In this episode of “Game Changers" host Sophie Brazell-Ng is joined by Sarah Partridge and Suzie Mossman-Monk to explore how leaders and team members alike can foster psychological safety to drive team success. The conversation dives into practical strategies for building trust, encouraging open feedback, and creating a culture of challenge that ultimately leads to high performance. Along the way, they share personal insights, real-world examples, and actionable steps to cultivate a psychologically safe environment in any team setting.
Listen here or read on for an edited transcript:
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Welcome back to Nevermind the Pain Points with Clarasys. Although we are now called the Game Changers for this particular segment of our podcast.
Today we're going to be talking about what is psychological safety and why should I care? So I'm really, really excited about this topic. And I'm joined by two wonderful guests, familiar face with Sarah and Suzie. Suzie, do you want to quickly introduce yourself?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yes. Hello. Thank you very much for having me on.
So I'm Suzie Mossman Monk and I am the in house performance psychologist here at Clarasys and I'm excited to talk about this topic. It's one of my faves.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Awesome. Sarah.
Sarah Partridge: Hello. Thank you for having me back. I'm Sarah Partridge. I'm the founder and director of the Change Academy. We're a consultancy working primarily in the leadership development space and also working with organisations to develop and articulate their strategy.
So this is another really great passionate topic for me. So I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Wonderful. And my name is Sophie Brazell-Ng I am one of the consultants here at Clarasys specializing in our people and change practice. So this is a topic that I'm really, really, really excited about. It's all about people. How do we look after our teams as well?
So, as always, we're going to start off with our definitions. And Sarah, I'm going to look to you.
What is psychological safety?
Sarah Partridge: Yeah, it's a really important way, I think, to start the podcast, because it's one of those phrases that you hear banded around in business a lot. And actually, what does it mean? So, In essence, psychological safety, or when we have it, it's a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, with questions, with concerns, or with mistakes. So, essentially, it's the ability to speak freely and openly with your team, with your manager at work, and share ideas, share concerns, to be able to challenge, to be able to admit mistakes when they happen. It's that sense of safety in a psychological way.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Amazing. Suzie, anything to add?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: The only bit I would add, I think, is the element of kind of being able to bring your whole self to work.
So I think there's kind of a few different areas of psychological safety. I think exactly what, what Sarah said is where we'll be focusing today. But I think there is a, an overlap with the more kind of D and I space of being able to be who you are, bring that kind of authentic self to work, not feeling like you have to hide certain elements of yourself, your personality. It doesn't mean you can show up and be horrible to people, but I think being able to bring your whole self and being authentic at work is an element of it as well.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Amazing. Thank you for breaking that one down. And quite hilariously, I'm now glad that we've got a definition because when I was prepping for this podcast, I definitely couldn't spell psychological safety.
So now I can both spell it, and I know exactly what it means.
So, at Clarasys psychological safety is something that's really, really important for us. It's deep rooted in the values that we run as a business. We want to make sure that our teams can turn up as their authentic selves and they have the freedom to raise what they're thinking at work.
It kind of goes a little bit without saying about why psych safety is important as we go through that definition, but I'd love to hear from you both why we think that psych safety is important.
Why is psychological safety important?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah. So I guess for me, the key bit that Sarah mentioned is around kind of failure and it being okay to, to fail. And people feel safe to try things out, to put their ideas forward, even if, you know, it's trying to reduce that caveat of this might be a stupid question or sorry if this is a silly idea. We want people to just feel like they can engage in the things that feel like might be a good idea, even if it fails, it doesn't matter. You're still going to be supported. People aren't going to make fun of you for failing or for doing something that doesn't work the first time, or doesn't maybe turn out exactly how you thought it would. And I think the key to that is it allows people to bring more innovation, more creativity. You can brainstorm quicker. You can get to solutions more quickly. I guess if we kind of translate this to the work that we do with clients. It's that feeling of, okay, how can we all get in a room and maybe just brainstorm or come up with a whole load of ideas or thoughts or things that we might want to do rather than that. You know, you can do that in a day rather than it may be taking a number of weeks to kind of get to those ideas. People feel that they can speak up and share ideas freely without kind of being ridiculed or made fun of.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah. And I really resonate with that. And I think, you know, in today's world, particularly for leaders and, you know, teams, we're living in a really volatile and certain environment. And, you know, this phrase VUCA is banded about a lot.
VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity in today's business world
Sophie Brazell-Ng: VUCA? How am I, how am I spelling VUCA?
Sarah Partridge: V U C A. It stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. And it's an acronym that was, I think, coined by the U. S. Army or the U. S. Navy to talk about, I guess, the environment when we're in war, right?
But essentially it's been adopted by the business community to describe the conditions that we're operating in at the moment as leaders with all of the
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That says a lot, doesn't it?
