How would you describe the culture of your place of work? Are people appreciated and valued for their contribution to their teams? Is it easy to ask for help? Are people prepared to take risks? Are people being rejected when they have differing opinions with those on their teams or with those in positions of authority? At your place of work, is it easy to engage and discuss issues, problems, and differences? If people make mistakes and fail, is it held against them? All these questions arguably point to the most important principle for the Servant Leader that contributes to the engagement of their people at work. This principle is constantly on the radar of the Servant Leader and is known as Psychological Safety.
Professor Amy Edmonson of Harvard Business School explains this principle:
“Psychological Safety represents the extent to which the team views the social climate as conducive to interpersonal risk; it is a measure of people’s willingness to trust others not to attempt to gain personal advantage at their expense.”
Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. If people and team members do not experience Psychological Safety, the consequences are that it becomes a closed, fake, and superficial environment to work in. Team members are afraid of being humiliated and punished for speaking the truth with transparency. There is a total lack of candor, and the result of this will be meetings before the meeting and meetings after the meeting to discuss what we are going to discuss in the meeting and what we should now really do after the meeting.
Jack Welch, the CEO of the 20th century after his stellar leadership at General Electric, spoke at length about the importance of creating a company where candor can thrive. If candor thrives and people are not afraid to speak the truth, it just speeds up the organization. If we can move faster, we can compete better. The Servant Leader, being driven to achieve and compete with others in the market, is therefore obsessed with creating psychological safety, where people can be candid, speak the truth without concern, because the Servant Leader knows that this leads to a massive competitive advantage.
Therefore, Jack Welch, with all his controversial mannerisms, is seen by many leadership scholars as a Servant Leader. Jack Welch had the head of HR next door to him at General Electric, not the head of Finance, because he was obsessed with creating a psychologically safe environment for his workforce to thrive. He knew that if you take care of your human capital, finance will take care of itself. This is the key principle for the Servant Leader. To illustrate this further, during an interview, Jack Welch was asked how he deals with negative people? He responded surprisingly: “I always let the negative people, the wet blankets speak, you know why? You know why? Because most of the time, they are the only ones telling you as the leader the truth and what you are supposed to hear!
To create psychological safety, the Servant Leader needs to practice openness. How does the Servant Leader go about doing that?
1. AVOID SECRECY
Keep everybody in the loop. Knowledge is power, and many leaders believe that to withhold information, gives them power. It sounds very silly, but our experience is most leaders are strongly focused on building their own empires and not on serving their teams. Servant Leaders make sure that everybody gets the information and knowledge needed to succeed. They include rather than exclude. They are open with information to make sure that people have real-time knowledge. This is done without compromising confidentiality. Sometimes information is confidential and sensitive. People are respected when you keep information that is sensitive to yourself. The Servant Leader will always ask for permission to share sensitive information from all parties involved and will express their gratitude for being allowed to share sensitive information. Servant Leaders understand the distinct difference between secrecy and confidentiality. Secrecy is avoided, and confidentiality is practiced.
2. DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER
Many leaders victimize those that bring them the bad news they do not want to hear. Servant Leaders embrace the messenger, thank the messenger, and even reward the messenger who is prepared to bring them a message that is unpleasant to hear. Leaders do get overwhelmed with the avalanche of problems and challenges that face them every day and get tempted to disregard those who say things that they do not want to hear. This could lead to team members becoming discouraged from sharing crucial information.
We all know the research that proves that the higher you move up in an organization, the less truth you hear. The reason for this is that people very soon learn to tell their leaders what they want to hear and not what they need to hear. If you shoot the messenger or humiliate them for speaking up, you run the risk of missing out on crucial information that you need to make better leadership decisions. The Servant Leader knows this and, therefore, will always encourage, embrace, and reward the messenger!
3. LISTEN, REALLY LISTEN
Removing your ego from what the messenger says is an excellent place to start when improving your listening. Your ego is a filter when listening because your ego forms your paradigm and perceptions of reality. Being aware of how your ego impacts your listening will be decisive in how well you listen to messengers. We can easily hear the messenger but immediately rationalize the message in such a way that the leader renders it useless. This is the danger of the ego. It is important for leaders to show fallibility and acknowledge that they are wrong or that they made mistakes.
Check your emotions while listening, because your emotions have an impact on how you will receive the message. I know of many Servant Leaders who will set up more time with messengers, to assure they interpret the message in the right way.
Ask the second question. This signals to the messenger that the leader listens and seeks clarity regarding the message. This makes the messenger feels like his/her message is valuable.
4. WELCOME FAILURE
In most companies, this will be very telling in establishing Psychological Safety. There is no way to be more open as a leader than by welcoming failure. Failure should not form part of the punishment process, but part of the reward system. If people know they do not have to hide their mistakes and failure, your business will leap towards an open culture and psychological safety. Many organizational development specialists have researched the impact of embracing failure in your company, and the mostly unanimous finding is curiosity and openness. If people can be open regarding their failures, it serves as a catalyst for openness on all levels and aspects of the business.
Many businesses now have an annual report of their biggest failures and then to discuss the value of these failures. This is seen as part of their innovation and growth initiatives.
IN CONCLUSION
Servant Leaders understand that a culture of transparency and truth speeds up the organization, and this leads to a competitive advantage. This is achieved by modeling openness as a leader. This openness promotes a psychologically safe work environment, which gets people to commit, engage, and act as citizens of your business.
Author and Contributor: Hermann Du Plessis – Founder & Director @ TTLI (LinkedIn Bio https://www.linkedin.com/in/hermann-du-plessis-01b17618/)