Psychological Safety - How to create Inclusion in your organizations

2020 will be remembered forever as a time when we were all forced to rebuild our way of thinking and living. Due to the pandemic, one of the topics discussed frequently was Psychological Safety

Psychological Safety is not a new term, you can find this term mentioned by Professor Edgar Schein as far back as 1965. Since then many other initiatives have been undertaken, like Google’s Project Aristotle, where they found out that Psychological Safety is the first unique characteristic of high-performing teams. Amy Edmondson shared many insights with her book, Fearless Organization, and, last but not least, Timothy Clark, the CEO of LeaderFactor, explores the theme through the 4 great stages.

As a former computer engineer and an Executive Manager at CI&T, a Global Digital Transformation company, I always think about human development in a logical and rational way. So, every time I am faced with a framework and structure that helps to understand and assimilate knowledge, I pay attention.

When the 4 stages of psychological safety were presented to me by my team I immediately  understood that we found an amazing way to spread psychological safety inside our company. One of the greatest gifts I’ve gotten working for CI&T in the past 13 years was the MVP (minimum valuable product) mindset. Every idea that pops up into my mind is paired with an intense need for testing, and with the 4 stages, it was no different.

Psychological safety in the workplace: starting small

We started doing small workshops to talk about psychological safety with our executives. It was an amazing experience, but, as I mentioned before, an engineer's brain craves structure and a framework to implement the concept of psychological safety for their teams and customers. As a co-founder of Hub, a strategic area at CI&T focused on spreading global leadership and teaching our employees how to unlock potential, we truly believe that before developing any hard or soft skills, you have to master your mindset.

There aren’t any behaviors or abilities that can be sustained for a long period of time without reframing the beliefs we got from our own life, our family, and society.I am a country guy that came to a big city to study computers and thought that I would never succeed in my professional life. When I figured out that the key to changing my destiny was in my mindset, I was able to rewrite and rebuild my journey. I have been to more than 20 countries and lived in China, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. I was one of the pioneer Executive Coaches in Brazil who built an internal area with a focus on escalating coaching. And why am I telling this story? Because the reason for all those achievements was not only to reframe my mindset, but to share what I learned with my colleagues.

When I started to study the 4 stages of psychological safety, 3 things stood out to me: . 
You can not advance to any other stage without belonging. To build a strong and courageous employee, people need to feel like they belong. As Timothy Clark says, “We long to belong”.

I started to improve my professional journey when I understood what I was truly good at. Discover your talents, embrace them, and accept yourself. I tell you with 100% certainty that there are many places you will be rewarded for who you truly are. 

A strategic framework to boost inclusion and psychological safety within the organization

Vulnerability is an amazing strength that everybody needs to develop. Once you know who you are, you must be able to share that so people can understand what you bring to the table. 

To implement these concepts, my team and I developed a strategic framework to boost inclusion and psychological safety within the organization. We called this framework M.I.R: 
My Internal Rule. Here are the 3 rules:

What do you really need? If you imagine yourself as a tree, your needs would be the roots. Tony Robbins says that there are 6 universal needs: Certainty, Variety, Significance, Love/Connection, Growth, and Contribution. You have to figure out which ones you value the most, so you can understand why you do what you do.

What are your values? Values lead your decision making and are the reason you are motivated or depressed at work. Values drive your journeys. There is an amazing article by Richard Barrett and an assessment about values that you can take for free. 

What are your talents or strengths? The beauty of understanding your talents is that they are the result of your needs and values and they reshape your behaviors. To help understand your talents, you can use the VIA assessment, a method from Dr. Martin Seligmen that identifies what is strong in people instead of what is wrong. 

Magic happens when you learn how to connect your internal rule with your goals, mission, and purpose. 

So I want you to imagine the following: if you are a leader, how much easier would inclusion be if you knew the internal rules for everyone on your team? How would their sense of belonging increase? If you are an employee, how quickly would you feel included once you understood your needs, values, and strengths? 

I invite all of you to think about how powerful inclusion can be for organizations and to look for new ways to develop it. . Remember, we long to belong! 

Cheers.

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