In conversation with...Binna Kandola

Beena Kandola: We're changing at such a fast pace that organizations who create a sense of psychological safety where people can speak up, ask questions, have their anxieties addressed, be able to formulate their own solutions, be able to discuss other people's solutions, actually helps to speed up, uh, adaptation to change.

Lucy: Hello and welcome to our Future of Work Hub in Conversation podcast. I'm Lucy, a partner in Lewis Silkins employment team. And whether you're a regular listener or you're joining us for the first time, I'm delighted to have you with us as we explore the trends and challenges shaping the world of work. And today I'm um, absolutely delighted to be joined by Professor Beena Candola. He's the co founder and senior partner at Pern Kandola, a business psychology consultancy specialising in diversity and inclusion leadership and assessment. And today we're going to be talking about psychological safety, resilience and workplace cognitive culture. And Beena is absolutely perfectly placed to talk to us about this because he has spent over 40 years uh, researching bias, organizational culture and leadership. And he's been advising global organizations including Microsoft, NATO, American Express and the World Bank. He's visiting professor at Leeds University and Aston University. He's the author of many award winning books, um, including his latest, Building a Psychologically Safe Work Environment. Beena was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to disadvantaged people and diversity. And he's been recognized by the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's top 10 business psychologists. It's so impressive, Beena, uh, it's fantastic to have you with us so really big welcome.

Beena Kandola: I'm very honoured to be here, Lucy, and thank you so much for asking me.

Lucy: Now you have spent four decades advising organizations um, around the world of DEI about bias, about workplace culture. And you know, over that time every, everybody listening will know the pace and scale of uh, change that organizations are facing has really accelerated. You know, the, the rise of AI remote working in the kind of post pandemic era, but also this very real um, ongoing political economical turbulence. But before we get into all of that, a lot of it I think we'll touch on, um, as part of our conversation. I thought it would just be great for the audience to hear from you in your own words, uh, about yourself and the work that you're doing.

Beena Kandola: Yeah, thank you Lucy. But I think that the point about the pace of change, I mean my career started in the 1980s, uh, I mean the world has just changed so much since then. I remember I was doing a PhD, uh, in the 80s early 80s. In 1981, the first shuttle flight went off from, um, NASA. I remember watching that on the telly, kind of thinking, wow, nobody needs me. You don't need people like me. That's the future. Uh, and that same week, the riots broke out, uh, race riots broke out all around the country. And I thought, that is a technological marvel. But there are still lots of issues we need to resolve, uh, which have impact on people, the way communities get on with one another. Discrimination. I was so impressed by the technology. But then I also realized there is a place for us looking at human relations in society generally in our communities, but in our work in organizations. And that's kind of propelled me since, actually.

Lucy: Really fascinating. And you're absolutely right. In this age of sort of technological advancement, it's very easy to, um, forget about the human element. Before we sort of get into some of the discussion, I just wanted to go back one step because I. In the introduction, I explained that we'd be talking about psychological, um, safety and, um, resilience. And I think it's a term that gets used quite a lot. It gets used by leaders, by HR people, but it can often mean different things to different people. And I thought it would be helpful to start by just talking about what you mean when you talk about psychological safety and why you think it matters so much.

Beena Kandola: Yeah, it's useful. Uh, that's a great question and clearly a fundamental question. Uh, one of the things I find interesting about the way we talk about psychological safety today in books is actually it's kind of seen as a team phenomenon. Psychological safety exists within a team, and that's where we. And as a consequence, that's where we need to kind of focus our energies. Actually, psychological safety is not just about the team. It's also about us as individuals. It's also about us. You know, it's also about organizations. And interesting. When the term was first coined back in 1965, it was actually introduced to help organizations deal with changes. And the point you're making, Lucy, that we're changing at such a fast pace that organizations who create a sense of psychological safety, where people can speak up, ask questions, have their anxieties addressed, be able to formulate their own solutions, be able to discuss other people's solutions, actually helps to speed up adaptation to change. And so that's why it remains relevant. When we asked people in a survey of 2,000 people last September whether they'd heard of the term. A lot of people have heard of the term, um, uh, less than a quarter. It's about a fifth of people said they understood it. So it's not understood actually. Um, and as a consequence, people having the interpreting psychological safety in their own particular way. Um, and we see it as an individual, a kind of need. It is a need. So it's the personal freedom to express oneself without the fear of negative consequences either to your self image, your career or your status. At a team level, the team is safe to take interpersonal risks. They can ask for help, they can make errors, and they can give feedback to others. At an organizational level, it's a culture that tolerates failure without retaliation and it's one that encourages risk taking, learning and innovation. So we see it as a three level thing, not just located within the team.

