Thriving in Safe and Supportive Environments

Cristina Amigoni: “We find that when psychological safety is deeply missing, that’s when even great ideas don’t come out. People are holding back.”

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, coworkers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: This is Alex Cullimore. 

BOTH: Let's dive in.

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills. No makeup. Just being.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, Cristina and I get to discuss something that we've talked about in all kinds of different ways before, mostly as far as like the importance of it in the workplace. But today we wanted to kind of take a new angle on the idea of psychological safety. So, Cristina, welcome. Let's talk some psychological safety.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, let's do that. We have touched on it in a few different ways, but we had – Nicole and I actually had a conversation yesterday about it, which turned into a two-hour philosophizing on psychological safety and really taking a completely different angle that I had never thought about actually when it comes to psychological safety.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Let's quickly give people a grounding and define this psychological safety being the ability to within groups feel like it's safe to challenge norms, ask questions, make mistakes without fear of shame and blame, but just actually take risks, do some things that are outside of the status quo, be able to challenge the status quo and not feel like that is something that is going to be punished or have insights in retribution or retaliation.

In the workplace, this is something that came up as the number one most important thing from Google's research on teams for effective teams to have. So, high psychological safety was correlated with high, and it was a good cause behind high results, getting those teams that work well together, feel comfortable with each other. It's a lot of what – it can be hard to define beyond that, but you kind of know it when to feel psychological safety because you get that openness in that space.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's even beyond that. It's almost as, it's definitely the being safe to make mistakes and speak up and challenge the status quo. But I think it also goes down to the level of being able to speak up. So, suggesting things and knowing that they're going to be heard and supported. Supported doesn't mean agreed, but know that the space is enough that if you have an idea, you can share it. And you will have the support of somebody listening to it and helping you build from it. Potentially, and also, change your mind and challenge it if it doesn't work.

We find that when psychological safety is deeply missing, that's when even great ideas don't come out. People are holding back, not because they don't have them. Because once they come out, you clearly understand that these are people that not only they know what to do, they know how to do it well, and they have the skills and the perspective and the ideas to actually move things in a direction that would be very successful.

So, the question is, why aren't they talking about this? Why don't they reach out and share this? What's the holding back from being really their best selves, which they are? They are very capable people. So, what's the holding back on what I'm capable of doing? That's a lack of psychological safety.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. We see this all the time in our leadership classes, people with great potential and ideas that just aren't quite speaking up, aren't quite really inserting that are, are asserting the things that they really can do well. And psychological safety allows that to kind of come out and be part of the conversation. It's easy to say like, “Oh, you have to solicit ideas,” but it's worth thinking that that's not just about like, “Oh, one person has one great idea.” But I remember hearing this with comedy writers talking about working on things like The Daily Show or Simpsons or something. And people will ask like, “Was that your joke? Was that your joke?” And they're always like, “I mean, some of these I started the seed of,” but it was all said and done, everybody in the and kind of ends up contributing some piece to it and makes it sharper, makes it tighter, it gives it the new twist.

So, it's not just like one person has an idea, it's the psychological safety for people to suggest things that end up becoming the seeds that in a group conversation become that idea. When everybody can share those, you might get enough perspectives to get ideas that will work not only now, but into the future, or might be something new or different, or just have that perspective. It doesn't mean that person has the fully fleshed-out idea. It doesn't mean that we're counting on every summer intern to have a business-changing idea. But if you get the input of every summer intern, you might have that perspective that changes how you thought about something in the first place, challenges and assumption, gives you some new idea. That's what we really need the space for, and that's where that value comes from, not just that everybody can have an idea, but also everybody can have ideas together and that we can build on this in a more collaborative sense. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, definitely, because it’s that collective. The collective is always going to be greater than the sum of the parts. The whole is greater than some of the parts is because you can build on all of them. Also, if we go back to something that we've talked about in the past many multiple times is like we have so much happening in our brain that what we're able to communicate out loud is at best, 10%. So, being able to communicate out loud as we're forming the ideas is that gift of connecting other dots and getting it out there and then seeing what somebody else is bringing to the table.

