Balancing Team Engagement and Psychological Safety

0:00people are the most consequential and dangerous forces on earth well personality psychology is about the nature of human nature it's about people and wouldn't that be useful to know it seems to me i can't i can't think of a more important problem you're listening to the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments the global leader in personality and leadership guided by your hosts hogan chief science officer and world-renowned personality psychologist dr ryan sherman alongside hogan's pr manager and

0:35resident storyteller blake lepp this podcast explores the impact of personality on life leadership and the nature of human nature hello everybody and welcome to the science of personality podcast i'm your host ryan sherman along with my co-host as always blake lepp say hello blake hello everybody and welcome back to the science of personality podcast episode 151 today ryan and i are joined by melvin pain commercial director at advanced people strategies one of hogan's fabulous distributors in the uk to talk

1:10about finding the right balance between team engagement and psychological safety more specifically we'll look at the role personality plays through the lens of hogan data this is something melvin and his team at aps have made a priority recently as they continue to deliver best in class team solutions for their vast client portfolio and we're excited to dive into that with him today but before we get to our conversation with melvin if you wish to give us any ideas for upcoming episodes or you want to ask ryan or me a question shoot us an email at hello at the science of personality.com

1:45or follow the science of personality on linkedin now let's get to it melvin welcome to the podcast is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before we get started uh thanks blake um just that i'm i'm an avid listener to the podcast as as as perhaps some listeners would know from previous comments and um just wanted to say that given that i'm with you two gentlemen again on this occasion one of my most favorite uh recent podcasts was the one where you

2:17used ai if you like to create the the questions and the discussions and um i'm just really mindful on here that you know in ryan's story about the airplane journey you pictured him as the pilot yourself blake as the the air steward and that leaves one other person in the story that was the jerk on the plane so i'm really hopeful that during this this call i i won't be the jerk in the plane well i'm sure you won't be the jerk on this plane uh melvin well i look really great to have you here

2:51again on the podcast i think blake mentioned before we we came on the air here that uh this is an anniversary episode for us and the last anniversary episode for us you were also our guest on the podcast so uh this is not intentional but a wonderful coincidence i'll also say i had a great time working with you and your team melvin uh in the uk and ireland earlier this year it was great to see you and uh super excited to talk with you today about psychological safety so yeah thanks again for

3:22joining us yeah melvin uh yeah thanks for joining us for our sixth anniversary of the episode of the the podcast so that's really fun uh i know it was a bit of a milestone last year with the five-year anniversary but you know maybe we just make this a tradition who you know maybe maybe you just start coming on for our our anniversary episode each year but um you know melvin let's let's get into this so i'm curious how did the conversation at aps around the topic of psychological safety and engagement

3:55start and how did it evolve into one of the firm's you know premier offerings um well i guess psychological safety in its broadest sense has been been on the table for us for for quite a long time so if i just sort of set the scene a little bit we use hogan obviously for selection purposes um and also development purposes and for for us and a lot of our clients use of hogan starts with individual development and then grows into sort of use for collective engagement such as team

4:30development and where we use hogan is for us the potential axis if you like this is how things are likely to show up this is how people are likely to be experienced but what we're really interested in as an organization is is this so what do we do with that on the development side so you know if i'm somebody who shows up as really well organized but perhaps a little bit inflexible you know is is that important what do i need to do about it but more importantly how do i go about doing things that

5:06will improve my overall effectiveness so psychological safety for us or although i'm conscious it's a term that's easily banded around at the moment um when we start to look at teams one of the things we we typically experience is you you know the team is set up to be high performing um we we might get together in a team intervention um but there's just a sense that we're not getting to that deeper level and and dealing with the

5:38elephant in the room and confronting issues or setting the team up if you like to to do something about it so what we we've been keen to do and and the team behind the scenes have done a great job is to come up with a a very short tactical questionnaire that enables us to sort of get get to the heart of the matter pretty quickly the things that might be holding the team back a little bit if you like um from doing something about what they need to address yeah so you know melvin why i totally agree with you that about the importance of this topic

6:16you know and working with you know the the kind of teams that you work with i'm sort of curious as to um you know what was this really client driven were they coming to you saying hey you know this is something that we need or was this created in-house where you guys looked around and said hey here's a problem that we can go solve to offer for our clients yeah absolutely um so chris and our lnd team behind the scenes have sort of identified this um focused on the research and different models

