Unleash Your Team's Potential Through The 4 Stages Of Psychological Safety - Sophie Vo, Rise & Play.

[Music] [Music] [Music] and we're on to our next speaker uh this one is unleash your team's potential through the four stages of psychological safety and your speaker for this will be Sophie V good afternoon everyone I hope you have had a good PGC London so far so it's a perfect segue actually after a talk from Seline about psychological

safety and uh I'm super pleased to be here today to talk about a a topic I'm very passionate about which are teams but also team performance am i m close okay the first stages of psychological safety so let's get into it so you're hearing that talk maybe you didn't know that it was about psychological safety about psychological safety raise your hand just so I have an idea of audience basic knowledge okay okay okay thank you uh for a few okay so yeah not everyone knows about it it's been used a lot in the industry actually I mean also in the previous talk and when we talk about team performance and culture but do we really understand it and do we know where it comes from so I don't need to go really far actually it was a term that was coin more especially around team performance by Google in 2016 and and there was a

whole study that was conducted over two years studying uh teams across Google I think it was 180 teams and to observe like in a very scientific way what are the parameters what are the traits the characteristics of the teams that are performing the best like the best output right and so at the time it was identified that in a team with high psychological safety teammates feel safe to take risk around the team members they feel confidence that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake asking a question or offering a new idea and around that there's actually quite a lot of uh Concepts around Innovation and creativity which is the heart of games so how is it related to team performance so this is also lecture um that researcher and author Timothy Clark that uh correlated uh Team psychological safety and performance because if you think about it and if you look at the chart here it starts we're feeling uh

included feeling safe that's the foundational piece and from now from then you can start to learn be curious we talked about curiosity in the previous talk and then as you learn you have your knowledge for yourself you contribute and then you challenge the status quo and so on and so on and how is it relevant especially in the creative Industries such as games it's moving over time audience is moving uh what we discover about player motivation even the Market the demand and how we deliver game experiences so in a market where it's constantly evolving faster than the knowledge of people you need the knowledge and the creativity the thoughts distributed across the team and not just uh stuck on the top of a hierarchy by the leader so by having more psychological safety I don't need to prove it at this point I haven't done that research but there is a correlation between the more psychological safety and the team output and performance and growth which I'm

sure some of you are also interested in that topic that's why you're here when you want to look at what is the best game we can create and the biggest rich and the the mass so um psychological safety just also as a disclaimer um I did give a bit of an introduction of maybe why it's important related to team what it is but the hardest part of the topic which I want to dive in today is how do we build psychological safety because I've seen many teams and also leaders culture talking about it but it's really really tricky how do you ensure that you have psychological safety and it's not a feature you put on a j board or a Sprint and that is going to happen and the thing is why it's complex psychological safety it's because it's as complex as trust it's it takes time I don't think anyone can say oh I can gain trust with someone or if I tell you today Trust me because I'm just

telling you you will not trust me right so psychological safety a bit like trust it's not a feature it's a feeling it's a feeling and and that's the tricky part about it because sometimes you feel safe and sometime you don't and you may not be able to pin it uh down like why but it's a feeling and also why psychological safety is so tricky and there's not a winning formula or a book of how do you have for sure 100% Psych I ological safety it's context based in some contexts you can feel very safe in a certain organization in a certain location and in other places actually you will not feel safe at all and I'm sure you've experienced that in your life as well when you uh separate work personal and so on so disclaimer for today what will you take away in um the 15 minutes I have left um at least to get into the topic quick Solutions you you will not get it today I I don't have the time to get into it

and is there's no quick solution to Foster psychological safety in your team I think that's the main message however what I want to provide and this is also my approach to team the tools the resources and the systems you can build to build the best conditions favorable for psychological safety so as I get into the topic as well uh maybe a bit of background about myself and maybe why I'm relevant to talk about it so that's my experience I've been working over 15 years in the gaming industry and my main focus has been building teams building game teams in different context in different phases and in different companies so I've seen a lot and I've seen a lot of around the topic of culture and psychological safety and today I could present myself as an expert in psychological safety which I'm claiming to be by selling this talk but I'm actually uh more an expert in the lack of psychological safety and I want to share something personal actually here why that is and why I I am

very familiar with the topic so it starts with um that I don't know if you recognize but it's the both people and for people who know about the story of Vietnam in 1975 a lot of uh Vietnamese millions of Vietnamese fled Vietnam during the war to uh build a b life somewhere that wasn't me I wasn't born that was my mother and my parents that met later in France but what I meant to say is that I was born in France uh from parents immigrants and my whole life my whole journey has been an identity crisis not feeling I belong um also experiencing a lot of discrimination in a small town of France where we were the only Asians so I I'm very familiar what it is to not feel that you're included and everything that you can say is not changing the perception of you because people have already made an opinion of you and it get reinforced later actually working in

