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PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

How do you foster more connection and psychological safety in the workplace?

Sounds like a “nice to have,” not a “got to have” thing, but today’s guest, Mike Brcic says it actually plays a huge role in business success. And in today’s episode he explains how to do it.

What You’ll Discover About Psychological Safety:

* The most common misunderstanding about psychological safety

* The foundation and precursor to psychological safety is

* The 4-part framework for establishing more psychological safety

* The power of repetition in protecting psychological safety

*And much more

Guest: Mike Brcic 

Community-builder and serial entrepreneur by nature, Mike Brcic is passionate about helping entrepreneurs live inspired, more connected lives. Via his events and adventure retreats around the world with Wayfinders, Mike helps entrepreneurs find the tribe and the support they need to achieve great things and personal fulfilment. 

He’s travelled to and spent time with locals in some of the remotest places on Earth, from the Kazakhs of far western Mongolia to the hunters of Greenland, to the Batwa forest people of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of Uganda. In the process, he’s learned a thing or two about living a meaningful life.

He is a passionate speaker on many topics related to entrepreneurship, community building, and mental health. Via his Substack channel he shares tips and resources about human connection and how to live a more deeply connected life.

Related Resources:

If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Leadership and Management episodes.

Contact Mike and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also get more people management tips on Mike’s Substack channel

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How to Foster more Psychological Safety in the Workplace  

How do you foster more connection and psychological safety in the workplace? Sounds like a nice to have, not a gotta have thing, but today’s guest says it actually plays a huge role in business success. And when we come back, we’ll find out why and how you can tap into this powerful dynamic too. Stay tuned.

This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

Speaker1: Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers, and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line. I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and today, I’ve got another interesting guest for you.

He’s Mike Brcic. He’s a community builder and a serial entrepreneur by nature who is passionate about helping entrepreneurs live inspired, more connected lives. And he also has a vibrant Substack channel where he shares tips and resources about human connection. I’m looking forward to learning more about connection creates psychological safety, and how we can tap into that knowledge to improve our own businesses. So, let’s have him join us now.

Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Mike.

Yeah, thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here.

I’m glad to have you. You’ve written a lot and researched also a lot about the role of human connection. And you’ve traveled extensively around the world, which is really fascinating. Tell us more about what you’ve learned about human connection in the course of those travels.

Well, so through my work with Wayfinders, I host events in some of the most far-flung, remote places around the planet. These events are retreats for entrepreneurs, personal development opportunities, and I’ve been blessed to spend time with monks in Bhutan and hunters in Greenland, and the nomads of western Mongolia, and people from such varied cultures and various interpretations of the human experience. And one thing that is common to every culture is just this core desire for connection.

And if we look through thousands and thousands of years of human history, our brains evolved in this way to just be wired for connection, and our neurochemistry is wired for connection. If you were to go back 100,000 years to some of our earliest ancestors, if you weren’t part of the tribe, if you weren’t connected to the tribe, if you were on your own, you generally did not survive. You wouldn’t survive for very long.

And so we learned to rely on each other. We developed language to rely on each other. We developed neurochemicals that get released when we feel connected with other people. And all of these things serve a purpose, which is to keep us connected together.

And that to this day, even though we’ve created these contexts where you could live – I could sit in my house for – I could easily sit in my house and not leave for a month. I can get everything ordered to my door. Everything I need could just be brought to me, and I could live in entirely solitary existence.

And even though we’ve created that context, our brains still need that human connection. Otherwise, things run amok and we feel depressed, we feel stressed, we feel isolated, we feel lonely. And that’s just still a core human need that we have not outgrown despite our efforts to create a society that denies that fact. And so, my role is to create more connections in the world, and I just love doing that work. It’s very satisfying.

I couldn’t agree with you more. Well, I’m curious in your travels and in the research and writing that you’ve done, what you think people misunderstand the most about psychological safety.

I mean, I think what people maybe I misunderstand the most is that very point about descent. And I think what people misunderstand is they see conflict as something that is to be avoided. And I’ve coached a number of CEOs and company owners, and often when they have – and I’ve seen it happen time and time again, often when they have these “toxic workplaces” or “toxic work cultures,” it is because they are very conflict avoidant.

They don’t have the tools, or they don’t have the culture for expressing dissent or handling conflict. And what happens is if you have this passive aggression that is just kind of lying under the surface, and nobody can really say what they mean because it just feels unsafe to do so, or people just don’t have the tools for handling those types of discussions. And when you can bring some of those tools into the workplace, it can be transformative.

So, we have to learn how to engage in conflict because all of the same dynamics that happen in our homes, we bring those same dynamics into the workplace, and we bring those same patterns, those same childhood leanings, or whatever, we bring that into the workplace. And if we don’t learn how to do this better, you just end up with a workplace that’s just really not a pleasant place to be in.

I couldn’t agree with you more. I mean, I think that fear-based environments are more common than the ones where people feel safe and look forward to a Monday morning, but with that in mind, with wanting to improve the situation, how can a leader start? Because I would imagine that as an organization grows and they scale, if there aren’t good resources or conflict management skills, that it just compounds and it gets worse and worse as the organization gets bigger and bigger.

