Strong Leaders Serve with Teri Schmidt

197. Two Simple Practices to Build Real Psychological Safety with Jade Garratt

• Teri Schmidt

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What does psychological safety really mean beneath the buzzword? In this episode, Jade Garratt, co-founder of Psych Safety and colleague of past guest Tom Geraghty, shares practical ways leaders can move past misconceptions and create environments where teams feel safe to learn, speak up, and perform at their best.

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Today on Strong Leaders Serve. We're continuing our series on going beneath the buzzwords by tackling one that shows up everywhere, psychological safety to help us move past the surface level talk and into the practical. I'm so excited today to be joined by Jade Garrett. Jade is a writer, facilitator, and learning designer with nearly two decades of experience across education, charities, universities, and businesses. She's a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy, currently immersed in her PhD research, and she's also a co-founder of Psych Safety. She's passionate about turning big ideas into everyday practices that make workplaces healthier, happier, and high performing. And if the name psych safety sounds familiar, it's because Jade Works alongside past guest Tom Garrity from episodes 1 48 and 180 2. Together, they continue the important mission of helping leaders and teams build truly safe spaces for learning growth and performance. This conversation goes beyond definitions. We explore the misconceptions that leaders often hold about psychological safety. Why it's much more than just being nice and the practical behaviors that can make or break a team's ability to learn and thrive together. And the two practices that Jade shares for making this really practical are ones that I haven't necessarily heard before. And that can have such a big impact, not just on psychological safety. But also on the effectiveness of your meetings. So I won't make you wait any longer. Let's get into it. I'm Terry Schmidt, executive and leadership coach at Strong Leaders Serve, where we partner with organizations to prepare leaders for those everyday stretch moments of leadership, the promotion that makes old habits obsolete, the reorg that shakes trust, or the high stakes project where influence matters more than authority. And this is the Strong Leaders Serve podcast I.

Teri Schmidt:

Hi Jade. Welcome to the Strong Leaders Serve Podcast. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.

Jade Garatt:

Thank you. Thank you. Really happy to be here and looking forward to getting stuck in.

Teri Schmidt:

Yes, And as you know, we're doing a series of going beneath the buzzwords. You know, some of the terms that kind of just get tossed glibly around on LinkedIn. What, what do they actually mean and what does it take? For leaders to engage in behaviors that make those buzzwords actually mean something. And I thought, who do I wanna talk to about this term of psychological safety? And couldn't think of anyone that I would rather talk to than you. So I'm so happy that you were willing to make some time for this conversation.

Jade Garatt:

Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you. What a compliment for a start and yeah, absolutely. I think this is a great topic and you are so right. There are so many buzzwords that it can be very easy to throw around terms and assume that because we can say the word that means we've done the work and it's fine. And as long as we say the right words, we've done it. And psychological safety in many ways, as it's become better known as a concept has. To some become something of a buzzword. And yet actually doing the work of fostering psychological safety in teams and in organizations in practice is really hard and can be quite challenging and quite confronting at times. So it's great that we're gonna get a chance to get stuck in today and consider some of those challenges as well as some of the considerable benefits to doing that sort of work.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Excellent. Well, let's, before we get into that, let's start with you. I'm curious to learn about what drew you to focus on psychological safety and really how has your own growth as a leader kind of shifted the way that you approach it?

Jade Garatt:

Wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for giving the opportunity. So I I started my career as a teacher, so I'm based in the UK and I was a secondary school teacher in the uk so I taught students from 11 to 18 years old and. Something that I didn't have a name for at the time, but I really noticed very early on in teaching is that. In our classrooms as teachers, we were very good at understanding that we needed to create spaces which were safe for students to speak up in. We needed to create spaces where students could have a go, could try when things were difficult, could risk failing, could risk making mistakes, could talk about those mistakes, could ask questions could say, you know, I don't understand. I'm not sure what you mean here. Could say, I, I don't, I don't think I'm doing so well. Could raise a concern like that. And could say, I've got an idea. I think I could write this differently, or, I think I could, I think I could take this in a different direction. And, and we got that. As teachers, we really understood that we needed to create the sorts of spaces where students could do that. Where they could have what we would now consider to be psychological safety. Although I didn't have that language at the time. What I also recognized was that in terms of my own professional development as a teacher, I'm more broadly in terms of relationships with other teachers and the way in which teachers certainly in England were inspected and observed, and I'm, I'm using, supported with my air quotes, but support to develop it was actually an incredibly unsafe environment, an environment where often it felt very punitive. It felt very fearful. There was. A really high stakes culture around making mistakes, getting it wrong, which can mean that you tend to keep yourself quite small and quite safe, and maybe only try the, the things that are perhaps more guaranteed to work. And this sort of stayed with me. I, I, you know, I, I was in, I taught myself in classrooms for five years and then I moved more into leadership roles in coaching other teachers and leadership development type work. But this question I think was something I was, I was always chewing on was how do we create spaces where. Teachers and people, and, and as I've moved out of classroom teaching and out of schools, I, I worked in environments with other kinds of leaders, not necessarily teachers, but I, I found the same thing. How do we create spaces where people can have a go, where they can try, where they can say, I don't know, I really don't understand what I'm doing here. Or, or, I really need some help. And the sort of challenges around that, but also the significant benefits when we can do it. So when I came across this language of psychological safety, the this idea of creating spaces where people feel safe to speak up, to share their ideas, their questions, their concerns, and to admit their mistakes, it's like, yes, this is it. What we've, we've been trying to do, this is what we've been working on without having the language for it. And when you have the language for it, it's very powerful because we can then start to talk about it more clearly. We can be more explicit about it and we can. To an extent, name the problem. You know, we can name that. Actually the problem is when we're met with responses, which are not helping us to feel like next time it might be safe for us to speak up. So so yeah, that was, that was kind of a, a roundabout way of describing my journey to it. But I do feel like it's been a theme and. A lot of the time, what we are grappling with is, is how do we do that? How do we foster the sorts of environments? How do we demonstrate that the space is genuinely safe to ask questions, to admit mistakes, to, to raise concerns? It's not a sort of fake it till we make it thing we, we actually have to do it. We actually have to make sure that the space is genuinely safe for people to do that because how else are they going to learn? How else are we all going to learn? How else are we all going to learn together and grow and improve our practice?

