Slides from my webinar on wanted.jobs on how to build psychological safety environments to drive higher performance. Includes neuroscience insights that provide insights into how to better connect people and develop a culture of inclusivity, respect and high trust which results in JOY @ Work. This is a preview of Absolute-North and David C. Winegar's Psychological Safety for Performance Organizational Toolkit available from absolute-north.com beginning in July of 2021.

1. Psychological Safety
The Secret to Creating
High Performing Teams
With
David C. Winegar, MBA
www.absolute-north.com

2. Poll Question 1
Have you read any books
on psychological safety?

3. To provide insight
into how to use
psychological
safety to build
better performing
teams.
My Objective

4. Project Aristotle
2012
2 years, 180 teams, 200+
interviews, analysis of 250
attributes
SURPRISING RESULTS
Aristotle: “The
whole is greater
than the sum of its
parts".
Various hypotheses for
team success. They
examined whether
successful teams were
made up of shy or
outgoing individuals,
those with similar
interests, or those who
socialized together
outside of work.

5. The How of the Team is more
important than the Who
1. Conversational turn-taking–
members speaking
approximately the same
amount of time increased the
collective intelligence.
2. High average social
sensitivity—able to pick up on
the nonverbal signals of their
team members and correctly
interpret their feelings.
Psychological
Safety

6. Poll Question 2
How much did teams with
Psychological safety
outperform their KPIs?

7. Psy-Safety teams outperformed
their KPIs by 20%vs 19%
underperformance by teams
without.

8. What Psy-safety is NOT…
It is not about being nice to people… in fact, conflictis a useful part of high
performance.
Kenneth G. Brown, University of Iowa, Journal of Applied Psychology: [T]ask conflict and
team performance were positively associated under conditions of high
psychological safety. The results support the conclusion that psychological safety
facilitates the performance benefits of task conflict in teams.

9. Psychological
Safety
Amy Edmondson – “a shared
belief held by members of a
team that the team is safe for
interpersonal risk-taking.”
William A. Kahn - “being able
to show and employ one’s self
without fear of negative
consequences of self-image,
status or career”.

10. How do we achieve
Psychological
Safety?

11. Psychologically Safe @
Work – The 6Keys to
Higher PERFORMANCE

12. BETTER
WORK AND
HIGHER
PERFORMANCE

13. TRUST Our Focus Today
VULNERABILITY

14. Vulnerability
취약점 | Kerentanan|脆弱性 | Verletzlichkeit |
Vulnerabilidad | பாதிப்பு | Vulnérabilité |Уязвимость | Tính dễ bị tổn thương

15. Definition of Vulnerability
Dictionary: capable of being physically or
emotionally wounded. 2 : open to attack or damage :
open to criticism.
Executive Coach Alicia Graham: “Vulnerability is
about… being real with somebody else, being open to
who you really are, and giving others the opportunity
to really see you.”
David C Winegar: A willingness to risk how others
think about your skills and abilities by admitting that
you do not know everything, make mistakes and
need help to achieve success.

16. When people cannot openly express what they
feel, think, expect or experience they will never
reach their full potential.
No one wants to put on a ‘‘work
face’’ when they get to the office.
Google Project Aristotle
It’s each person’s job in a team to help to
create the environment where everyone has
the opportunity, will, and motivation to reach
their full potential.

17. The brain has evolved to worry constantly about how others view us
Impression Management
2
3
1
4
People will question
my intelligence I’ll look negative
I’ll be seen as
disruptive/dangerous
I won’t be liked/
I will be seen as
needy

18. In Companies we have Vulnerability Backwards …
• We believe we cannot be vulnerable to people we don’t
have a relationship of demonstrated trust.
• We are suspicious of other’s intentions and what they will do
with information we share with them.
• Therefore, we hold back our true thoughts and often our best
ideas.
• When we are vulnerable it opens the door to sharing
and understanding.
• The result is others trust us more – we demonstrate to
them that we have nothing to hide, no other motives.
“Being vulnerable
gets the static out of
the way and lets us
do the job together,
without worrying or
hesitating,”
vulnerability researcher Jeff
Polzer.

19. UNCONSCIOUS
Johari Window
SELF
Shares more
OTHERS
Gives
more
Things I
don’t know
Things I
know
Things
others
know
Things
others
don’t
know
BLIND SPOT
HIDDEN UNKNOWN
OPEN
UNCONSCIOUS
HIDDEN
UN-
KNOWN
OPEN
BLIND
SPOT

22. Can you see the forest through
the trees?

23. Can you see the trees through
the forest?

24. How to build a culture of vulnerability
• Dedicate time for sharing and processing emotions
into feelings.
• Follow-up and try to understand what is driving the
emotion.
• Ask more questions to understand what is at the root of
the emotion.
• Be OK with uncomfortable moments. Silence is not a
threat but time to process.
• Don’t try to be perfect in your interpretations.
• It is often the case that people themselves do not fully
understand their emotions and have not yet processed
them to feelings.
IMPORTANT
The difference between
emotions and feelings.
Emotions are the raw chemicals
that produce a physical reaction
in the body.
Feelings are our thinking brain’s
interpretation of the body’s
reaction.

25. TRUST

26. Every interaction
you have with
another is an
opportunity to
open the trust
door or close it.
Ayaan Khatri
Everything
was going fine
until I opened
my mouth.