So, for the entrepreneurs that are listening, what steps would you recommend they take to put in place now at their early stages to help promote psychological safety in their organizations?

Yeah. Great question. I’ll share two things with you. It’s actually not that hard, this idea of creating psychological safety. What I have found both with the people that I’ve coached through my events, when I take people to a bunch of strangers to Mongolia or something like that, one of the most powerful vehicles for creating that sense, the precursor to psychological safety is connection.

When you can help a group of people feel connected to one another, that automatically creates that psychological safety, creates a context for vulnerability. And the best way that I’ve experienced in doing that is simply through storytelling. And we, humans, have connected over stories for hundreds of thousands of years. Since our earliest ancestors sat around the fire, told stories about hunting, exploring life, and stuff, it is a natural part of the human experience and of the human spirit. And so we connect naturally over stories. And it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

In my previous company, in our weekly huddles, we started those meetings with 15 minutes of storytelling. And sometimes it would be a prompt – so, just to give you some context, my previous company, we ran high-end mountain bike trips all over the world. And one of the things we did in our weekly huddles, we would just tell stories. And sometimes I could prompt it with just, “Hey, tell me about your very first bike ride. Where did you learn to ride a bike?” And we would go around and people would tell their stories.

And when people are telling these meaningful stories, childhood stories are particularly powerful, they resonate with other people and they see points of connection with each other. And you’re just a little bit more prone to seeing that person as a human being with hopes and dreams and fears and aspirations and all that kind of stuff, rather than just a colleague or worse, a competitor, somebody who’s vying with you for a promotion.

We see each other as humans. We immediately feel more connected to them. And the more you invest in that, the more safety there is in the workplace. This idea of psychological safety. So, it’s just about creating spaces for people to connect. And you can do that through storytelling, and you can go into ChatGPT and say, “Hey, give me 25 prompts that will help a group of people feel more connected.” It’ll produce 25 amazing prompts for you or questions or whatever you want to start with.

The other thing I wanted to mention, and you talked about like somebody starting a company, this is equally applicable to a company that’s been around for years. Maybe the workplace has gotten a little bit heated or toxic, there isn’t that safety, you can still bring these things there.

And it’s amazing, the people who have maybe not communicated well or not connected and just through the simple act of storytelling, seeing them for the first time, seeing each other as human beings, understanding each other’s stories and knowing a little bit more about each other, that can have a transformative effect.

The second thing I would share with you is a framework for communication, and this is particularly good in the context of conflict. And so I draw inspiration from the model of nonviolent communication. It’s been around for quite some time, and it’s a framework and it’s quite simple. And so, we’ve all been in those discussions where it devolves into personal attacks against each other. So, you’re such a jerk. You’re so inconsiderate, you – that kind of…

And once a conversation devolves into name slinging and attacks on personal character, it’s very hard to bring those back. And so non-violent communication is a framework that has been proven to be much more effective way of communicating our needs, our frustrations. So, I’ll walk you through the framework. It’s very simple. I use the acronym OFNR, O-F-N-R.

And the O stands for observation. This is something that you observed. It’s either a behavior or it’s words, but it’s actually something that’s observable, not an interpretation. So, it could start out when you said X and X  has to be actual verbatim what the person said, give or take, not your interpretation, if you interpret it, it comes out very differently. So, it has to be something that you could observe. I kind of think of it as like you could film it with a video camera. You can describe an actual action, not when you were disrespectful to me.

Right? That’s an interpretation. We’re talking about an observation. The next part is feelings. What are your personal feelings about it? Well, when you said X, I felt quite sad, for instance. Sad, angry, frustrated. Those are feelings. And that’s where we have to be careful about the feel like, the feel like is actually once we’re getting again into the area of subjectivity and interpretation.

When you said X, I feel like you – this. We are putting the focus on ourselves and our own feelings. So, when you said X, I felt sad. The next part is needs. And what need is that feeling tied to? Well, I feel sad because I need to feel like I’m accepted in the workplace or whatever. And then the final part, the R is a request. Could you not raise your voice during our conversations because it makes me feel scared or threatened.

So, when you use that framework, there’s nothing to object to. People can’t object to your feelings. They can’t say, “Well, people might, but they can’t really object to your feelings. Your feelings are your own subjective experience. There’s nothing to disagree with,” and it’s the starting point for a conversation. And that is a really good framework for dealing with being able to voice what’s going on for you in the workplace in a way that doesn’t make the other person or people feel attacked and hopefully have productive conversations.

That’s a great framework, Mike. Thank you for sharing that. I’d like to come back to what you mentioned earlier about stories and how it helps us connect. I would imagine that there are some people listening who have workplaces where it would take a lot of stories to connect and peel back the layers that they’ve been dealing with in some of their workplace relationships.

And it’s one thing when you have a department retreat or maybe you’re getting together outside the office for whether it’s a dinner or a lunch or whatever, and people maybe are telling a story about how they first rode a bike or something like that, but then they go back to their office, they go back to their desk, they go back to their computer if they’re working remotely, and they fall back into old habits.