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Yeah. And that last point there, you know, how else are we going to learn? And it's not, I kind of feel like in the past, maybe once someone got into the workforce. Learning wasn't as critical for them. But now in the world that we live in, you know, the, the VUCA world, that's, that's so volatile and uncertain and complex and ambiguous. The fact is we have to learn constantly. And without that psychological safety, organizations, teams, individuals are not going to be learning.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And, and teaching is an example actually of a domain where still sometimes we hear, talk about best practice as if there is one fixed way that if we just all, all get that bit better and do it this one fixed perfect way. It'll be fine. And, and the reality is, we, we know that's not the world that we live in, that we know that's not the complexity of the terrain that we are navigating. So we have to be creating spaces where people can adapt and can think differently and can problem solve to these new challenges, which are coming up all the time, literally every day, every minute of every day. And if we are not doing that. We are not actually going to be allowing ourselves and each other to, to even function fully, nevermind get better in, in the space that we're in. So it, it's so crucial. And I think, I think you're right. I think maybe has been something that's been overlooked in the past or perhaps not recognize that this is ongoing. I think maybe we've considered that someone will start their career, an early career, will do lots of learning. They've got a lot to learn at the start. There's going to be a steep learning curve. But then by the time they're in a leadership role, they'll, they've got it. They, they, of course, they must know it because they're in a leadership role, but that, that doesn't make any sense. Right? Like a, a leadership role. You're potentially managing a whole load more complexity. You're potentially looking after a lot of people and navigating whatever is going on outside of your organization and inside of your organization. That's a lot of complexity to be dealing with. There's no magic playbook that's going to. Kind of give you a step by step account as to how to work through this. We have to create spaces where people can have a go, can try something, can experiment, can fail quickly, can learn and can grow in that. So, so, yeah. I, I think we should be talking more and more about learning.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah, the work that you now do is more with, leaders and organizations as I understand it. Do you wanna speak a little bit about the work that you're currently engaged in?

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, absolutely. So, so the work that we do is with teams and organizations. It's often delivering training workshops. Sometimes it's more through sort of self-guided resources and, and facilitating learning experiences in, in more of a kind of drawn out way. Essentially what we are helping teams and organizations, and groups of people at work to do is to foster environments at work where people feel psychologically safer and therefore can learn together better and therefore can perform better. So, so yeah, that looks like everything from healthcare teams to work in, you know, large corporate organizations, businesses, some, most of the time I'd say our work is with leaders. And if we take leadership in our, in our broadest term, you know, we are all leaders in our domains at work. Sometimes it will be more working with a, a group of team members. And we'll be considering how to, how do that team as a unit, how do they work together. And we'll be perhaps facilitating more dialogue between them, more conversations helping them with tools and practices that might help them together to, to work better together. A lot of the time though, it's with groups of leaders, groups of managers and considering in in their areas, what are they doing, what's within their locus of control and locus of influence to help to create the sorts of environments we want to be creating at work.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've thrown around the term multiple times, but since we're focused on going beneath the buzzword, I think it's important to really get a clear definition of the phrase itself. And I think I heard Amy Edmondson even talk about how she wishes it wasn. Called psychological safety because it is kind of a, a complex not complex, but it, it's a, a difficult phrase to get out of your mouth, I would say. You can kind of feel smart when you're saying it, but it is one of those terms that is a little bit long. But I would love from your perspective what does it really mean? And then after that, you know, what are some of those misconceptions that leaders have about it that you see most frequently?

