BTO – ARE YOU READY?
Posted by Sue Sneyd
Back-to-office (BTO and not Bachman Turner Overdrive this time!) is a hot topic. Some of us have been in and out of office spaces during the pandemic, others hibernated at home and adapted to Zoom and jammies, while others supported the front lines every day in essential service positions. For the most part, we've gotten through ‘it’, while adapting to lightning speed organizational changes that drastically impacted our personal interactions. For people that are now wrapping their heads around going BTO, there's real anxiety in how to manage it. The key? Check your workplace ‘psychological safety’.
Psychological safety is about feeling comfortable and safe to engage with other people and share ideas, weaknesses and mistakes, ask questions without fear – where there is psychology safety, you can be yourself. For an excellent resource to understand Psychological safety, check out Amy Edmondson's TED Talk, where she explains that when there is psychological safety in a team, there is interpersonal connection, there is trust- and these ingredients will make it easier to get over the anxiety of going BTO.
A leader I'm working with - Diane Duncan, Exec Director at Senior Persons Living Connected - is diving right into psychological safety as a key teamwork ingredient. She started the discussion by sharing Google's Teamwork model and there, right at the top of the model are those two words, psychological safety. She then shared the Amy Edmondson TED Talk link and encouraged her direct reports to watch it. In a team discussion, concerns about psychological safety were tabled. Next, Diane wisely incorporated questions inspired by Amy's research into an anonymous survey for her team with the results discussed at a team meeting. Quite a few surprises around that virtual table, enough to inspire curiosity about what can be done to change. There's the key, get curious, start talking and listening.
My last blog was about gut-checking your perspective to consider the different ways to see a situation. Practice listening, pause and reflect is a way to contribute to building psychological safety with your colleagues. Remember that last virtual meeting you had with a colleague and how they: a) kept their camera off, b) droned on, monopolizing the conversation, and c) vented about a problem instead of collaborating on a solution. The next time you see that person IRL, your instinct is to avoid them. That's one perspective- though it won't contribute to psychological safety at all. How can you get curious and engage them to feel seen and heard? Start virtually if you need to, as Diane did, and then your first IRL conversation with a team member can be - what did you think of those results?
Where do we go from here? I’m not sure, though I’m hopeful, curious and as Randy Bachman and co. famously sing, "you ain't seen nothing yet!"