6:50behind it to say look this is something that we can help teams with as part of our development offering um but we we're not only interested in sort of the team working together but but also on those individual development um scenarios where we're working with a particular leader just to try and help them with some of the the key areas where the team that reports to them um we might create some

7:20insights about what might be holding the team back for that particular leader so obviously where where their individual behavior has an impact well melvin okay if the the goal you know is finding the right balance between engagement and psychological safety it kind of seems as those two things are at odds with each other where teams tend to overdo one and underdo the other i mean if this is an offering that you're needing to try to find the balance so if that's true why do you think that's the

7:54case um i think it's probably slightly differently for an individual leader if we're thinking about the environment that they create um so i guess all the leaders i speak to their intentions are usually positive i don't know anybody that sort of goes out of their way to to do anything destructive but often that sort of contrast between the psychological safety bit if if i overdo that

8:25at the expense of engagement we're still not that we're not going to be high performing as a team for that boss and i think from when i deal with very senior leadership teams and boards one of the the sort of areas that i notice is everybody's a functional expert so i might be a cfo um i might be sitting next to you know a chief technology officer i've got a chief people officer around the table with me

8:56we're all very successful we're all experts in our field and sometimes i've we we find that as a board we play what i would call a political game um we we tick the box we're all very nice to each other we all do our professional piece but often what we're interested in as a high performing team is you know as a as a cfo do i own responsibility for the cpo's uh function do i share that responsibility

9:29do do do i try and help them challenge them uh so that they can be the best that they can be and and vice versa and so i tend to find there's a a general psychological safety where people you're often a very comfortable challenging sort of numbers processes ideas um but when it comes to perhaps more emotive conversations that might be getting in the way of team performance such as

9:59you know you're not wearing your deodorant today for example that's a much more difficult conversation to have um and equally on the on the engagement side for us psychological safety becomes a bit irrelevant if if the team's not achieving the goals that they need to achieve so you're right we're trying to find or help teams find that ideal balance but um usually teams are a little bit lopsided probably like us as individuals

10:30yeah i think i'm thinking about this combination or this juxtaposition position uh melvin between engagement and psychological safety i mean it occurs to me that you know in a high performing team right these two things are working hand in hand right they're they're sort of coinciding with this they're actually supporting each other right that the psychological uh safety actually can generate additional engagement from the team and vice versa um but so it's interesting you know to think about

11:04how those things can be odd at odds with each other at times as well but can you talk to us about some maybe some of the higher performing teams or teams where you've engaged in these these uh processes to sort of get those two things working together yeah absolutely yeah and and perhaps a real life example that came to mind from a few years ago that a talk that i was listening to actually from a real life team member and um what sparked the thought a few days ago was that unfortunate um airplane

11:37collision in the us where the two fighter jets collided um and i i remember a few years ago sort of listening to a pilot from our equivalent in the uk which would be the red arrows and these are people that operate in in an elite team they're flying super fast jets next to each other um it's life and death at any one moment and these are the the people who are top of their game and i i remember him talking about at the end of every flight we all

12:11sit down in a room afterwards uh we're all open about the mistakes that we made we own up to the mistakes we talk about them and if somebody doesn't talk about it somebody else will raise it and confront it um but actually it's it's what we do about it then and what's the action that comes off of that that makes us even more effective the next time we do it and that that example has always stayed with me is that the perfect ideal if you like where everybody's equal in that team um everybody has a

12:44voice but equally you know everybody's comfortable putting their hands up if they made a mistake but then wanting to do something different about it to improve performance later um so when when we think about it obviously we're in a in a business context i always say you know with with elite teams in sports and and the military they probably spend a lot more time practicing than they do in action and obviously with the business teams we have we we have limited time with them

13:17to have that sort of impact and create that sort of environment um so so for us it's it's the questionnaire we use is just very short very simple 12 items five minute completion but really to give us some useful pointers to start those discussions with teams yep you know melvin i i'm thinking about this concept of psychological safety and i wondered with your in your interactions with clients to what degree it's you know based on the example that you you sort of just shared there is it actually

