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? I can't think of a more important problem.

0:19You'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 resident storyteller, Blake Lepp, this podcast explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and the nature of human nature.

0:47Hello, 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 Payne, commercial director at Advanced People Strategies, one of Hogan's fabulous distributors in the UK, to talk about 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.

1:20This 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 thescienceofpersonality.com, or follow the Science of Personality on LinkedIn. Now, let's get to it.

1:51Melvin, welcome to the podcast. Is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before we get started? Thanks, Blake. Just that I'm an avid listener to the podcast, as perhaps some listeners would know from previous comments, and just wanted to say that given that I'm with you two gentlemen again on this occasion, one of my most favourite recent podcasts was the one where you used AI, if you like, to create the questions and the discussions.

2:22And 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 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 call, I won't be the jerk in the plane. Well, I'm sure you won't be the jerk on this plane, Melvin. Well, look, really great to have you here again on the podcast. I think Blake mentioned before we came on the air here that this is an anniversary episode for us,

2:59and the last anniversary episode for us, you were also our guest on the podcast. So this is not intentional, but a wonderful coincidence. I'll also say I had a great time working with you and your team, Melvin, in the UK and Ireland earlier this year. It was great to see you and super excited to talk with you today about psychological safety. So, yeah, thanks again for joining us. Yeah, Melvin, yeah, thanks for joining us for our sixth anniversary of the episode, of the podcast.

3:31So that's really fun. 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. You know, maybe you just start coming on for our anniversary episode each year. But, you know, Melvin, let's get into this. So I'm curious, how did the conversation at APS around the topic of psychological safety and engagement start? And how did it evolve into one of the firm's, you know, premier offerings?

4:01Well, I guess psychological safety in its broadest sense has been on the table for us for quite a long time. So if I just sort of set the scene a little bit, we use Hogan, obviously, for selection purposes and also development purposes. And 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 development.

4:32And where we use Hogan is for us the potential axis, if you like. 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 the 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 that important? What do I need to do about it? But more importantly, how do I go about doing things that will improve my overall effectiveness?

5:09So psychological safety for us, although I'm conscious it's a term that's easily banded around at the moment. When we start to look at teams, one of the things we typically experience is, you know, the team is set up to be high performing. We might get together in a team intervention, but there's just a sense that we're not getting to that deeper level and dealing with the elephant in the room and confronting issues or setting the team up, if you like, to do something about it.

5:45So what we've been keen to do, and the team behind the scenes have done a great job, is to come up with a very short tactical questionnaire that enables us to sort of get to the heart of the matter pretty quickly. Things that might be holding the team back a little bit, if you like, from doing something about what they need to address. Yeah, so, you know, Melvin, while I totally agree with you about the importance of this topic, you know, and working with, you know, the kind of teams that you work with, I'm sort of curious as to, you know, what was this really client driven?

6:26Were 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. So Chris and our L&D team behind the scenes have sort of identified this, focused on the research and different models behind it to say, look, this is something that we can help teams with as part of our development offering.

6:58But we're not only interested in sort of the team working together, but also on those individual development scenarios where we're working with a particular leader, just to try and help them with some of the key areas where the team that reports to them, we might create some insights about what might be holding the team back for that particular leader, so obviously where their individual behavior has an impact.

7:29Well, Melvin, okay, if 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 case? I think it's probably slightly differently for an individual leader if we're thinking about the environment that they create.

8:04So 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 do anything destructive. But often that sort of contrast between the psychological safety bit, if I overdo that at the expense of engagement, we're still 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 sort of areas that I notice is everybody's a functional expert.

8:44So I might be a CFO. I might be sitting next to, you know, a chief technology officer. I've got a chief people officer around the table with me. We're all very successful. We're all experts in our field. And sometimes we find that as a board, we play what I would call a political game. We tick the box. We're all very nice to each other. We all do our professional piece.

9:14But often what we're interested in as a high performing team is, you know, as a CFO, do I own responsibility for the CPO's function? Do I share that responsibility? Do I try and help them, challenge them so that they can be the best that they can be and vice versa? And so I tend to find there's a general psychological safety where people are often a very comfortable, challenging sort of numbers, processes, ideas.