games in in in the industry I don't know if you know that small animated movie from Pixar Pearl I've been that little Pearl B here because I've often find myself being the only woman in the room the only Asian in the room and the only Asian woman in the room if you add all the layers and the especially going further higher in leadership position even more so that has been my whole experience to not feel I belong to not feel seen to not feel understood and when I started buil in myself that was a at the very heart of what I didn't want my team to feel and really studying a lot the topic to understand how do I really build sustainably psychological safety when I know how it feels to not have it so I touch then on the topic of trust which could be a whole content by itself but today is on psychological safety so I'll do a fast forward here with the trust trust the same is a complex very complex feeling and you can't really engineer it but somebody has done the work for it Francis FR has a amazing Ted

Talk on how to build and rebuild trust and she identifies three pillars of what makes trust again it's what are the conditions for trust first one is logic so I give an example here how do I build trust with someone can I understand their logic can I understand how that person makes decision what's their rational so then I can trust a little bit but that's the very first step of trust a second pillar of trust is empathy when I deal with that person individ ual I understand how they think but do they care about me does that person understand me do they care about me do they see me and if they take me into account maybe I trust a bit further and the last and the most difficult piece of it is authenticity do I believe that the person I'm talking to or dealing with are they really the person they claim to be are they following the actions with actions what they say they are so are they doing what they say they will do and this is is a complicated one because that implies

that the person you try to trust is also knowing themsel and that's the piece of authenticity because how can you act authentic if you don't even know yourself so as I give tools today about psychological safety in a team it doesn't start with your team but it start with you so the first point is actually how do you build safety you have to find the way to be yourself and yourself is easy to say but I'm not talking about yourself like like I'm presenting myself on stage but your vulnerable self and why I'm getting into this again I have many other uh researchers that has done amazing work here bruny Brown if you haven't checked her work around vulnerability but what does it allow to be vulnerable it builds connection like real authentic genuine sustainable connection it's not faked it's really going inside yourself to share with others but why are we struggling as a societ Society especially as leader to

be vulnerable because being vulnerable you can ask yourself this is the moment where you're about to share something that feels really uncomfortable it's in your guts you know it's like you you feel you're going to share something that can can end endanger you threaten you maybe something you lose very important for you your pride your identity judgment about you and this is when you know that you're sharing something vulnerable and my point here around vulnerability as you maybe working with the team and thinking about those things you can't create psychological safety for your team if in the first place you are not feeling psychologically safe yourself and that's the first piece of it because how can you expect others to come to you to put themselves in a vulnerable state to maybe endanger their reputation their job when you are not willing to do that yourself so it starts with you by being vulnerable so others can actually see that it's okay to you be

vulnerable and the second point of how you build psychological safety is leading yourself again I'm not sharing anything about what you need to do with your team but it starts again with you so leading yourself what does that entitle because in leadership we talk a lot about how we have to lead others but a lot of work is not about leading others it's leading the self first and what does that mean is first gaining awareness of what you stand for why are you here why are you leading team what what's your mission what's what what are your so blind spots and as you get Awareness on all of that this is the Hest conversation you have to take with your have with yourself to take responsibility and as you take responsibility that means also responsibility of your emotions because what does create the opposite of safety is the moments where I'm sure you have experienced that a boss that burst and then is super angry and yels at you and at the end of the day you know every we we are all humans we have a moments of

emotions but the level of responsibility for a leader is not the same on a team than somebody from the team so what does that mean it's a responsibility of a leader to manage their emotion of course they can feel angry of course they can feel sad but they have to be really back to awareness and responsible of the impact it creates on the team and last around the piece of trust and safety is it's if you are managing your emotion and responsible just in one shot it's not going to make it so you have to be consistent over time and you have to do what you do what you will do and all those species are on self leadership and this is how you start to create safety because you start to create predictability for your team they know what to expect from you and you will not explode one day just because you had a bad mood and it's easier of course to say van do but this is where from my own practice I have build a lot of tools for myself and I recommend for anyone who are uh taking the

responsibility of the role of a leader on those pieces around you know journaling white space how much time do you spend time to reflect and check with yourself where you at are you acting out of fear of emotions or are you acting out of Consciousness body awareness receiving feedback meditation coaching and counseling I will not have a time today to go into it so you can take the screenshot or follow the talk later but there are many resources to lead yourself and at the end of the day you know you can try to influence everyone the world a company the team create big things but it starts with you I think that's the main message I want to bring here it starts with you before you can influence others the thir point is building a culture of feedback as you have done the work homework on yourself and uh what is why is it relevant here because if you are familiar with the stages of a team a team needs to storm it's inevitable if your team is not disagreeing sometime we