13:52associated with job security as well right feeling like i can share this information because uh you know i'm not at risk right and that that's what i wonder about is and i think in many executive circumstances um there's a big risk to to losing your job right i mean um you know there there's lots of incentives and and pay and salary and those kinds of things at that level that there's a big risk and so

14:25i wonder to what degree sort of ironically you can feel more job secure and more psychologically safe at a uh you know lower end position in an organizational hierarchy than at the higher end i mean is that something that that comes up or is that something you see with clients uh absolutely i i suspect that you know the higher we we are in the organization the stakes are always higher and particularly if we think about values you know if i'm high recognition and power i don't want to be seen to fail or look bad so

15:00asking the wrong question saying the wrong thing could jeopardize what's really important to me from a values perspective um and again i suspect at a very senior level um it is about you know who am i to question a colleague when i don't necessarily know anything about what they really do they're the experts so there's also that sort of inner anxiety for some people you know melvin the premise of this episode really kind of revolves around a model that you shared

15:36with us prior to recording this episode and it breaks engagement and psychological safety into four zones um we haven't really had a chance to discuss it you know i can just consume the information that you sent me but those four zones are the comfort zone the high performance zone the apathy zone and the anxiety zone so let's tell me more can you give us an overview of these four zones and how everything is measured yeah absolutely so i for us the ideal is to have a team in what we call a high

16:11performance zone and what we mean by that is we've got high reported psychological safety from the individuals in the team so from their perspective they're likely to feel open saying what they need to say they're likely to feel comfortable expressing opinions um not likely to feel afraid to look an idiot in front of their colleagues and how they'll be treated but equally a little bit like ryan you said

16:42that that also creates an environment where we want to innovate we work together we want to engage and collaborate more to be the best that we can be but it also means are we clear about our priorities do we have shared responsibilities and goals that as a team we're all collectively aiming for so that balance between we're heading all in the same direction um but we've got this safe space to operate in as a

17:14team where we're all going with each other on that journey so that's that's our high performance zone um we then just break it down into a four box grid so if we think about teams that have got high psychological safety um but low on engagement so we call that comfort so if i'm a member of that team i can feel free to say what i think i should

17:45say it's our meetings are probably enjoyable we all get along but the the real danger is we don't hold people accountable for results um so i'm free to say what i like make mistakes but there's no consequence as a result of that or it doesn't create um any focus really on achieving results and outputs conversely where we see a team with high engagement but low psychological safety we we call that the

18:18anxiety zone so this is the this is the zone where there's a lot of accountability high expectations for targets results the way things are done but again probably picking up a little bit there on what you said ryan the danger is you know i hold back because i'm i'm scared of how i'll be treated what people will say um we often talk about using humor in meetings so you know is humor used to deflect

18:48tension a little bit or if i'm in that meeting and say the wrong thing is humor used to belittle me for example so what we've got is high tension high intensity high anxiety um so a lot of drive if you like for the end game but but not a comfortable way of achieving it and the final piece there is where both engagement and psychological safety are low which we call apathy um so i might turn up to

19:21work i might turn up to be a member of the team we'll tick the box um but there's there's no real push either towards getting results um and there's not much sort of openness within the team between the team members um and whether we're thinking about a team working together so a team intervention or perhaps if if i'm the leader of the team and i get that sort of picture that that's what's

19:52happening um if we take a look at something like absentee leadership that you you've talked about before on the podcast and in webinars you know am i creating an environment as a leader that's that's generating this this apathy if you like in the team so we we're all there we're all part of the team but but not a lot's happening so so melvin i'm sort of uh curious here i mean i think the way you're describing this in my understanding based on our previous conversations this is measured at the team level but does the actual measurement come out at the individual level as well or is it all

20:27always just aggregated to the team level when you when you do this kind of work yeah absolutely we we tend to see the the devil is in the detail actually right and so um we we take the 12 items six around psychological safety uh six around engagement and typically even where we see teams that are in the high performance zone or pretty close to it what we tend to find is at the individual level you'll start to see a spread in certain areas so if i take one of the items you know i feel

21:03like i can ask questions without feeling stupid um you might find the majority of the team in a high performing zone is at the higher end but there'll be two or three perhaps at the other end that don't feel as comfortable so for us although on the surface that looks good as a as a collective that's a great discussion point then for the team to start thinking about how do we make these three two or three colleagues feel more comfortable um around asking questions what is it that we're doing