Sarah Partridge: Yeah.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: The fact that we're using that terminology to discuss business.
Sarah Partridge: Totally. And I think, you know, the research that's been done suggests that the rate of change at the moment is greater than it's ever been before. And things are just speeding up. And obviously that has an impact on business and leaders and the way that we operate in business. And so, this ability to harness ideas and knowledge and diversity of thought in order to carve the best way forward when there's all this volatility around has never been more important than today.
And I think that's why psychological safety as a concept is being engaged with in in such a significant way by, you know, leadership experts as well as businesses because they realise if they want to have a compelling strategy moving forward, and obviously I work in the strategy space as well, psychological safety is an enabler to a really strong and clear and compelling strategy because we need to harness those ideas because we can't, as leaders, we can't expect to know it all anymore. You know, it's like there's too much going on. So we need to tap into all of that rich knowledge in our teams. And we can only do that through what Suzie talked about before.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, in a world, and I think it's really interesting we're talking about it from the business angle as well, like in a world now where everything seems to be about productivity and about doing more and doing more with less. There's this sense that I've felt for a while that we're forgetting about the people part of it. And actually now we are flipping that mirror and we are looking at the people part of it. And to me, psychological safety is some of that actually, how do we support each other? How do we level up in a way that's not about being more productive? Okay. It's actually about listening to people and actually working with people because ultimately that's what most businesses are actually doing.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah, just following up on that, the speed at which things happen now in the workplace, I think that rate of change that Sarah mentioned and that kind of focus on, as you said, Sophie, the productivity and doing more and just that kind of the speed that things seem to be happening. I think that's where psychological safety can be so critical for a business because actually do your team members feel safe to almost put the brakes on a little bit and say, hold on a sec, like, have we kind of done all our checks and balances?
I think a lot of the psychological safety literature talks to spaces where danger, I guess, is real. But there's also a lot of factories, a lot of aviation, those kind of spaces where you need someone to even if it's gone through three layers of people saying, yes, that's fine, you need someone to actually put their hand up and say, hold on a minute like, are we sure this is fine? And that's what psychological safety is, is, is giving people that space that even if it is fine, you feel safe to kind of slow things down a little bit. Just make sure that actually we've kind of gone through all of the things that we need to. And actually that can feel really difficult to your point, Soph, like, it can feel really intimidating to be the person that is almost the, hold on guys, like, have we actually thought this through? And I think that, as you said, is, is becoming more and more significant as everything happens so quickly and that rate of changes is so high.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah. And actually, I think there's been a few studies done where your point has kind of come about in terms of, there's been nurses in hospitals that have spotted mistakes and not spoken up to the doctor in charge because they felt that it wasn't their place to do so, even though they've noticed that a patient was being given the wrong dosage of medication, or whatever it might be, and they've not spoken up because they haven't felt psychologically safe to do so.
I think the other point, just based on what you were saying before Suzie, is, you know, we're always doing, right? We're kind of like busy in the kind of weeds trying to cope with the fast pace of life. And what psychological safety needs is an adaptive style of leadership, right? And we talk about these two kind of different environments of either being on the dance floor, right? Go with me here. Being on the dance floor where you're kind of in the thick of things and you are you know, with your people, with your team, you're making things happen, like you're in the action, and then going up to the balcony. And up in the balcony, you can see things objectively. You have the perspective to look at the team and go, how are we doing? What are the checks and balance that we haven't done yet? You know, what's missing here? So you're shifting that perspective from the dance floor to the balcony and back down again. And it's like almost that ability to have those two perspectives almost simultaneously is hugely important in this topic of psychological safety because you can't really know whether you're developing it or whether you have it unless you have that ability to go to the balcony and see it from a different perspective.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And to carry on that analogy, which I think is, is actually a perfect one. It's coming down from the balcony and the group that you're dancing with, you're saying maybe we need to change our steps a little bit and adapt what we're doing.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah. Or, sorry, or even bringing them up to the balcony to see it with you.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, it's kind of encouraging anyone in your team to feel like they can go up to the balcony and be like, Oh, we're a bit out of time here or that doesn't look quite right. Obviously from a leadership perspective, you want to be doing that so that you can call out if that isn't happening.
But for me, psychological safety is allowing anyone in that team to be able to go up, have that perspective and call it out and feel kind of safe to do so without that risk of, you know, impacting them, their career, being ridiculed.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: A lot of really interesting things there. I think something that I hadn't thought about, particularly as someone who spends a lot of time with businesses and making. those types of decisions, I hadn't actually thought about the importance of psychological safety from maybe some more of those jobs that are on the ground. I think, Sarah, you mentioned a nurse in that, we've got people in the factories and the importance in that space. And then also thinking about, I had a reflection there that my group of friends is somebody that I feel very psychologically safe around. Why is that the case? Why do I have to maybe have a work persona that might be a little bit different? Okay, is there elements of it that I don't feel psychologically safe and I have to maybe change the way I go about things? But then I've also just had a thought of great teams that I've worked in and actually what was great about them and it's very hard to pinpoint but potentially that psychological safety aspect.