Lucy: One of the areas I think it's worth sort of, um, exploring or discussing briefly is my sense is one of the really big areas of misunderstanding is that there's a sort of sense that um, psychological safety and comfort are synonymous. In other words, if I feel challenged or I don't feel comfortable, it must be a not psychologically safe environment. And of course in a workplace environment there are plenty of times when it might be appropriate for somebody to feel challenged. What do you say to people that sort of suggest that psychological safety is synonymous with this idea of comfort and as a result it's difficult to challenge people?

Beena Kandola: Yeah, I think it's a really, really important point that you're making there. Psychological safety isn't about comfort. Um, nor is it, nor is it about being nice. We do want to be polite and respectful, but it's not about those things either necessarily. What it's about is about honesty, respect, candour, trust between people. So if you were having a conversation with me, it's a little bit, I just need to give you some feedback. Uh, that work, you did this well on that project. Um, actually there are one or two things that uh, you need to work on. Uh, it's not the first time it's come up, but I just want to talk to you about it. Now. If I was then to throw my hands up and say I don't feel psychologically safe here anymore. Lucy, the irony in that situation is you are practicing psychological safety and I am not. So when I say I don't feel psychologically safe, I basically are saying I don't want to listen to any negative feedback that you're going to give me. Even though you did it in an honest way, you're giving me, you're about to give me the feedback, you did it in a respectful way. Uh, and it's you who practicing psychological safety, and it's me who isn't because I misunderstood it, but I'm interpreting as being comfort. What you're saying is you can do better than this. Psychological safety incorporates stretch, learning from mistakes, and challenge.

Lucy: Thanks, Peter. That's so helpful. And it takes us on, um, to what I wanted to ask you next, which is really starting to explore the practical side of all of this. You know, from your experience, how can organizations actively create psychological safety? What does it look like when you're practicing psychological safety day to day?

Beena Kandola: It is those day to day small actions that count in terms of, uh, the words we use and leaders in particular use. Um, you know, people will say things like, oh, I'm not sure. I'm not sure this is the right question to ask. Don't worry about that. Any question's relevant, I'll answer it as best I can. Just ask it. Those things repeated actually send the message it's all right to speak up. In this setting, if leaders in teams allowed the rest of the team to speak first before they intervene. Sometimes it can be not that people, people want to dominate, it's just that we just want to contribute, leaders want to contribute, uh, but things like that can make a huge difference. So holding back, letting other people speak first, uh, watching out for the dynamics within the team, who's speaking, who isn't speaking. The same applies to, uh, online meetings. And then invite the people in who are not speaking. So you would say to me, if I hadn't spoken much, you'd say, um, bitter. I'd like to hear from, uh, be interested in what your views are and what your perspective on this. Or if, you know, I'm particularly, uh, introverted. Um, one thing I found is very useful. Say, um, I'd love to hear what you've got to say about this, Binner. Uh, but I just want to go to Joe first and just hear what, um, he's got to say. Now what you've done is you've not put me on the spot because that'll make me feel difficult and awkward. You've given me a moment to think because you're going to talk to somebody else first. So watching out for who's contributing, and particularly when you're in, you know, physical team meetings, when you are together, just watch out for the way the team members relate to one another. We found in our survey last year research last year that when, uh, we looked at the reasons why an environment was not psychologically safe, the cause for that 2/3 of the time was the leader. Fair enough. Over half of the time, 55% of the time, it was colleagues. So it's not just the leader who. It's actually the way that all of us behave in teams which create a climate where people feel safe or not.

