Exploring Psychological Safety and Danger with Ola Tunde

Agile Coaches' Corner

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Ola Tunde, who is a principal consultant in AgileThought Company. In today’s episode, Ola and Dan discuss the topic of psychological safety and psychological danger; they dive deep into the meaning of these two concepts, providing valuable and practical examples.

Psychological safety needs to be promoted by leaders to foster innovation and to create a better atmosphere where employees can express themselves in an authentic way without fearing failure, but on the contrary, embracing every mistake as a learning opportunity.

Key Takeaways

• What do psychological safety and psychological danger mean?
• • Psychological safety is the ability to be transparent and to be honest without the fear of danger.
  • Psychological danger is the inability to admit I am wrong or a failure.
  • Innovating is only possible when leadership allows failure, and most of the time when trying something new you will fail many times before achieving success.
  • Every team member should be able to admit a failure or better called a learning opportunity.
• The concept of personal agility and its bond to trust.
• • If a team member does not trust a colleague or someone he or she is working for, there is bitterness that will result in a lack of innovation.
  • Trust is needed to go over the fear of failure.
• What are some strategies that could increase psychological safety?
• • Show people how much you care. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
  • Care about how you make people feel, wisely Maya Angelou stated, “People will forget what you say, do, or give to them but they will never forget how you make them feel.”
  • Care about the human being, not the resources.
  • Bring your humanity to work; share something personal and create personal and authentic connections.
  • Have aligned values and aligned perspectives.
• How can a manager or a leader foster psychological safety?
• • Leaders should come to the place where the work is done, participate in ceremonies, engage with the employees, and know about them and what is going on in their lives.
  • Treat people so right that they don’t want to leave your company.

• What are some strategies that team members could provide for creating more psychological safety?
• • Regardless of the outcome, believe everybody on the team was doing their best given the variables they were exposed to.
  • Make sure that the people who don’t know about a certain subject, can learn about it.
  • Baby steps are important! Psychological safety happens gradually and it is a place of a continuous journey, not a destination.
  • Leaders should use metrics to create conversations not to evaluate.

Mentioned in this Episode:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Follow Them, and People Will Follow You, by John Maxwell

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