Suzie, you also mentioned you know, the rate of change in the world and actually psychological safety potentially being that sure footing in a world of quicksand or VUCA, VUCA quicksand that we can stand on. What are the benefits of psychological safety in the workplace, if I kind of just put a real kind of lens and focus on that?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: For me, it's everyone in your team having a voice. And I think coming back to that kind of diversity of thought piece, actually, you want to be hearing from a range of different voices quickly and often to allow you to get to the best solution. So if we think about taking a team, say from Clarasys, and we go and work with clients, we want everyone in that team to have an opinion, be able to share their opinion, because each individual is going to be bringing their own experience, their own perspective, and by allowing everyone to have a voice and doing that quickly, I think is the key for us. You don't have to kind of take time and then someone suddenly three weeks down the line is like, Oh yeah, I was going to mention that, but I didn't think it was relevant or I didn't think it was important. And then you've lost three weeks
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And you have that head in your hands moment like why didn't you say anything, we wouldn't be here.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: So for me, that's a really critical part. So that's the kind of creativity side of it. And the other side for me is just making sure that you are covering your bases across all areas, right? So as we said, from a safety perspective, maybe in some of those more hands on contexts, but from a business perspective, it is that thing of someone just being like, Oh, is this not an issue? This thing over here that maybe someone else hasn't seen because they don't work in that space. That's the benefit, right? As we kind of touched on, you call it out early, you call it out quickly before something maybe spirals into a bigger problem that you hadn't noticed. And giving people the space and the safety, anyone in the team to raise something, whether you, you know, you've had a six months experience versus 10 years experience, we want everyone to be looking out for those potential risks and issues so that we can deal with them quickly and they don't turn into an actual problem.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, definitely. I just think as someone in that space, if you have got more experience. It doesn't mean you've thought through all of the possible permutations. You are relying on your team for that bit and you don't really want to be in a position and potentially where you are as a leader that actually you've made your team feel that they can't say anything because you've got all the best ideas in the room. What you're saying is the right way to do things. Well, that's not necessarily true and you can't keep on top of all the things that are changing in the world. You need to have that, that reliability of your team, team behind you.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah, I think the thing that I'd add about that, I read this brilliant quote the other day and it said something along the lines of, success in an uncertain world depends on high quality bets or high quality decisions and high quality decisions depend on high quality conversations. Right? And the only thing that will breed a high quality conversation is psychological safety. And so we can't be in an environment where there's fear of productive conflict, where there's fear of healthy dialogue and debate. You know, those great conversations that you have with your colleagues when everyone feels like, they can go, actually, I disagree, and these are the reasons why, and you have a brilliant debate, and everyone leaves that room feeling really clear that they've, they've been heard. The decision, even though it might not be your own choice, you've had your opinion heard, and you're going to go with the decision that's made, and so, therefore, you feel accountable to that decision, so I think that ability to have that level of dialogue and constructive debate is so essential now.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Accountability is really interesting there as well because you've been part of that decision making process. So even if actually it wasn't your original idea, you didn't think it was, you've been brought along that journey. You're like, okay, now actually I'm ready to go with that as an idea. We're all in it together.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: I just think it's such an interesting point as well because often I think psychological safety can be misconstrued as everyone just being really nice and everyone's very friendly and it's all lovely and we are very supportive.
Sarah Partridge: So not that.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah, exactly. Whereas I think actually the whole point of it is that you feel safe to challenge. You feel safe to have those honest conversations and it's not saying that we're just going to turn up and be dicks all the time to our team, but actually having, it's not about being nicey nicey, it's about being able to challenge and have those difficult conversations.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. And I wonder sometimes whether actually we've got kind of the right word in the English language, because challenges often sound something that's really negative. And in this instance, it's, it's not, it's positive challenging.
Sarah Partridge: Absolutely.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Sarah, I'm going to put you on the spot really quickly. Uh, again, panic stations, but I think you said a really, really powerful quote that I just want us to rego again for everybody listening. Can you just share that quote again, please?
Sarah Partridge: Yeah, sure. It was, success in an uncertain world depends on high quality bets. i. e. high quality decisions. High quality bets depend on high quality conversations and we can't have high quality conversations without psychological safety.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I think that's just really powerful and thanks for quickly remembering that one on the spot.