9:51But when it comes to perhaps more emotive conversations that might be getting in the way of team performance, such as, you know, you're not wearing your deodorant today, for example, that's a much more difficult conversation to have. And equally, on the engagement side, for us, psychological safety becomes a bit irrelevant 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.

10:23But usually teams are a little bit lopsided, probably like us as individuals. Yeah, I think I'm thinking about this combination or this juxtaposition, 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 sort of coinciding with this is actually supporting each other, right? That the psychological safety actually can generate additional engagement from the team and vice versa.

11:01But so it's interesting, you know, to think about how those things can be 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 processes to sort of get those two things working together? Yeah, absolutely. And perhaps a real life example that came to mind from a few years ago, a talk that I was listening to, actually, from a real life team member. And what sparked the thought a few days ago was that unfortunate airplane collision in the US where the two fighter jets collided.

11:40And 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 an elite team. They're flying super fast jets next to each other. It's life and death at any one moment. And these are the people who are top of their game. And I remember him talking about at the end of every flight, we all sit down in a room afterwards.

12:13We'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. But actually, 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 example has always stayed with me as the perfect ideal, if you like, where everybody's equal in that team. Everybody has a voice.

12:45But 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. So when we think about it, obviously, we're in a business context. I always say, you know, with elite teams in sports 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 have limited time with them to have that sort of impact and create that sort of environment.

13:20And so for us, 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'm thinking about this concept of psychological safety. And I wondered in your interactions with clients, to what degree it's, you know, based on the example that you sort of just shared there,

13:50is it actually associated with job security as well, right? Feeling like I can share this information because, you know, I'm not at risk, right? And that's what I wonder about is, I think, in many executive circumstances, there's a big risk to losing your job, right? I mean, you know, there's lots of incentives and pay and salary and those kinds of things at that level that there's a big risk.

14:24And so I wonder to what degree, sort of ironically, you can feel more job secure and more psychologically safe at a, you know, lower end position in an organizational hierarchy than at the higher end. I mean, is that something that comes up or is that something you see with clients? Absolutely. I suspect that, you know, the higher 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.

15:00So asking the wrong question, saying the wrong thing could jeopardize what's really important to me from a values perspective.

15:10And again, I suspect at a very senior level, 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.

15:29You know, Melvin, the premise of this episode really kind of revolves around a model that you shared with us prior to recording this episode. And it breaks engagement and psychological safety into four zones. And 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.

16:00So let's tell me more. Can you give us an overview of these four zones and how everything is measured? Yeah, absolutely. So for us, the ideal is to have a team in what we call a high performance 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, not likely to feel afraid to look an idiot in front of their colleagues and how they'll be treated.

16:37But equally, a little bit like Ryan, you said that 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, but we've got this safe space to operate in as a team where we're all going with each other on that journey.

17:20So that's our high performance zone. We then just break it down into a four box grid. So if we think about teams that have got high psychological safety, 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 say. It's our meetings are probably enjoyable. We all get along. But the real danger is we don't hold people accountable for results.

17:57So 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 any focus really on achieving results and outputs. Conversely, where we see a team with high engagement, but low psychological safety, we call that the anxiety zone. So this is the zone where there's a lot of accountability, high expectations for targets, results, the way things are done.

18:31But again, probably picking up a little bit there on what you said, Ryan, the danger is, you know, I hold back because I'm scared of how I'll be treated, what people will say. We often talk about using humour in meetings. So, you know, is humour used to deflect tension a little bit? Or if I'm in that meeting and say the wrong thing, is humour used to belittle me, for example? So what we've got is high tension, high intensity, high anxiety.

19:04So a lot of drive, if you like, for the end game, 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.

19:19So I might turn up to work, I might turn up to be a member of the team, we'll tick the box.

19:26But there's no real push either towards getting results. And there's not much sort of openness within the team, between the team members. And whether we're thinking about a team working together, so a team intervention, or perhaps if I'm the leader of the team and I get that sort of picture that that's what's happening. If we take a look at something like absentee leadership that you've talked about before on the podcast and in webinars, you know, am I creating an environment as a leader that's generating this apathy, if you like, in the team?

20:08So we're all there, we're all part of the team, but not a lot's happening. So Melvin, I'm sort of 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 always just aggregated to the team level when you do this kind of work? Yeah, absolutely. We tend to see the devil is in the detail, actually, Ryan. So we take the 12 items, six around psychological safety, six around engagement.

