these conversations for a morning coffee break or lunch would have made the issue disappear before it got traction.

• Addressed the performance issues as soon as they were noticed - initially by asking if the person needed support or clarification of their role, and ultimately through formal performance management if needed.

• Had a whole team conversation about expectations and behaviour in the open plan environment which would have enabled the team to set and monitor their own benchmarks for healthy ways of working together and getting the job done, as in the next case study.

The Edges of Clarity

“We meet and agree on the direction of the project. But then I find work is being done that is counter to the strategic direction we have agreed.” (A CEO)

“One of the decision makers is unavailable to meet for extended periods. Meanwhile we have to decide and take action. Then he shows up, doesn’t like the decisions and ‘throws grenades’.” (Company Director)

“My manager meets with me weekly and keeps getting involved in the nitty gritty of my projects. I’m a senior practitioner with years of experience managing projects like this. When she gets involved in this way, I feel like my skills aren’t valued and it slows everything down.” (Senior Technical Project Manager)

“Mate, we just sit on the sidelines until ‘Bullshit Castle’ tells us what to do. If we start anything, they always come and change it anyway, so what's the point? Might as well chill til they make up their mind.” (Frontline Supervisor)

Have you ever heard or said things like these? They are all real examples from coaching sessions over the years. All stem from a lack of clarity. Lack of clarity burns time, energy and resources. Do-overs, stress, frustration, lack of momentum, fatigue, cynicism are byproducts.

The challenge for clarity is that your expectations and assumptions are probably different to mine. Unless we spend some time understanding the gaps and creating alignment, we are destined to carry unnecessary load. It’s no wonder that “Lack of Clarity” is listed as a psychosocial hazard in the updated Work Health and Safety Legislation in Australia.

Time spent increasing clarity is never wasted time. It’s a case of slowing down to speed up. Where could you add clarity today?

Smiling: The Simplest Super Power

We were heading into an awkward moment, neither sure what to do next. I was being served by an older Malay woman in a store in Kuala Lumpur. Her limited English was way better than my limited Bahasa, so it was the language we were using. I asked a question, and despite our best efforts together, I couldn’t make it clear, and she couldn’t understand. We were both getting a little frustrated, not with each other, but with our mutual misunderstanding. I smiled. She smiled back. We laughed. It was a moment of human connection. Frustration dissipated. We tried again with more success.

According to some researchers, trust in a workplace has 2 components - Warmth and Competence. Warmth = approachability and safety. Competence = We’ll be able to get the job done. We humans judge warmth in milliseconds. Competence takes longer to establish. But guess what… If we are already seen as warm, we are more likely to be seen as competent too. A genuine smile is one of the fastest ways we have of conveying warmth. Smiling more is a simple super power to build trust and open the door for Psychological Safety.

It’s easy to forget when under pressure, in a hurry or dealing with contentious topics. And it’s also all the more important. Experiment with smiling more, I’d love to hear your results.

Mark the Boundaries

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

One of the reasons sporting games work so well is the crystal clear boundaries. Everyone knows what defines the field of play. What’s in and what’s out. How to score. Even when there is technical complexity, the rules are clear, and create the conditions for clear decision making (notwithstanding the perpetual armchair critic who can always clearly see how the ref got it wrong!). These clear constraints are what make games work. 

Lack of clarity creates ambiguity and often the result is uncertainty and/or stress. As a leader, we can contribute to clarity via regular discussion about the boundaries. Unlike a ‘field of play’ where the boundaries are clearly marked, work often has boundaries marked only in our collective understanding. If the collective understanding is fuzzy, so are the boundaries.

A simple framework for the discussion is:

• IN - what’s clearly ‘in’? Why? What purpose does it serve? How does it help us deliver? When is it important?

• OUT - What’s clearly ‘out’? Why? How does it detract or distract us from our important work? What are the consequences if we are ‘out of bounds’? How can we stop or reset ‘play’ when we are ‘out’?

• DISCUSS - Some areas of our work are open to discussion or judgement and creativity. What constitutes ‘good enough’? What’s our appetite for risk? How do we decide when we disagree, and there are sound reasons for each position? How will we innovate if it hasn’t been done before? What do we do when we are caught by surprise or disrupted? How should we use our judgement? Discussion in the fuzzy territory between clearly in or out results in greater clarity of the boundaries.

This approach can be applied to specific roles, delegation, projects, decision making process, team norms/expectations, delivery against metrics and more.

Where could you clarify boundaries today?

The Busy Dillema

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I was working with a leader (let’s call her Beth) last week who echoed a familiar theme. Busy! Not just with ‘busy work’. Beth faces a continual assault of important things joining her action list. Much of it is ‘Mission Critical’ - left for too long it becomes both important and urgent. Like many, she feels the timeframe for action is getting compressed. The result? Close range focus and compelling reactivity. Both feed the sense of urgent transactional pressure. So how the hell do you add clarity in the midst of that!

