Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
Psychological safety is the foundation of every high performing team, yet many leaders unintentionally undermine it without even realizing this week my Impactful team's co founder Lara Cullen and I explore psychological safety. We talk about why comfort isn't the goal and the small, powerful and very practical leadership behaviors that you can implement to create a culture where people feel safe to contribute, to challenge and to innovate. We have a very relaxed conversation talking about what psychological safety really means, the difference between psychological safety and trust. Why mistakes aren't necessarily a bad thing. We also talk about what destroys psychological safety and why comfort isn't the goal. This is Influence and Impact for Leaders, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team. Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately to be better at your job without working harder. Now, before we jump into the chat between Lara and I, I'll give you my normal little update about what's going on in my life.

Carla Miller [00:01:20]:
So I am recording this near the end of November. It is very col up here in the Lake District. Not a lot of snow to be seen, but definitely very chilly. I am a hibernator in winter. I think I must have been a hedgehog in a previous life. I really would be very happy to go to sleep when it starts getting dark in the afternoon and to sleep for winter and wake up in March when spring really starts. Unfortunately that's not the case, so I'm just bundling up. I'm about to bundle up and go out in the dark with my very head torch to go and collect my child from after school club.

Carla Miller [00:02:02]:
I've been really busy in autumn and the start of winter, mainly delivering two leadership programs for clients which has been great to design those for them. And it means I've got a whole load of workshops now for any organizations looking to develop their managers and leaders, particularly if they're looking at things like delegation, feedback, conflict, setting expectations, coaching and motivating your team. All of those management and leadership skills that are essential I now have in my training bank. So if you're looking to develop your managers and leaders in your team, do get in touch to chat about that. I am also looking forward to Christmas. This is going to be the last podcast of 2025. We will be back at the beginning of January. I've been doing lots of interviews with authors so there's some fantastic episod aligned up and I'm looking forward to sharing those with you in the new year.

Carla Miller [00:03:02]:
So I hope you find this Episode super useful. Have a lovely festive season, whatever that looks like for you. Thank you for listening in 2025. It's always lovely when I hear back from listeners that it's made a difference to them and when I get to chat to some of you on the phone because you want to talk about coaching or training. Um, so thanks for listening, I really appreciate it and enjoy the end of 2025 and I will see you in 2026. So I promised you a co host and she has. We have eventually recorded another episode together. So welcome back, Lara as co host of this episode.

Lara Cullen [00:03:45]:
Hello. Thank you. Good to be back.

Carla Miller [00:03:48]:
And we are going to talk about psychological safety today and building psychological safety in your team. And we have a bit of a caveat around this, which is neither of us have written a book on psychological safety. We're not claiming to be in depth level experts, but we've worked with so many teams across the years as individuals. We're starting to work with teams together now as well that you pick up a lot and from coaching individuals you pick up a lot as well. So we think that we've got enough to share between us to give you some really useful tips in terms of how you can create psychological safety as a leader. Is that a fair description of our level of expertise, Lara?

Lara Cullen [00:04:31]:
I think so. I think so. And also, you know, we've been in teams as well, the good, the bad and the ugly. But yeah, certainly for me, I don't think I'd even really heard of the concept of psychological safety until about five, six years ago. And when I did it, it made sense. But in the years since, you know, it's, it's becoming fairly, a fairly common place to be discussed. It's something that's really seeping into the, the conversations particularly around high performing teams and around leadership. So over that time being, you know, while we haven't yet written the book on it certainly been giving it a lot more, a lot more attention and gleamed a few bits and pieces which as you say, I think will be qu helpful for people listening who are maybe starting out on the journey, as it were.

Carla Miller [00:05:23]:
Definitely. And so when we're talking about psychological safety, how do we describe that to other people? I've got concepts in mind. I don't really have a perfect description.