I think we're all aligned that psychological safety is extremely, extremely important. I want to look at the flip side of it. What does it feel like to operate without psychological safety?
What does it feel like to operate without psychological safety?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah, so I think your point earlier, Sophie, you kind of said it can feel quite intangible at times. I think almost when it's there, you almost don't notice it. But actually when it's not there, that feels like it, it can be quite a stark kind of place to be. And for me, from a personal perspective, it's really noticing I have more of those moments where I have something pop into my head and I think, Oh, I should say this or I've got a thought or I've got an idea or that doesn't sit quite right, but I don't then voice it. And that's how I notice it for myself. I'm kind of like, Ooh, should I? Should I say that? And it's like, Oh no, like, I'll, I'll sit on it. I'll think about it for a bit. And then I, you know, it goes out of my head. It's that fear of repercussions as we kind of spoke about in that definition, but it comes back to that feeling of like, I've got an idea, I've got something I want to say, but I'm not going to say it for whatever, you know, for something, as you say, there's something stopping me. I think that's how it shows up for me, when I feel like I'm not in a kind of psychologically safe environment.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's probably the most common example of where you don't have it is that wanting to speak up in a meeting and for whatever reason choosing not to. And so many of my coaching clients come to me with that specific thing. It's like, Oh, we should have said that. And I didn't, and why didn't I say that? And what was stopping me? And so I think that's a really good point. And, you know, I've been in many environments where there isn't psychological safety. And I've talked about this on previous podcasts, but certainly in the music industry, when I was working in big labels, you know, there was, the opposite of psychological safety in terms of some of the meetings that I attended and, you know, the leader of that meeting, ridiculing people who spoke out with ideas or challenge or got something wrong or didn't live up to the expectations in terms of sales figures or whatever it might be.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: How are you going to get? anything good out of anybody.
Sarah Partridge: Well, you know, that's the thing, right? So I've kind of seen that firsthand and it is really, really damaging. I mean, it drives people to work hard because of the fear is driving the sort of work ethic, but in terms of creativity and collaboration and all of these things that we need to succeed, it's kind of erodes that fundamentally.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And it goes back to my thought again about like productivity And again, everyone's seeing like productivity, we're going to get more people to do that. Why haven't you reached your sales target? How are we going to make you reach your sales target? Actually, they've not realised that the way that their language, or the way that they're approaching that situation is actually making somebody not be able to reach their sales targets because they're not comfortable to try something potentially new or don't know how to ask for help.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah, I think for me from a wider context perspective, it's if everything feels a bit too shiny and perfect as well, that almost rings alarm bells a little bit in my head as well, right?
If, I don't know, senior leaders aren't owning up to mistakes or if no one seems to be making any mistakes and you're sat there like, oh my god, like, am I the only person that has, you know, ever messed up here? I think that's a kind of a sign that maybe we don't have that psychologically safe environment. And to your point, Sophie, it makes people feel like they can't try things because what if I try it and it goes wrong and no one here makes mistakes, it's already perfect. Like at Clarasys, we have the fuck up championship, which is where each month people kind of share the things that they've got wrong and it can range from relatively trivial things from, you know, I stood up on a zoom call and I was still wearing my pyjama bottoms. My personal one was calling a client by the wrong name within my first month of being here at Clarasys called her by her nickname, but you know, sharing things like that so that everyone can learn and actually everyone then feels more comfortable of like, Oh, well I tried to go after this thing and I did it terribly. It went horribly wrong, but actually I still tried it and it creates that environment of people feeling like they can do that, versus everything seeming all shiny and perfect.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah, sorry, just one thing that came to mind there is that there's so many organisations that I've worked in where, you know, you present your results at the end of the quarter, and there's a RAG status, which is the red, amber, green, and everything's on an Excel spreadsheet. And all of the departments are kind of, you know, essentially it's smoke and mirrors to show that it's green on the RAG status. And you're like, so it's green because, you know, you've sort of doctored the figures a little bit and got it to where it should be.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And you're defending everything you're trying to do rather than actually being like, okay, what do we want to achieve?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: How can we make it better?
Sarah Partridge: Imagine if you could go into those meetings with it being red on the RAG status and saying, these are the issues we've got. You know, this is the help that we need. We need ideas. We need Come on, let's discuss this together as a team and collaborate, rather than trying to brush it under the carpet and it all be smoke and mirrors because everyone's worried about their bonuses being attached to, you know, the target and so yeah.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: We're bright red. Come and help us. Please. That's really, really powerful. So I think quite a lot of people are probably sitting here. We've looked at both sides of why it's important. What's it like to operate with it and what's it like to not operate with it? And there might be a couple of people listening that are thinking, I don't think that our team is in a psychologically safe space or I might not be working with others. Are there any kind of other telltale signs to know if you and your team are working in a psychologically safe space? I know Suzie, you've touched on one about how you feel about that, but is there any other way to sort of recognise that in your team as a potential leader?