Lucy: Yeah, that's really interesting because, um, I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on leadership. We explored on this podcast before that there's huge pressure on leaders at the moment that, um, they're facing into these huge winds of change. Um, how do you think we create an environment in which they can face into all those challenges and build resilience themselves as leaders?

Beena Kandola: Yeah, I think, uh, well talk to other leaders, learn from other leaders about the work, the practices that work and don't work. One of the biggest sources of resilience with a team, and this applies to leaders as well, is actually social support, the support we get from other people.

Lucy: That's great. I think that's really helpful advice. I want to change tack, um, a little bit and talk a bit about the role of hybrid working, remote working. It won't surprise you to know that it comes up a lot in this podcast in terms of the way that the workplace has changed, is continuing to change, particularly since, um, the pandemic, because, you know, we've seen lots of businesses settle into this sort of hybrid working model. But there's also quite a lot of debate about what that means for culture, what it means for connections. And one of the questions that we see asked is actually also what it means for psychological safety, what it means for resolutions of issues, um, feedback when it arises. You know, is it easier actually to catch up with people face to face when you're sitting alongside each other? And so we dehumanise some of that when we're not in the same space. So much I'm interested in your thoughts about, I guess, firstly, quite broadly, how psychological safety has been impacted by hybrid working.

Beena Kandola: We were doing research in 2019, uh, looking at people's involvement and sense of psychological safety in the workplace. And people weren't talking. I mean, November 2019. I'm not even sure people were talking about COVID 19. Uh, so we started this research looking at what impacts people's wellbeing in the workplace and their own personal identity and that sort of thing. And then when we followed them up, um, six months later, we were kind of saying, well, actually, what was impacting you? What had an impact? And there were all sorts of stories flying around at the time. I remember in the press saying that kind of the more left leaning newspapers were kind of saying minorities are badly affected by online working. Uh, um, it's a chance for people to show more prejudice. Our research showed the opposite actually, that for minorities in the workplace they actually found that online working was better for them. So when they were together they could be ignored on the screen. You occupy exactly the same amount of space as everybody else in the team. Uh, you could actually make a comment and uh, tried to get attention. Uh, but if you, if you didn't get attention for people you could put a hand up, you could put an animated hand up and you could keep it up for 10 minutes until somebody said oh, he's got his hand up. And even if that was ignored, you could put a comment into the chat. So there are all sorts of ways that people felt that technology was facilitating inclusion actually. Uh, so we need to be, we need to be, we need to look at this in an objective way, kind of say it can work better. We actually found that women with kids were the ones whose identity suffered the most. It has different impacts on different uh, groups of people. There's an evolutionary psychologist called uh, Mark van Vucht, he's Dutch and he's a Dutch professor, uh, of evolutionary psychology. He, he's characterized it as if all of human evolution is represented as 16 minutes. The way we live and work today would represent only 17 seconds of that. So we have evolved to be meeting people in a circle, looking at one another, um, sharing ideas, thoughts, food. Uh, so actually being able to meet with people is really essential in terms of building trust and friendships between individuals.

Lucy: That's really helpful. I'm going to take us back because we're coming to the end of time and I want to take us back to um, psychological safety. In the UK we are seeing businesses much more actively focus on well being particularly through um, the lens of disability discrimination in um, restructuring exercises in practice. Do you have um, suggestions for businesses when they're entering into something? And I've used the example of restructuring because I think that's the most obvious one where you're very conscious that you are doing something which um, may be unsettling from a psychological safety perspective. It may um, undermine some of the trust that you've worked so hard to build. Do you have practical suggestions for how businesses deal with that? So some practical tips for people who are facing into something that they know might impact the psychological safety they've been working to build.