21:37if you like that that might be causing that anxiety or those feelings that they're getting um so you're right at an individual level is where it usually shows up um but we always keep these anonymous so we we don't share the names so that we can get that sort of almost psychological safety when people are completing the questionnaire so melvin i have us another follow-up question here you know it strikes me that teams that are in this apathy zone you know are in really you know

22:11dire straits right i mean like that's the um you know there's probably a lot of problems going on and this is sort of you know you're sticking with the plane analogy that we talked about earlier this this plane is you know headed for disaster uh whereas the i think about the comfort zone and the anxiety zone these are areas where you go okay there's some things that are working there's some um but but there's just one thing that's dysfunctional or a couple things that are dysfunctional that are keeping it from maximizing performance and so it feels like in that in those situations it feels like you're just maybe one or two tweaks away i i wonder though about the

22:48risk of sort of overdoing one right if we're in the comfort zone i wonder how often teams can switch from the comfort zone to the anxiety zone or from the anxiety zone to the comfort zone and back and forth and never really hit that right balance to get in the performance zone yes um but but is that is that consistent with with your takeaway or or you know or or what are your uh experiences working with clients in those zones uh absolutely um and again just taking it from the two perspectives first of all if i'm the leader and this is emerging in the data from my team let's say we

23:22we we we we collect this data with our custom 360s or uh emotional intelligence 360 we we run so if the leader's getting feedback to say look here's the feedback for you on your own behavior but this is the impact that it's having on the team the first thing we're interested in at the leader's individual level is it is which of my behaviors is perhaps causing this as a culture in the team what what can i do first um if we're working with the within the team if you like the team

23:57themselves and we've got that um yes it it's very much first of all acknowledging it um then having a look at what is the cause of it uh and then taking the action but with all of these things a little bit like individual development usually there is a driver behind it that that is either causing a behavior to be overused or underused because of the the values or the culture so we usually try and go

24:28there first using the hogan data to have a look at why that might be i have an i have a follow-up question here as well melvin um it got me thinking i mean and i don't know how many teams you all have worked with this specifically on but i'm sure you've seen different or varying sizes of teams so i guess what i'm curious about is whenever you get to having you know a larger team let's say for example you know maybe it's 15 to 20 people versus three to five people is it harder to

25:04to i mean do you see those teams having more issues because of there's just simply more people um and have less or have more of a difficulty reaching that kind of uh high performance level yeah and i think it there blake it also depends on what's your definition of a team um so once you get perhaps beyond a certain number we we're then talking about perhaps a group of people rather than what we might call an interdependent or an intact team okay and and so i think it depends

25:40upon the makeup of the team the purpose of the team etc as to how that's likely to play out um but yeah if you think about the the larger the group we've got more different personalities at play if you like um and and more different extremes that are likely to impact um equally though in in teams of if we take very small numbers two or three um three or four sorry

26:10you know the impact of one person is likely to be very significant in that small team so any any nuance in their behavior is is likely to be noticeable and um again just to share an example uh recently working with a very small team that had just been put together so a ceo cfo and a chair um for for a company for private equity um the ceo and chair had worked together for years had a very

26:40strong relationship um the cfo was new and um just getting their input uh around these areas was really useful and after about an hour of discussing different things the cfo the new cfo opened up and said to the chair i wasn't sure that i wanted to come and work with you because of certain behavior that he'd picked up in the initial meetings um now that cfo was a little bit more naturally reserved um and sort of task focused so to get to

27:18that stage where he felt comfortable to say that to the chair very early or in their relationship um we saw as a real success and created that opportunity then for them to move on and and discuss it and agree how they were going to work together um if in a larger group it takes a a lot longer to get to those deeper levels with people okay now i'm curious to hear from you melvin and then also for for ryan's feedback on this

27:51because i'm curious what's the impact of personality and how do you incorporate hogan into all this um well for us as i say hogan creates the potential axis if you like on a chart for me so it's telling us how it's likely to show up um and the mvpi helps us understand a little bit about why um what we're then interested in is what actually does show up and what's the the impact so for us