So, how do we overcome that inertia? Because it’s not going to happen with one meeting or one story. Help us out there.

I think it’s really just about developing this as a habit and developing it as a muscle. It’s not just something you do once a year for 20 minutes at the company retreat. This is a habit where you take this work of people feeling connected in the workplace seriously.

And when you can create a workplace where people can come and feel accepted and they feel like a sense of belonging because their co-workers see them and accept them, that is transformative, and those employees will stay. They will be far more productive than in other companies where they don’t feel that. So, it’s really just a matter of repetition.

It doesn’t mean every week you have story time and you sit around the campfire, roasting marshmallows, but it does mean you are creating those contexts where people can bring their whole selves to the workplace. And as a leader, for the managers, it’s really about repeatedly calling out when that sense of safety is compromised.

If you’re having a meeting and then you’re seeing somebody who’s resorting to a personal attack, that’s a huge drag on psychological safety. Whoever is being attacked is going to be just a little bit less prone to voicing their opinion, to bringing themselves to that next meeting.

So, you need to – it’s your job as a leader or a manager to be able to call that and to do that in a gentle and supportive way and not resorting to attacking yourself but it’s just creating that culture. And again, just repeatedly and with our weekly huddle, we did that storytelling time every week and the contents change every week.

But there’s a context where we connected with each other as human beings before we got into the work stuff, and we got to know each other as human beings. And when I had my weekly one-on-ones with my core team, these one-on-ones were half an hour per team member. For the last five years of that company, we were working fully remotely, I would usually take them walking. I would invite the other person to do the same. Kind of just puts you in a better frame of mind for that type of discussion.

And at least half of that meeting would just be me and the other person connecting as human beings like, “Hey, tell me what’s important in your life. What’s going on? What are you struggling with?” That kind of stuff. And I brought my curiosity, and I wanted them to feel like they were being listened to, that they were being heard, that I wanted to know about them.

And then the other 10-15 minutes we would talk about specifics around their job or whatever, but actually always felt that first half of the meeting was far more important than the second half. The other stuff we could generally deal with over Slack or whatnot, but the connection is pretty hard to do that over channel, a Slack channel. So, it’s just a muscle of just keep repeating that and keeping that in mind and keeping in mind that it’s valuable, the research shows that it’s the most valuable thing you can do in the workplace.

That’s all great, and I hate to be skeptical, but what if the leader is the one that’s being toxic? I mean, you set a great example for your team in being able to create that safe space, but what if the leader’s ego is getting in the way, that they feel threatened by a particular team member, or they don’t have time for that person on the team? How do you overcome that ego?

Well, I guess I would have two answers. If you have a team member or a leader who is bringing that toxicity in the workplace and not providing the type of leadership you need for that sense of connection, safety in the workplace, one, you need to give them an opportunity. Those leaders will have their own leaders. You need to give them an opportunity to step up and you need to be able to express to them.

You need to give them additional opportunities for training and then you will still have people who are meeting that working resistance, and you have to let those people go. You have to let them go quickly. Because if they’re unwilling to change, they will take down your company or they will take down your division, whatever that may be. And unfortunately, I learned the hard way the cost of keeping people on too long because I wasn’t ready to handle that level of conflict, of dealing with people. And I left people on board for far too long to just spread that toxicity throughout the company.

And then when I finally grew as a leader and learned that part of my job as leader is in creating the conditions that help thriving in the workplace, part of that job of supporting thriving is getting rid of elements that aren’t supporting the thriving. And I remember the first time I had to fire somebody, I was sick about it for days leading up to it. I knew I had to do it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

And I was just sick for days until I finally just said I had to do it, and it was not a comfortable, pleasant conversation, but it was the right thing to do. And right after I did that and let the team know, I had people coming up to me privately and just thanking me for that. And it was transformative on the culture, and it happened more than once. And so you need to recognize that and you need to take the steps to preserve that, that sense of connection and safety in the workplace.

Thank you for sharing that story because I think it is hard to give somebody their walking papers. It’s not easy. And again, if you’re avoiding conflict that happens in a team dynamic and things that are stymieing collaboration, it’s even harder to tell somebody, “Hey, this isn’t working out. Your skillset is better served someplace else.”

So, this has really been fantastic. Thank you so much, Mike. It’s been great, and I appreciate your time and your insights about human connection. It’s important and its role in psychological safety and the steps that we can take in order to help promote psychological safety.

And I appreciate that in organizations that maybe have more toxicity than they’re willing to admit, it’s going to take time, and more than that 20-minute at a one year annual retreat. Because I think too often that is the way people view it, because, well, we’ve got business, we got a bottom line, we got quarterly results, and everything is go, go, go, go, go, and ignoring the importance of the human factor and connection and that without that, it just slows everything down.

So, if you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Mike Brcic, an information, as well as a transcript of this interview is available in the show notes at businessconfidentialradio.com.

Appreciate your listening. Be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next week with another information packed episode of Business Confidential Now.

So until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.

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