Lara Cullen [00:05:35]:
I suppose maybe starting with a little bit of the background to it. So the concept or the phrase psychological safety was defined by Professor Amy Edmondson and then really picked up steam through some studies that were carried out at Google around what makes a high Performing team. And they identified that, you know, while there were lots of things that go into making up a high performing team, some of which are included in our team model, the thing that underpinned that was this idea of psychological safety and that being this shared belief that this particular team is safe for taking risks, for making mistakes, for interpersonal risk taking. So basically for being different, having a dissenting view and challenging without either fear of humiliation or punishment or exclusion. So I think that's kind of where it came from and what it means to me.

Carla Miller [00:06:41]:
Yeah, that really resonates with me as well, that feeling safe to speak up, feeling safe to be yourself, not necessarily your unedited self, because we don't need to bring completely unedited selves to work, but feeling like it's okay to have different opinions and there's no blame culture going on there. And when you have that, that obviously allows everyone to take those risks, doesn't it? To start to. To stretch themselves, to step out of their comfort zone and do new things, knowing that they're not going to be judged if they don't get it right first time.

Lara Cullen [00:07:16]:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and in an ideal world, you kind of want to move away almost from that fear of being judged for getting it wrong, to actually almost being celebrated for getting it wrong. And that's not to say that you aspire to make mistakes, but you can't learn without making mistakes. And you can't have mistakes really without safety or not calculated kind of, you know, wise mistakes. And that's, you know, that's where innovation comes from. So the, the companies or the teams where there are high levels of psychological safety, mistakes are not just tolerated, but genuinely encouraged.

Carla Miller [00:07:57]:
That's made me think of Charlie, my son. So he's just gone into year three and it's a big leap up. And they have a poster on the wall about marvelous mistakes and they celebrate mistakes, which is great for my kid who never used to put his hand up unless he definitely knew the answer, to feel like, yeah, it's actively safe to make these mistakes. And it's really helped to build his confidence as well. So we almost need, like you're saying that kind of encouragement to try new things and make mistakes. Definitely.

Lara Cullen [00:08:26]:
Yeah, definitely. And I heard I'll probably get it wrong and I won't get the detail right. But I think, you know, the concept and the intention will be, will be accurate, which is at innocent smoothies they used to have. I think it was like a wall of failure, and it was all of the flavors that didn't quite hit the mark or didn't quite make it to market or land as well as I expected to. And that was celebrated just as much of the ones that did because it shows that people were taking risks and they were trying new things. So, yeah, exactly. Whether it's individual confidence or bolstering innovation and creativity. And I think that's the other thing.

Lara Cullen [00:09:04]:
You know, I work with a lot of creative businesses particularly, and psychological safety is one of those things that is absolutely critical for innovation and for creativity because unless people feel safe to maybe rock the boat to do things a little bit differently, to challenge a status quo, to just try something that's never been tried before, you're not going to get creativity, innovation, newness. But it's not just limited to the creative sectors. In Amy Edmondson's book, which is called the Fearless Organization, which is a really good intro text for anybody who does want to brush up on what this is all about, she gives examples of people in hospitals and in real life or death situations where people have maybe been afraid to call out somebody, who. Not call out somebody, but question, ask questions of somebody who is, in theory, more experienced or more senior. Because it's almost like, well, who am I to ask them if they're really sure about this decision? Or who am I to question the prescription dose that's been passed out? Or if I, if I challenge people on X, Y or Z, then what repercussions are there going to be for me? And if you think about those kind of environments, that's literally saving lives, making really consequential decisions that don't happen unless that element of, okay, you know, maybe I am going to ask this person if they've really thought about the various permutations and possibilities, and maybe they have, and maybe I might feel a little bit foolish for a moment, but actually it'll be okay, you know, and they'll thank me for stepping in. And I think that's. That's really what it's all about.

Carla Miller [00:10:49]:
Absolutely. And we see a lot more collaboration in teams where there is psychological safety because people are able to actually have some of those challenging conversations, but also build authentic relationships that allow them to work well together. Now, in our teams model, we cover this under the T of teams, which is trust and psychological safety. But Lara and I were having a bit of discussion before about there is a distinction between trust and psychological safety that you were making, isn't there, Lara? How do you, where do you see that distinction?