28:22at an individual level things like 360 data things like this questionnaire data give us the performance axis um and i i guess the reason for sort of raising this as a topic as as potentially being interest here is we we do tend to see certain characteristics in individuals that in group settings will influence whether they naturally feel safe or or whether they don't or for other

28:52people whether they're naturally engaged or less so um so that that's where sort of hogan really helps us out sort of try and pinpoint things yeah i i mean i my takeaway for some of this is i mean i from i guess my perspective is i would have to be sort of spitballing this here because i don't think we have great data i think i think we do have a white paper that talks about psychological safety um and of course we have white papers that talk about engagement but the impact of personality on it is it can be hit or miss right depending

29:27on your fit with the environment so that's where values as melvin mentioned earlier comes into play uh so those are the kinds of things i would be looking at if i was thinking okay how engaged is this person likely to be i would be looking at how do their values match with the company but then i would be looking at a few other things as well right so do they uh do are they you know a highly ambitious person highly ambitious people tend to be pretty engaged uh regardless circumstances although it's certainly not universally true um you can you can get highly ambitious people to be

29:59disengaged as well depending on the workplace environment that you have i would be looking at things uh when it comes to psychological safety i'd be looking at things like interpersonal sensitivity is this person creating an environment where people feel open and welcome to share uh to share their thoughts and feelings and of course i'd be looking at some of the scales on the hds i'd be looking at things like excitable looking at things like skeptical uh to to see okay is this person creating or even things like mischievous or um to see if this person's creating an environment where people

30:32might feel threatened or or might feel uh that there's potential backlash coming against them for for sharing uh sharing their thoughts so those would be the kind of scales i would be looking at i wouldn't say oh when these scales are high or low or whatever that means there's definitely a psychological safety problem but i think it would be really interesting to look you know at the teams that you've worked with melvin to look at the data there and say okay what kind of patterns are emerging um certainly that's something my team would be interested in in taking a look at i don't know

31:05how many how much how many data points you might have or how much we could we could share together but um you know for me that would be really interesting to say what are these patterns that are showing up uh that that are showing up in these teams that say are in the comfort zone or what are the patterns that are showing up for teams that are in the anxiety zone well hey brian i i think you're actually you're spoiling my next question here oh sorry i should have read no you're good no you're good hey that's fine because i let's get to it because um i mean i guess we'll start with you melvin you know

31:39do you see any common personality characteristics among teams that let's say in this instance tend to prioritize engagement over psychological safety yeah and again obviously the way we ask questions is is is likely to to influence which scales are important but if i take one let's say from sort of our engagement questions which is i'm willing to assert my perspective to get the best result so you know somebody who is higher ambition higher sociability for example i might expect that

32:13person naturally to first of all to to do it in practice to to see that in any team intervention but also for them naturally to feel more comfortable to assert their opinion um whereas lower ambition lower sociability that person might naturally say you know i'm i might be willing to do it but i might not be comfortable doing it for example um if i take again on the safety side you know i'm i'm comfortable reaching out to everyone whenever i want to

32:48um so again thinking about those social skills interpersonal sensitivity ryan as you mentioned maybe sociability again i'm likely to look like somebody who's a little bit more comfortable doing those sort of things um and if my my favorite example of perhaps just picking up on ryan what you said about sort of contradictions there somebody who's very ambitious um sometimes one of the things i see with senior teams is very ambitious people that that don't want to play and what i mean by that is we they're asked to do

33:24an exercise um which they don't see as relevant uh it doesn't perhaps have the same face validity um but often when i talk to people like that behind the scenes after it's more about i've never done that before i didn't see the relevance of it but equally i didn't want to take part unless i can do it well so it again perhaps that that driver behind the scenes there's you know do i feel at ease making

33:56mistakes or getting it wrong to try and learn from that particular perspective um so we see we do see examples and practically in in in team interventions where those sort of characteristics and hogan scales are playing out from a positive perspective or or emphasis perspective in the hpi yeah i can see that melvin that example they're showing up a lot right so somebody who's highly ambitious driven motivated

34:26maybe even high power on on the mvpi in a an environment where they don't feel psychologically safe that's really going to drive them towards that anxiety zone right as where you said they don't want to play right i'm not gonna not gonna say anything i'm not gonna get involved because i just feel like that there's you know i can't win right or i don't know how to win in a game like this and so i can certainly see see that showing up a lot and as showing up as a position in the anxiety zone again i think