Jade Garatt:

Mm. Yeah, great question. And, and to your point about it's, it's difficult to say, it's also difficult to type and I type it multiple times a day, multiple times have to go back. I do know how to spell it, of course, but but trying to type all those letters in the right order is is an everyday challenge for me. So, yes, I also, it wasn't called psychological safety, something much shorter would be better please. But yeah. In our work we use Amy Edmondson's definition, which is a shared belief that it's safe in a team to to speak up with your mistakes, your questions your concerns and to share your ideas. So. It's a shared belief that that team is safe for what we call interpersonal risk taking. So that doesn't mean, you know, taking some wild business risk. It doesn't mean we're all gonna go bungee jumping together, but it means that I feel safe enough in this team. I have enough faith in this team that I will not be punished or humiliated if I take the interpersonal risk of admitting a mistake or of saying I've got an idea or of saying I'm a bit concerned or of asking a question. And each of those. Four ideas, ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes all bring a slightly different flavor to what we're talking about. There are differences between speaking up to share a new idea that you've got and the potential barriers to doing that. And perhaps the barriers to speaking up to say, I messed up there, I made a mistake. So, so this already brings some different dimensions into the term. But in a way, my, my working definition of psychological safety is that. It's the conditions necessary for a group to be learning together. And this, this leads back really to my sort of fundamental understanding of, of psychological safety, which, which goes back to my teaching days and goes back to, to my central focus on how, how are we learning together Is if a group of people. Do not have psychological safety. If they do not feel safe to share their ideas, to ask questions, to make mistakes together, you will not be able to facilitate them learning effectively together. Or certainly there'll be significant barriers to them doing that. So, so that's, that's the definition that we work with. We always find it's useful to start, and actually in all of our training sessions, we, we check in with the definition because there are so many misconceptions about what it means. For some people they, they hear the word psychological and they instantly kind of jump to, oh, this is a wellbeing initiative. This is a mental health initiative. And of course, fostering environments where people can speak up is, is actually crucial to any kind of wellbeing initiative or any kind of mental health initiative. But it, it's not the same thing. And the term wellbeing, for example, is a much, much broader term, a much broader concept. So we're talking about something quite specific and it's helpful to make sure when we have this shared language that we're talking about the same thing. So that's, I think one of the misconceptions is just muddling it with these other terms. You know, other ones would be inclusion and belonging as if it's all the same. It's all the same thing, and it's not, it's all connected. But these concepts are not all the same thing. And one of the things that I quite like about working with psychological safety is we can be quite specific about what it is that we're working on that can help us when there are challenges to better pinpoint when there's a problem. And we can sort of start from there and then we can talk about how it connects to inclusion, to wellbeing, to mental health, to belonging, or any number of other impor very important concepts. So, so that's sort of some of the misconceptions that come in. We also get. Perhaps more fundamental misconceptions about actually what does this mean? A really common one is, it, it just means being nice. It just means being nice to each other all the time. And of course, I, I, I'm often a bit conflicted with this because I think, well, I, I do want people being kind to each other for sure. Like, that's really important to work. And actually, if you want to feel safe to share your idea, knowing that your team members will be kind is going to help. Undoubtedly, and yet that alone is, is not enough. And sometimes this sort of let's just be nice, can then get warped into it. Let's just be positive all the time, even when actually we're concerned, which is the exact opposite of we're try what we're trying to do with psychological safety. We want people to feel safe enough to say, I'm worried about that. I don't think the idea will work. I've seen that go wrong elsewhere. Here's what I'm concerned about. We want to be creating spaces where people can safely dissent and express a, a diverging perspective or just say, I can see you all, you all for this, and that's wonderful, and I'm still worried about this aspect. so, so, you know, this is where we have to be really careful, I think, not to just kind of get caught up in like, oh, psychological safety. Let's, yeah, let's just, you know, say everything is great. And, you know, so that's one. And, and one final one, if I can, if I can be allowed one more, is that we can't just assume that we have it. And this is so tricky because, and and I. If I can be really honest, I see this a lot when I explain to, to sort of people I meet day to day outside of my, in my personal life, and I explain the work that we do, and very often, especially if I'm talking to people in leadership roles, if they've not really come across the concept, not really worked with it before, they'll say, oh, I, I think we have that. I think we do that in our team, and that's great and that's wonderful, and they may well be right. But chances are there's always a bit more work that we can do in this. And it's very easy when you are, when you have power, when you have authority, when you have leadership, to assume that because you feel safe to speak up, to share your ideas, to ask questions, to admit mistakes that everyone does and that everyone does with you. And that's not necessarily true. And we don't know the things that we're not hearing. So so I think just assuming that it's there, it is a, is a real risk. And actually being open to the fact that sometimes it's ourselves, it, it's perhaps the way we've responded in the past where it's perhaps a. A power gradient that we've inadvertently set up or just you know, agreed with, sort of stepped into the place of that can make it very difficult for other people to, to speak up. And we, we might not even know it's happening. We probably don't even know it's happening.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting what you said that, you know, we don't know what we can't hear, and that is, you know, the, that's the challenge here because if people don't feel safe to speak up, no matter how many times a leader says, oh, I have an open door. You know, tell me anything you feel and you know, I won't judge you for anything you say. That doesn't by itself create an environment where people do feel safe to speak up with ideas or concerns.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, absolutely. And this, this open door policy is a, is a real kind of, because I've heard this so many times and I, I'll be honest, I've probably said it as well thinking this is, this is what you say in order to see this is, this is how you should talk as a leader. And yet, actually, if you just think about the language of that, you know, my door is open, but presumably I'm in my space and I'm expecting you to cross the boundary into my space to come and speak to me. You know, I, I find this particularly thi this does get bandied around in, in schools. My door is always open. Often it's physically not. Often there is a physical barrier to that. You know, there's this, my door is metaphorically always open, but you are gonna have to knock on it and make sure that I'm not in a meeting, you're not in a call. So, you know, often it's a, it's an out and out lie. But, but also we are putting the onus on the person stepping into our space and. If we are the person with more power in this situation, if we are higher up the organizational hierarchy, that's a big ask actually. And, and really, you know, we ought to be thinking about what the spaces that we're inhabiting and how are we approaching, how are we opening up these channels of conversation that aren't expecting someone to come through through a doorway closed door open.

