Timothy R Clark on 'The 4 Stages of Building Psychological Safety at Work '

[Music] hello everyone i hope you are enjoying our sessions by such stellar leaders from the world of work at the edhr world human capital experience apac summit well it's time to move on to our next keynote session of the day on the topic the four stages of building psychological safety at work psychological safety is a condition in which human beings feel included safe to learn safe to contribute and safe to challenge the status quo all without fear of being embarrassed marginalized or punished in some way the four stages of psychological safety are a universal pattern

that reflects the natural progressions of human needs in social settings when teams organizations and social units of all kind progress through the four stages they create deeply inclusive environments accelerate learning increase contribution and stimulate innovation to share some valuable insights on such an important and interesting topic i have the pleasure of welcoming the brain and heart behind this theory please join me in welcoming timothy r clark author of the book the four stages of psychological safety timothy is the founder and ceo of leader factor a global consulting training and assessment organization that focuses on leadership

culture and change dr clark is an international authority in the field of psychological safety and innovation large-scale change and transformation and senior leadership development he has personally worked with more than 200 executive teams around the world dr clark is the author of five books including his new bestseller the four stages of psychological safety defining the path to inclusion and innovation he has also written more than 200 articles for publications such as the harvard business review popes and past company his mantra for leaders is lead as you have no power welcome tim and thank you so

much for joining us today so without any further ado i would like to hand over the screen over to you tim hi everyone i'm tim clark and i appreciate the opportunity to join you for the ethr world human capital experience aipac summit i'm delighted to be with you today and i appreciate the opportunity to spend a few minutes with you and i hope that you will take away from this session some insights and also some tools that you'll be able to apply immediately for for value and impact in your role in the in the context

in which you are working and contributing so i'm going to take some i'm going to draw some on some tools and concepts from my recent book the four stages of psychological safety we're going to focus on psychological safety and some related concepts so here we go so here's the premise for our session today you are a cultural architect now think about that for a minute you may have not framed your role that way you you perhaps haven't seen yourself this way and maybe you're saying well who me i'm i'm an individual contributor or i'm on

a technical track or i'm recently hired may i suggest that you're a cultural architect regardless of your role it's embedded in your role the reason is you radiate influence based on the values and the norms that you model every day and there's no off switch you can't come to work tomorrow and say i don't want to be a cultural architect i'm going to take the day off and then i'll come back the next day and do it that's not how it works you are a cultural architect by virtue of your modeling behavior so the choice

is this when it comes to creating a culture we all have a choice every organization has a choice the choice is you can do it by design or you can do it by default regardless of the approach you take in the end you get a culture so the choice is not about getting a culture you will have a culture every organization every team on the planet has a culture the choice is what approach you take so do you do it by designer by default now think about the risks think about the potential unintended consequences of

approaching culture by default as we move into the 2020s this decade of culture it's increasingly becoming an intolerable risk to approach culture by default i want you to think about that as as we spend a few minutes together so if we if we say we're gonna we're going to approach it by design what are we after what are we trying to accomplish then well i think we have at least a couple of shared goals or aspirations this is how i would frame those we're trying to create a sanctuary of inclusion and second we're trying to

create an incubator of innovation i think this is the irreducible minimum now you might add characteristics of your culture based on your strategy based on your context based on your objectives fine but i think we have these two shared goals in common so how do you accomplish these goals well this leads us to the concept of psychological safety what is this concept it's been around for a while but since the pandemic began two years ago the interest in psychological safety has exploded worldwide let's think about why that is let's define this concept here's what here's

what psychological safety means we can define it in five words an environment of rewarded vulnerability this is the essence of the concept an environment of rewarded vulnerability now think about that for a minute the premise of the concept of psychological safety is this human interaction is a vulnerable activity whenever we get together and interact and furthermore you really can't be yourself you really can't learn or contribute or innovate without engaging in vulnerable activity so the question is will that vulnerable activity be rewarded or punished the answer to that question makes all the difference when it

comes to the performance of individuals and teams and organizations here's what we do we go into a social situation and we immediately begin to engage in threat detection it's normal it's natural it's instinctive we're trying to figure out if we're in a safe or an unsafe environment and so if we come to the conclusion that we're in a safe environment we will typically offer a performance response what does that look like it means you're jumping in you're eager to participate you want to contribute and create value and you feel that you can you feel that

you can release your discretionary efforts on the other hand if you think you're in an unsafe environment you will typically offer a a fear response and a fear response is different the objective of a fear response is not to create value it's to survive it's very different you need to be able to ask and answer that question so that you can be guided by your answer your answer will govern your behavior let's let's talk a little bit more about a fear response when you're on the receiving end of punished vulnerability what happens well there's a

