Importance of Treating Psychological Safety as a Journey

Amy Edmondson defines psychology safety as “a belief that one will not be punished for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.” The benefit is that this can lead to high performing teams and innovative ideas.  To align with a shared belief at a team or organization level, it explicitly requires a change in the way a culture works and this will take time. 

More specifically, a culture shift that must occur in the following areas: openness to asking questions instead of staying quiet for fear of looking ignorant; admitting mistakes instead of hiding them for fear of looking incompetent; offering ideas instead of holding on to them for fear of looking intrusive; and challenging norms instead of sitting back for fear of sounding negative. 

As it can take time to shift to a culture of psychological safety, I have seen great benefits in treating this as a journey.  I encourage this as my experience has shown that attaining psychological safety requires several components that work together.  With that in mind, I’ve created, tested, and applied what I dub the Psychological Safety Roadmap.  This roadmap is meant to be adaptive as your starting point and the dynamic as each organization is different.  The journey and practices therein are meant to be spaced-out and applied over months as building psychological safety takes time.  As you proceed with your journey, you may also add or adapt the components of the roadmap.  

The components or metaphorically the cities along the journey to psychological safety include: Get to know one another; Establish Safety Norms; Show Vulnerability; and Practice Safety via Feedback.  Within each city, there are a lot games and practices you can visit or try, each supporting the city you are in.  It is important to understand that the roadmap is not meant to be sequential and instead, several cities may be visited concurrently.  The only exception is you should visit the city of Getting to know one another before visiting the city of Showing Vulnerability.  My experience has shown that it is easier to show vulnerability after you get to know someone. 

Now let’s visit each city on the roadmap.  The city of Get to know one another includes practices and games where team members will, well, get to know one another.  The intent is if we know about each other, conversations tend to be safer and easier. This includes practices and games such as “Who am I?”, “If I were an animal, what would I be?”, “How do we educate ourselves”, and “Checking-in”.  

The second city on the roadmap is Establish Safety Norms.  The intent here is to make meetings a safe space to encourage speaking up with ideas, questions, and concerns.  This includes practices and games such as “All voices will be heard”, “Learn to repeat”, and encourage such attributes as being curious and non-judgmental. 

The next city is Show Vulnerability with the intent that being open and showing vulnerability helps build trust and creates a safe space within a team.  This includes practices and games such as “Circle of Vulnerability”, “I Feel Safer When”, and “Three Before Me”. 

The fourth city on the roadmap is Practice Safety via Feedback. The intent is giving feedback with good intent helps build trust and create strong relationships.  This includes practices and games such as "Appreciative feedback", "Differentiating feedback", and "Reflection for improvement".  

As you approach the Psychological Safety Roadmap, remind yourself that it is not meant to be a sequential journey nor are the games and practices a definitive list of what can be applied along the journey.  You (or your team) are meant to visit several cities (and practices and games therein) sometimes concurrently and it will take many months to achieve psychological safety.  Enjoy the journey and remember that your goal is to create a safe environment for people to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.  This can lead to high performing teams and innovative ideas. 

To learn the basics of psychological safety, consider reading: Psychological Safety leads to High-Performing Teams.

Building an AI and Agile Culture of Learning

Does your AI and Agile education begin and end with barely a touch of training?  A number of colleagues have told me that in their companies, training ranged from 1 hour to 1 day.  With this limited training, they were expected to implement and master the topic.  AI nor Agile isn’t simply a process or skill that can be memorized and applied. It is a culture shift. Will this suffice for a transformation toward AI and Agile?

Education is an investment in your people.  A shift in culture requires an incremental learning approach that spans time.  What works in one company doesn’t work in another. A learning culture should be an intrinsic part of your transformation that includes skills, roles, process, culture and behavior education with room to experience and experiment.

A transformation requires a shift toward a continuous learning culture which will give you wings to soar!  You need a combination of training, mentoring, coaching, experimenting, reflecting, and giving back. These education elements can help you become a learning enterprise.  Let's take a closer look at each:

Training is applied when an enterprise wants to build employee skills, educate employees in their role, or roll out a process. It is often event driven and a one-way transfer of knowledge. What was learned can be undone when you move back into your existing culture.