How to know whether your team is working in a psychologically safe space?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah, so mine would be based around when you're having things like team conversations or when you're kind of interacting with your team. How vocal are your team? Are they sat there just kind of nodding along with whatever you're saying or are they speaking up? Do you, as a leader, get challenged? Is there feedback that you get from your team? Do you feel comfortable giving feedback to your team? It's really, for me, it almost is like a noise level. Like there should be a level of noise within a team. There should be two way conversations. People should be speaking up. It shouldn't just be that kind of directive. We're going to do this and everyone just nods along and goes and does it. That for me would be a one of the biggest indicators.
Sarah Partridge: I think so. And I also think further to that, you know, if the meetings you're having, there's not a level of noise as you call it. And then when the meeting finishes, behind closed doors, there's a level of noise. Then we know we don't have it, right? We don't have psychological safety. Because people go off into their little factions and go, can't believe what Suzie said in that meeting. Unbelievable. What a ridiculous idea, you know, but we need to be able to say that in an open forum and to challenge, maybe not in that way. You wouldn't say that's a ridiculous idea, but you might say, tell me more about it.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, I don't think that would bring great psychological safety.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah, there's a way of going about it. But you know, you might want to be able to say, you know, what's led you to take this decision and help me understand, right? And to really get to the bottom of that so everyone feels like they've got buy in at the end of that meeting.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yep. Let's get rid of all those status report meetings. I find them the most painful things ever. I mean, if you've got a status report, send it out first and then let's actually have a conversation about it rather than reading a report because then you get into the meat of it and like how can we help and do something about it. I actually often say to the teams I'm working with is obviously like I want to hear all the great stuff and it's really important that we celebrate our successes, but like if something is really, really broken. Tell me now, like, and I'll help you with it. Don't sit on it or try and solve it kind of on your own. Exactly. Don't hide it. I'm not gonna have a go at you for it. I'd rather know than suddenly find out. And I will feel bad that I couldn't help you in that space.
I think something for me that I also think about if I'm thinking about if my team have psychological safety is how well do I listen and how well do I know what's actually important to them? And there's something when you're working with a team that you know who is good at all different things and yeah you can talk about your roles and responsibilities but as you start to groove as a team you really truly understand what someone is really great and what someone is really passionate about and some of the things that actually start to potentially scare them.
If I don't know that about my team, I have not built an environment for them to feel comfortable to share that with me. So for me, that's a question that I like to ask myself. How well do I listen? How well do I know them? How well do I actually know what makes everyone tick? And can they answer the same questions about me too? Because it's really important that I'm open in that same way as well.
So I want to move us into a space that we start talking about some practical takeaways. And I've shared a little bit about kind of what I do there. I think there's a few different lenses we can have a look at it, but I'd like to split it into leader and as a team member, if that's okay.
So as a leader, do we have any practical takeaways or kind of ideas that we can do to help foster psychological safety in our teams?
How to foster psychological safety in teams as a leader
Sarah Partridge: Yeah, I mean, I think that a team construct is co created, right? So it's the responsibility of all the members in the team. However, the leader generally does have quite a high level of influence on the dynamics in that particular team. So when I'm working with psychological safety as a tool, I work with a model called the fearless organization scan, which is actually an assessment that was developed by Amy Edmondson.