Then really building on top of that, it's the true we, that's the power of the we. So, in that, having the environment that allows for that is crucial. What we realized when talking yesterday that it's actually only one side of the coin. It's not just about the environment. The environment has a huge piece and without it, nothing works. So, working on from an organizational perspective and a workplace perspective, like having the environment where there is a focus on establishing psychological safety is absolutely necessary.

The other side is we have to have internal psychological safety about ourselves and our own worth to actually speak up in this type of environment. One of the things that Nicole actually brought up was that as she realized, she didn't always have it. She found it when she started realizing that if she weren't afraid, she stopped being afraid of being fired. If she spoke up, if she challenged, if she asked the question, if she asked for clarification, if she pointed out something that was not working. And that was the switch.

The switch wasn't just the environment that allowed for her to speak up. It was that she needed to internally be very clear about her worth and know that if she got fired for speaking up and for saying and for asking, she would still land on her feet. She would know exactly what to do and she would still be okay.

Alex Cullimore: That really is the central conceit of how we wanted to think about psychological safety today. We wanted to think about this in terms of being both an external and an internal job. It's that you should create environments and seek to create environments where people can express themselves and be that, that really does tie into our overall theme of authenticity. We want the psychological safety to be able to elicit the geniuses that happen to be present for each individual person. So, you want that authenticity expressed, you want psychological safety to get there.

You've talked a lot about some of the environments to get there on the outside, and leaders have a responsibility to try and help and foster that. But the other half of the coin that has to be present too is you being willing to step up and take that. And to have the confidence to say, “No, I have my worth.” I'm willing to say the thing, because it might be a company where it is – that there's nothing wrong with the room, they would be fine with receiving a new idea. But if the person is not comfortable speaking up for themselves, that still is going to go unexpressed.

You'll still miss that value. You'll still missed something that could be collaborative and innovative, enjoyable.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. For me, once we started talking about that and I started thinking about it, I guess I practiced that from day one. For most of my careers, I found myself in that space of knowing, I know what to do if today is my last day in this job, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. So, it's not just, it's okay if I get fired because I'll be fine. But it's also, it's okay if I realize I need to walk away. I'll know what to do. And I know what I can bring to the table and I know my worth. I know how to go through the steps I've done then millions of times, or at least what it feels like millions of times.

But it is that component of being very clear with, do I know what I provide? And am I okay if this is it, if today is the last day? If I mention this, I speak up, I open my mouth, and it goes sideways. I remember doing that pretty much almost, maybe not from day one, in my very first job when I was 19, but probably by the end of the first week. I mean, if we ever get, actually, we could probably ask Andrew to come on the podcast. It was my first boss. If you ask Andrew, or even Joe, who's another of the guys that I worked with very closely, like their memory of me, their understanding of me is that you'll know what I feel and what I'm thinking at all times, and I'm not going to hold back.

Alex Cullimore: I think that's the perfect way of describing it. As you mentioned that, because I had recently read some quote that was talking about basically confidence and how confidence is, it doesn't come from doing things well. It comes from basically things going poorly and getting through it and understanding that you can get through it. So, kind of difficult to answer chicken in the egg way to create your own psychological safety or to step into this role to get more comfortable with it. If you aren't feeling comfortable with it, it does take that personal impetus to jump into that discomfort and assume that things might not go well and step into the things that you feel like you're taking a risk on.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, definitely. If I think back to my childhood and growing up in a school environment where if you didn't speak up and said the exact perfect thing, you were punished, you were humiliated publicly, you would fail. It was very traumatizing to not being able to perfectly speak up. Also, that perfection was so subjective that you never knew how to meet it. Because for some teachers, it would be, you have to speak up every single time. We have a lesson and be the one that participates and raises their hands. For some, it would be like you only speak up when spoken to. For others, it would be, you only make sure that you answer perfectly in written form or orally form, or when we're speaking.