Lara Cullen [00:11:22]:
So trust, to me is often more individual and it's more personal. And there's absolutely an overlap between the two for sure. But trust is often about, you know, I trust you as a person. I trust you because of your character and how you are and the way that you show up and the things that you do and the things that you value. And I trust you as a human. And it can also be about, I trust your competence, I trust that you will be able to deliver this job that you have said that you will deliver. Whereas psychological safety is more. It's more collective, it's more about feeling safe within a group.

Lara Cullen [00:12:02]:
So you might trust your boss and you might trust that if you say something in confidence, it won't be repeated. Or you might trust that somebody's intentions are pure, but you still might not feel safe to say speak up or to challenge their ideas in a meeting. You know, you, you might kind of think, okay, I've noticed something, but rather than say it here in the meeting, I'll just tell them offline or equally, you might feel very safe speaking up in a meeting or on a one on one. But you might not actually trust that anything's going to come of that or that they're able to do anything with it. So there's definitely a connection. I think it's hard to feel safety in a group where you don't trust the people, but it's also helpful to distinguish between the two. And Stephen Covey, who some people might be familiar with, he was a kind of a management guru in the past, talks about the speed of trust. And that is, you know, when you've got high levels of trust, everything just happens more quickly.

Lara Cullen [00:13:06]:
And that's something that's always really stuck with me. You know, if you think about doing business with people, or for example, say you've, you know, you, you trust your assistant to get on with something, it's a much quicker conversation handing that piece of work over versus somebody who you don't have that trust with. So trust definitely speeds things up. But I think in psychologically safe environments there is an element of speeding up, but there can also be an element of slowing things down because there's more conversation and more debate and more discussion.

Carla Miller [00:13:37]:
That makes sense. And it's interesting, that dynamic, isn't it, that it's about psychological safety is about a collective and a team. Because what I see quite a lot is that a leader's approach can really impact that for the rest of the team, can't it? You only really need one person, and if it's a leader, then Their impact is amplified to destroy that sense of psychological safety. Like sometimes you have a room full of people where they do have it and then someone else enters the room and the psychological safety exits as they come in. Do you think that's. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it like that before, but I do think, yeah, you need everyone in the room to feel like a safe person to speak up in front of or to speak to, don't you?

Lara Cullen [00:14:18]:
Yeah. And it's really hard. You know, again, one of the things that we were talking about before the conversation before, before coming on to record this episode was where we've seen it in practice and, you know, examples of best practice, even with teams that we've worked in. And while there's definitely examples, I think both of us can think of in May individual pockets. For me, personally, I don't know a full business that I would say that business has absolutely nailed psychological safety. For me, it's a lot more micro than that, but it's also constantly evolving for exactly the reasons that you mentioned. And it's, it can be quite fragile. So it's something for leaders to really be conscious of and to be conscious that it's not a.

Lara Cullen [00:15:07]:
It's not a one and done. It's not like, okay, you know, we've got our strategy for the year a tick. We don't need to look at that until six months down the road. Your psychological safety is something that you really have to be thinking about all of the time and you don't necessarily.

Carla Miller [00:15:20]:
Need it in the wider organization to have it within your team. So we like to think about creating a bubble of safety. If, you know, the outside of the, of your team, there is not psychological safety that you're going to come across some difficult characters or there's a very dominant culture. That doesn't mean that it's impossible for you to have it within your team. You can take some steps so that when you're in the room and your team are gathered together, there is that sense of safety. And so we thought we would go through some of those tips for people, didn't we?

Lara Cullen [00:15:57]:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think exactly that. So starting with that bit that you're able to influence and, and control, which is rather than thinking about the organization as a whole, it's like, okay, you know, what about my, my team? What do we need here? And I think, you know, one of the first things that people can do is to invite challenge, invite difference of opinion. And then when they receive that, it's about how you respond to that, isn't it? You know, so if you're going to, if you're a leader and you ask people to give you some feedback and not just you, all of the nice things that make you feel warm and fuzzy, but some of the things that maybe you could do differently or better, and if somebody is brave enough to share that with you, to really, really acknowledge that warmly, openly to thank them, you don't have to agree with it. You know, you don't always have to agree with everything that, that people share with you. But even if you don't agree with it, you can disagree that it still shows respect. And I think that's the, you know, that's one of the key things as well.