Amy Edmondson, we actually haven't brought her name up yet, which is surprising because she's, you know, such a pioneer in this topic of psychological safety. She's a Harvard professor that has done a huge amount of research over like a 20 year period on the benefits of psychological safety in the workplace. But she's created a tool called the fearless organization scan, which can be used to measure levels of psychological safety in teams and a coach like myself would work with the leader of the team to discuss what, you know, what psychological safety is, how they can foster it. But we'd assess the team, and it's a really easy assessment actually, it's seven questions, so it takes about three minutes to answer. But the results are, you know, such a great conversation starter. So the results of the assessment, they're not scientific, it's not like taking a body temperature or something, but they give an indication of where teams sit in relation to four different areas, and those areas are inclusion and diversity, attitude to risk and failure, willingness to help and open conversation. So essentially it's measuring the metrics in those four areas. And then we would have a conversation with the entire team to look at, okay, how are we scoring on attitude to risk and failure? You know, compared to a global average. And we start to have that conversation to understand, okay, this is where we're doing well. This is where we're not doing so well. And then we can apply practical solutions to help the leader to kind of develop these four critical areas that will help develop psychological safety. And I can go into those in a minute, but I'll pause for a second.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: No, I love that. I think being as scientific as you can be to pinpoint how well you're doing this and which areas maybe you're not doing so well. So I think to speak to one of those, like, maybe you are a really friendly team and everyone feels like they can be themselves and be their authentic selves at work, but maybe you've slipped a little bit into the too nicey nicey side of psychological safety where, you know, people can show up as they are, but you're not having those difficult conversations and you're not kind of bringing that challenge side of things.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That's really important that you just brought up that.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of identifying, okay, we do this really well as a team, maybe in this space, but we're not bringing the other side of it. I guess for me, I think even just those four that Sarah mentioned, I think there's an element of even asking those questions, right? Like obviously if you can use Amy Edmondson's, the measure that fearless organisation measure is, is great, but just asking yourself those kind of questions like, as a leader, are my team challenging me? Do I set up meetings to allow everyone in that room to have a voice? So certain things that I've done with teams is actually everyone in the room, whenever an idea is put forward, everyone has to bring a challenge, even if you don't necessarily stand by it or believe it fully yourself. It's kind of encouraging that mindset of like, what is the, what is the thing here that we might be missing. What is that challenge? So kind of encouraging meetings where everyone has a chance to speak. Obviously they don't have to, but you're kind of almost literally going around the room. So an idea is shared and it's like, right, Sophie, what do you think of this? What are the challenges? Sarah, what do you think of this? What are the challenges?
And the other thing for me as a leader is just asking for feedback. It's something we're really Big on here at Clarasys, but actively asking every single member of your team for feedback on a regular basis. So we're not just talking about a once a year 360, it's every month or every quarter you're asking for feedback from those people in your team, whether you do that anonymously or face to face with the person, whatever it is, actually just allowing a space to get those feedback dialogues happening on a regular basis. So it's not just kind of a one off thing, I think would be two things from my side.
Sarah Partridge: And I think, you know, further to that, the sorts of things that are recommended by Amy, you know, there's three things that she suggests leaders should practice to develop psychological safety.
The first one is about setting the scene, in a meeting, in any kind of team type forum, where you're reframing failure first and foremost by saying, you know, we're here to learn, we're here to experiment. If you fail, that's okay, as long as there's learning from this. And when you set that scene, like Suzie said, you know, it's about inviting all voices in the room. So you're saying, you know, we want to hear from as many people as possible. This is the challenge we've got. We can't solve it without all of you and all of your great intellect and ideation and everything else. So please, you know, let's come together and collaborate here. So you're really framing that session, that meeting, that workshop, whatever it is, right at the beginning to encourage collaboration.
And then the second part is what Amy calls practising inquiry. And the first part of that is conversational turn taking, which again, Suzie mentioned. So it's just making sure that everybody that wants to speak is given that time and space to speak. And actually, this is kind of almost borrowing on the work of Nancy Klein, who is another great leadership expert. And she talks about this idea of deep listening and making sure people have the time and space to slow down and really think about things and share what they're thinking. So there's this idea of conversational turn taking, but also the generative listening, so really listening as a leader to what everyone has to say. And also the final thing is finishing with appreciation. So it's really important that if you're inviting collaboration, participation in your team, if someone has a The courage to speak up and to share an idea that you show them appreciation for that, because that miniature reward of thanking someone in that meeting for sharing, for challenging, for admitting a mistake, for being vulnerable. That is probably the most crucial step as a leader to fostering ongoing behaviour in that way.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: To that individual and then also as a signal to everyone else.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: I think the same with feedback, right? Even if you don't agree with the feedback or it's kind of, it gives you that emotional response saying just first up, thank you for having the courage to come and give me that feedback is a great way to then, as you say, encourage those behaviours, both for that person and then they'll go away and tell their mates and be like, Oh, actually it wasn't horrendous giving my boss that feedback. It was well received or they said, thank you.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That's some really awesome practical takeaways. We'll put all the links in the show notes to Amy Edmondson's and the fearless organisation scan. Some things that were really kind of speaking out to me there was the importance of it not just being once and done. So I think there's some really great things in that scan, but it's sort of, don't just go out there and do it once, like you need to continue to work on this and like, typically I know at Clarasys we regularly run retros with our team, which is fortnightly, we would actually engage with our teams and actually start to ask some of these questions and say, actually, what went wrong this week? How could we have improved it? What went really well? Where are we celebrating our successes? So making sure that actually, as soon as you start to open that door and start to build psychological safety, don't shut that on people really quickly. You have to kind of double down on that.