few things that happen that we know based on research number one it activates the pain centers of the brain you process punished vulnerability in a way neurologically in a way similar to processing physical pain number two it triggers the self-censoring instinct now you'll change your behavior you'll change what you say and what you do and that makes sense because you're an adaptable creature and you're trying you're trying to protect yourself and then it's going to shift you into a defensive mode of performance and now what are you going to worry about managing personal risk preserving

yourself avoiding loss this is what we do when we are on the receiving end of punish vulnerability well let's talk about let's take it a step further what are some acts of vulnerability common everyday acts of vulnerability that we engage in as we work together every day there are many showing up greeting someone asking a question asking for help saying you don't know apologizing giving and receiving feedback it goes on and on and on challenging the status quo registering an alternative point of view we we could create a master list we could go on and

on and on what we're saying is in order to be your authentic complete self and in order to really perform at capacity you need those acts of vulnerability rewarded not punished that makes all the difference so if we reduce this if we distill this all the way down here's what we come to to change or transform culture comes down to a central mechanism and that mechanism is to model and reward acts of vulnerability this is the core skill cultural skill for the 2020s and there's no work around there's no shortcut there's no back door there's

nothing can that can substitute for not doing this this is the this this is the core mechanism for cultural transformation okay well let's let's go a little deeper into the research what we have discovered based on global survey research is that there's a pattern in the way psychological safety increases on a team or in an organization so i'm going to actually pull out my highlighter here and i'm going to kind of take you through this so psychological safety in the first place is a function of two things number one respect which you see here on

the vertical axis and then number two permission which you see here on the horizontal axis so it's the combination of those two things that gives us a level of psychological safety now that could be high it could be low it could be somewhere in the middle beyond that there is a progression through four successive stages let me take you through this very briefly when we put people together in the first place they're in a state of exclusion do you see this down at in the lower left hand corner they don't know each other they've never

worked together before by definition they're in a state of exclusion but as they begin to interact patterns emerge we call those patterns norms if those norms are inclusive then we move to the first stage of psychological safety which is inclusion safety we cross this threshold of you know of of inclusion and we move to stage one inclusion safety means that you feel included you feel accepted you feel a sense of belonging and connection this is the foundation and the governing principle of human interaction to feel those things and to be able to interact safely then

we go to stage two stage two is learner safety it means that you can engage in the learning process without fear of being embarrassed or marginalized or punished in some way that's stage two then we go to stage three contributor safety contributor safety means that you're given an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution that translates into an appropriate level of autonomy role clarity and then you have the guidance and support you need that's stage three and as you're moving through the stages you are following the sequence of satisfying basic human needs this is the sequence

that we've discovered based on global survey research then finally you arrive at stage four challenger safety this is the culminating stage it means that you feel safe to challenge the status quo without what can you finish my sentence without retaliation without retribution without jeopardizing your personal standing or reputation without putting your career on the line you're gonna cross this innovation threshold to get to stage four why is there an innovation threshold because this entire area of stage four this is where we innovate innovation by its very nature requires that we disrupt the status quo it

requires challenging behavior otherwise we can't create new solutions and solve problems and make breakthroughs this is this is an overall very quick outline of the four stages so what's the goal the goal is to move your team every team safely and successfully through the stages all the way to stage four and then sustain those conditions and not fall into the failure pattern paternalism where we're unnecessarily micromanaging people or exploitation where we're trying to extract value from people without valuing them as human beings so this is the framework of the four stages it's a universal empirical

pattern that cuts through demographics cuts through psychographics cuts cuts through cultural attributes let's take a little closer look at each stage real quick stage one is inclusion safety here's the full definition inclusion safety satisfies the basic human need to be included accepted and belong it means it's not expensive to be yourself you're accepted for who you are including your unique attributes and defining characteristics let me give an example so early in my life i grew up in southern colorado in the united states among the navajo this is a native american tribe the second largest tribe

next to the cherokee my father was a teacher among the navajo so i grew up with the navajo and i experienced stage one inclusion safety in spite of the the significant differences that we had in culture and customs and mores and traditions and beliefs they invited us into their society and we invited them into our society and we were able to navigate the differences very very successfully because we kept that foundation of inclusion safety in place the respect and the permission and so we learned how this works let me summarize stage one inclusion safety this

is the foundation is a human right it's not something you earn it's owed to you it's an entitlement if you're human and you do not present the team with harm i am morally obligated to include you so we can say it this way including another human being should be an act of prejudgment i don't need to think about it in advance because it's based on your worth as a human being it's not an act of judgment based on your worthiness this is not about worthiness this is about applying a worth test to each other based