34:59you'd say here well a highly ambitious person you know they tend to not have a lot of anxiety right there's there's that's pretty common pattern that we see in fact there's a no social anxiety components to ambition in our assessments yet i could see that when in a position where they feel like they don't have psychological safety showing up as a lot of anxiety about sharing and about getting involved absolutely and then the flip side really is sort of hds can be really useful and powerful in

35:36these examples so if i again take another item on the engagement side i'm ready readily share my thoughts and feelings without hesitation so if we take high colorful that's likely to be somebody who will naturally answer that positively i'm you know i'm quite open i'll i'll share my thoughts and feelings but so they're likely to respond quite positively there but might not realize that the the impact on the team makes other people feel less at ease speaking up um so for us the the hds then is powerful to say

36:14what are the things that we might be overdoing either as individuals or collectively that that might be damaging the safety and engagement yeah well now again sorry like i'll just say another one there that makes a lot of sense to me melvin is that as again that moving against cluster of the hgs you see bold colorful as sort of prioritizing engagement prioritizing uh competing prioritizing um you know you know sort of time on stage over um over creating psychological safety

36:50and this is where we see different different people within the team that their view of safety from their perspective might be totally different from a colleague without them even realizing okay let's let's turn the table here and talk about teams that might prioritize psychological safety over engagement so what about that any common personality characteristics among these teams yeah um my guess from from what we see certainly if we start with values the intention behind it

37:25so often lower lower average status drivers with things like higher affiliation or higher altruism so it's more about the care for one another and the the team safety if you like or the team getting along and the relationship is often a driver behind that and then in terms of sort of what drives up that safety interpersonal sensitivity for example uh is it is a key one around getting along

37:57but equally if we start to think about hds impacts we if we start to see things like cautious dutiful dutiful leisurely these are the things that are starting to sort of show up as not confronting the elephant in the room um maintaining relationships perhaps at the expense of engagement um equally uh things like skeptical so is there a little bit of a risk that i don't feel comfortable

38:30speaking up because i'm not sure what people will think about me or say about me and then reserved um so i'll just keep my mouth shut it's easier uh rather than engage so typically the moving away from cluster um and a little bit of dutiful as well there yeah melvin one of the questions that comes to mind for me and and thinking about this is what's the frequency of this sort of i don't know if imbalance

39:04is the right word but how how frequently do we see let's just think about top teams right you know top leadership teams how frequently do we see them falling into the comfort zone problem versus the anxiety zone problem or another way of thinking about it is you know if you don't know anything about a team which of these buckets do you think they would land in just based on the base rates um don't have that off the top of my head ryan so um my gut would say we typically see more reported

39:39around um things like i feel energized i'm willing to assert my my perspective uh so again at the sort of sub level um so the the things that aren't as obvious are the safety questions that that come out so partly because you know the question do i feel comfortable asking questions without feeling stupid is is not going to be as obvious um if because it's not happening

40:11or it's probably not uh highlighted as much um but in my experience with a lot of the teams that i work with most of the time these are already successful teams so the reason for the intervention often is about we've got changes in the team um or we're already you know well established or high performing and we want to take it to the next level um so we we tend to see teams reporting closer to the high performing zone

40:48um on average and then underneath the surface it'll be the the questions underneath that reveal what's really going on so i wouldn't say there's a particular weighting either towards safety or engagement gotcha so so in these teams that that you know you you get a team that is a high performing team and you're working with them and they tend to be mostly in the high performance zone you mentioned sort of yeah sort of looking under the hood or digging a little bit deeper into the

41:19details can you talk to us through what some of those might be what might be the things like if i'm working with a team that this team scores really well on this assessment seems to be in the high performance zone what are the kinds of things i might work with a team like that on um then perhaps i'll share a couple of examples um to to bring it out there's one team where uh this piece around uh so two questions do i feel at ease speaking up do i feel comfortable asking questions without feeling stupid was was lower in the team um and setting the scene this is a senior leadership team

41:57um we've got the data for the whole hogan data for the whole team and the leader of the team and before going into the team session one of the things we talked to the leader about was a bit of a risk in his own data of closing people down dominating the team um we'd also got a bit of other data suggesting this theme of um you know the boss taking too much control and we we we talked to the leader