Lara Cullen [00:17:05]:
It's not. Psychological safety isn't just about having cultures or having teams where everybody is really nice to each other and really happy and you know, going around giving each other big hugs and singing Kumbaya and all of that kind of stuff. It's. It's about being honest and direct, but doing so respectfully. So giving and receiving feedback, whether it's about an individual or even about a piece of work and then the way that that's received is a really great first step in, in building psychological safety.

Carla Miller [00:17:41]:
Yeah. And it's modeling it yourself, isn't it? By asking, proactively asking for that feedback. So even if it's questions like you could do it double sided, you could say, what's something that I am doing? Well, in terms of supporting you and working with you and what's one thing that I do that actually makes your working life harder? Because we all have these blind spots and so just just creating that to have that conversation and giving people a chance to think about it beforehand, maybe so they're not put in the spot and don't feel like they have to say something very people pleasing to you like, oh, you're just a perfectionist or something. So a question like that, but also modeling openness in terms of if you've made a mistake or if you've changed your mind on things or if you've said something and actually you wish you'd said it differently, putting your hand up and sharing that, really normalizing that you don't have to be perfect to be really good at your job and actually you can improve relationships and repair things even if you didn't handle things in the ideal way to start with and then also making it safe to disagree. So whether that's taking the whole Simon Sinek leader speaks last approach or whether it's if you are presenting something, then actively encouraging different opinions on it or presenting options rather than your way of thinking. Anything that really actively invites other opinions into the room and makes it feel really safe for them to say something that contradicts or doesn't exactly align with what you're saying.

Lara Cullen [00:19:17]:
Yeah, I love that. And I love what you're saying as well about modeling that and about taking those risks yourself as well. I think one of the fastest ways to show people that it's safe to take risks is by. By you showing yourself or by you taking risks. And whether that is, as you say, you know, admitting mistakes or sharing vulnerability wisely as well. So, you know, you don't need to walk into a room and like, disclose everything that's going on in your personal life or the fact that you're completely overwhelmed and you've got no idea what you're doing or what you've been asked to do or why that. That's not going to make people feel safe. And I think that's something that's worth pointing out as well.

Lara Cullen [00:20:00]:
You know, vulnerability. There is a safety in leaders being human and showing their vulnerability, but there's also a limit to that, you know, so people need to feel that their leaders have generally got a steer on things. So rather than saying, you know, I have no idea what's going on and I have no idea what I'm doing here, you might want to say something. Something like, look, this is new to me as well, and we're all learning and we're all figuring this out together. So I'd love to hear some opinions of things that maybe I haven't considered along this journey. So there's, there's, there's a difference there. There's a vulnerability, there's an honesty, there's a humanity, but it's also letting people know, okay, you know, the person who's got their hands on the steering wheel has, you know, does at least know how to drive. Even if they don't know this, particularly this particular road that we're navigating our way down.

Carla Miller [00:20:54]:
Yeah, you definitely want to feel like someone has a clue what they're doing, even if they don't have an exact plan. And I think that's around self awareness, isn't it? And that self awareness piece is so crucial to creating psychological safety as a leader. It's becoming aware of your blind spots. It's reading the room like you have a meeting and you're not getting contributions from people. It's reflecting afterwards. Right. Okay, so what was going on there. How can I get curious? How can I ask more questions in order to bring out what people think? We've got a couple of episodes within the podcast that are really good on that self awareness piece.

Carla Miller [00:21:32]:
There's episode 180 on mastering micro interactions and then there's one that I've just recorded. So we'll be out within a few weeks of this episode, which is around leadership. And it's. It's an interview with Julia Cardin where her book is called you'd're not as self aware as you think you are. It's like, yeah, I imagine that applies to a lot of us.