I also liked how we started to talk about reframing and there's something that's quite simple within this is doing meetings in a different way. And it's, okay, what outcome do you want to get to from this meeting or this session or the thing that we've got to achieve as a team as a goal? And then saying, actually, is there a slightly different way that we can do this, that yeah, as a leader, it might take you a little bit longer, even if you know the answer, but that's not the important thing, is that you've brought everybody into that discussion. So next time when you don't know the answer, or you need to be told that you've got your answer wrong, that the team around you feel like that they can. And again, with that feedback, it's about doing things in a slightly different way and inviting people to be part of that. So I really like that. I think it's probably, and guys, I'll look to you to correct me if I'm wrong on this one, it's probably going to feel quite tricky to begin with. You're probably going to be sat there going, I'm actually need to think about how I'm going to run this meeting in a different way or how I want to approach this situation in a different way. But after something you've practiced over a while, it becomes second nature. It would just be how you work.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah. And it's gonna feel uncomfortable, right, as you say, to start with. I think even, I remember when I went on a course, like even they do this thing which is an appreciation shower, where at the end everyone just goes around and says thank you to each person for something that they've brought. And I don't know if it's a British thing or a me thing.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I did also just have a reaction to it, if it's correct. Right.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: And that feels so uncomfortable, but actually, it opens the door, as you say, to having those kinds of conversations. And again, with the challenge piece, it's like, okay, yeah, that might feel like a bit long or that you're just going over the same stuff. But actually, if you get people used to constantly challenging and having to come up with a challenge, then as, as you say, if there is something that you've missed or that you haven't thought of, it just means that as a team, you're much more in that rhythm of like, oh, okay. So and so Sophie, my leader has said this thing, oh, my immediate response is to think, okay, what Sophie missed, in a way that is constructive and to help to get to that best solution. So yeah, it probably will feel uncomfortable and maybe it won't work and everyone will sit and look at you and kind of think, what is this, what's going on here? But in time, as you say, it will lead to much richer discussions and all those benefits that we've kind of touched on.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah. And I think that the challenging part is difficult for a lot of people. I think it's quite hard to get it right. And the best practice with challenging is to challenge directly and care personally at the same time. And that's this kind of concept of radical candor, but the caring personally bit has to be there to be able to challenge directly in a way that fosters psychological safety, because if you're challenging directly without the caring personally, then you're probably going to erode the psychological safety, right? So there's, there's a real balance here. And I think that, often it falls to the job of the leader to role model what that looks like. They're challenging directly and caring personally, and it's not going to happen overnight. And I think my advice, if you're a leader looking to implement some of these practices is, you know, don't go from nought to a hundred, like go in on Monday and be completely different person. Just start integrating a few things at a time. And. Make it natural.
Suzie Mossman-Monk: And explain why, right.
And explain why, because that's part of the transparency piece and kind of bringing everybody along. Share this podcast with your team.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I love it. And I feel like, Sarah, you've got some amazing quotes today, like soundbites left, right and centre for this.
I just want to quickly touch on the other side. So we've looked at Alida. There might be other people. that are listening to this podcast that maybe feel like they aren't a leader. Although I do, I do challenge that. everyone can be a leader in their own right in a team. It's just people might look to you for, for slightly different things.
And I think as Sarah used the term role model, uh, as well, for those that might be more of a team member, how can they help foster psychological safety?
How can a team member help foster psychological safety?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Two things I would say. One, genuinely, kind of you mentioned it, Sophie, but share the concept of psychological safety with whoever is leading your team in a way that's like, oh, I had this really cool concept that came from Google and all of that kind of stuff. Just talk about it and be like, oh, like, I think we do this really well. I feel safe to share this, but I wonder if we could do more of the appreciation bit or the feedback bit or bring any kind of those elements in. And then when you're a member of that team, just notice if there are maybe individuals who don't speak up so much or people who are really quiet or who do that kind of offline chitchat. So, you know, who the people that don't raise it in the meeting, but then we'll message you afterwards saying, oh, that was, you know, rubbish or whatever. And just encourage them to share those ideas back. So, oh, why don't you next time maybe mention it? Or why don't you share those things, even if they don't want to do it in the meeting, why don't you share those offline thoughts with our leader or whoever it is? So it's kind of those little nudges, right? As you said, it's not, you're not going to necessarily go and, you know, flip everything on its head, but small things of noticing who's quiet, who maybe does that kind of talking offline and encourage them to bring more of that into the room. And then role model it, as you kind of said, as much as that person feels comfortable, I think it can be really challenging if you are a team member in a team where psychological safety isn't present to suddenly be that person that puts their hand up and says, oh, like, I think we should do this differently. And I guess that is almost a bit of a vicious circle with this because if psychological safety isn't there, then the fear of repercussion probably is. But there are small things that you can do, as you said, maybe bring some of those concepts, some of those ideas, help other people to also kind of share some stuff, even if that is in written format to start with, rather than diving in straight away and being like, oh, I think you're wrong and this is why.