So, you're constantly navigating what is perfection? And basically, I'm never going to attain it. Because even if I find that in one way, it's going to be the opposite for the other teacher. So, for me as an introvert, well, a former introvert, I'm not sure what I am now, but a former introvert, I didn't speak because I was never sure what perfection looked like and I could see the punishment on me and others and what happened if you didn't meet the perfect way of participating and speaking up. I didn't speak at all, unless it was absolutely necessary, which then was a punishment in itself, because then the punishment for me was like, “Oh, my parents were told for 13 years.” It's like your daughter is not intelligent enough. Your daughter doesn't know what's going on. Your daughter will amount to nothing in her life because she just doesn't get it.

Maybe I didn't get everything and I'm sure I didn't, but I was never even given a chance. So that was a lack of the environment for that. So then, when I think about the switch that going to college actually, did in me, and then starting with these jobs, I realized that something was in me, the confidence was there somewhere. It had just been pushed down so far that then I just took having a safe environment and constant practice to say, “Oh, if I say this, let’s see what happens. Okay, let me say this other thing and see what happens.” And I was very lucky that my first work environment was that environment, was the environment where I could keep practicing speaking up. I could keep practicing asking the question of, I don't understand. I could keep practicing going up to my boss, and my boss’ boss’ boss, and saying what was in my mind and not getting punished for it.

Alex Cullimore: That's a really good example of the importance of the environment. You have the loss of it in the first half, but then the choice, and so if people are feeling stuck in environments where that's not there, it's going to take that leap of faith to trust that there are environments out there in which that is possible. And then the second leap of, can I speak up? What happens when I do? How you phrase that, because it sounds like keeping that kind of experimental mindset of being able to say, what happens if I do this? Will it go well? And thankfully, when you do get a good response, it can be a lot easier to continue to build that muscle and be ready to step in when it gets harder and when inevitably there will be disagreements, which is not a bad thing. It's just that that can be very demoralizing if you're highly anticipating any pushback, meaning that there's no way forward.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. I think it's that practice. So, I think the confidence is a muscle just to constantly practice it and constantly seeing what happens and then evaluating. Yes, just like any like any muscle, the stronger it gets, the easier it is to think like, “Well, if I say this, and it's the end, I know what to do. I've been here before.” Whether voluntarily or not, I know what I provide. I know how I can land on my feet.

So, the interesting piece for me is that when I got to the point of having that solidified foundation, still being nervous, like you don't never not get nervous. At least I never not get nervous. You're still nervous, you're still worried, you still go through the whole catastrophizing and worst-case scenario and what happens in that. But there, I've started a lot of conversations with bosses or sometimes even clients and say like, “Hey, I'm going to say this and you may want to fire me after I say this.” So, I'm already in that possible future. I'm like, “Yes, go ahead, I've given you the button. Push the button. I'm still going to say this.”

Alex Cullimore: Record to date, that's usually when we ended up getting more work.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. The record to date is that I usually get promoted.

Alex Cullimore: I think that also speaks to how much, like, even if the environment doesn't seem welcome to it, I think that people are often relieved once the thing that is just unspoken is spoken, especially, if people are seeing it and it just feels like nobody's addressing it and it starts to just take on its own life. Whether it was even intentional or not, whether anybody was driving it. Often, we can say like, “Oh, nobody made space for this. Nobody had the idea for this.” The leader didn't seem like they were willing to hear it.

Sometimes it's just a blind spot that grew into something. Sometimes it's just something that just, institutionally, everybody starts to assume something can't be done because it hasn't been done. You kind of get that personal bystander effect of like, “Well, certainly somebody would have pointed it out if it was possible, so I'm not going to be the one to point it out.” So, jumping into that allows you to decide that this is going to be something that can be done. I think people get relieved when it is finally spoken and then suddenly that can be worked on. So, a lot of the observations that have been things that we walk into thinking we might get fired for are usually ones that people are hoping or are thinking already, or hoping someone might say. So, it creates a space for that to be a reality to grow from.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And it is, is the dynamics of the environment and the internal. It's a dance almost. Internally, it's having the confidence to speak up and know that if the worst-case scenarios comes to life, there's still a way, it's okay. You can handle the worst-case scenario. And the environment is that the constant observation of, because that's the other piece, the environment is not really stable. It's like, “Yes, it's been okay for the first 15 times and it could go around the 16th time.” So, it's that constant observation and especially of what's happening to others when they do it.

