Today’s video is a real treat – an interview with one of the most amazing Superheroes of the Human Work and a champion of change and resilience – the inimitable Karen Ferris. Her thirst for knowledge is second to none and the way she’s able to boil the key points down is utterly mesmerising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of5gYdXNc7E
Asking Karen when she first heard the term “Psychological Safety” was special because if anyone has read everything that would be Karen so she would have stumbled upon the concept far before many other people and indeed she had.
I then asked Karen if I were a leader of an organisation with a mountain of HumanDebt – what should I do first? And she answered unflinchingly:
“Start with leadership to pay off HumanDebt, we were in a crisis before the pandemic, we are in a bigger leadership crisis now, we need to give these people help, servant leadership and new skills aren’t easy – have they got the capacity to be empathetic and the competency to give clarity and structure and then how do we help them truly to get to apply this new definition of leadership”.
Karen then goes on to mention that leaders are far from being willing to let go of command and control and that their need for line of sight in the face of the new working from home reality translates into how global demand for employee surveillance software has gone up for 80% undoubtedly driven by fearful middle managers who can’t trust their people and how that has driven response behaviour from employees that continue the productivity theatre by making themselves appear busy.
We then spoke about the value of feedback and the need to close those loops and embed them into the very mindset of not only leadership but
We touched on most everything – psychological safety of course; HumanDebt by all means; the way the people work is seen in Australia versus Europe; empowered teams; adaptive and empathic leadership; how much resistance there is; needed “why” conversations; having principles, not policies; and so much more.
We both returned to agreeing that most CxOs, all very clearly know how much HumanDebt there is but their own impression management is stopping them from taking definitive action alongside how it seems “too big” of an issue. It is not, dissect and distribute it and start small and you’ll get further than most.
What always comes across from listening to Karen is the quiet and calm self-assuredness of having the definitive answers about what’s right and what matters. She comprehends so many big topics so cleanly and so deeply it’s truly unique. She gets the dynamic in the team, the dynamics of enterprises and above all she cares, you can “hear” her heart come from every word and her knowledge underpin her emotions and what else can be better and more valuable?
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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve
At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us about a demo at contact@peoplenottech.com
To order the “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” book go to this Amazon link