27. Without trust we don’t truly collaborate, we merely
coordinate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that
transforms a group of people into a team.
Stephen Covey, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

28. Poll Question 3
How much more productive
are teams with high levels
of trust?

29. An engaged employee is 44% more productive than a satisfied worker,
but an employee who feels inspired at work is nearly 125% more
productive than a satisfied one.
People in Trustful Organizations have…

30. High performance is about promoting
TRUST
Definition of Trust: The total time that people save
in not having to verify others’ actions and intentions.
TRUST IS A CHEMICAL
Oxytocin

31. The Aha Moment
More O = More Trust =
More Opportunity

32. Tara Raam - Department of Neurobiology,
Harvard Medical School
• “Our results indicate that oxytocin takes over the
preexisting neural circuit within the hippocampus that
normally regulates the separation of similar memories. In
the presence of oxytocin, the circuit assumes an additional
role as a regulator of social cognition,” (Raam, et al. 2017)
• Oxytocin, therefore, plays a part in determining if a person
is a friend or foe, providing us with the intuitive memory of
those who have harmed us, as well as those who have
cared for us.
Raam, Tara, Kathleen M. McAvoy, Antoine Besnard, Alexa H. Veenema, and Amar Sahay. 2017.
"Hippocampal oxytocin receptors are necessary for discrimination of social stimuli." Nature
Communications 8 (1): 2001. Accessed 7 11, 2018. http://nature.com/articles/s41467-017-
02173-0.

33. The Trust Equation
<(CREDIBILITY) +(RELIABILITY) + (INTIMACY)
(SELF-ORIENTATION) >
= TRUSTWORTHINESS
JOY = TRUST X PURPOSE
Definition of Trust: The total time people do not have to
spend in verifying others’ actions and intentions.

34. Research Confirms
• People with higher concentrations of
oxytocin are more than three times more
likely to prioritize their group's interests
over their own.
• Oxytocin drives people away from an
egoistic self-serving orientation.
• Oxytocin promotes “tend and defend”
behavior.
• In-group (our tribe) trust and cooperation,
and defensive, but not offensive, aggression
toward competing groups.
• Higher Oxytocin, the more people are
willing to conform to the attitudes of the
group.

35. What kills Oxytocin?
• Testosterone kills Oxytocin –
Leadership roles promote
testosterone production (in men
and women).
• Uncertainty is one of the drivers
of social rejection and is
manifested in the brain the same
as physical pain.

38. What gets in the way?

39. What is the
ONE thing
that we never have enough of
and cannot get more of?
FOCUS
9-18s

40. The human brain
cannot multitask it
can only
cognitively switch
between tasks.

42. The Steps to Attain Higher Team Performance

43. PURPOSE
Converse
Relate
Sync
Collaborate
WE
Joy @
Work
Psy-
Saftey

44. PURPOSE
Converse
Relate
Sync
Collaborate
WE
Joy @
Work
Psy-
Saftey
WE-Centric thinking unleashes our potential to achieve more.
CONVERSATIONS are fundamental to all human interactions.
Humans are hard-wired for RELATIONSHIPS.
When humans agree their brains are in physical SYNCHRONIZATION
COLLABORATION happens only when we feel safe.

45. Everything happens through Conversations
• Remember! Words are not
things, they are the
representations and symbols we
use to see, think, and process
our perceptions of reality with
others. – Judith Glaser
• All conversations make us feel
either good or bad.
• We either feel open to co-
create, or we close down and
protect.
.07 Seconds
At the
Moment of
Contact

46. How to Move to Better Conversations
&

47. What gets
in the way?

48. We make
Assumptions
Based on our
“Gut” and past
experiences

49. What we already know
and our established
habits.
Humans are pattern recognizing machines. We try to fit everything into
what we already know and don’t care if it is true or not.

50. Our brains assume a lot!
What you do not want
is people making the
WRONG
assumptions

51. It’s all about how people Perceive You
Heidi Grant Halvorson “No one understands you and what to do about it.”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Understands-You-What-About/dp/1625274122

52. Our View of the World
is Individual
The Dress – Example of your Brain‘s unique
ability to interpret the world.
We each have our
own view shaped by
culture, history,
experience.
THE
DRESS

55. You Brain is not your Friend
• Your brain is continually live wiring - you are
either growing and rising (upwiring) or you are
fading and falling (downwiring) – there is
NOTHING in-between
• Naturally our brains want to downwire. We want
to settle into using as little energy as possible (Our
brain is 1/12th of our body but uses 20% of our
energy).
• The brain makes breakthroughs by leaning into
what is possible – upwiring.
• The more you upwire the easier it comes to
upwire
• It becomes a first attention priority for the
brain.
Good and Great are the Enemies of What is Possible

57. How lazy is your brain?

58. ?=
Question: What is the
answer to this puzzle?
Only 1 in 1000 can solve this.

59. Our bodies respond
negatively to using energy on
things not necessary for
survival.

60. Emotional Intelligence is Important

61. Fastest path to
Dis-Trust
LACK OF
EMPATHY

62. I am too powerful too
empathize.
Testosterone impairs cognitive empathy, preventing the ability to
understand the emotions of others (men and women!)

63. Psychological Safety is first and
foremost about…
using our brains to demonstrate to others that we care for their well-
being and respect their differences because we know this is the only
path to greatness. David C Winegar

64. Self-Help Book Industry
is $11 Billion Industry
People hear, see,
& feel a good
idea
For the brain it
is…
JOB DONE

65. Plasticity and Nudge
“The brain thwarts progress
with old habits and imaginary
evils and is maddeningly prone
to waiting for the big miracle or
easy solution that never comes,
never realizing that one small
change and then another could
have won it all.”
Author of more than 700 papers and
other publications on the brain.
Neuroscientist Dr. Karl Pribram
1919 - 2015

66. Coming in July 2021
• Comprehensive guide to creating psychologically
safe teams.
• A practical toolkit for developing programs in
psychological safety in your organization.
• Includes everything from the benefits for your
organization to planning and implementation tools,
presentations, a quick-start guide and how to
manage change for higher levels of success.