This week on the Positive Change Methods podcast, I interview keynote speaker and leadership & culture consultant Jenny Ainsworth about psychological safety and her bestselling book Connection Intelligence, with excursions into engaging virtual teams and leadership in the age of AI (‘artificial intelligence’ not Appreciative Inquiry).
I think this is a great episode, packed with useful tips if you lead or work with teams. Includes:
- What is psychological safety?
- Why is it good for team decision-making and effectiveness, not just for the individual?
- Some top tips for building psychological safety even if your team is working remotely
- The one thing leaders should stop doing immediately if they want a more engaged team
- How to stop yourself falling into the “You (next generation down from you) don’t know you’re born!” trap
- What you should (and shouldn’t) use AI for as a leader
… and much more!
Jenny’s free resources, as mentioned in the podcast, are really worth getting, and here they are – the Rapid Charger newsletter, the Connection Intelligence® Rapid Assessment, the Going Conscious Leader’s Guide to Building Psychological Safety, and one I didn’t mention – the Personal Superpower Blueprint, a free 48-page action guide to help you discover your personal and unique talents, values and strengths!
Jenny’s book, Connection Intelligence: Building Meaningful Workplace Connection across Generations, Locations and Digital Divides, is currently available from Amazon in paperback or Kindle formats.
You can find Jenny at jennyainsworth.com and on LinkedIn.
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Transcript of our interview about psychological safety
Andy Smith: Welcome, Jenny Ainsworth!
Jenny Ainsworth: Oh, thanks, Andy. It’s brilliant to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Andy: Well, it’s great to have you here. One of the reasons I invited you, apart from I know you’re a brilliant guest and speaker and conversationalist and so on, and I know we’re going to have a good time, is that I saw your information sheet on psychological safety in the workplace. Now, I hadn’t really paid much attention to ‘psychological safety’. It just seemed like the next big buzzword. But reading your information sheet, full of workable and common sense suggestions, really brought it home to me and reminded me of when I used to work in corporate and didn’t always feel psychologically safe in the team. So – why is it so important? Why is psychological safety so important?
Jenny: It’s essentially if you think, psychological safety primarily is to do with how somebody feels in a group. Okay, so whether that is at a gym, whether that is at a council meeting, whether that’s at work, wherever that might be, it’s “do I feel safe enough to share my thoughts, to bring my ideas to the table, to, to potentially disagree with somebody at the table and not feel that I’m going to be ostracised or isolated or judged for it?” So I hope just that explanation in and of itself shows how important it is because too much can happen where ‘groupthink’ might be going on and you know, we’re going down a particular avenue where I might have an idea of something that I think is going to stop a problem or a challenge later on. But if I don’t feel safe enough to bring that up, then I’m not going to. It’s about whether there’s some hierarchically, if there is a leader, a manager or somebody above you sharing something, if I’m not sure about it or I want to question it, feeling that I’m able to do that without any repercussions. So it’s really, really important to make sure that we’ve always got that diversity of thought and diversity of thinking going on, I think.
Andy: Right, yeah, that was going to be my next question because it’s obvious how it’s important to the individual. but it actually also has a big effect on the quality of decision making in the team and where it’s going so that people don’t get, I guess, groupthink as you mentioned, or what Daniel Goleman calls ‘CEO disease’ where people are so frightened of the boss that they don’t ever bring the bad news. I guess Vladimir Putin will probably be the prime example and we can see how that goes horribly wrong.
Jenny: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely that.
Andy: All right. So if the team is on site in the same room, then following your tips in the sheet, it’s fairly easy I think to create an atmosphere of psychological safety as long as the people in charge of that are reasonably self aware and notice the effects of how they behave and how they are on their team members.
But a lot of people work remotely and a lot of teams are distributed these days. So how does it work? How do you build psychological safety in a team like that?