One of the simplest levers is to look for recurring patterns and see if you can inject clarity early. Beth works in human services and has an important customer whose service sometimes reaches a crisis point where their family gets involved. At a minimum, this requires some careful communication. At worst it results in a formal complaint and mandated response/action. The urgent (and important) requirement to respond adds pressure to Beth, her team and the person receiving the service.

When we unpacked it in detail, most of the issues arise because the family doesn't have enough information about what is happening. The family, Beth and her team spend hours (sometimes days) resolving the situation. When Beth contacts the family regularly to update them on the service, the larger concerns are dealt with while they are still manageable. It adds clarity for everyone. Adding a regular call or visit to update the family saves time and adds value for everyone involved.

The challenge for Beth is she is genuinely busy. The service is mostly going well. Making those regular calls will be in competition with many other urgent tasks. AND proactive action like this always creates clarity, capacity and alleviates pressure.

What are the recurring pressure points for you? What action could you take to add clarity and reduce the pressure?

Clear as Mud

Image by Hans from Pixabay

One of the greatest barriers to effective work is getting clear about what we want, need or expect for a job well done. Here are some examples of lack of clarity getting in the way of good work. They are all live examples from my own interactions with staff, or from leaders I coach.

• A designer sends me some sample ideas based on an initial brief. It’s not even close to what I was expecting. I’m baffled, because I’m sure I have been really clear about what I consider some of the fundamental ‘must haves’ in the design. When I go back to my brief I find several areas that I thought were crystal clear, but on reflection are very ambiguous. I have not set the designer up for success. I could have done a much clearer job of the brief. The designer could have asked for more clarification.

• A manager gets very frustrated when a high priority piece of work has received no attention for several weeks. They had given an urgent task to the person responsible. The urgent task was interpreted as a ‘drop everything else’ priority. He had shifted all his effort and attention to the new task. It left the manager questioning his capability and him feeling ambushed and unsupported.

• A team gets delegated work from their team leader. They take no action. Why? Because the team leader has a pattern of taking over part way through a delegated task and ‘re-doing’ it because it’s not ‘up to standard’. Neither the leader or the team can articulate what the ‘standard’ is. The team has decided to wait until the team leader initiates the direction, because it feels like a waste of time to do otherwise.

• A director gives a senior leader responsibility for coordinating the scheduling of staff for significant remote area projects that the team is delivering. The leader starts organising a detailed roster to ensure expertise, breaks, and logistics are all taken into account for each trip. She’s told she’s overstepping the mark. The directors wanted to be able to assemble their own project teams. The senior leader was completely confused about what was expected. Turns out they wanted someone tracking workloads and scheduling issues, to advise on team makeup, rather than someone to actually assemble the team. Both had a really different picture of what ‘coordination’ meant.

All these examples burnt time, energy and resources. They created frustration and more work to arrive at good outcomes. All of them involved capable, competent and enthusiastic people. Lack of clarity was a significant factor in all of them.

Do you have similar experiences where you work? What’s the impact?

Lack of role clarity is listed as a potential psychosocial hazard. Lack of clarity adds to workload and can certainly contribute to stress. Clarity also contributes to a sense of certainty and acts as a launch pad for high performance. Next time we’ll talk about what we can do to add clarity.

How quickly will we evolve?

The recent formalising of Psychosocial Hazards in Australian Work Health and Safety legislation is a fantastic evolution. We have been aware of the risks to people’s well being (Both mental and physical) from Psychosocial Hazards for a long time, and it’s taken a while for it to be seen as a hazard that needs to be actively managed.

Early in the industrial age accidents and fatalities were an accepted and expected outcome in work environments. The attitude was largely “You know the risks, so the responsibility is on you. By the way, it might not end well”. Over time safety and risk became the subject of increased awareness and responsibility for employers, transitioning through cultures dominated by compliance/policy/procedure and ultimately growing to deep safety cultures. The exemplars of this are zero blame cultures where safety is prioritised over production. Everyone is empowered to call a halt if something seems unsafe, and there are continual conversations about how it can be made more safe.

We are just emerging from the equivalent of “you know the risks” in PsychoSocial Hazards. You can track it in laguage like:

• Stress is part of the job, suck it up

• Go to the hardware and buy a bucket of harden up

• Your emotions have no place at work

• Everyone is busy, deal with it

• Yes he’s a bully, but he’s also a great performer we’ll all just have to put up with it

These are fading, but they haven’t gone away. We now have a regulatory environment. How quickly can we evolve to cultures of deep responsibility where we are encouraged to call out unsafe practice, hold each other to account, educate rather than blame? We have a road map in the physical WHS space that has been a roughly 200 year evolution. Let's not take that long on psychosocial hazards. The clock has been ticking for a while.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be exploring some of the hazards named in the excellent Worksafe “CODE OF PRACTICE - Psychosocial hazards in the workplace” and especially how these contribute to a high performance culture as well as one free from harm. Just like physical safety, it makes sense regardless of what metric you measure.

