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
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Yesterday we wrote about “pandemic flux” and the generalised state of weariness and anxiety many of us are still experiencing. What we suggested as an antidote for our PeopleNotTech clients was using one of the plays created to increase EQ and raise the levels of compassion and kindness in the teams such as the Empathy Hackathon or the Team=Family plays.
For those who don’t have access to our software, we go over the contents of those and the motivation behind them in this video.
BTW, a reminder: we have moved Channels to this one and for those of you who were subscribers before you will need to please Subscribe again.
What matters most is the framing of why we need EQ and what it is and that this context creation happens in common with the entire team. Contrary to what you may imagine, this doesn’t need a trained facilitator, simply have one person in the team -it doesn’t have to be the team leader- do a bit more background reading in advance and then bring it to the team and open the floor about how much EQ the team feels there is and how important empathy is.
As a tip, the distinction between empathy, sympathy and compassion sometimes is a useful discussion starting point as it may create debate.
Another general topic to open the team up for the conversation at hand is whether or not we are called to have a high EQ in the workplace, whether “soft skills” matter and whether it is useful and preferable that we understand our emotions and the emotions of others.
For more ideas on how to frame maybe look at some of these resources:
Empathy And Communication In Psychologically Safe Teams
4 minutes of silence can boost your empathy for others.
Once the framing is done have the team answer “empathy in the team” type of questions:
- Are there people in the team that you feel more empathetic towards more than others?
- Can you think of a time when you’ve put yourself into one of your team mates shoes whether professionally or personally?
- Do you find it easier to relate to positive or negative events that happen to people eon the team?
- Do you feel other team members know what it’s like to be in your shoes?
- Do you wonder what emotions other team members are experiencing?
And many more. The purpose of them is evocative, not educational and the better you construct those questions and give people a few minutes to create the structured space for exploration, the easiest it is for people to relate and carry those realisations with them in their day-to-day team dynamic.
As the video says though, this work has to happen at the empowered team level not centralised at the HR level because no matter how well you would construct the human actions, how smart of workshops you may think up, how complete of L&D plans and pieces of training, none of them will have any kind of lasting effect on the Psychological Safety of the team if they can not see the results immediately reflected in live data.
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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve
Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at www.peoplenottech.com or reach out at contact@peoplenottech.com and let’s help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.
To order the “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” go to this Amazon link