Jenny: I mean this is the challenge of the modern workplace today because everything is done through, you know, these little squares on the screen. And we don’t have the organic chat that we would do, as people are just sort of sidling into the meeting room and you know, shooting the breeze and all of that sort of stuff. People wait until on the dot of the meeting starting, you know, it comes, the screen comes up and there they are and we have so many meetings that everything is back to back to back. So you know, we’ve stopped doing some of the, just the organic chattiness and, and talking to people. Yeah. So I mean one of the big things I would say is, absolutely make sure that first of all you’ve got a buffer in between meetings to allow people some breathing space, you know. Also not every meeting needs to be an hour. We just put it in as a default because that’s how Outlook builds it. We just don’t need that. So you know, put it in for 45 minutes but say the meeting itself is going to be a 30 minute meeting but do come on time because we’ll just top and tail it with some you know, connection, talking to one another, that sort of thing. So I think that’s really, really important in terms of the things that we need to do now. One of the things I think that we don’t pick up on when we’re not working in the same space. We don’t pick up on as much about what’s important to people and what they value and how they want to be, how they prefer to work, all of those sorts of things. And even if you’ve worked in a team for many, many months, many many years, that, that can sort of go down a little bit. So for me every now and then, and I think it’s brilliant to do this in January and September because January has a start of the year feel and September has a back to school feel. And you know there’s a really good, the good times of the year just to do them sort of twice a year to say “right, what’s working, what isn’t, what do you need in order to feel better, connected, better seen, better valued?” – all of that sort of stuff. “If there’s one thing that we could do as a team that would enable you to feel even more like you had a voice at the table?” Whatever question you want to ask.
I would do that a couple of times a year because it gives people a chance to reflect on “what is important to me, what has been slipping by?”, you know, those sorts of things and then to share those with people. Any rituals that you can do, whether it’s creating a team charter, whether it’s finding, creating some principles of work together. I think things like that, where everybody contributes and everybody feels at the end of it “Yeah, that’s it. They’re good principles for our team.” I really encourage those sorts of things to happen.
Andy: Yeah, where everyone’s heard from and genuinely listened to. Which fits in very nicely with the thing dear to my heart, the Wholeness Principle from Appreciative Inquiry, which is exactly about that, that everyone gets heard from. So, that’s really good tips for online meetings. And it hadn’t occurred to me to build in some buffer time actually in the booked out time for the meeting because of course people used to go from one meeting room to another, even if it was two meetings on each other’s heels, and actually possibly even chat to their colleagues in the corridor on the way there and so on. Which ordinarily you wouldn’t get if you’re working remotely or from home or…
Jenny: No. And another thing I’ve seen actually, and when I first mention this, you can see people thinking, “oh, that seems a bit odd” but actually it’s fantastic. And it’s what you call ambient co-working. So if you were in an office space, you’d be at your desk, I’d be at mine and you’re sort of just getting on with your work. But occasionally, every now and then, you might ask a quick question or somebody might just comment on something. We have a couple of minutes of just chatting about that, and back to work. If people are up for it, you can have ambient co-working hours or two hours, and that is simply you are at your desk with your camera on and the only rules are “we’re not going to sit and chat for two hours”. But if people do want to pass comment or ask a quick question and that you are open to that, otherwise like you would be in, in an office. And similarly if you were in an office and you absolutely needed quiet time and, and not disturbed, you’d probably go off and find yourself a quiet corner or a quiet office to work on your own – in which case don’t come along. But it’s been proven that just the fact of having that camera on you, getting on with your work, you’re not sort of necessarily looking at people because you’ll be looking at other screens, but occasionally coming back and seeing that the cameras are on. That’s such a simple thing to do, but it creates that sort of team spirit of “yes, I’m here, you’re there, but we’re all still on the same team” or “we’re all still working together” and that’s got a really good hit rate of improving psychological safety.
Andy: Okay, fantastic. See, these are ideas that I have not heard before, a lot of them. And yet, yeah, they fall into that category of “that’s so obvious – why didn’t I think of it?” But I didn’t. So it’s just the sort of thing that I love.
Jenny: Really brilliant.
