The document summarizes a workshop on psychological safety. The workshop aims to help participants understand what psychological safety is, why it's important, and how to create it. It defines psychological safety as being able to show one's self without fear of negative consequences. The agenda includes exercises to discuss the best and worst teams worked with, conditions that create psychological safety, and overcoming obstacles. It emphasizes that psychological safety enables candid conversations and risk-taking, and that failure should be viewed as a learning opportunity rather than punished.
1. 1
Psychological Safety Workshop
NTX Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Meetup
Mike McKiggan, SPC 5.0, CSM, PSM I, PSPO I
Agile Center of Excellence Leader
GM Financial
2. 2
Workshop Outcomes / Agenda
Outcomes:
• Understand what psychological safety is and
why its important
• Conditions required to create it
• Tips to overcome obstacles
Agenda:
• Icebreaker exercise
• Ideas:
• What is it and why it’s important
• Ladder of Inference
• Amygdala Attack
• Your truth, my truth, THE TRUTH
• Exercise: what conditions created it
• Overcoming Obstacles
- Some examples
- Exercise: Just like me
• Closing Thoughts
4. 4
Psychological Safety: What is it and why it’s so important
• “Being able to show and employ one's self
without fear of negative consequences of
self-image, status or career” (Kahn 1990, p.
708)
• Enables candid, honest conversations =
Healthy conflict
• Without it, we rarely are willing to address the
“elephant in the room”
• Enables teams to push the envelope/
innovate / take risks
5. 5
Take Aways:
• We are all shaped – and innately
biased – based on our beliefs and
values
• Confirmation bias – selecting
only certain observable “data” to
support our existing world view
• It’s helpful to “check your
assumptions” with others you
respect who hold different views
• Diversity of Thought improves
decision making and increases
Empathy
How we make meaning from what we see: Our version of “Truth”
The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge
6. 6
Take Aways:
• We are built to protect
ourselves
• We will protect our
strongly-held opinions
• We are often not aware:
- Of our feelings
- That our feelings impact
our thoughts
• When our amygdala is
“firing”:
- We lose empathy for
others
- We lose creativity
Overcoming our Amygdala: Our fight or flight reaction
11. 11
Benefits of Psychological Safety – Organizational level
Take Aways:
• How leaders react when things go
wrong will determine employee
willingness to take risk / innovate /
think outside the box
• Punishing failure stifles risk-
taking and reduces transparency
which leads to more failures and
finger-pointing
• Reacting with curiosity to failure
leads to learning which – repeated
throughout an organization –
becomes competitive advantage
12. 12
Psychological Safety - Individuals
• Radical Candor, by Kim Scott
Think of an important relationship
that you would like to improve?
What quadrant would they say
you are in?
What can you do to shift to the
Radical Candor quadrant?
13. 13
• Ask leaders what they want
• Ask to try an experiment
• “In god we trust, all others must bring data”
- W. E. Deming
• Failure can be a good teacher
• Remind them we’re all human
- Exercise: “Just like me”
What have you tried
that’s helped overcome
resistance?
Overcoming Obstacles
14. 14
“Progress is impossible
without change,
and those who cannot
change their minds
cannot change anything.”
- George Bernard Shaw
Closing Thoughts
Remember your
Humanity
Lead with curiosity:
seek first to understand
then to be understood
Stay Open
“People don’t always
remember what you
say or do, but they
always remember
how you made them
feel.”
- Maya Angelou
“There is no
courage
without
vulnerability”
- Brene Brown
15. 15
Mike McKiggan leads the Agile
Center of Excellence at GM
Financial.
He started his agile journey in
2005 with Capital One. Since
then, he’s had many more failures
than successes but is constantly
experimenting, learning and trying
to avoid the Dunning Kruger
effect.
When he’s not spending time with
his family, he’s a passionate
fitness buff, avid traveler and
voracious Audible listener.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-
mckiggan/
Mike’s new motto
About the Presenter
