4 myths that make our job harder
There are two things that build psychological safety on a team.
Someone takes a risk to say something honest.
(Everyone sees that) They don’t get punished for it.
According to the research, every time you allow those two things to happen, you are doing the single most important thing you can do as a leader: increase the psychological safety of your team.
Why does something that sounds simple feel so hard in real life? Because many of us have been conditioned to hold false and counter-productive beliefs about leading a team that will prevent this simple sequence from happening. We have powerful stories that we tell ourselves about what makes a team or leader strong – stories that often have no basis in reality but seem widely held and play to our insecurities and fears.
Here are the biggest myths that we frequently spend time in our intensives un-learning:
Myth: Team culture is supposed to feel “positive” (nearly all the time) .
Reality: The highest performing teams aren’t differentiated by being “positive” or “negative,” but by being honest (and not spending time pretending / tip-toeing around each other).
Myth: There's too much urgency - we need to stick to the agenda.
Reality: When people are empowered to speak up, the team will often guide us to what’s most important. But when we cut off conversations we’re often just pushing them to the (less productive) “meeting after the meeting.”
Myth: Don’t air dirty laundry - this should be a 1:1 that doesn’t happen in front of the group.
Reality: what we think is a private issue is often something that many on the team can sense and feel. And seeing it talked about openly reinforces the message that there’s nothing to hide and it’s a safe place to be honest. (Often when leaders want to move something offline it’s because it helps them feel more in control.)
Myth: Leaders have to check people when they’re being "unprofessional" or not following norms.
Reality: this is often the pretext for shutting people down when they’re saying something the leader doesn’t want to hear. And while sometimes people need to be pushed or checked, when the leader steps back they leave room for the team to play that role for each other.
A lot of this conditioning runs DEEP and countering it is very hard work that requires a lot of awareness and self-management. Step #1 is just to slow down and try not to be reactive. When we get past our automatic reactions to respond / correct / take control, then we get an extra beat to self-manage and just see what happens.