Andy: Okay, so there’s one other thing that I want to ask you about team engagement before we get into Connection Intelligence which is going to appeal to the more sort of risk averse, or problem avoiding, problem-solving people among the listeners, which is: if there’s one thing that leaders should stop doing immediately if they want to have more engaged teams, what is that one thing that they should stop doing?
Jenny: I think that the one thing they should stop doing is everybody contributing to a catch up at the weekly meetings. Now hear me out. What leaders are doing in an attempt to involve everybody and include everybody is going around each team member and saying like “Jenny, give us an update on your week. Andy, give us an update, Bill give us an update” and all of that sort of stuff. So the intention is pure, I think: to try and include everybody. But knowing the amount of meetings that we all go to, the question has got to be: as a result of me listening to all these updates from team members, how much more engaged, inspired, informed am I to actually do my job? And I would argue that I’m not any more engaged, I’m not any more influenced, I’m not any more inspired. Now there may well be some requirement for having an update but fine, people can fill in a quick online sheet and it’s there to go and have a look at. As a leader you may not be in charge of any other hour across the week. For your team member, this might be the only hour or only 40 minutes, whatever it is. So it is your duty to make this the most compelling, engaging connecting time. And so it’s get rid of anything that just fills the time and find a way of asking the right questions, listening to people that really makes a difference. So people want to come to the meeting, they actively look forward to it, they’re engaged on it, rather than listening to you ticking over while they’re looking at another screen, all of those sorts of things. And so much of that will come from asking them “what do you want? If this could be the best hour of your week that would connect us, that would enable you to feel more engaged, what do you want us to do in that meeting?” and let your team speak. Because then it takes some of the pressure off you as leader. It takes away some of the faux connection things that actually don’t make any engagement whatsoever and it actually brings in true engagement. So that would be my recommendation.
Andy: Yeah, going back decades, as a team member, I remember actually actively disengaging when everyone else was going through the updates on their project that was nothing to do with me.
Jenny: You don’t care.
Andy (laughing): Yeah, I really don’t. No, no, absolutely. Now if the leader needs to know that, fine, leave that for a one to one, you know, but it’s actually a disrespect of other people’s time when people are so busy. So this should be really precious, really meaningful time. So let’s make it so.
Andy: Yeah. So one thing I recommend to my students about using Appreciative Inquiry kind of informally is perhaps starting a meeting – and I may update this in the light of your buffer time thing, I don’t know – by asking, or inviting actually, people to say, what’s gone well this week? Or what’s gone well since we last saw you? But not going around like “YOU! What have you achieved?”
Jenny: No, no, no, I love that and I think you’re right and I think it encourages people to focus on what goes well because as human beings we are hell bent on focusing on what’s not working, what’s gone wrong, all of that sort of stuff. And we just float through the stuff that’s going well because it’s, we’re on to the next thing. So there’s some real mindfulness there about really focusing on “What has gone well? What am I pleased about? How has that contributed to my week?” Those sorts of things I think are really important to do and to recognise.
Andy: Yeah, we need discipline – some sort of, not discipline, but we need something to remind us to actually look at that because otherwise we just take it for granted or forget about it and we’re only focused on the next problem and the last thing that went badly wrong.
Jenny: Absolutely, yeah.
Andy: Which is so easy to do. Okay, well, these are brilliant tips for team engagement and psychological safety. I am going to put in the show notes links to your guide for psychological safety, which is free to download.
Jenny: Yeah.
Andy: And really good. I recommend anyone who’s got a team or anyone who works with teams to get that. Also, your Rapid Charger newsletter, which is full of great stuff every – week?
Jenny: Every Friday.
Andy: So much more organised than me! Which I highly recommend. And because you don’t really do blog articles, do you? It’s all in the newsletter. So that is the only way, apart from buying the book, to get Jenny’s tips, I think.
Jenny: Yeah.