42:28about trying to create the right environment before going into that meeting so people did feel a little bit more ease at speaking up and asking questions and in the environment where we're all together in a room working on this um the leader showed a great amount of vulnerability and said look i've seen this feedback about me it's come out in more than one way um so i want everybody to to know it's okay to challenge me on things i want you to be making the decisions you come up with them i'm perfectly fine

43:03with that um at the end of that meeting as the laptop lids went down people started putting their jackets on somebody took a phone call and there was a problem um given what everybody had talked about and the new ground rules they'd set uh this individual raised the problem with the leader of the team who then turned around and said don't ever say that to me again i've told you before don't do that wow and so uh now i know that's pretty rare and pretty extreme but that that's an example if you

43:34like of a sort of what we see as a theme coming through um and again i won't go into sort of the the detail behind it but but that risk of you know this is how the team are feeling underneath because of the leader's behavior and it's effectively the derailing tendencies that are causing the problem um equally i can share an example of um a similar sort of leader but a leader who is um

44:08in hogan terms very diligent and very low interpersonal sensitivity so very task focused but quite thick skinned um but with a hogan driver for everybody that's familiar with it of high altruism so really cares about doing the right thing for for both the team the the the staff uh the the report to this leader and can't understand why people don't challenge her back so she's quite open to it she likes people to challenge her she likes the detail um but again because she comes across as a bit hard

44:44to please a bit perfectionistic and a bit direct um it's creating an environment where where people don't feel comfortable doing that um and so for all of these they're just different bits of data where hogan is saying this might be what people are seeing and saying if if you're not paying attention and and then using you know validated other validated forms of information to try and bring it to the surface you know melvin those examples bring to mind another question for me which is about um the degree

45:21to which uh these engagements with with these organizations or these teams are more of an leader interview an individual leader intervention or a team structure intervention is it either or sometimes both or is there because you know in some of these it does sound like it's like well really that the leader has this big influence and impact and it's really ends up being more of a individual leader intervention than it is a team structure and intervention but how often is it is it the other

45:51one i suppose yes um if i was thinking about sort of the the team issue if you like um and again just taking a real life recent example of a sort of a senior hr team where we've got that theme of high altruism high affiliation um we're actually when we think about safety and engagement they're creating a high degree of safety um but actually what leaders outside of the team want is we want hr to

46:24challenge us more challenge our thinking around business etc not not just be the person or the team that sorts out the hr solutions but equally in the team itself this is a team that's highly engaged so i think about engagement questions around feeling energized by the responsibilities clear on expectations they're very clear of what they think their role is but paying attention to their reputation

46:55outside of the team is slightly different what people want from them is is is over and above what they think people want so again all about reputation perception and and other people's reality um so to to answer the question right it can be both um for a leader we're interested in what do they need to focus on in their behavior to to try and create that balance in the team that reports to them

47:25but within the team itself is you know how do we how do we need to start to change the environment and the behaviors within the team for us to be more effective well melvin those are great examples um but i'm curious let's what what what have been some success stories or do you have one or two that stand out where you really saw a team that maybe was facing some issues you know that there was you know your

47:58services were very much needed whether that's um you know trying to you know whether they lean heavily one way or the other but you're trying to find that balance between engagement and psychological safety are there any that stand out as like wow we made huge tremendous strides here and this team really really was better for it if for me there blake those tend to be the ones where people say can you come back and do more of this yeah okay because you usually that means you you know

48:32there's there's been a learning so um just to share a couple um one as recently as as yesterday um mike in our team has been been working with a group of leaders and as part of these interactions what what came back was uh somebody's self-awareness that was raised massively that their view of how people saw them and the impact was totally different to what other people were experiencing again that's at an

49:02individual level but my understanding in that team environment it it was opened up it was discussed um and people were giving that individual pointers on how they could adjust their behavior to be more effective um so that that that's an individual that that's learned something they weren't aware of but also should benefit the team um another example of a a team um a few months ago it would be just before christmas so

49:35um one of those occasions where um the team thought it would be a good idea to invite us to to run a team session which is probably more of an excuses and get together before a christmas celebration um so perhaps expecting a lighter touch um but for this team um they're high on engagement um so their view of themselves is they ask lots of questions um that they're they're energized they engage they feel it is