What's amazing is that having that combination and having that internal confidence and internal psychological safety to go out there and take the leap with an environment that supports it, that's when you can truly see what people are capable of. So, when looking at people and thinking like, “Wow, like, is this person capable? Is this the right person?” When you get into those situations where they share how they are thinking, they share their plans, they share how they will approach something, that's when you know, my God, this is definitely a high-talented person that can make a huge difference, and it's absolutely necessary in this organization and this team and this environment.”

So, the question is like why are they not showing up the way we may see them? Why are they not showing up like this all the time? That's when the other side comes in. What is the environment? What's the system doing that's not allowing for people to shine for what they can truly bring to the table?

Alex Cullimore: If you're in a space where you feel like you've created a good environment and you still occasionally have like one or two people who don't feel like they're reaching out, then it becomes that the game of being curious about that, getting into like, why is that not happening? Not as in a blame game of like, why aren't you speaking up? But as in, “Hey, what's holding you back? What feels like you don't want to speak up?” We're even pointing out like, “Hey, here's a couple of times where ideas really changed the trajectory of what we were doing and we'd love to see more of that.” What's kind of holding that back? What can we do to encourage that and getting into that curious, or coaching mind space where it's, “Hey, this could be really great. I see potential.” What would help you express that?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, definitely. That curiosity is that not judging and just basically being on the receiving end of the judgment I received when I was in school, of like, “Oh, she doesn't speak up. Therefore, her brain is not functioning. Therefore, she's not getting it. She doesn't get it. That's why she doesn't speak up.” I'm like, “Maybe that's not why I don't speak up, but it's having that curiosity.”

Alex Cullimore: I think it also is important to say that like this non-judgment is not about not challenging ideas or not about like having a discussion on them or having a debate. It's not accepting every idea that comes out as like, “Oh, then we'll definitely do that.” It's about having the honest respect for ideas and that people can offer them and then really give them the fair shake of what that means and having the non-judgment of not assuming we know why something is happening, but getting curious about why that is happening. Or if somebody is throwing out a solution that you think is just off the wall, absolutely never going to work.

Is it better just to be like, “That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard,” or to say what makes you think that? Or to probe on like, “Okay, I would be worried about these three things happening.” Is it possible to avoid that with this idea? And that's where you get that collaboration and a brand-new perspective that could totally change things. Even if the original idea isn't the right one. Shutting those down and being judgmental about having brought that up is what stops this psychological safety environmentally and being able to get into that non-judgmental space, not without challenging, not without discerning, not just taking everything out at face value, still doing the critical thinking, but honestly showing up to the conversation. What is the debate when it is a question?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. So, the question is, which I actually don't have an answer, so it is a question, that's not a rhetorical question. I don't have an answer is how do you build that internal muscle of psychological safety? How do you find it in you?

Alex Cullimore: I don't have an answer for it. I just have ideas. I think that you've identified a couple of them and there's that testing it. I think that as bad as it sounds, I think it is by finding some failures and recovering from them, but you do have to also be willing to tell yourself the story that like, “Oh, I found my way out of this.” I mean, a lot of people can get tied to an outcome, have something go away, they didn't want it to go and then assume like, “Well, I can't make something happen. I failed at this.”

Whereas if you could fail from something or what felt like a failure from the original idea and then turn that into something else or see why that was important to have essentially learned from something that felt terrible at the time, but you recover from it, I think that gives you that idea of like, as long as you can really store that away and bolster yourself with it and understand that that is because of who you are that you were able to recover from this, that gives you the idea that like, “Okay, maybe it's not so bad that things go poorly.”