Teri Schmidt:

Right, right. Such a good point. So let's get into that then. I know there's so much that we could spend time on discussing and I always recommend you're in Tom's newsletter to everyone that I can. So you know, I will definitely make sure that that's included in the show notes.'cause people can go much deeper than we'll have time to go today, but I would. Love to hear from you about, you know, maybe two or three practices that are really powerful for creating psychological safety. If it's not saying you have an open door, what is it? And, and maybe we can talk, you know, kind of go in deep one by one and talk about what the practice is, but then what makes it so difficult? For leaders and what kind of internal growth is necessary perhaps for them to be able to follow through on this practice.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, definitely. And I, I love, I love practical stuff. I'm a very practical person. I love, I love things that we can think, right? Let's do this. Let's try this. So the first one, and, and we encourage this with almost all of the, the teams that we work with is that whenever you have a group of people who are meeting together for a meeting or for a project or something that they're working on, in any round of introductions and everyone who's gathering ought to be speaking in that ought to be introducing themselves because otherwise what are they doing there? But we really encourage introductions with first name and maximum a sentence describing what. Their role is in that situation of what they're actually doing, what the action is, as opposed to their job title. Because it's very easy to come in and say, hi, I'm Josh, I'm the CEO. And instantly we've created this power gradient because we all know there's Josh and he's the CEO. But actually if what we can do is say, hi. I'm Josh. And I'm here to today to make sure that the whole team is looked after. That's great. Let's start with that. If we can come and say hi, you know, I am Ellen. I'm here today to make sure that we launch this next email campaign on time rather than, hi, I'm Ellen. I'm head of marketing. I'm and, and sort of layering in these details. It is so much easier to speak up to Josh and Ellen who are here to look after the team, who are here to launch the email campaign than it is. To speak up to the CEO o to the head of marketing, to the, the person who's already told you I I'm up here. And I think you said, you know, why, why can this be difficult and, and this maybe feels like this shouldn't be that difficult, although sometimes it's quite difficult to describe what we do in action words in a really clear, we sometimes talk about the. Explain it to your five-year-old, you know, if you were, if your five-year-old, and this isn't about being patronizing towards our team members, but it's about can we be really clear about what the action is? What, what's the, what's the work that we are here to do in this particular context? Doesn't have to be our entire job role. But, but actually that can be quite challenging in itself. The other thing that can be hard, and, and I, I really understand this, you know, as someone who worked hard to move up organizational hierarchies and was very proud of those promotions when they came, it can be hard not to want to lead with that, not to want to lead with. Actually, I am head of this department and I do lead this number of people and, and actually it can take an adjustment to say, actually what I'm doing here today is being Jade and I'm here to make sure that we have the best learning experience that we can. And that's what I'm here to do. So it can take a little bit of just reflecting on which bit of this is my ego

Teri Schmidt:

Mm-hmm.

Jade Garatt:

that's okay. Like we can be friends with our egos. We can, we can say that's okay. I am still head of this. I'm still director of that. I'm still CEO. That's fine. That still sits on. Cb, it's still on my LinkedIn profile, wherever you want it to be, but we don't necessarily need to lead with that when we are meeting with people and we're working directly with people and, and it, it can just take a little bit to kind of go, I'm still credible. I'm still a valuable person in this, in this context, and I don't need to lead with that in this particular situation.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Yeah, that, that sounds so simple. And I have a couple of follow up questions about that. I, I guess the first one would be what, how effective is this when everyone already knows that that's the VP of marketing, or that's the CEO? Like, is it, is it still effective for them to introduce themself in a different way?

Jade Garatt:

Yeah. So yes, I think so. One thing that's really interesting, if you get into approachability research, which is sounds very neat, it kind of is. But is that we assume that approachability or we tend to assume is, is a fixed characteristic as in. I'm an approachable person or I'm not an approachable person. And that's kind of an innate part of who we are. And, and this often catches some of us out'cause we can assume that, well, I'm a nice person, I'm a good person, that people will approach me. But actually what you find when you start to research approachability in the sense of how, how, how willing, how ready are people actually to come and approach you. You find it's highly, highly contextual. So even if you are typically a very approachable person. If someone in that moment perceives you to be a bit stressed or to have maybe just snapped about something or to be just preoccupied, distracted, maybe on your emails or something in that moment, they still won't approach you.

Teri Schmidt:

Hmm.