50:07speaking up um but that particular team what we were able to show them is they don't listen to each other um so they feel comfortable disclosing errors they feel comfortable sort of sort of asking questions but again they're not taking it to a deeper level to to create the engagement or the accountability um and this is a team where i certainly speak to them regularly and and what i hear is that they they

50:41now use some of the questions that we used with them with each other to hold themselves accountable um so for us it it's not often big changes that a team needs to make it's it's small changes small tweaks to the way they operate together that can create the insights and the step change

51:05well it sounds like despite the fact they weren't listening to each other at least they were willing to listen to you and that's made a big difference in them so that sounds like a pretty fantastic uh success story to me ryan that's probably my blunt and direct style maybe the uh too much engagement and not much safety for them well well melvin this has been an awesome conversation i'm glad you brought this topic to us because i mean i think this is one that you know i i think whenever you look at each thing psychological safety and engagement on the surface

51:41you know they are you know they're they're hot topics that people care about in our space uh but um seeing the two of them together and how that plays out and finding that balance i think is something that we really haven't talked about and so i'm so glad that you just brought this to us um because i think there's a lot of people out here that listen to this podcast that are going to really find a lot of value and what you have to say and then maybe also how they can work with teams moving forward uh from a similar approach through the the same type of lens um so appreciate all the

52:17insights you you've given us here but i have one last question before we let you go sure um and that's for the team leaders out there so my question it's a two-part question is a how can they determine if there's an imbalance on their team between psychological safety and engagement and b what would you recommend they do about it if there is um i suppose the the flippant answer to the first part to that question blake is give us a call and we'll run the questionnaire that's the easy one but um

52:52i think the the first thing is to ask the questions and go and seek feedback um so

53:00again if we think about you know the premise behind hogan is around creating that self-awareness about how we come across um we we always suggest to leaders how do you create feedback loops so you can calibrate how the behavior is playing out so whether you do that as an individual or as a team the key thing is am i seeing how i'm coming across to see that the same way people are perceiving it and is that good bad or indifferent um so again for us that's why exercises observations of people feedback

53:40such as these sort of questionnaires are vital the second thing really um particularly for teams is do we have an agreed consistent and approach that's right for our context so you know psychological safety for some teams is you know we can shout at each other and that's okay we're all happy with it that's the way it works for other teams there'll be a different way of confronting issues or raising ideas

54:12but the critical thing is are we all clear on that we're going to approach it the same way so we we've decided that we've agreed it up front and then if people are stepping out of line or it's not working do you know does somebody call it out and do we address it and and say is there a different way or a better way going forward so and and for all teams it's that cycle if you like and the same as an individual what's working well what do we need to focus on next to to try and improve in effectiveness

54:48yeah and and i think melvin that's one of our key takeaways with team work as well is that on the one hand you know they they want to learn something about what are the team dynamics what's going on in the team and it helps if you have a survey it helps if you have something that can um you know tie into that information and and and give them some you know some hard data to to point to what those dynamics are like but ultimately they want to know you know okay what can we do about this what are the things we need to change going forward and i think that's where the kind of

55:21consulting practice that you are all engaged in is so valuable you know there's only so much you can get from from some data the data might tell you what's going wrong might diagnose a potential problem but finding the solution you know what do we need to change behaviorally going forward isn't always so straightforward it usually takes some uh interpretive guidance some some experienced professional who can take that information and say okay here's what we recommend that you do going forward and i think that's what's really powerful about the uh team intervention or the

55:56team setup that you've all put together at aps and really appreciate you sharing that with us today so so yeah thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing about this with us no thanks for the opportunity and i i know we've talked about psychological safety before as you say i i think it's you've perhaps been talked about on podcasts before but i think i think you're right it seems a a real key topic at the moment but but for us as we say the safety without the engagement is is is still not going to get the results well melvin really appreciate you joining us uh i think

56:30our listeners are going to love this episode and we hey we'll look to maybe have you again a year from now whenever we we uh celebrate our seventh anniversary thank you that's great blake

56:45and that does it for the science of personality podcast episode 151 be sure to join us in two weeks for another fun and informative episode cheers everybody

56:58this has been the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments you can access all episodes on our website thescienceofpersonality.com or on the streaming service of your choice see you next time