Trust and Psychological Safety: The Meeting After the Meeting 

Presentation transcript | Barbara Stewart, Accelus Partners 

Welcome 

Welcome. I’m Barbara Stewart with Accelus Partners. I founded the company over 16 years ago to help leaders and teams become more effective in the workplace and to have even more fun doing the great work that we get to do. 

I am delighted that you’ve joined us here today. If this is your first time, this is a Conversation Among Leaders. It’s an invitation-only event. It is designed to provoke a topic, and then for all of us in the room to engage around the topic, so that we can learn from each other, that we can share experiences, that we can put some new ideas out there, and that hopefully you walk away with something that adds meaning to your work life and something that you can share with your team and your organization. 

The Meeting After the Meeting 

The topic today is trust and psychological safety. And for a lot of leaders that I work with, this seems like the soft stuff. And yet, at the same time, they know how important it is for their organization and for their teams to have this present. They don’t get the results, they don’t get the effectiveness if it’s not there. 

So what we’re going to explore today is a tangible approach to trust and psychological safety. We’re looking at it through the lens of the meeting after the meeting. 

So I know that all of us have been there. Every single one of us has experienced this. We sat through the meeting, people nodded, decisions were made. The meeting ends, and then it continues in the hallway. Or you pick up your phone and call your colleague on the drive home to discuss what happened or didn’t happen in that meeting. 

It happens in every organization, so if that helps us feel better, we know there’s a challenge that everyone faces. It reflects concerns that didn’t get brought up. The questions that people don’t ask in the meeting. The disagreement that keeps coming up over and over and over again, because we never can quite get aligned on it. 

And why is that? Are we not actually saying what needs to be said or asking the questions that need to be asked so we can see how this could end up being circular? 

Trust: Can I Rely on You? 

We’re going to focus on the definitions first to make sure we’re on the same page. And I’ve put these in a very simple format so that we can easily distinguish. Trust: can I rely on you? Psychological safety: what happens when I take a risk in this room? 

So, we’ll look at trust first. It is relational. It is person to person, one-to-one. Yes, we can have trust in teams. We’ll talk about that in just a minute. But trust is that feeling that I can rely on you. I trust you to get this done. I trust you to represent the organization. 

Trust is built in a couple of different ways. First off, I’m going to start at the end of this description here with competence. This is something that can occur quite quickly in teams or organizations or between people, is this feeling of competence. 

Very simple example. A doctor, a medical doctor, if you’re going to your medical practice, you’re going to see your doctor, you’re trusting that they have the skills, knowledge, and experience to treat you. Because you know they went through a rigorous course of study, they had to do those terrible rotations in the hospital where they stay up all night. They managed to get through all that, pass a test, and are now a doctor. So that competence can be easy to establish. 

On the other hand, we have reliability and integrity. Reliability is, do you do what you say you’re going to do? Do you show up on time? Do you do your part of the project and hand it off to me on time? Do you take care of that customer issue? 

And then the integrity part. Are you walking the talk? So if we all agree, and you do as well, that timely handoffs are important, or handling customer complaints timely is important, and yet you don’t do it, then I question a little bit the integrity, and that can degrade trust. 

On the other hand, one more comment on trust. As you’ve listened to that description, you heard that the medical doctor, that could happen fairly quickly. Competence can be established quickly, but not always. Many of these things take time. 

So it’s consistency over time. Do I consistently demonstrate my competence, my reliability, and my integrity? Do you feel trust? Oh yeah, Barbara’s got it. She’s going to get this handled, no problem. 

Psychological Safety: What Happens When I Take a Risk in This Room? 

If we contrast that to psychological safety, which these are related, but they are two different things. Psychological safety is about taking that risk in the room. It operates at the level of the group or the team. And it really goes to address, do I feel safe taking a risk here? 

Do I dare to speak up? Do I dare to admit I made a mistake? Do I put something out there? That crazy idea, because perhaps it would spark something else. That’s what we mean by psychological safety. 

