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Mojo Monday - What it Really Means to be Psychologically Safe (and What It Doesn't) With Carly Taylor) · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, It's Carlie Taylor here for this speaks Mojo Monday.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: So Paul and I were having a chat the other
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: day and we were talking about psychological safety, and I thought,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: this is actually a really good topic to talk about
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: on Mojo Monday because it's been one of those phrases
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: that we hear everywhere. Well, we hear the word safety
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: a lot now, but it's the meaning of this has drifted,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: especially for our young people in schools and universities. So
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to what it originally meant,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: which is kind of the cruts of the conversation that
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Paul and I were having. So the early researchers, people
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: like Shine and Bennis in the sixties and later William Kahn,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: when they talked about psychological safety, they weren't talking about comfort.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: They were talking about and they were talking about creating
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: environments where people could speak up, they could admit their
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: mistakes and be honest without being punished or humiliated. And
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Amy Edmondson, who did this famous nineteen ninety nine study,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: showed exactly that that teams with high psychological safety weren't
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: comfortable teams. They were high learning teams. So they asked questions,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: they owned their mistakes, they challenged each other, and they
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: performed better because of it. But somehow along the way
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the meaning has changed. And you really notice this when
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: you look at young people today and especially the messages
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: that are out there in social media, and for decades, honestly,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: right up until the two thousands, universities were places of
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: lively disagreement. You know, students were able to argue politics
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and philosophy and identity and gender and ethics, all of it.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And of course i'm talking generally here, but you could
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: strongly oppose someone's viewpoint in a tutorial and then walk
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: out and grab a coffee and stay friends. So debate
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: wasn't considered something dangerous. It was actually normal and it
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: was part of the university experiences. But researchers like Jonathan
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Height and Greg looking on Off have documented this big
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: shift in their work on university culture. They show how
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: certain ideas are now treated not as wrong, but as
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: harmful and therefore must be avoided. And Australian psychologist Nick
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Haslam talks about this concept creep, where definitions of harm
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: or trauma and safety have expanded so widely that everyday
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: discomforts and disagreements get labeled as threats. So when this happens,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: we stop debating, we stop stretching our thinking, we start
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: avoiding anything that feels uncomfortable, and so we avoid, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: then avoidance gets framed as safety. But that is the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: modern misuse of psychological safety, and it's the complete opposite
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of what the original research intended. So psychological safety was
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: never about protecting people from feeling discomfort. It was about
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: creating a space where we can enter into discomfort honestly, respectfully,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and with enough trust that we don't collapse under it.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: And this is really relevant for our young people because
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the evidence is really clear growth requires discomfort, Confidence comes
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: from doing difficult things, and resilience is built by moving
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: towards challenge and not away from it. So if you
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: are a young person listening to this, or if you
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: work with them or love young people, here's something to
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: keep in mind. Feeling uncomfortable isn't a sign that something
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: is wrong. It's often a sign that you're learning. So
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: real psychological safety isn't about being shielded from hard conversations.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It's about having those conversations without fear of being shamed
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: or silenced. So this week, instead of slipping into avoidance
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: if that's what you tend to do, try asking yourself,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: am I willing to make room for this discomfort so
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I can grow from it? Or can I feel this
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: discomfort in the service of becoming the person that I
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: want to be? Because comfort, as we know, does not
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: build resilience, but challenge, supported, honest, psychologically safe challenge absolutely does.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: So that's me for this week's Mojo Monday thing to
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: think about, and I hope you all have a great
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: week and I'll catch you next week. See ya.