Creating psychological and challenger safety: a practical guide

I’ve been challenged a couple of times in the last few weeks to come up with some real, practical ways in which leaders can create genuine challenger safety. Including close to home; by the people around me at Byrne Dean. If we don’t have this at home, how can we help our clients? 

Psychological safety, mental health and comfort zones

Implicit in the challenge is the widely held, but I think misplaced belief: that the creation of any level of psychological safety necessarily requires lower standards of performance. That for people to feel safe, there can’t be any tough feedback; that leaders have to be nice all the time.

Psychological safety and challenger safety (the form of safety that research shows unlocks the highest levels of team performance) have nothing to do with people staying in their comfort zones. At its core, safety is about building interpersonal trust. Trust that people can say something, contribute, ask clarifying questions, report errors and propose ideas. Without fear they’ll be punished or humiliated in some way for what they’re doing.

I’d actually set the bar a notch higher. It’s one thing for people to feel they won’t be punished, it’s another if they want to contribute. This has been central to our core messaging at Byrne Dean for over two decades: culture change can only happen when everyone knows that part of their job is helping colleagues to create an environment where everyone can thrive. 

Creating a learning environment of shared ownership

This sort of environment allows a team to learn, adjust and reach higher standards. It also enables tough feedback – because the person getting that feedback knows that what they’re hearing is motivated by a genuine desire to develop them, not a desire to humiliate or punish them for what they may have said or done.

A team attains the highest level - challenger safety - when people feel able to question the approach being taken, the strategy. Leaders often express doubts: will this erode their authority, slow down decision making and lead to endless debates.

Actually, freedom to challenge enables high speed execution and reduces errors. Friction becomes front-loaded; debate takes place before execution begins and costly backtracking and reworking can be avoided. Shared ownership and true buy-in can be generated by early vetting; the transparency that challenger safety requires means everyone understands why a path was chosen. 

Five ideas for how to build challenger safety

1. Embrace it; want it; welcome challenge. This is a mindset. You have to believe that people questioning the process is critical to high performance.
   
   
2. Model intellectual humility. In many of the alpha environments I’ve spent the last two decades working in, this is a big ask – for leaders to admit they don’t have all the answers. But, showing you value learning by asking questions yourself is key. Responding to questions seriously and respectfully is also important.
   
   
3. Establish and embed the principle: asking is normal. Everyone needs to understand that asking is a sign of someone who’s engaged, who wants to drive the team forward rather than of any incompetence and insecurity.
   
   
4. Implement question time rituals. Make sure that the team dedicates time (for example in team meetings) for questions – particularly about process and strategy.
   
   
5. Track question frequency. On the basis that what gets measured gets done, devising a simple metric to show how many times different people ask questions (and possibly any action taken as a result) could be very effective. 

The one thing that will work...

This last idea – of tracking question frequency, perhaps feels like the oddest to actually do. How would you decide what is a challenge that’s worth recording? 

Think about it though. Generating debate around what are the questions that have taken the team forward. This is what will embed the principle. It feels odd simply because it’s not the sort of thing that teams do. 

At the moment. 

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