Lara Cullen [00:21:57]:
Definitely, definitely. And I love the whole concepts or the thinking around self awareness. There's a great book as well called Insight by Tasha Urich, which I quote all the time when I'm running workshops or coaching people. And she. I'm sure this probably comes up in your conversation with Julia, but she found that when asked if they're self aware or not, 99 to 95% of people will say that they think they're pretty self aware. And actually the truth is about 10 to 15%. So that sounds like a great book. There was another thought that was kind of brewing as you were speaking there, which is around making some of the, like some of your assumptions clear, bringing them to the surface, making some of the unspoken spoken, particularly around how you disagree.

Lara Cullen [00:22:46]:
So rather than if you've been leading a team for a while and you've identified that maybe this is an area that needs attention, or if you're new to leading a team and you want to get off on the right foot and having a culture of high psychological safety, you might start by actually dedicating some time at a team meeting or creating a meeting specifically to discuss how safe does it feel in this team to make mistakes. Depending on how safe it is, you may get get a wide variety of answers. But regardless of what you get, you could have some conversations around how do we want to disagree with each other? You know, so creating together your norms around how you want to disagree about, how you want to challenge each other about what that looks like so that you're starting those conversations together. And it may even, you may even need to take a step before that as well to talk about like your team mission and purpose, which is one of the other things in our team model. It's really hard as well to have psychological safety if we don't all know what we're aiming for. And that might seem really, really obvious and in many cases it possibly is Very obvious. And also I know, and I'm sure you know as well, Carla, from lots of the teams that we work with, there can be different views around what priorities are and the, the essence and the mission of the team and then also about like what is okay, what's not okay. So those conversations as well are really helpful.

Lara Cullen [00:24:15]:
You know, it all sort of feeds in together in building psychological safety. So articulating that can, can really help and then doing that together so that people know, ah, this is what's happening here. And you're giving people permission in advance to challenge, question, be different as well.

Carla Miller [00:24:35]:
I love that. And we're both a big fan of consciously creating the culture of your team and spending a bit of time doing that. It will save you so much time later on and misunderstandings. But it also really helps to build that high performing team that many of us are looking for. There were a couple of misconceptions around psychological safety that we thought it was worth addressing on this episode as well. And one of them, we've already touched on this idea that it's, it's not about being nice, it's not about everyone saying lovely things to each other all the time. It's also not about avoiding accountability because I think if things don't feel fair then it doesn't create psychological safety either, does it? So I do quite like the radical candor model or compassionate candor as she's updated it because people were going around going, I'm just being radically having radical candor and then saying things that were quite harsh. So I quite like that where you're combining the caring with challenging directly and you have to have both and you have to have that trust that you were talking about as well underlying it.

Carla Miller [00:25:41]:
But let's not think that a lack of conflict is necessarily an indication of psychological safety in the team.

Lara Cullen [00:25:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I was thinking of some of my earlier career experiences and one of the first businesses that I worked in. I wouldn't say, you know, people were particularly challenging or argumentative or certainly I didn't feel that people were hostile but there was a good degree of debate and discussion and building on ideas. And at the time, this is me going back over 20 years now, I wouldn't have had the language of psychological safety to pin on that. But looking back, that's what it was. So people would bring ideas and then it was encouraged that you had build upon them or you might point out if somebody's maybe missed something and so on. And then I joined another business where it was the Complete opposite. You know, I remember the first time being in the HR team meeting, which is the team that I belonged in, and bringing some ideas and just being met with silence and these kind of like smiles that were smiles on the lips but not behind the eyes.

Lara Cullen [00:26:47]:
It didn't feel very safe at all. And just knowing that, you know, even though nobody said anything in the meeting other than yeah or yeah, that's great, well done. Knowing that as soon as the door closed and people were going back to their little offices or their cars, whatever, the phones would be ringing or the side conversations would be happening and people would be criticizing and you know, all of that kind of thing. And it really, really didn't feel psychologically safe. It felt, it was actually pretty low point in my career in terms of just how it felt to, to be at work. I didn't feel that anybody had my back. I didn't, I didn't feel that anybody had each other's back either. But there was very little if any explicit disagreement or challenge or conflict.

