The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation
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“Research shows that a well-developed sense of personal value and autonomy correlates significantly with kindness, generosity, social cooperation, and a spirit of mutual aid.”22
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Key concept: You learn inclusion when you practice inclusion. Behave until you believe.
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The feeling of love is the reward of the action of love.
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In fact, if we fail to serve others, our relationships remain superficial, and even suspicious, until we close the distance.
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Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased. —Jiddu Krishnamurti
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Key concept: The true definition of devastation is no one caring when you fail.
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There are three patterns of fear-inducing emotional danger that remove learner safety and create a state of risk: (1) neglect, (2) manipulation, and (3) coercion.
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Finally, in an emotionally dysfunctional family, regardless of the pattern of that dysfunction, children wilt emotionally and tend to crumble academically.
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Key concept: When the environment punishes rather than teaches, whether through neglect, manipulation, or coercion, individuals become more defensive, less reflective, and less able to self-diagnose, self-coach, and self-correct. That introduces the risk of real failure—the failure to keep trying.
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With inclusion safety, there’s no active participation requirement other than to be humane and courteous, but with learner safety you must put yourself out there to ask questions, solicit feedback, float ideas, experiment, make mistakes, and even fail.
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Inclusion safety requires that we show courtesy to each other, but with learner safety, we add another social exchange. If I’m giving learner safety to an individual, I want and expect the individual to make an effort to learn. If I’m the learner, I expect the leader, teacher, coach, or parent to support me in the learning process. It’s encouragement to learn in exchange for engagement to learn.
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Key concept: The moral imperative to grant learner safety is to act first by encouraging the learner to learn. Be the first mover.
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The climate we create feeds the desire and motivation to learn.
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In an ideal setting, learner safety is a mutual giving and receiving of ideas, observations, questions, and discussion.
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If leaders are to meet learners where they are, you may need to back up and begin by supplying the inclusion safety that’s been absent. I have yet to see learner safety where inc...
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Key question: Have you ever had a teacher that had more confidence in your ability to learn than you did? How did that in...
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It’s a “build it and they will come” principle. If you don’t build it, they may still come, but they won’t learn.
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He begins with one all-important preconception, one rigid bias, one unyielding prejudice: that every student can learn calculus.
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I believe in the unlimited potential of every student. At first glance they range, like instructors, from mediocre to magnificent. But potential is invisible to the superficial gaze. It takes faith to discern it, but I have witnessed too many academic miracles to doubt its existence. I now view each student as “material for a work of art.” If I have faith, deep faith, in students’ capacities for creativity and growth, how very much we can accomplish together. If, on the other hand, I fail to believe in that potential, my failure sows seeds of doubt. Students read our negative signals, however ...more
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“I can’t teach students unless I like them. I can’t like them unless I know them, and I can’t know them unless I talk to them.” That’s why he spends the first class period every term doing nothing but learning his students’ names and a little about their lives. After that, everyone gets down to work, but he continues to punctuate his class time with short, personal touch points with each student. He begins each class by checking in with each student to acknowledge him or her individually and to check on homework completion.
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“A wrong answer is as good as a right answer, as long as you know why,”
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Key concept: Failure isn’t the exception, it’s the expectation and the way forward. There will be discouragement before discovery.
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Indeed, if you’re really trying, there should be no stigma, no shame, and no embarrassment associated with failure. It’s simply a stepping-stone. We should reward failure because it’s not failure; it’s progress. The examination of f...
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Craig has debunked the conventional wisdom that test retakes—the practice of allowing students to retake a test if they do poorly—don’t work. “It’s a little more work for the teacher,” Craig observes. “Retesting clearly works, so I give endless chances. If you’re willing to work, there’s always mercy. You can try again.” Craig i...
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“He never acts bothered or irritated when you ask a question,” another student said. “He’ll kneel down by your desk, find out what you know, and help you from there. But he doesn’t give you the answer. You have to explain where and why you’re stuck.”
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John opted for a more democratic and collaborative approach where we learned together. This of course created more risk for the students because we bore more responsibility to teach each other, but out of that joint ownership came a deeper emotional investment and a greater willingness to take risks in the learning process.
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A leader can maintain a culture of learning only if he or she consistently minimizes vulnerability through a consistent pattern of positive emotional response.12
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People want to see how you react to dissent and bad news. If you listen intently, respond constructively, and convey appreciation, participants absorb these cues a...
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Learning is not the operation of a detached, dispassionate data center; it’s an interplay of the head and the heart.
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Learners who feel safe are far more willing to practice at the edge of their expertise to experiment, solve difficult problems, and to reflect on their performance.”13
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Learner safety is an enabling precondition that creates the curiosity and willingness to be brave in personal learning.
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Remember that humans instinctively look for learner safety before they engage in the learning process.
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When it comes to learner safety, the learner has the final say.
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Learner safety is important because it encourages these specific learning behaviors. What’s even more impressive is that it can act as an invisible leveling agent to remove the hesitation and reduce the anxiety employees often feel in asking for help from those who could literally terminate their employment.19 In the end, we each have a choice to cultivate or crush, nurture or neglect, stimulate or stifle learner safety.
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“I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best. And so I see not a top rung and a bottom rung—I see all this horizontally— and I see this as part of a matrix.” —Jonas Salk
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With contributor safety, we provide autonomy in exchange for performance.
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Contributor safety marks the end of the apprenticeship and the beginning of solid, self-directed performance. It’s time to put something meaningful on the table.
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The leader grants contributor safety when the individual has the chops to do the job. In business terms, it means the individual is an asset rather than a liability, a net contributor delivering a positive return on investment. The organization grants respe...
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When the progression to contributor safety works, the team empowers the individual and says, “Go do it!” Similarly, the individual at this point is now prepared and has developed a greater desire to contribute, and says, “Let me do it.”
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Key concept: The preparation to perform creates the desire to perform.
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Contributor safety is therefore the full activation of the social contract. Once the individual graduates from trainee status, he or she expects to be treated like a full-fledged member of the team, and the organization expects a meaningful contribution.
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If learner safety is the stage of preparation, contributor safety is the stage of performance.
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Key concept: Organizations engage in only two processes— execution and innovation. Execution is the creation and delivery of value today, while innovation is the creation and delivery of value tomorrow.
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Key concept: Offensive innovation is a response to an opportunity, while defensive innovation is a response to a threat or crisis.
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Key principle: When an external threat challenges the status quo, the natural fear of challenging the status quo is replaced with the survival instinct.
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To summarize, then, contributor safety fosters execution and defensive innovation, but falls short of addressing the higher level of risk and vulnerability that is usually needed for offensive innovation.
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Contributor safety is a mutual investment by the individual and the social unit, not a natural right, and not something human beings are entitled to by virtue of their human status. You must earn it, and it’s an instinct for leaders to grant more autonomy as other human beings under their charge become more self-directed and deliver the expected results.
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Having the role doesn’t mean you can perform in the role. In both cases, I had much to learn. I assumed these roles before I was adequately prepared for them. But isn’t that true with most roles, positions, and assignments in life? Don’t we often have to grow into them?
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Key concept: The exchange of guided autonomy for results is the basis of human performance.
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Don’t excuse yourself from the obligation of creating contributor safety because you think you may not possess certain gifts of personality.