Sarah Partridge: Yeah. And I think, you know, there is a lot of evidence to support how important this is in terms of high performance, right? If you're a leader of a team, you just want your team to perform to the best of their ability and at a high level because you want to be successful. So if you're someone in the team who feels really passionate about this topic, there is so much evidence, scientific evidence to show that fostering psychological safety is the number one driver of high performance in teams.
You know, I mean, look, that might be disputed, but there's a lot of research that points in that direction. So it isn't fluffy. It isn't something that's just a fad that there's hard factual, concrete scientific evidence here that we can utilize to have that discussion with our leaders, with our CEOs, to help us to move and influence the organisation in a way that's going to essentially result in high performance.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Amazing. Well, guys, I'm sadly going to have to close this podcast. I think, again, similar to all the podcasts we've had, we could sit and chat for ages on this bit, but I hope folks that are listening have got some really great practical takeaways to go with. Start kind of, chipping away at building psychological safety, if that's the right way, or start building the blocks of psychological safety with your team. Whether or not you're a leader or a team member, there's absolutely things that you can do.
I think some, some key takeaways for me is it's not about what you do, but how you choose to do it. And you can look to reach the same outcomes, but it changes materialistically about how you approach it and how people might have felt along that journey.
Just to kind of quickly close, I would love to know from each of you just sort of one very quick takeaway from this session.
Sarah Partridge: So, I think for me, the final thought I want to share is again something that comes from Amy Edmondson and she says psychological safety is the soil, not the seed. Right.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: You're at it again. You've got another one.
Sarah Partridge: Too many quotes. Too many quotes. And I love that analogy because actually psychological safety isn't this thing that sits over there that we've got to just kind of add on to our to do list. Think of it, as the soil that nurtures your business growth or your business targets or your team ambitions. Because if you can kind of plant that target into a rich soil of psychological safety, then you're going to be successful. So that's my parting thought is that it's the soil, not the seed. Think of it in that way.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Love it, Suzie?
Suzie Mossman-Monk: Yeah, I think for me it would be acknowledging that this isn't something that is just fluffy and nice. And actually the point of psychological safety is to allow for challenge and for idea generation to happen more quickly and more effectively. That is the purpose of it. So even though it might feel like you have to put in some work to get there, the benefits for you, your team, your clients, your business, is going to be significant. That has kind of been proven so it's worth putting in the time to create that psychological safety within your team and within your business.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Wonderful. Well, thank you both for a fascinating and rich conversation. We've talked about a lot and I know you've both got loads of resources, so we'll put a ton of links to some of the stuff that we've been talking about to today in the show notes.
Sadly, we're going to have to end today's podcast, until next time.
Show notes
Guest bio:
As Founder and Director of rapidly growing leadership and strategy consultancy The Change Academy, Sarah Partridge is deeply motivated by empowering clients to develop the mindsets and behaviours required to thrive in today's dynamic landscape.
With a passion for purpose-driven leadership and a keen understanding of modern business challenges, Sarah leverages her extensive boardroom experience to guide individuals and organisations through transformative change.
Prior to pioneering The Change Academy, Sarah honed her leadership and strategic acumen in diverse arenas. At BMW Group Financial Services UK, she served as Head of Strategy & Business Development, collaborating closely with the CEO and executive team to chart the company's course. Leading critical functions including internal communications, innovation, and change management, Sarah acquired a deep understanding of organisational dynamics.
Sarah began her career as a passionate musician and creative marketer, immersed in the vibrant major label culture of the recorded music industry. As she climbed the ladder from Sony to Universal and finally to Marketing Director at EMI, she witnessed the energising power of creativity and learned the true definition of leadership, good, bad, and ugly. This dynamic journey fuelled her desire to empower individuals and organisations to challenge the status quo, embrace change and unlock their full potential.
The Change Academy embodies this philosophy. Founded on the belief that true growth lies outside the comfort zone; the Change Academy provides challenging and deeply supportive learning programmes. Sarah's lived experience informs every initiative, ensuring solutions are grounded in the realities of the modern workplace. From SMEs to established corporations, The Change Academy's unique blend of leadership development, strategic guidance and executive coaching empowers organisations across all sectors to navigate transformation and thrive.
“The leadership programme run by The Change Academy was by far the most practical, engaging and rewarding of any of the programmes I've been involved with previously”
Dan, Client Success Director, Kenshoo
"Sarah is a rare blend of a strategic thinker and a change maker - someone that can think differently to those around her, that can challenge you to think outside of the box and come up with ideas to evolve your business. I would recommend Sarah and The Change Academy to any organisation looking for a trusted partner who will go above and beyond to support your strategic ambitions or leadership development aspirations"
Spencer Halil, Managing Director, Northridge Finance
View Sarah's website here.
Contact Sarah via email here.
