Becoming Psychologically Safe
Creating a culture of vulnerability at work
The Obamas are in town!
In a conversation before a sellout audience this past weekend, I listened to Michelle Obama reflect on why she wrote the book, Becoming. She spoke about dealing with chronic self-doubt, about overcoming marital issues with Barack, parenting issues with Sasha and Malia, having to go for IVF to have children, and dealing with abuse on the political stage. It was candid, it was connecting, and it was so utterly human.
“It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.” (Michelle Obama)
Michelle said that it was important for leaders today to talk about the imperfect reality of their lives. We all have our own demons to fight, but that is what the human condition is about. She found that sharing the less glamorous and sometimes distressing parts of her journey of becoming had been incredibly empowering for people around her.
She also said that being vulnerable and sharing her story with different groups of people also made her more powerful and confident in her own voice and message. Vulnerability. That message resonated with that of Brené Brown, a research professor specializing in vulnerability—a voice I heard for the first time during my postgraduate sabbatical.
All my life, I had thought of vulnerability as being synonymous with weakness. And, throughout my career, I had constantly sought to present an image of competence, to always know the right answer. Even when my then-boss counselled me about complementing my professional qualities with the ability to build stronger connections with my colleagues, I thought success lay in projecting competence ahead of warmth.
It was only when I watched and read Brené for some of my “soft skills” classes, and reflected on some of the emotional scars I carried from unpleasant episodes in my life, that I realized how I had gotten it back to front. Vulnerability and self-compassion were necessary for empathy, compassion and stronger connections with people; you cannot motivate through competence without warmth and connection.
Intermission
Now, Michelle’s talk is not freely available online, but Brené’s is. And, if you have 20 minutes to spare, I strongly recommend her second TED talk, below; you can also check out her first TEDxHouston talk, or her Netflix video too, if time permits.
How we do vulnerability in GDS
In GDS, we run regular all-hands meetings that we call “REBASE”. At our REBASE in October, I addressed a topic that had come up in our internal chat-group that very same morning: psychological safety. We were discussing Google’s approach and brainstorming ways to engender greater psychological safety in GDS, when I had an epiphany.
I could, as Brené says, stand outside the arena, and talk about psychological safety from behind my phone screen. Perhaps, deal with it as an intellectual exercise. Maybe even convene yet one more of those task forces to define the problem and make recommendations.
Or, I could lead by example, with my own vulnerability, to encourage Hivers in GDS to do the same. Here, Brené helpfully calls up a famous Theodore Roosevelt quote on the vulnerability of struggle:
“It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood… who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming… who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” (Theodore Roosevelt)
My mind was made up: show, not tell. Even if I fail, it would be worth the effort.
To close off REBASE that day, I began by sharing two stories of professional and personal struggles. Stories of seeking help for mental wellness issues, and of dealing with family tensions. Stories I had never shared in such a large group before. Stories that I knew would cause my team to never see me with the same eyes again.
Everyone is fighting a battle that you know nothing about.
And then I ended by addressing psychological safety directly:
If you want to build psychological safety in an organisation, it’s a leadership imperative. And I don’t mean leadership in a formal sense—I mean leadership in a peered sense. All of us have a responsibility.
Psychological safety is intrinsic to leadership behaviour. It’s a product of leadership behaviour. It is leadership behaviour. You can’t mandate it—I can’t sit down, as a leader in any group, and say, “Tomorrow, we shall be more psychologically safe with each other.” It doesn’t happen that way. It’s about trust. It’s about keeping a space open for people to speak, to be heard, and to be seen—to be seen deeply, to be seen emotionally.
It’s about leaders taking the lead, by example, to be vulnerable themselves. And in doing so, to give people around them permission to also be vulnerable. And this takes courage more than anything else. In my experience, it took more courage than anything I’d ever done…
This courage is a muscle that we can all develop. It takes practice. It takes practice to be vulnerable, to trust others with our thoughts, our emotions, our weaknesses. And to trust that they know what to do, and how to respond. It requires a certain level of trust in your teams, individually… It’s not something you delegate down. It’s something you have to want and do, as individuals.
A culture of vulnerability: our shared responsibility
Let me tie this all back to Michelle’s talk. The courage to be vulnerable is hard to come by. We grow up thinking that showing vulnerability is a weakness, when it really is one of the most reliable markers of a person who has the courage to be who they are—and not who they think they should be.
Some of this arises because we are self-conscious, and therefore self-judging. We think it’s all about us. When we lack the confidence to dance alone under the spotlight, we think that the world is watching with a critical eye—and that we will never be good enough. And it’s only when we are self-compassionate that we can lean into the discomfort of being courageous for those around us. When we talk about the good and bad of how we became the person we are today, we humanise ourselves and our journey, and make it easier for others around us to also become who they aspire to be—imperfect though they may be.
This has enormous implications for the workplace. When we are vulnerable, we give feedback not from a perch of superiority, but from a place of fellowship in imperfection. When we are vulnerable as leaders, we are also ready to hear—and therefore more likely to hear—difficult and heartfelt feedback from those around us. Conversely, if you are afraid to raise a sensitive issue with your boss, no amount of structuring meetings or anonymous suggestion boxes is going to create the psychological safety for honesty—if the boss does not demonstrate openness and vulnerability.
When it comes to innovation, vulnerability helps us prepare to try new things and experiment, because we are comfortable not knowing whether success or failure lies before us. (When was the last time you saw “innovation” at work constrained by resourcing approvals that hinge on guaranteed success? When a pilot project sets out not to answer a question, but to fulfill a prophecy?)
When it comes to change in organisations, vulnerability is what makes us ready to admit, as leaders and as followers, that we do not truly know what lies before us. We become less anxious about the uncertainties in the future, and take solace in our mutual support for each other throughout the process.
My wish for us all is that we can all be leaders in our own right, that we can draw from Michelle Obama’s example. It’s precisely the things we don’t talk about that we must get better at normalising so that we can create environments at work where our co-workers can bring their whole selves, where we can collectively acknowledge that change is difficult and support each other, where we can value doing over achievement, growth over fixed success, and where we can admit that sometimes we might be in charge and not know all the answers.