Lara Cullen [00:27:34]:
And that was one of the most unsettling things of all because it's like, hold on a second, you know, if I'm about to work in, walk into a burning fire with this, is anybody going to tell me or are they just going to allow me do that? And Lencioni, there's a very famous book called the Five Dysfunctions of Team by Patrick Lencioni. It's quite an easy book to read, but he really talks about this and about the absence of conflict actually being a indicator of low trust and low safety. Because he says, you know, basically when people don't speak up, you get this like artificial harmony. But that's not actually where teams do their best work or people stay or they bring their best ideas. It's just this artificial harmony.

Carla Miller [00:28:22]:
Yeah, that resonates. And I think that also brings up this idea that safety and comfort are not the same thing. So personally I'm quite conflict averse. If I'm in a people manager role where it's my job to sort stuff out, I love to deal with it. But as an individual I am quite conflict averse. And as an individual in the workplace, if I'm dealing with things one to one, I probably am as well. And so if I was placed in an environment where there was a lot of really vocal disagreement, I would initially feel uncomfortable because it would be out of my comfort zone. But that doesn't mean it's not safe.

Carla Miller [00:29:00]:
It actually would be safe for me to speak up or safe for me to stay. Quiet until I felt comfortable to speak up. So there is this difference, isn't there, between safety and everyone's comfortable. And I think that's particularly important to bear in mind as we look at things like Gen Z coming into the workplace where they like to give feedback in some ways, but they can feel a lot of anxiety around being judged by people in other ways. So just recognizing it's not that everyone has to be in their comfort bubble all the time, sometimes it's about stretching that comfort bubble with them, isn't it?

Lara Cullen [00:29:35]:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more on that. And we don't learn in our comfort zone zones, we learn when we're uncomfortable. So the goal is not to feel comfortable, the goal is to feel safe. And I take this into my personal life as well. You know, I recently came back from a solo trip to Morocco which was, which was fantastic. Didn't speak to anybody for five days. I just stayed in my own little comfort bubble and it was great. But there were times when I was out and about and I was wandering and getting lost in the, in the medinas, as you do, where I felt I felt a little bit uncomfortable or people calling out after me or whatever, but I actually never once felt unsafe.

Lara Cullen [00:30:18]:
And that allowed me to explore a little bit more and to get out and about. Whereas there's been times where I felt, I wouldn't say I felt comfortable and unsafe, but certainly when I feel unsafe I would be less likely to explore, to try new things. And I think, you know, whether it's in our personal life, whether it's in our working life or in the context that we're discussing today in terms of high performing teams, it's really good to challenge ourselves, to get out of our comfort zones and to distinguish between, okay, what I'm feeling right now, am I feeling that it's uncomfortable to speak up? Am I feeling that it's uncomfortable to challenge this? Or am I feeling that if I do it, my career progression might be at stake or there might be some other consequences or I might be excluded from this group. And that's the difference. Does it feel uncomfortable or does it feel unsafe?

Carla Miller [00:31:07]:
Yeah. And as you say there, I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking about myself and about clients who've described exact situations where it's like, I want to address this, but I know it's going to come back and effectively bite me in the ass if I do. So I'm choosing not to. I think when you're having those courageous conversations, you have to Trust your intuition, don't you? But you've got to tune into that and go, is it my intuition or is it just. I feel uncomfortable stepping out of my comfort zone here. So we've looked at some ways that you can create safety as an individual. We've looked at some common misconceptions and what it looks like to have high or low psychological safety. We've also talked about those differences between trust and psychological safety and comfort and safety.

Carla Miller [00:31:53]:
What are a few little takeaways that we want people to leave this podcast? So one of my favorites so far has been this idea about consciously creating your team's culture and including how you're going to disagree. I think that's a really lovely practical thing we can do. What else do we think practical things leaders could do if they want to really start to build that psychological safety in their team?