on humanity not a worthiness test when we get that mixed up we sow the seeds of division but when we apply a worth test we can create and sustain a deeply inclusive environment so that's stage one let's go to stage two briefly do i feel safe to learn here's the full definition learner safety satisfies the basic human need to learn and grow you feel safe in the learning process asking questions giving and receiving feedback experimenting even making mistakes and you'll be rewarded for those acts of learning vulnerability here's what we know about learning learning is

both intellectual and emotional you cannot separate in the learning process you cannot separate the thinking brain from the feeling brain you cannot pull them apart and so it's so essential that we nurture safety by rewarding acts of learning vulnerability starting with asking a question and all other forms of of of learning vulnerability that we engage in here's what we know based on the research an emotionally bruised learner how do you become emotionally bruised as a learner by the way when you have your acts of learning vulnerability consistently punished what does that do to you over

time it bruises you emotionally and then you become cognitively impaired as a learner you cannot learn at capacity on the other hand if your acts of learning vulnerability are consistently rewarded you become emotionally empowered and you are now cognitively enabled as a learner do you see the difference the difference is profound so we need teams and organizations that are consistently rewarding acts of learning vulnerability that's stage two now let's go to stage three contributor safety contributor safety satisfies the basic human need for autonomy and contribution you feel safe and are given the opportunity and role

clarity to use your skills and abilities to make a difference so let's talk a little bit about the social exchange that happens with stage three it's different than stage one stage one as you'll recall is a human right inclusion safety is a human right by the time you get to stage three we're not talking about human rights anymore you have to earn the autonomy through results so the team gives you autonomy in exchange for your results autonomy is not free we're all accountable organizations are built on the principle of accountability and that is as it

should be we're all accountable we just we need to understand that when we get to stage three we have to earn that autonomy through demonstrated track record of performance so that's stage three then finally we get to stage four the culminating stage this is where everything comes together and we see the fullest expression of psychological safety here's the definition challenger safety stage 4 satisfies the basic human need to make things better you feel safe to speak up and challenge the status quo when you think there's a need or opportunity to improve so if we're watching

if we're observing a team that is demonstrating stage four challenger safety what do we see what patterns would we observe let me show you the patterns that we are we are seeing as we work with teams around the world when you get to stage four you see cultural flatness yes there's still a hierarchy but we're much more agnostic to title and position and authority we can debate issues on their merits we can create an idea meritocracy so there's cultural flatness there's constructive descent dissent isn't merely tolerated it's rewarded it's expected there's a very high tolerance

for candor and there's creative abrasion ideas are colliding and rubbing against each other this is what we see when we get to stage four in teams that exhibit these patterns they far outperform our expectations let's talk a little bit about the social exchange here so what does it look like well the team gives you air cover for your in exchange for your candor you're gonna you're going to be protected in those acts of challenging the status quo okay now one last thing that i want to mention there's a central defining characteristic for teams that get

all the way to stage four challenger safety and here's the here's the pattern they develop intellectual friction to extremely high levels the intellectual friction is vital for innovation this is the raw material to solve difficult problems to create new solutions to make breakthroughs to innovate you cannot do it without intellectual friction at a high level but they keep the social friction it's down at the same time why well there's a tendency as the intellectual friction rises the social friction will have a tendency to rise at the same time why because we're human we get defensive

we're temperamental we take things personally we get territorial that's the problem though because the social friction at some point will shut down the intellectual friction so we need to maintain the respect and the permission which is the basis right it's it's the very definition of psychological safety if you can do that you will achieve the highest level of performance as a team so i want you to think about this and i hope that our time together has shaken loose some insights i'm going to leave you with one parting thought to kind of summarize the single

most important factor in creating psychological safety is your modeling behavior remember you either lead the way or get in the way you can't be a neutral party when it comes to psychological safety now that's a sobering thought but it's also a very exciting thought because your influence as a cultural architect is vitally important to your team so i hope that you'll reflect on what we've covered today psychological safety and the framework of the four stages and your role as a cultural architect and i appreciate very much the opportunity to be with you at this apac

summit thanks so much what a wonderful session and such crisp insights coming in tim from you thank you so much once again for joining us today i will go back to tim's own words where he said the single most important factor in creating psychological safety is your modeling behavior remember you either lead the way or get in the way so with that ladies and gentlemen we conclude this session with tim i will request him to address our audience questions and you can reach out to him in case you have any further questions in your mind

coming up next our keynote closing session on the topic ritual roadmap for engaged workforce with erica piswing author of the book rituals roadmap the human way to transform everyday routines into workplace magic see you on the other side [Music] you