Jade Garatt:

It's much more contextual than we think it is. Which is is both a kind of, oh no. We can assume that we've got some stuff in the bank'cause we've been approachable in the past and we think we're an approachable person. But it can, we can also use this to our favor because. Even if you are the CEO, even if you're the director of, you know, whatever faculty department you know, whatever division you can still influence the way that you're perceived in that moment, in that context. Through the way that you introduce yourself, through the way that you come across, through your presence in that space. So we have more influence in the moment than we think we do. It's not going to erase it. Like, like you said, people will still know you're the ceo. People will still know you're, you're this person. And that is probably still going to have an inhibiting effect because there is still a power gradient there. But what we don't want to be doing is exacerbating it. And what we wanna be doing is, is just actually saying to people right now. This is safe right

Teri Schmidt:

Mm.

Jade Garatt:

here to be talked to. That's, that's what I'm in this space for.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah, that's fascinating. I didn't even know there was a field of approachability research and now I want to learn more about it. But that is so powerful that you can change it in the moment with these, you know, small behaviors. And again, they're much more powerful behaviors than saying your door is open or anyone is free to speak up in this meeting and. How more effective would our meetings be if everyone knew exactly what they were there to do and to contribute and was able to voice it, like you said in their introduction.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, exactly. I, I think it can really help with us being much clearer about what that space is for. It can help us to stay much more focused. And maybe also, you know, if we are taking that moment beforehand to think. How am I introducing my actions, my role, my, my, you know, what I'm doing in this space? If I'm really struggling with that in relation to this meeting, do I need to be there? Like, do I have an important role to play here? Or actually, is it something that I could be updated on afterwards? Does this need to be a meeting? You know, oh, does it need to be a meeting? Could it be any of, but actually if, if I can't be really clear about what that role is, what I'm here to do, then perhaps I need to reconsider what this meeting is for, or what the sort of shape of this meeting is. And, and that in itself is, is gonna help us all out. I think you know, few people know that they don't have enough.

Teri Schmidt:

Right, right. No, I have never heard that complaint. You know, and, and just before we kind of move on to the next one, I think what you said about. Yes, I still have credibility even though I didn't kick off with my title is such a big thing. You get into this role and think, well, I have to. Promote myself. I have to engage in the self-promotion in order to look like I belong here in order to build that trust so that when I speak up, people will think that I'm coming from a place of authority or, or from credibility. So how have you seen leaders effectively manage through that?

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, so, so I think it's recognizing that probably does have a place still that there may well be times and places where actually we do need to establish our cred credibility, where maybe we're speaking to an external audience or maybe we're entering a completely unfamiliar and. Possibly hostile environment where actually what we need to do is say, I know my staff, I, you know, I'm here, I've got this credibility. And, and we may need to start with that. Where I think it becomes problematic is where we lead with that in all of our work interactions. And especially when actually what we're doing is, is working with colleagues. We're working on a defined project and then in a defined way because we are not recognizing. The significance of the way that we, that we introduce ourselves and you know, if a, if a surgeon is able to come in and rather than leading with, you know, I'm the chief consultant in this area of medicine, but to say, I'm, I'm here today to make sure that this patient gets safely through this procedure, then, then we can all kind of take. Some lessons from that. If a, if a pilot, a captain of an airline, airline can come and say, I'm here today to fly the plane. You know, and and actually all, we're not in any way questioning that credibility. We're not in any way questioning their expertise or their authority actually, but we are saying this is what they're here to do right now. So, so it can be really, really powerful and I'd say. What I found very interesting is it often is the leaders who find this most difficult are perhaps the ones who are most established in their roles. They're perhaps most senior. They're very used to doing this, and I I remember in, in a fairly early middle leadership role, going to a going on a leadership development course, and I remember being made to rehearse my elevator pitch for who I was. Why, and, and being made to practice that as a kind of, this is what you should do, this is how you should introduce yourself. And I, I'm not saying that that doesn't have a place, but I, but I don't know that it's necessarily a kind of, I don't know that it should have been first thing on the leadership. It almost came from this deficit that sort of, assuming everyone's going to think you're not credible and you've gotta prove to them that you are. Whereas actually, I, I really prefer now to think I will let my actions determine that.

Teri Schmidt:

that is, that is so true, and I think, you know, especially in. The development of in, and maybe it's for everyone, but I, I've, I've seen a lot of that in the leadership about women as leaders and, and needing to have that executive presence. And, and really maybe because they are thinking that everyone is going to assume that they are not credible. And I guess this would probably go for, you know, any. Marginalized group. They're thinking that the natural assumption is that they are not credible, so that it is necessary to always own that title, own that education, own that experience, and, and put that right upfront when introducing themselves. So I guess, how would you react if someone were to bring that point up?

Jade Garatt:

