Speaking up, and why we think it will literally kill us.
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd"
- Bertrand Russell
There are three things that you need to know to understand why going against the grain is hard:
We are social creatures, and avoiding social pain is a survival mechanism
We are intelligent, creative and compassionate beings and not necessarily ruled by our instincts
We live closer in time to Tyrannosaurus Rex than T-Rex lived to Stegosaurus
Consensus is usually a requirement of any team effort. In fact, pulling in the same direction is almost the definition of teamwork. However, consensus can be the enemy of success. If everyone is pulling in the wrong direction, the effort will ultimately fail (or, at the very least, require more time and effort than it should have). This seems obvious - so why do so many people find it difficult to voice their concerns about the direction of their team?
The answer lies in point 3 above. If we condensed the lifespan of Earth into 24 hours, humans have only existed for 3.76 seconds. We were hunter-gatherers, relying on survival instincts, for 3.57 seconds of that time. This means that on the evolutionary clock, we have only had about a fifth of a second since we even thought about growing our own food. Simply put, we are still the same creatures as we always were; despite the trappings of modern life.
Imagine, instead of discussing how your strategic leadership team can meet it’s goals you’re talking about how you can get your family group across the mountains without running afoul of a hostile tribe, predators, hunger or the weather. There would be no time to get it wrong, and the risk of experimentation would be too great to allow it for most group decisions. We’re hardwired to find the safest, most familiar path. To our brains, it isn’t a question of whether you’ll meet KPIs - it’s whether or not we survive the journey. Challenges to this could endanger the group.
So, speaking out when you disagree with your team can feel dangerous in a real and physical sense. We could be cast out of the tribe, and we’d never survive on our own.
This feeling is a result of the interactions between our prefrontal neocortex and our limbic system, which are the parts of our brain which deal with our social behaviour and emotional responses. Together, these form the social instincts which enabled humans thrive as a species.
Logically, we know that hearing alternative viewpoints is a good thing. That isn’t news. However - it takes courage and practice to think past the threat we feel at speaking out, and allow our logical mind to overrule our primal one. When we do, we should congratulate ourselves even if it doesn’t go well - and create environments which allows others to do the same.
Enter: Psychological Safety.
What is Psychological Safety? Psychological Safety essentially describes an environment where we and our colleagues feel safe in raising concerns, ideas and questions and admitting to mistakes. Studies have shown (e.g. Project Aristotle, Amy Edmonson) that psychological safety is one of, if not the most, important factors in cultivating a highly effective team.
Getting there requires overcoming two basic problems - people aren’t confident in displaying those behaviours, but very few people are naturally comfortable with receiving those behaviours either!
So how do you increase psychological safety, given those two facts?
When I’ve delivered leadership development to foster psychological safety in the past, the most important thing I learned was to accept those two principles; and to encourage people to forgive themselves for struggling with these new behaviours. After all, berating someone because they haven’t been successful (yet) is like washing a dirty car with mud - you’d be erasing their feeling of safety by trying to get them to display it. Being able to accept less-than-optimal results (with an aim of learning from them) is a key component of psychological safety.
Another component I’ve found invaluable in delivering psychological safety is bringing in internal help from the organisation. Consistently displaying these safety behaviours is a great way to ensure they stick in the team, and seeing your own colleague or boss champion them will always be infinitely more effective than watching the trainer do it! Achieving a snowball effect through leaders developing leaders is always a great go-to strategy.