Lara Cullen [00:32:17]:
Yeah, I think the point we made earlier about feedback is a really easy, not easy. It's a very obvious, accessible one. So start by asking for feedback and be really, really conscious about how you receive it. Don't expect that if you suddenly start asking people for feedback and you've never done that before, that they're necessarily going to be all that forthcoming. Some people may be, some people may not be. But start small. Reward those. Reward the feedback that you do get.

Lara Cullen [00:32:49]:
And yeah, ask for it as well as. As giving it. Not enough leaders, in my experience, ask for feedback. Plenty are more comfortable giving it. So I think there's something in that as well.

Carla Miller [00:33:02]:
Another way I think we can create psychological safety as leaders is to be consistent in how we show up. So I did an episode with Jen McKenna recently on dealing with difficult bosses. And one of the key difficult bosses to deal with is someone who's inconsistent. So one day you get them and they're in a great mood and really open to feedback, and another time you get them and they shut you down completely. So it's being conscious. It's not just what you say as a leader that creates that psychological safety. It's how you show up. And I'm not saying you have to be perfect all the time, but your behavior gets amplified because of the power that you have in a situation.

Carla Miller [00:33:40]:
So if you are stressed, that's a moment to take a breather before you go and have a conversation with. With someone, rather than coming straight out of that stressful meeting and ranting at them, for example. So it's just worth thinking, am I being consistent? And if you do act in a way that you look back and go kind of wish I hadn't shown up like that. It is really easy when you have your next conversation with someone, with that person to say, do you know what? I've been reflecting on that. And that's not how I should have approached that, or I don't feel comfortable with how, or I didn't word that that very well. So I just wanted to be really clear that what I meant was this or that. I did hear you and I'm sorry if it didn't appear that way. So we don't have to apologize for everything all the time, but recognizing you can repair when you haven't done something as well as you would have liked.

Lara Cullen [00:34:31]:
Yeah, there's so much in that little nugget there that you just shared. There's so many different pieces in that. I think. Exactly. It is about consistency, for sure. You know, people as human beings, we like consistency, we like certainty. And that's pretty hard to come by in a lot of the environments that people are working in now, today. But you can be fairly consistent and predictable in your responses.

Lara Cullen [00:34:57]:
Rightly or wrongly, we tend to veer towards what we know and what is familiar. So the more consistent you can be, the more naturally safe people will feel. And it is in those small, those small doings, those small interactions, that psychological safety is built. So while having and creating space consciously to discuss psychological safety is great. And it's often a great first step and a great way in. It's in the little micro moments, it's in the interactions, it's in the asking for feedback in a meeting or asking for challenge in a meeting, and then responding favorably in the meeting, but not then going back outside and having little debriefs and little side conversations about them or rolling the eyes. It is in those small things. And as you say, there is so much spotlight on people as leaders, and of course none of us are going to be perfect all of the time.

Lara Cullen [00:35:50]:
It's just not possible. But admitting those shortfalls without groveling, admitting those shortfalls really helps as well. So that consistency in those small steps, rather than aiming for perfection, because often even aiming for perfection, it. Not that it's. I. I believe, not that it's entirely attainable, but even if it were, if you've got a boss who is absolutely infallible and gets things right all of the time, how safe and how, how safe is it going to feel for you when you make mistakes and you don't get things right all of the time? So showing of those vulnerabilities is a good thing.

Carla Miller [00:36:31]:
Absolutely. So hopefully we've given you some food for thought there. If you are thinking about how to develop your team to create that psychological safety to bring the team together and you want to chat about how we could support you with that, then you can book a call with either one of us and we can chat you through our team's model and see where we think you'll might be able to benefit from a little bit of time and attention together as a team. And we obviously both coach as well. So if you're like oh I've got a really big issue here, I think I could actually do with a coach of my own to help me deliver as a leader and build our self awareness then you know who we both are as well. So good luck going out and putting some of this into practice to build psychological safety in your team. And thank you to my wonderful co host Lara.

Lara Cullen [00:37:22]:
Thank you to my wonderful co host Carla.