So, so I think it's valid. I, I, you know, I, I absolutely think that there is, there are going to be occasions where some of us are going to be read to be more credible than others, to, you know, to, to perhaps better align with the dominant norm of an organization and therefore to be more readily perceived to be a leader. And as I say, I think there are times where it is appropriate to just be absolutely clear about this is my role and, and, and here's my elevator pitch if we need it. But I, I would like to differentiate between those times and the times when we are actually setting up environments where we want people to work with us. And I think we need to just pause for a moment and reflect on the kinds of leaders we want to be. And do we want to be the kinds of leaders who set ourselves up here and have. Everyone else knowing their place and knowing that we are this much above them, or do we want to be the kinds of leaders where people will come to us with their questions, with their concerns, with their new ideas about how we can improve it? Can we reconceptualize the sorts of leaders that we want to be and accept that that might then need to take? More time for people to go, yes, they really are a great leader, but when they do, it will be because of what we've done, not because of the way that we've positioned ourselves from the start to to to appear this kind of power over model. I'm often really drawn to Mary Parker Follett's work on on power, and so much of this comes from our. Internalized, sort of innate feeling that what we need to do is have power over people that we need to elevate ourselves and, and extract more from them, put them in their place and extract more from them. Whereas what she advocated for was, was power with people and power for people, for them to, to go and do the work and, and do the great stuff that, that we want them to be working with us to do. It takes some rethinking and, and I recognize it doesn't always fit within the organizational structures that we might be battling. But. What we want is a different kind of workplace if we want, we want is different kinds of teams and teams that can actually perform really well. We have to recognize that there's a cost when we do the, hello, I'm the CEO and I've got this many years experience and because we instantly say to people, be careful. Be careful in coming to me and, and it an implicit message, but it's, but it's there for sure.

Teri Schmidt:

Ha ha. I, I hadn't thought about that implicit message, you know, be careful about coming to me. That makes it very, very concrete. And I think what you said also about it may take longer, but people will know you because of your track record in a sense, you know the work that you've done and that is so much more durable in terms of credibility than someone thinking you're credible and trustworthy just because you stated your title.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, absolutely. And, and there are also ways where, you know, we can recognize that, that what we are here to do is, is a big thing. You know, we may well be in this very senior role because what we have is a significant job is in a session recently with someone who, who said, you know, I, I am here. To look after all 800 people across this plant and make sure they are safe, you know, that is huge. To me, that's more impressive than saying you're director of safety or your, you know, that, that in itself, that lands, and yet I'm clear on what you're here to do. I'm, I'm clear on. So, it's a different tone, but it's, it's also emphasis to, to what I'm doing. I'm not saying I'm here because I'm in this role with this seniority and the status. I'm here saying I'm here to do an important big thing. You know, I'm here to find the plane. I'm here to keep people safe. I'm here to keep this number of people safe.

Teri Schmidt:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Love that. Well, we may have time for maybe one more practice. If you have one that, that is your favorite or a, a favorite that you've seen work really well with corporate teams, I'd love to hear about it.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, so I, I'm gonna go to, so I, I love 15 fives. So if you haven't heard of them, 15 fives are essentially like a reporting mechanism. It's a communication channel that you can open up with members of your team. And it's great for what we might call direct reports, people who directly report into you. But you can also, if you have matrix management type arrangements in an organization and you want to better open up those communication channels, you can use it for that as well. The idea of a 15 five. So the reason it's called a 15 five is that it should take the person doing it, writing the the little report on how their week has gone. No more than 15 minutes to write, and it should take you no more than five minutes to read. They're not meant to replace one-to-one meetings or any other meeting structure that you've got, but it's an alternative communication channel that you are saying, fill me in, let me know how things are going. And you can do this in a way that works for you. So sometimes people like to have a, a few key questions for 15 fives. Things like what's my you know what have, what have mostly been working on this week? What's been a challenge? What's gone really well? What's something I like a bit more support with. So you can, you can alter the questions, you can make it fit to your context. You can tell people to color outside of the lines, and if the questions don't feel relevant and they just want to write you a paragraph about what's going on for them right now, that, that's fine too. But maybe set it up as a recurring calendar, invite a little reminder to people. And then they just. Fill out their 15 five, email it over to you and you can Then, the way I, I've seen it work really nicely with teams is where the, the team lead will acknowledge receipt of it, will say, you know, thanks so much. Really helpful. Sometimes they'll also share their own with the team, which can be a, a really nice reciprocal practice as well. But anything that warrants longer discussion then gets picked up in a one to meeting form more of a discussion. The reason that I love it is that even when we think we have great communication, and even when we're. In almost constant contact with each other through teams, messages, slack channels, whatever it is that we are using at work, emails, all the rest of it. Even when we've got our regular one-to-ones in place there are sometimes opening up a different way of communication means we hear different things because we carve out a different space for it. So in that space someone might feel more able to share. My dog died last week and I've just not. Been firing on all cylinders. It work. I'm not, not having a great time of it. Whereas in person, they might find that difficult to share. It might not feel like it warrants an email all of its own'cause you know that it's my dog. It's not a, it's, it's, it's not a, not a person, but it, but, you know, as a family member in a sense. And so we actually are just creating this different channel for people to, to communicate in. And it's surprising, you know, we. We started, didn't we Were saying we, we don't know the things that we can't hear. And this is one way to get beneath the surface of what are some of these things that we might not be hearing. Now, interestingly, when I've shared this practice some of them, the, usually people love this practice and, and often it's really adopting quite readily in teens. But in, in one particular session I was in there, there was more pushback. And when I sort of, you know, explored like. All practices are optional. It's always an invitation, it's always an offering. You don't have to do anything. The reason for it was, well, that'll create loads of problems, won't it? And there was this idea that if we're surfacing issues, that it might actually create more of them. Which I, I, I. Understand where that from, and if you are feeling overwhelmed and as a leader, you're already feeling like I'm up to, I'm not gonna.

