Melissa Perri interviews Tara Scott at the Agile 2022 Conference on this week’s episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Tara is an experienced product coach and organizational behavior design coach who specializes in psychological safety, which is the ability to speak up in the workplace without fear of negative consequences. Tara tells Melissa how experiences in her own family led her to this important line of work, how she realized psychological safety could actually help increase organizational agility, what happens when a company isn’t psychologically safe, why having a “work” version of you is actually harmful, the inevitable uncomfortable moments that come with creating a safer work environment, particularly for leadership, and more. 

Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Tara talk about:

Tara talks about her own background and what led her to teach psychological safety.

Tara assesses the psychological safety of an organization by conducting individual conversations with the team.

If you feel like you have to micromanage your employees, it probably means that you don't feel safe giving them the freedom to do their jobs. This can be damaging to your team's morale and productivity.

Tara advises that leaders should “lead with curiosity as opposed to leading with questions” as this would create positive interactions with employees and allow them to feel psychologically safe.

Open communication, diversity and inclusion, willingness to help and willingness to ask for help, and attitudes towards risk and failure are the four metrics used to measure if a work environment is psychologically safe.

Tara explains that when employees are more relaxed and laugh, it is a sign that the work environment is becoming more psychologically safe. Another indicator is when team leaders work actively to create a psychologically safe environment.

Tara suggests that every morning, remote teams should sit around before work and just talk to each other – get to know each other and become comfortable hearing your own voice. This promotes psychological safety within the team.

As an executive, if you're noticing your organization becoming psychologically unsafe you can introduce an optional virtual coffee, where your employees can join for 15 minutes to relax and have conversations with co-workers.

Resources

Tara Scott on LinkedIn