say fighting but it's not negative if they are not like sparring storming they are not going through actually uh the stage of act challenging themselves and Performing as a team but for a team to storm well again back to the layers of trust they need to pass overcome the fear of conflict and this is where your role as a leader if you want to create that layer of performance you need to create the environment where there's no fear of conflicts and it's back to why the psychological safety is relevant so where you want to move from is that's vicious circle of where nobody wants to admit mistakes we are blaming each other and everyone is like saying what they are not really thinking to a culture of learning where people are curious where they actually I wouldn't say Enjoy it's maybe a strong word but embracing fully the process of getting feedback challenging and you are building that and part of it as

well so again not a surprise everything I share today it starts with you and so I say that based on experience because sometimes I've seen leaders trying to create a culture of feedback like okay give feedback to each other but you ask yourself how are you receiving feedback and I would say just something very simple every time you receive feedback good bad just say thank you because it's not about the feedback you receive and if you agree or not with the person that gives feedback it's the courage that that person took to come to you to give feedback and if you want that person to keep giving you feedback to challenge your thinking you should just say thank you and later you can correct whatever you know the fact and so on but just receive the feedback that's the best thing you can do to create that culture and then you can ask yourself when do you talk about your mistakes what is the place in your system in your culture where you talk about your mistake not someone else mistakes not the mistake of the market or mistakes your own mistakes because then people also will know and and see what it is to

share your mistake in your culture and again also where do you talk about initiative and failures and here I share a lot of also tools that I used you can take a screenshot of it uh I would not have a time to get into those but you know I'm sure you're very familiar with some of those tools and resources uh but those are all places in your culture that you can integrate to to have that chance to have that feedback loop and direct feedback this is the tools for direct feedback but you have also indirect feedback because yes you may be in a place where by default your team doesn't feel safe you don't haven't created that culture so you want to give option for people first to be safe to share something before they can feel safe to share something more directly and I was want to share quick examples of how I've done it in the past in my teams a culture handbook this is where we talk a lot about handbooks I think was also mentioning it this is where you can be very EXP explicit about how you expect to give and receive

feedback in your team how to handle conflicts and disagreements by also leading and walking the talk but at least you make it very explicit so everyone can practice safely and doesn't have to guess how to give critical feedback team po survey so have done it I've done it very consistently and I've also taken like one reference I can give is the game outcome project uh it was published on gamasutra I think in 2016 something they were studying as well all the tra characteristic of Team performing and succeeding and I just took the survey to make sure that there's always Clarity understanding of what the team is doing and how they feel safe and so on so you can check that source and uh also slido that I use as well when you have all hands very handy to organize Anonymous ask me anything and this is the place where you are very uncomfortably as a leader have to uh answer a very uncomfortable question in all hands where it's not always mod at it but this is where you give a chance

to for a team to see a culture where you know you don't have to be perfect but uh you are Al also okay to receive feedback and the last point for I have for a few minutes left um everything that I share today is to take with a grain of salord because you have to adapt it to your context and culture and the first disclaimer is those teams uh those tools have worked for my teams in my context and maybe there are some people is that will work for your team but not all of it and I want to give the most concrete example which is if you are familiar about the culture map book no some of you maybe yes very uh useful in uh International Teams and culture for example I'm very direct in my culture I'm French I was I I grew up as French and then if I start to be very direct in the culture that is inir and I have teams that had the more indirect culture it will create uh it will not create safety the opposite it actually so it's really important you as what you

want to implement as a leader what is the context of your team and what's more appropriate right and maybe you want to meet in in the middle or you want to groom and educate the team as well where you want to have your culture disclaimer uh number two what I'm I share today you can create with OS two a collective sense of psychological safety but why there's been so much push back as well around psychological safety this is not your responsibility to fix a person's lack of psychological safety I want to be clear here in a workplace we are in a workplace at after all and you're trying to create a collective sense but people come with also their baggages and that's not your responsibility to fix it but at the end of the day you don't want to make it worse I feel that collectively you want to make it better and that's what you should aim for and not on an individual level and thir disclamer is everything I Shar today if it's one thing to remember safety it starts with you are you secure first then you can actually expect to

create safety in your team and you need to have a very un comfortable conversation with yourself so today we just touch on the foundation of psychological safety but that's all you need to know in the end because the rest will follow and as a summary some question I would like you to keep with you as you walk away from the room today vulnerability how does it what does it look like for you to be vulnerable self- leadership what gets in a way for you to lead yourself feedback what will you do to create more feedback loop in your organization or team from what you learned today and context what works and what doesn't work for your specific team so thank you for your attention and and I'm out of time so no questions and uh the resources if you need to take a screenshot of what I shared today thank you for your attention thank you round of applause everyone thank you