Andy: So that’s worth getting. and also I’ve noticed today when I was looking up a free Connection Intelligence assessment. So which brings us to Connection Intelligence, which is not only your book but it’s also an approach or a toolkit or a philosophy, I’m not quite sure. Assuming that the listeners know nothing about it, which will be easy because I know nothing about it, can you sort of briefly introduce what that is?
Jenny: I can. So essentially it’s something that’s become more evident to me as I’ve been doing my work over the the last couple of decades. Essentially it’s – Connection intelligence is sort of the sweet spot in the middle of the other three intelligences. So we’ve got IQ, as we know, which is our ability to think rationally, to solve problems. That’s that sort of thing. We’ve got EQ, our Emotional Quotient, which again is that ability to understand and manage your own emotions. The ability to recognise what’s going on emotionally in somebody else. We’ve then got AI. I’ve called it ‘DQ’ – Digital Quotient – just so it fits in nicer. And again for me this is about, in respect to Connection Intelligence, DQ is your ability to use digital and AI tools purposefully and intentionally, and thoughtfully, if you like. And then Connection Intelligence – CQ – is the bit that goes in the middle. So again it’s your ability to connect meaningfully with others, you know, create meaningful connections through your work, through who you are, and through other people. And I talk about three different connections at work. So your connection to your colleagues, your connection to resources to actually do your job, and then connection to the organisation. And it’s all about the fact that we now have multiple generations working in the workplace, all of whom believe that their perspective and their worldview is the correct one. We’ve got leaders and managers managing people who are based in multi locations, sometimes even multi time zones. So again it’s how do you get the best out of people digitally when they’re physically not in the same room? And it’s essentially frameworks around that and an accumulation of all my research and all my experience of helping people with that brought together in a book.
Andy: Okay, fantastic. And this is available through the usual outlets presumably?
Jenny: Yes, absolutely, through, through, sadly through Jeff Bezos at Amazon at the moment. But yeah, hopefully getting into the independent bookshops soon.
Andy: So what will people get from your book?
Jenny: So I’m a fully fledged member of Gen X and since you know, Adam was a lad, every single generation has always looked at the generation below them and said, “you don’t know you’re born, you lot. When I was your age I had to do xyz” and that will never change, never change. I’ll be really interested what the – we’re moving into Generation Alpha now. What the Gen Alphas are going to look down at the next ones and say, “you don’t know you’re born, when I was your age…”. What are they going to say? We don’t know, but they will. So because you grow up in a specific period of time with all those specific resources and cultural occurrences and your whole view is shaped by that. And so to give you an example, nothing to do with work – and I’ve got this example in the book actually – I’d come into my lounge and my teen, my 16 year old, was lounging on the sofa, with his phone, watching a film, a movie on his phone. And not six feet away was a beautiful flat screen television, turned off. And so I said “what are you doing?” And he said “watching a film.” And I said “why aren’t you watching it on the telly?” And he said “why?” And I said “because it’s better.” And he said “for who?” And that in and of itself – now: people can argue, and the older generations do, “but surely it’s better, it’s better if you think…” without recognising that that is pure bias because you wouldn’t countenance watching a film on a phone and therefore watching a film on a phone is wrong. It’s not wrong, it’s just different. And that is so much of what is happening in businesses at the moment. Which is “my way is the right way and you have to learn my way” rather than saying “what is the right way?” And very often it is people with experience, but not all the time. If I said to them, “would you say you’re closed minded?” most people would say absolutely, categorically not. But their behaviour betrays that because, you know, if somebody comes with a different idea or a different approach, it’s “no, we can’t do it like that or that won’t work because…” And it’s all based on their experience rather than, “well, do you know, we did try that and it didn’t work. But that was a different time. Maybe things have changed. Let’s give it a bash.” But it’s all this, “my experience trumps your fresh ideas.”