Quick Way to Reduce Stress

Breathing has long been known to reduce stress. In my first book “Thrive and Adapt” I recommend rhythmic breathing as a quick way to get back to clarity, presence and focus in moments of pressure. At the time I wrote it, that was the most evidence based tactic I could find. Turns out there’s an even more effective approach called the Physiological Sigh.

How? Take a long, deep inhale through the nose. Follow immediately with a second short sharp inhale through the nose. Then ‘sigh’ a very long exhale through the mouth.

There’s lots of evidence based research suggesting this is the fastest way to de-stress in a moment of pressure. It also has a number of great benefits for respiratory system health.

The Guerrilla Mindfulness tactic in “Thrive and Adapt” has 3 steps:

1. Take 3 long slow rhythmic breaths in and out. Focus on rhythm.

2. Say how you feel.

3. State your intention for what you are doing, or are about to do.

Practice in transitions. Use it anywhere. In light of this more current information, I suggest amending step 1 to a Physiological Sigh.

I’d love to know how you find it in practice.

Image by yeison bueno from Pixabay

P.S. If you’d like a free chapter of Thrive and Adapt about Guerrilla Mindfulness, send me a message and I’ll email it to you.

P.S.S. If you’d like to take a deep dive into actionable research about breathing, this 2.5hr episode of the Huberman Lab goes into great detail about the Physiological Sigh and other breathing tactics.

Fringe Magic and Psychological Safety for Leaders

Last week I took a risk. It worked out beautifully. I teamed up with Stuart Lightbody, a globe-trotting, award-winning magician who was in Perth for Fringe Festival. We ran a leadership workshop together. I learned 3 clear lessons from Stuart that any leader can apply. Each has a direct impact on Psychological Safety.

• Play Host - Well before the show starts, Stuart focusses his energy on the audience. His shows are designed to create wonder. His focus is on what people will experience, rather the technical elements needed to make it happen. As people arrive, he greets them with infectious enthusiasm. Acting as host takes us out of our own head and gets us thinking about what others need for success. We could all do more of that in our work.

• Embody It - “If I want people to be curious or amazed, it helps if I am too”, Stuart said. Don’t try to impose emotion, disposition or thoughts on others. They are their own person and forcing them to show up a particular way almost always leads to showing up less authentically. Invite them into the ideal state for the work you are doing. Model it, but don't force it. I worked with a leader once who was scathing of anyone pointing out potential barriers or challenges to a project. She was forcing an artificial positivity (interestingly her own demeanour at these times was far from positive). People stopped raising challenges and several projects got sideswiped by issues that people could foresee but didn’t feel safe to speak about. The same leader could have framed the challenges through a lens of positive regard for her staff. If she assumed that they were challenging in order to drive success, and invited them into a positively framed exploration of the challenges, the results would have been much closer to what she and her team desired.

• Audience-Centred - No doubt there are many details Stuart needs to take care of for his shows to work, but these are invisible to the audience. When he designs and hosts his shows, he’s immersed in what it will be like from their point of view. He embodied the same positive enthusiasm when we met to design our workshop. It immediately created an open and curious space for us to work in. Especially when we are a subject matter expert, it’s easy to feel like people need to know everything. Usually that is confusing and overwhelming. I remind myself of this regularly as I counter my desire to give people a ‘complete’ workshop rather than a good one. Every time I stray over the line the feedback is that the workshop was confusing, or there wasn’t enough time. Give people enough to achieve what they need but not more. Design for value from their perspective rather than yours.

These 3 - Play Host, Embody It, and Audience Centred if done consistently and well, create a safe and open environment. It will be focussed on the right work, the right people, the right atmosphere and the right result. That makes commercial sense. It might even be magic.

On Trust

I got asked a great question. “Is trust the same as Psychological Safety in a team or organisation?” It’s not but they are closely related. Building one without the other is probably impossible. Both involve some initial faith and investment before they are backed by evidence. Hemingway once said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” There’s some risk involved. What if they turn out to be untrustworthy?

There are 2 useful questions to ask yourself/others in the team about trust:

1. How readily do you trust someone? We all sit somewhere on a continuum from ‘I assume everyone is trustworthy’ to ‘I trust no one’. At the extremes are dangerous territory. Too trusting is gullible and easily taken advantage of. Too distrustful and you are unlikely to ever work well with others. You'll always be watching your back.

2. If trust is broken, how readily do you restore it? Again it's a continuum. For some, any perceived breach of trust means they will never trust again. For others, they’ll repair broken trust easily.

Understanding what it takes for each person to give their trust and to fix it is useful.

I reckon a useful mindset is to assume people are inherently trustworthy. It speeds our ability to work well together. And we’ll build psychological safety more quickly too.

Consciously build and defend both.