Especially early, it's easy to feel like, early in careers, early in life, it's easy to feel like, “Oh, any mistake is going to derail forever.” And there are things that can hurt, there are things that can take a little while back. But most of those, if you're looking along enough timeframe tends to be the reason that something else comes up later, the reason that we are able to handle something when something even more important to us appears and it's only because we had some failure, or something we would call a failure at the time and we might not feel about that later.

So, I think that confidence builds from experiencing really kind of some hard things. It means leaning into things that you're probably not going to get right, at least right off the bat, and then being able to understand that you're learning or growing from that and that have that be important, and be willing to try that because that's jumping in and taking that risk is huge. If you don't take that risk, you're not going to be in those situations anyway. And that's not just to take every wild risk. It's not you shouldn't do any thinking about what risk is worth taking. But I don't think you can get there without the experiments.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, that's true. It is a lot of experience. The experimenting that gives you the practice and gives you the muscle and then you can see that life doesn't end. It may feel like it's ending sometimes, but it doesn't actually end. So, knowing that – I think there's also a value in looking at other completely unrelated situations. Knowing, kind of doing a lot of, what is it about me that maybe succeeded and maybe succeed, maybe not be there, but we got through this other situation which maybe it's not work related at all, but we're past it. It's a situation that I'm at the moment felt like the end of the world and the end of life as we knew it, and it would probably was the end of life as we knew it. How do I recover? I don't know how I'm going to recover from that.

But maybe even looking at those, even though they may not be similar situations, whether it's a personal situation or something family related or friends related, but something else, where could you find that confidence anywhere almost in life?

Alex Cullimore: Whatever it might be that derails us and all of our experiences, all human experiences, whether we put them in the bucket of work or family or personal, whatever. It’s all just experiences. We can all do that categorization. But it is a good mental exercise to test out, “Hey, how much am I testing the waters?” Or, “If I don’t feel like I can test the waters right now, that might be fine.” Maybe you don’t have the ability right now, so what would it take to get to that, or what do you need to help recover? What is it that is preventing that, that feels like maybe you need some rest from right now? Or what can you do to actually make that the not active rest as in doing something, but active as in helping you address what is holding you back?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Then I would think that the other piece is, if the environment, if you find that confidence in your own psychological safety, if you find that you know your worth, you know where you stand, you know that speaking up, that providing really being able to shine and provide everything that, or a good amount of what your talents are to the picture is important, which I would strongly agree. I would strongly say that it is very important.

If the environment is constantly one that does not allow for that, then that's when it's important to go back to figuring out like how long can I stay in this environment until it does chip away internally? Cause it will chip away. So, what is possible here? It's not going to be a forever situation. Where's that weight? Like how long can I make this? Can I keep testing something that's giving me the same results over and over and over or too often? And then really digging into that internal psychological safety and confidence to then decide what the next move is. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I think that's a great way of putting it. None of this is easy. All of this is simple to say, harder to do, but I think these are important ways of thinking about it and I really appreciated Nicole's idea that this is both an inside and an outside job to go develop this and that we do our best to create an environment and then we can do our best to support somebody in finding their own. But at some point, if it is about us, we have to take that step. We have to put on the wings and hope that when we jump, they work.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Good luck.

Alex Cullimore: Good luck. Build some psychological safety.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Go jump off the cliff, see what happens. 

Alex Cullimore: I mean, not literally. Please don't jump off the cliff.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, not the cliff. Please don't jump off the cliff.

Alex Cullimore: The metaphorical cliff.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Take a risk, not one that will risk your life. Take a risk. Take a measured risk in a safe environment. And thanks for listening.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you.

[OUTRO]

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Uncover the Human. Special thanks to Rachel Sherwood who helped produce our theme and of course our production assistants, Carlee and Niki for whom we could not do this or could not publish this. We get to do basically the fun parts. Thank you to We Edit Podcasts for editing our podcasts. 

Cristina Amigoni: You can find us at podcast@wearesiamo.com. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us at Uncover the Human on social media. So, follow us. We Are Siamo is W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.com.

Alex Cullimore: Please feel free to reach out with questions, topics you'd like addressed. If you'd like to be on the show, reach out. We're around. Thank you everybody for listening.

[END]