Teri Schmidt:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jade Garatt:

But of course we need to then recognize the problem is that maybe you are managing a bit too much, maybe you need a bit more support. Because actually, if we're just hoping that we can squash everything down then there will be things bubbling up that we're not hearing and that we should be hearing. And you know, I love the you can't fix the secret. You know, we, we have to know this. We're going to be able to work effectively with it. So you know, I think when we are at the point of thinking like, oh, I can't ask the question'cause what if they say there's something wrong and then I might have to deal with it. That's when we actually need to sort of take a moment for ourselves and think, okay, am I doing too much? Am I managing my time appropriately or do I need to ask for some support? Because if I feel like I haven't got time for the people I'm working with to share the things that are important for them, that's a problem.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Yeah. And it allows those issues to become visible, when they maybe are in their infantile stay or their, you know, very small problems as opposed to when they are affecting multiple people, multiple projects when their impact is much bigger.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know, as hard as it can be to hear something's a problem or there might be an issue I hadn't even seen. And, and this is one of the challenges of fostering psychological safety, it won't always feel good because. Sometimes we are finding out things that we really, we'd really rather not have had to deal with. Really, rather, it was all just fine and all, everything was just going swimmingly. But of course if we don't know, then we can't do anything about it. And so like we can hold both shoes, that that can be harder in the moment and ultimately in the long run, it, it will be better and will mean actually we can, we can. Perform better perform and we can all work better together. It is, I think, better to know than not to know. So, yeah. But it, it, it's an interesting, I think it's always a sort of an opportunity to get curious when we find ourselves not wanting to know or preferring not to that's a sort of opportunity just to check in.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah, and, and I'd love your angle on it too, in terms of when you feel yourself not wanting to check in because you feel like you can't hear about one more thing that has gone wrong, that is a. Indication that you should be looking, like you said at how you are managing and if you need more support.

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The, the I used to say when I was, I was teaching and, and leading a team and had really no time to lead the team'cause I was always far too busy with my own teaching. But the, the most dreaded phrase would be, Jade, if you got a minute. I think because I didn't know I have no minutes, but of course it's so important that I have a minute and, and actually. You know, what we will need to be doing is going, yes. Thank you so much for asking. Like, thank you. Yeah. Bring it. You know, like, like, let's, let's on this, but it's very hard to do that if you don't have the head space and the capacity to, to deal with the things that are going to come up in that just a minute.

Teri Schmidt:

Right. Right. Yeah. Do you have any tips or, you know, things that you've seen leaders implement when they are in that space where they don't feel like they have a minute? Obviously that, you know, a more in depth look at how they're managing is important, but even just in that moment, if they feel like they're completely overwhelmed and someone asks them if they have a minute

Jade Garatt:

So. Yeah, I mean, like you say, there's a, there's a broader structural thing, which is, is probably the role of coaching and, and you know, something a bit more in depth to really figure out like, is this, that you have too much on your plate? Is it a tricky relationship with your own manager, is there something that we, that we need to be working on managing differently? Are you struggling to let go? Are you, are you allowing people to run with things enough or are you taking too much on yourself and therefore feeling so overloaded? But it in that, in that moment, I am such a fan of the, just giving it a pause, just just taking taking a pause, taking a breath, grounding yourself and literally just kind of going and, and. As busy as we are, and even in the most extreme situations, we always, always have time to just take that one breath before we respond to, to maybe just manage perhaps our tendency to perhaps roll our eyes or, you know, a little expression of like, oh no, not really, but go for it. And just to check our response because, you know, we talk about this a lot in human and organizational performance as well. How we respond matters. And that if we can respond better, if we can just give ourselves a moment before responding or being really honest and saying right now, no. Can we chat at the end of the day? Can we talk at this point? Because it might be that we genuinely don't, that we are, you know, we're on our way to deliver a present presentation and, and our head needs to be in that, and we just don't have a moment. Right? Then we literally don't have that minute, so, so maybe it is that we need to just take a breath and say, Ooh. Not right now, but definitely later. And then make sure we, we honor that because there is nothing worse than sort of a Oh yeah, sure. When actually we know we're really, really not in the place to receive that right now. It's gonna make us feel awful for the rest of the day, and we are probably not going to be in the place to manage our response in the way that we want to, to make that person feel the next time they need a minute from us, that they'll feel able to come and ask for it.

Teri Schmidt:

Right. Right. And I, I like what you said about it. It's not just saying, no, I don't have the minute right now. It's not right now, but this specific time, I will, let's connect then.

Jade Garatt:

yeah, yeah, exactly. And then is that okay or or is it something that's so urgent, such an emergency situation that you do need to speak Right now it's sort of checking in, like, is that all right? Would, would that be okay? So, because there will be times when we don't have the minute, but the person really does need to tell us something right away, so yeah.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Well, I know we only went through two practices today, but you know, went pretty, pretty in depth into them. It sounds like a lot of work potentially for people, so if they're thinking about this and they're like, yeah, I, I like the idea of psychological safety. It sounds great. Everyone says it's great. I read on LinkedIn, it's great. But I'm, I'm not sure. What kind of an impact it would have on my team. Why is it worth investing this time? I'm curious, because you've worked with so many organizations, you know, what ripple effects have you seen in teams and organizations when they are able to invest this effort and create psychologically safe teams?

