022 Psychological Safety - A Common Mistake for New Leaders
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This is Dr. Tori. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show where we make every day better and we influence for good.
In other episodes, I covered some aspects of psychological safety. Such as the body language of listening. I covered the Chinese or Mandarin word ting, which means to listen and all of its various aspects being present, hearing, seeing, feeling, et cetera. I covered multiple aspects of psychological safety and why it's important to create an environment where it's safe to speak up, especially in high risk professions and high risk environments
but also even in our homes, especially if you're raising children to be able to be safe, to bring up areas of concern, areas of embarrassment or.
Just areas of curiosity. If you create an environment where it's psychologically safe. To bring up these things then you're more likely to have a better outcome. Now, that doesn't mean always being happy, always being comfortable. Look, the full range of emotions is available to an environment of psychological safety.
It's just that there's a context and a culture and an environment where that sharing of ideas or thoughts or mistakes are not met with Disapproval or judgment for the act of bringing them up. Okay so anyway, it allows the whole group to get to a better space.
But the point here of this episode is not to talk about psychological safety in all of its entirety and all of its various aspects and nuances. But instead, I want to focus on one mistake that's very common that I see leaders make, especially new leaders or people who have recently changed positions.
They have a new title, they have a new role, and they've risen to a new level of challenge. Some would say to a new level of incompetence. And one of those is establishing psychological safety in that role. Now a very common mistake that I've seen time and time again.
is where team members support that person by telling them to express some vulnerability. Hey, we're going into this meeting. The whole team is going to be there. This is a great time to start with a message where you share some vulnerability on your part. And that would be really good for going first for the rest of the group. Now, that advice is spot on when you're the leader. If you go first, you make it easier for others to follow suit when the time comes. So that advice is spot on. The mistake that occurs is often how it's implemented. So oftentimes that leader that's going to be vulnerable will tell a story or share something from their past where they almost made a mistake.
But they figured it out or they turned it around or something and somehow they end up being The still being the hero of their story.If you're the hero of the story, it's probably not the best story to tell as an act of vulnerability. In other words, typically the best story or the best act of vulnerability is when we yield to someone else's opinion or we yield to someone else's path forward.
So the pattern might be when I Did XYZ I ran into this challenge and I stumbled and as I stumbled this person over here or this other group of people or so and so stepped forward and they gave this advice or they did this act or they took this action and in so doing turned it around so I want to celebrate them.
So instead of you being the hero of the story, you tell the story in such a way that the other person is the hero that the other person rescued you from that mistake or from that judgment or from that embarrassment, or helped you get to that better place.
so the biggest mistake is to make yourself the hero of your story of vulnerability, because many times that comes off as the exact opposite of vulnerability. It comes off as, I almost didn't do something great, but I still ended up being great. Like that is not conveying vulnerability at all and will often backfire.
So if you're about to tell a story and you think you're being vulnerable. Examine. Am I the hero of this story or is someone else the hero of this story? If someone else is the hero of the story, then you might be on the right track. I hope you found this helpful. I'll see you in the next episode.
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