Coaching helps a team put the knowledge into action and lays the groundwork for transforming the culture. Coaching provides a two-way communication process so that questions can be asked along the way. A coach can help you course-correct and promote right behaviors for the culture you want.

Mentoring focuses on relationships and building confidence and self-awareness. The mentee invests time by proposing topics to be discussed with the mentor in the relationship. In this two-way communication, deep learning can occur.

Experimenting focuses on trying out the new skills, roles, and mindset in a real world setting.  This allows first-hand knowledge of what you’ve learned and allows for a better understanding of Agile.

Reflecting focuses on taking the time to consider what you learned whether it is a skill, process, role, or culture, and determine what you can do better and what else you need on your learning journey. 

Giving back occurs when the employee has gained enough knowledge, skills, experience, to start giving back to their community to make the learning circle complete. Helping others highlight a feeling of ownership to the transformation and the learning journey.

It takes a repertoire of educational elements to achieve a culture shift and becoming a Learning enterprise. When you have people willing to give back is when the learning enterprise has become full circle and your enterprise can soar.

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For more Agile related Learning and Education articles, consider reading:

• Agile Education Engine - Bringing power to your Agile Transformation - http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/2014/11/agile-education-engine-bringing-power.html
• There is no Success of Fail, only Learn - http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/2015/12/there-is-no-success-or-fail-only-learn.html
• How a Self-organizing Agile Education Vision can help your Agile Transformation - http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/2014/02/how-self-organizing-education-vision.html

Agile Retrospective – the Gift that keeps on Giving

As we approach the holiday season and the new year, it may be a good time to celebrate our past success, understand where we may need to improve, and commit to where we want to go in the future.  Applying a “Year-in-Review Retrospective” can be a good way to do this.  This type of Retrospective asks you to reflect on the year (e.g., 2014), embrace what you are thankful for, and help you build meaningful and realistic resolutions for the new year. 

Borrowing a page from an Agile retrospective, here is a personal way to conduct a "Year-in-Review Retrospective".  It can be done individually, with your family, or any size cohort of people.   The 12th Agile Principle asks us “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”  This can be adapted to read “At regular intervals, we celebrate our successes, reflect on areas for improvement, and commit to resolutions to improve. “

Let’s begin by establishing a framework for applying the retrospective.  Let’s call this the Retrospective Starter Kit.   We start with creating a reflection (or retrospective) board.  This board should have a place to indicate “What I am Thankful for” (or “What we are Thankful for”), “What can be Improved”, and “Actions for Improvement”. 

Start with reflecting on what went well over the past year.  Document the successes and events and then put them in an order of significances or importance.  Then take a moment and celebrate what went well (maybe over a drink and with some music in the background).

Next, reflect on what was problematic over the past year.  Write each statement as a problem.  Avoid jumping to solutions (that will come next).  Once all problems are listed, prioritize which problems may be the most significant or challenging. 

Lastly, take the top 2 or 3 problems and consider actions for improvement.  You want to identify the root cause for each problem so that you establish a solution that addresses the cause behind the problem.  For example, if the problem is that “I am out of shape”, suggesting a solution of “I need to work out” may not be the only action.  Instead, applying root case techniques may uncover that you need to create time in your schedule first.  Otherwise simply saying that you should “work out” will be unrealistic.  Once you have identified actions, then you must commit to your resolutions (or actions that you identified).   

Over time, if you find the retrospective valuable, you may want to conduct this practice in an increasingly timely manner, possibly every month.  Within an Agile context, this occurs at the end of each iterative of work which could be weekly, bi-weekly, every three weeks, or four weeks.

Finally, in the spirit of giving, may I gift you with the following items:

• Agile Adoption Roadmap – this blog offers many helpful ways to implement and practice Agile to achieve an Agile mindset and receive the business benefits of being Agile. 
• Being Agile: Your Roadmap to a Successful Adoption of Agile – in 24 concise chapters, this book focuses on the business benefits of Agile and then introduces you to the Ready, Implement, Coach, and Hone (RICH) deployment model as a pathway to help you in your Agile transformation.     

Happy Holiday and Celebrate, Reflect, and Improve!