Beena Kandola: So if you are, if you're kind of encouraging discussion, ah, within the group and you're Getting people to speak up. Um, and then every now and then something's happened. So you're snappy with someone. Uh, you've altered the climate temporarily, you've altered the climate within that meeting with that discussion. But if you've created a culture of openness and honesty and candor, then people will appreciate that we can't. None of us are perfect. Uh, and, uh, people will appreciate that it's just an off moment, and that is recoverable from, uh. And if it was, if it was. If I was kind of particularly snappy with you and a bit unpleasant with you in the team meeting, um, and then I've calmed down a bit, I've got a good night's sleep, I think it will be incumbent on me to say sorry about that yesterday, Lucy. Just a bad moment. It's not an excuse. It just happened. Um, and you say in front of everybody, so everybody knows, you've actually kind of then restored that general feeling of safety within the culture of the organization. But momentarily, we all lose it. So that's a distinction between the general culture and that climate you create in the moment. The other point about things like psychological safety, you can see it in official reports, actually. So you look at the Iraq, um, the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. Uh, um, there were all sorts of factors that the Blair government was criticized for about how we got into the war. But, uh, when it came to the recommendations, it was all about governance. You need to create this, we need to do this, we need to structure it like this. And yet many of the issues were actually to do with psychological safety. Uh, people weren't allowed to criticize the decision to go to war. So Robin Cook, who was the Foreign Secretary, he wasn't against the war, but he was making it quite clear. And this is in the Chilcot report. He made it clear that I just want to hear the case for it, and if we can make a proper case for it, I will go along with it. Uh, but he was eventually kind of sidelined, ignored, and then he had to resign. The only way he could show, um, his displeasure was actually by resigning. Well, that was a psychological safety point. Jack Straw, who was the Home Secretary, said that, uh, how could you challenge Tony Blair? He'd won three elections. This is something that never happened in the history of the Labour Party. How could you challenge him? And so people weren't challenging him. And these are all psychologically, uh, all issues to do with psychological safety. And yet that didn't feature in the report's recommendations about the way meetings were conducted about where the leaders should behave and leaders should react. So we need to be able to understand when we review events in our organisations about the impact that psychological safety has.

Lucy: Yeah, thank you, Veena. That's interesting and I agree with you. I do think, you know, certainly the findings of our um, our Future of Work, um, report last year was definitely that businesses recognize the value of this. They recognize the need to focus more on um, well, being on the ideas of culture and psychological safety in the context of this very significant change. And there's much more work we see being done by businesses to invest in those building blocks that hopefully will enable businesses to respond better to change. And actually that takes me to the um, final question I wanted to ask you. It's a question I'm putting to all my guests this year. If you could give one piece of advice to leaders who want to build their organizations for future resilience in the face of this constant change, what would that piece of advice be?

Beena Kandola: It's people. It's the sense of community you create within your team that builds resilience. There's all sorts of things you could do with mindset and uh, self talk and all of those sorts of things. Then when you ask, uh, the server. There's been one piece of research looking at, um, was a meta analysis. The overall sample was nearly a third of a million people in all of the studies that were looked at, looking at the things that had the biggest impact in terms of people's health and resilience and wellbeing. And when people were asked what has the biggest impact on health and wellbeing, people quite naturally said, and it's understandable. Diet, exercise, alcohol or reducing alcohol, not smoking. All right. Further down the list was social, um, connections. In fact, what the research showed that the number one factor which improves our health and wellbeing more than not smoking, more than not drinking, more than having a healthy diet, more than exercising, was our connections with other people. That's the number one factor. And yet we underappreciate it. So actually it's not just about individuals kind of, you know, analyzing their own thoughts and building resilience through tips and techniques. It's actually building that sense of belonging.

Lucy: It's so fascinating. It's really, um, really good to come full circle, to end up almost back where we started, but making that really important, important point. In the face of all this change, we can't lose sight of those human connections. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to everybody listening for joining us. If, um, you'd like to hear, hear more conversations like this, you can sign up on our website or subscribe on your usual channels. And you can find, um, a link to Bina's book, Building a Psychologically Safe Work Environment in this transcript, um, of this podcast. I look forward to, um, your company again soon. So until next time, goodbye.