And the funny thing about it is, I can trust another member of my team, or I could trust several members of my team, but still not feel psychologically safe in that team environment. I may not feel comfortable putting something out there and disagreeing with you publicly, even though we can have that conversation one-on-one. 

So as team leaders, we have a lot to wrestle with here, right? How do we build trust, have trust within our teams, so that we could possibly, potentially have psychological safety as well? 

People Trust at Different Levels 

One of the things that we know from the work that we do with teams, we use a leadership assessment called the Birkman Method. And it has a specific measure for trust. And trust on the individual level. So measuring how easily someone trusts, or if it takes a little bit more convincing. 

So there is a range of trust among any of us. There are some of us who trust quickly. We’re like, hey, they’re part of the same organization, went through the hiring process. I know that was rigorous. We have values and standards. I can trust easily. 

Within that same team is another person who’s like, yeah, we have a rigorous hiring process. Not sure if you went through the same one I did. We have values, yes. And I’m going to trust you on this. Not complete trust, kind of that trust-but-verify approach. 

So even within a team, we have that wide range of where we fall on the trust spectrum, which creates a challenge for us as leaders, but it also creates opportunity. And if we can bring that to light to understand that people trust in different levels, then we can help people understand the importance of trust and how we build it, eventually leading us into psychological safety. 

What Leaders Can Model 

Now, in the time that we have together today, we’re not going to explore: How do we do this? How do we build trust? How do we build psychological safety? But you can take some hints from our slide. Reliability, integrity, confidence. Can I challenge an idea, admit a mistake, or raise a concern? 

If you’re a leader, you can model any of these behaviors. And as a leader, you can help instill psychological safety by being willing to admit, I don’t know, or I made a mistake. Putting these things out there in the team can open up the conversation. 

We had Sarah, who’s here today. We had a team session yesterday, a leadership session yesterday, and someone shared that as a team lead, they opened up a conversation on a touchy subject with just that approach: I don’t know how we’re going to solve this, but that’s why we’re here as a team. 

She got some amazing results, great feedback. Not a single person didn’t speak up because of the approach she took. 

The Silent Cycle 

I want to give an example that brings this whole psychological safety into view. And again, it’s something that we’ve all experienced. We’ve gone from the meeting after the meeting, so seeing it in action, and this is what it looks like in the meeting. It’s something I’m calling the silent cycle. 

You’ve all been there. It’s the moment when that tension shows up. When the leader puts something out there, or another of the team members put something out there, and we feel that tension, and the room goes silent. 

And then you hear the rustling of papers, perhaps, see the shifting in the chair. And you realize that people are assessing the risk. Do I dare speak up? Will my insight be welcome, or is it going to cost me in the future? 

Well, given my past experience here, and the last time I spoke up and it was shot down by another team member, not even the team leader, I think I’m going to stay quiet on this one. 

Other alternatives are, hey, it’s worth the risk, and I’m going to speak up because I don’t see this project succeeding if I don’t. Or perhaps I take the middle ground and I soften it a little bit, kind of softball it out there and see how it’s received. 

All of these have a cost. We do appreciate those who do speak up and bring the hard issues up. Are they doing it in a way that serves the team? Yes, even when they do speak up, there can still be a hidden cost to that approach. 

And the cost is not just in the room, but it’s in the innovation that doesn’t happen, the opportunities that aren’t acted on, because it’s simply not in the room or not in the room in a way that we can all benefit from. 

The Question for the Room 

So, with that, I’m going to take us to our final slide. The absence of disagreement is not proof of alignment. 

Absolutely. We love those meetings where it’s like, okay, no one has comment. Moving on. Decision made. I’m willing to bet that the team is not aligned. 

So taking us to our final slide, this is the question that I want you to consider: When important conversations move outside the meeting, what is that saying about the team, the leader, or the issue itself? Could be one or all three. 

But something to consider. This is the part of the presentation where we’re going to move into conversation and the introductions.