Where Psychological Safety and Radical Candor Meet
I came across an article this morning co-authored by two of my favorite women in the leadership space, Amy Edmondson and Kim Scott – and since this podcast is about actionable leadership development that you can integrate into your day, that's how I started my day and thought I want to share this with you right now.
So Amy's work on psychological safety is brilliant and Kim Scott's book on radical candor, if you've read it, is a game changer for leaders and teams, and that is what I want to talk to you about today. So their article on the intersection of those two fields of Kim's work on radical candor and communication and Amy's field of psychological safety and where those intersect this caught my eye.
I want you to think about psychological safety in your workplace and the ways you are communicating openly, and with candor, among your team.
Now, the reason why I love this article is that in co-authoring, they were presenting ways that psychological safety and radical candor intersect for leaders. Some people see these as two sides of a spectrum, two opposing sides. They think that radical candor is just brutal honesty and saying whatever the heck you want, which it's not. They may feel that psychological safety is just about cultivating nice and harmonious and peaceful workplaces where conflict does not exist, which that's not what psychological safety is in the workplace. We know that a peaceful harmonious workplace without conflict would be a unicorn workplace that truly doesn't exist, and conflict can be good, right? So instead, Kim and Amy break down how they work together in this article that popped up in Fast Company and it's titled, Follow these four steps to create psychological safety in your teams, super actionable, right?
So first, let's do some definitions here. I want to give you kind of some groundwork before you're gonna dive over into this article for your development today. First, radical candor – Kim Scott has defined it as the space where leaders care personally and are challenged directly. Her book is brilliant for leaders who are looking to level up their communication, and dig into the ways that feedback is really important for transforming work and transforming culture.
Then, on the flip side, if you're new to the work of Amy Edmondson, she defines psychological safety as the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. This means a psychologically safe workplace is one where people can speak up and voice ideas and take risks and openly fail and have some cushion there.
Generally in this field, we recognize that psychologically safe workplaces where people feel safe to take risks and fail and become more resilient, would require workplaces where people also feel capable of communicating, right? And they would be able to do that in ways that challenge directly, while also caring personally, which is what Kim talks about.
This article, of course, is going to make sense to most leaders already who follow these two women, it could aid me in what I'm sharing with you. But after you read this post or listen through the episode, you still have homework because I still want you to scroll down to spend five minutes reading this article and considering the four steps that you need to create psychological safety in your teams. On your way there, here's what I want you to do – I want you to assess where your team is at right now before you dive into those steps.
Heading into the final weeks of the year, when you're listening to this, things might be a little tense, right? It's just the season, it brings an added layer of stress and overwhelm to everyone and that bleeds into the workplace. When it feels like the stakes are higher, we tend to play it safe.
However, when we're talking about true psychological safety, at work, it means that we get to confidently take risks. There's a culture of resiliency that's already been established, and that's the landing zone, which is why we want to create more psychological safety on our teams in the first place.
So as you're thinking about this tricky season, I hope that you’re also thinking that you want to be a leader who's always considering bettering our workplace and considering how people are feeling safe at the moment. I want you to think about how your team might be feeling right now, because maybe it's the end of the year and they are hustling to meet sales goals for the end of Q4. Or, maybe your team has an upcoming annual performance review that they are worried about. Or, they are thinking about how they can wrap up a project on time, even if new info has presented itself, but they're like I have to finish this by the time I take a holiday break. All of this might be impacting how they're feeling about risk taking in general, and how risk and failure might impact the way people see them.
So think about the people around you. Are they able to voice opinions about the changes coming up in 2023? Can they share ideas about how to kick off 2023? Better yet, can they ask for help right now? Likewise, thinking of what’s adding to the pressure that might be going on outside of work, right? Christmas parties and school plays and family illness and travel plans and traditions, etc, etc, etc. might all be contributing to the way that we are communicating at work, or the way that we are showing up at work.
That overwhelm of all the end of the year brings both personally and professionally could be contributing to shared feelings of impending doom, or interpersonal failure, which dampens overall engagement or well being and psychological safety of the team as a whole.
So you leader, I want you to consider the ways you are leading to encourage psychological safety. Those questions I just asked, what are people stressed about? What are people overwhelmed about? Are they able to voice opinions? Can they share ideas? Can they ask for help? How are you leading to encourage psychological safety and interpersonal well being today?
Care personally, challenge directly, stay curious, and consider how psychological safety comes first for you and your team.
All right, go top off your coffee, dive into that article and find one way that you can start to put this into action today or utilize one step in that article to start facilitating and fostering a workplace of psychological safety. Leadership requires you to make the first move and start putting it into action. Now, make it happen.