And so it’s, how do we bring all of that together? Because equally, I’m not saying that people with experience shouldn’t be listened to. Of course they should. But it’s a balance. And then we’ve got all this stuff going on about, you know, feeling out of sight and out of mind. And, whereas we would pick up on the nuance of people when we were working in the same office as one another, we don’t have that anymore. So how do you create nuance? How do you pick up on nuance when, as we’ve just talked about, you literally, you know, a meeting starts at 10 o’ clock and literally on the dot at 10 o’, clock, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. All the screens come up, we have the meeting and then as soon as the meeting’s finished, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Everything goes off again. So we’ve lost all that picking up on humanity.
Andy: Yeah.
Jenny: So the book is about both of those things, how to create a human working culture, irrespective of where you are working from, and irrespective of your working style and working age.
Andy: Right. Yeah. And this intergenerational kind of misunderstanding thing, I think it’s worse the faster the pace of change.
Jenny: Yeah, yeah.
Andy: About10 years ago, I used to do a lot of emotional intelligence training in Malaysia and also the Gulf as well. And “okay, so what questions do you have?” or questions that pop up during the course, the one that came up most often was “how do you manage – well, at that time it was Generation X, “how do you manage Gen X?” (Note – I meant to say Gen Z here!) As if they were like this totally different species. And I think things had changed faster in Malaysia than they had in the west because they’d gone from, you know, much less economically developed, to attempting to take on Western business practises and sometimes outstripping it and using as up to date technology as anyone else and so on. So they’d come a long way in a very short time.
Jenny: Absolutely.
Andy: And the generations probably understood each other even less.
Jenny: Yeah.
Andy: And I don’t see that pace of change slowing down. even in like the UK or America, it seems to be accelerating.
Jenny: Yeah.
Andy: For example, your DQ thing, your digital quotient. And I’ve noticed on LinkedIn, almost everyone’s like a big AI advocate and, “oh, I asked ChatGPT or ‘Chatty’, as they call it, “I asked it this…” and you know, for some entirely frivolous purpose. And until very recently, I was still sort of shunning it. I guess one adopts it as and when needed. And I know in the corporate world, it’s being used a lot now, and people have to adapt to it.
Jenny: It is. And you know, for me, from a leadership perspective, in many ways it is taking leaders to what I believe is true leadership. So, so often leaders, their whole identity is caught up with what they know and their knowledge. And if that is all you have as a leader, then frankly, you should be worried by AI. You should. You know, however, because people can ask it the questions, you know, that you have the knowledge for, and it will spew out the same sort of knowledge – maybe not as nuanced as yours, but enough for people to get by. So for me it’s, let’s use AI as a leader to free you up from some of those questions, some of the knowledge, but the space that you create… Be a real leader, you know, ask the great questions, coach, be interested, observe, all of those things. So you can really add massive value into your people because, you know, when you have got a tight, brilliant team, leading is the easiest job in the world. It really is. But how often do we get that? And actually, you can create the space to make your life smoother and easier simply by embracing AI where you need to. Not to the extent that, as you say, it’s going to take over the world. I think there’s a balance here. But use the space therefore, to be a real human leader and to create that humanity in your team.
Andy: Yeah. So doing the routine stuff for you, that you can reasonably trust that it can do. Rather than asking it, “what should I do in this situation?” and placing absolute trust because, as we know, it occasionally makes stuff up and things can go disastrously wrong.
Okay, as I say, I’ll put the links to all of your resources and newsletter and what have you in the show notes. And I strongly, strongly recommend that everyone gets hold of those and signs up.
What do you want to leave us with? If there’s like, one thing that people should know that maybe you haven’t talked about already or, one piece of advice you would give for leaders or – I guess, actually my audience for this podcast is mostly coaches and consultants. More working with leaders, I think. So what do we need to know?
Jenny: I think it’s about, you know, be the leader, that you want to see in them. So be interested and not just interesting. ask the questions, validate the great stuff that they’re doing. Don’t just pull on the stuff that could be better. All of the things that you want to see in a leader – be that, and lead in that way, and encourage it to be mirrored back to you.
Andy: Fantastic. Thank you very much. Jenny Ainsworth.
Jenny: Thanks so much. I really appreciate being here.