Jade Garatt:

Yeah, so, so, you know, I'm biased. Obviously I work in this area. I, I clearly think that this is, this is worth doing, but I, I think the truth and the, the real value of it does come out when we actually start seeing practices. Being implemented in organizations, and there's a tricky balance to be struck between warning people, managing people's expectations, that this will create, this will take time, like it, it will require a investment of effort. It might require rethinking some of your own behaviors, some of your own ways of being with. Teams and with people, and that can be really difficult. And that can require exactly like you've, you've, you know, really nicely articulated today. A lot of internal work, a lot of work on ourselves to make sure that we're doing that. But what we, and, and yes, that, that will take time. But what's really wonderful about this work is often how quick some of the results are. And actually, yes, you're, you are not going to go from a team that feels completely unp, psychologically safe to a team that feels totally psychologically safe all the time, overnight, but very small practices, things like the way that we introduce ourselves when we're in a team, the way that we. Say our names and and what we do can really quickly start to shift the, the tone and the quality of the interactions that we're having and, and the dialogue. And what we can then do is, is celebrate those wins. So the first time that we hear something in a team meeting that we thought, I don't think I would've heard that last week. We really, really thank the person for sharing that. We make it super clear to ourselves and to them and to everyone who's. In that room, in that space that this is what we want to be doing. This is what we want to be hearing, this is what we are here for. And if, if we can do that, then each one of those times we're building this positive momentum where we're sometimes actually undoing years of people's conditioning around what they think is safe or unsafe to, to speak. Every time we get one of these opportunities, every time someone says, have you got a minute? Every time someone says, oh, I'm not so sure about that, we can say thank you. Like, thank you. Oh, you know, tell me more. Let's talk about this together. And demonstrate again and again that this is, this is safe to do that. And, and that's not just great because we're having richer conversations, we're having richer dialogue. It's also great because it means that we're able to do the work that we're here to do much better. If we are not able to have these conversations, we're not able to respond to the changing situations, the circumstances. Internal and external for the teams and organizations that we're working with. We have to be having better dialogue around what's going on. We have to be able to learn better together. And it's a better way to be working. Like it's much, much more enjoyable as well to be working in teams and spaces where people are working well together, where they're sharing their ideas. Where when you say, you know, does anyone have any worries about this? It's not just a kind of deathly silence and you're thinking someone please. It is much better. So, oh, actually I was worried about that. I, I have been thinking about that. And we can have these rich and productive conversations. So so, you know, it's a great thing to do on a number of levels and these small little incremental shifts that we start to see these small interpersonal risks that people take, which might seem small, but may have been huge for them. We can celebrate each and every one and, and acknowledge each, everyone, and, and then we're building forward in a positive way.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Yeah. And it, you know, having those, those richer conversations where we are learning from and with each other really seems to be the point of bringing people together anyway. You know, if, if we're gonna come together in a meeting, as opposed to just having a task list that people can check in on and, and, you know, do their part to contribute to the whole. Instead, we're really bringing people together and really acting as a team, and we want those diverse viewpoints. If we don't have this psychological safety to be able to learn together, to be able to share new ideas, to raise concerns, why are we doing it anyway? Why? Why are we coming together anyway?

Jade Garatt:

Exactly, exactly that. You know, if, if I just want someone to echo back my thoughts to me, I can have a little dialogue with chat GPT and that will really nicely summarize exactly what I've already said and, and, you know, share exactly what I expected to, to share back the, the reason that we are getting humans together in a room with other humans, with different backgrounds, different experiences, different perspectives, who see the world in different ways, is because we have something then to offer each other and we are. We are better. We are more powerful with all of those perspectives than we are if we just take ours and hope that everyone's gonna agree with it.

Teri Schmidt:

Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Well, I think that's a, a great point to end on, but I've already mentioned the, the newsletter, obviously. But if a listener loves what you're talking about and wants to learn more. About your work, what's the best place for them to go?

Jade Garatt:

Fab. Yeah. So so our website is psych safety.com. And that's, you know, that's got everything on there. It's got articles, it's got all the past newsletter articles and resources. You'll find information about Tom and I on there and as well as the work that we do in organizations and the online training that you can join with us as an individual exactly like you've done, Terry.

Teri Schmidt:

Yes. And I highly recommend it. Yeah, one of the, one of the best that I've taken, and I'm looking forward to the second half of it coming up in November as well.

Jade Garatt:

Fantastic. Wonderful. Thank you for that.

Teri Schmidt:

Yes. And, and thank you so much for your time today. This like I mentioned, could have gone much longer, but I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to speak with me about this and kind of get beneath that buzzword of psychological safety.

Jade Garatt:

Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Terry.

I hope you found today's conversation with Jade as thought provoking and practical as I did. And if you're ready to take the next step in building a safer, high performing workplace. I really do encourage you to to check out Psych Safety's Flagship program, the Psychological Safety Course, train the Trainer. I've participated in half of it, so three of the six workshops, and am looking forward to participating in the remaining three in November. As I said before, it really is one of the best training programs that I have taken. And of course you can learn more at the link in the show notes. Thanks again for joining me today. And until next time, keep leading with compassion and courage.