20:46And 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 like I can ask questions without feeling stupid.

21:07You 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 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 around asking questions? What is it that we're doing, if you like, that might be causing that anxiety or those feelings that they're getting?

21:43So you're right at an individual level is where it usually shows up. But we always keep these anonymous. So 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 another follow-up question here. You know, it strikes me that teams that are in this apathy zone, you know, are in really dire straits, right? I mean, like that's the, you know, there's probably a lot of problems going on.

22:16And this is sort of, you know, you're sticking with the plane analogy that we talked about earlier. This plane is, you know, headed for disaster. Whereas 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, but there's just one thing that's dysfunctional or a couple of 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 wonder though about the risk of sort of overdoing one, right?

22:50If 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. But is that consistent with your takeaway or, you know, or what are your experiences working with clients in those zones? Absolutely. 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 collect this data with our custom 360s or emotional intelligence 360 we run.

23:30So 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 can I do first? If we're working within the team, if you like, the team themselves, and we've got that, yes, it's very much first of all acknowledging it, then having a look at what is the cause of it, and then taking the action.

24:10But with all of these things, a little bit like individual development, usually there is a driver behind it that is either causing a behavior to be overused or underused because of the values or the culture. So we usually try and go there first using the Hogan data to have a look at why that might be.

24:34I have a follow-up question here as well, Melvin. It got me thinking, 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 a larger team, let's say, for example, maybe it's 15 to 20 people versus three to five people, is it harder to – I mean, do you see those teams having more issues because there's just simply more people and have less – or have more of a difficulty reaching that kind of high-performance level?

25:17Yeah, and I think there, Blake, it also depends on what's your definition of a team.

25:25So once you get perhaps beyond a certain number, we're then talking about perhaps a group of people rather than what we might call an interdependent or an intact team. And so I think it depends upon the makeup of the team, the purpose of the team, et cetera, as to how that's likely to play out. But, yeah, if you think about the larger the group, we've got more different personalities at play, if you like, and more different extremes that are likely to impact.

25:59Equally, though, in teams of – if we take very small numbers, two or three, three or four, sorry, you know, the impact of one person is likely to be very significant in that small team. So any nuance in their behavior is likely to be noticeable. And, again, just to share an example, recently working with a very small team that had just been put together, so a CEO, CFO, and a chair for a company for private equity.

26:35The CEO and chair had worked together for years, had a very strong relationship, the CFO was new, and just getting their input 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.

27:07Now, that CFO was a little bit more naturally reserved and sort of task-focused, so to get to that stage where he felt comfortable to say that to the chair very early on in their relationship, we saw it as a real success, and created that opportunity then for them to move on and discuss it and agree how they were going to work together. However, in a larger group, it takes a lot longer to get to those deeper levels with people.

27:45Okay, now I'm curious to hear from you, Melvin, and then also for Ryan's feedback on this, because I'm curious, what's the impact of personality, and how do you incorporate Hogan into all of this? 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, and the MVPI helps us understand a little bit about why. What we're then interested in is what actually does show up and what's the impact, so for us, at an individual level, things like 360 data, things like this questionnaire data, give us the performance axis.

28:31And I guess the reason for sort of raising this as a topic as potentially being interest here is we do tend to see certain characteristics in individuals that in group settings will influence whether they naturally feel safe or whether they don't, or for other people, whether they're naturally engaged or less so. So that's where sort of Hogan really helps us out, sort of try and pinpoint things.

29:04Yeah, I mean, my takeaway for some of this is, I mean, 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 we do have a white paper that talks about psychological safety. And of course, we have white papers to talk about engagement, but the impact of personality on it is, it can be hit or miss, right, depending on your fit with the environment. So that's where values, as Melvin mentioned earlier, comes into play. 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?

29:39I 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, are they, you know, a highly ambitious person, highly ambitious people tend to be pretty engaged, regardless of circumstances, although it's certainly not universally true. You can, you can get highly ambitious people to be disengaged as well, depending on the workplace environment that you have. I would be looking at things when it comes to psychological safety. I'd be looking at things like interpersonal sensitivity.

30:10Is this person creating an environment where people feel open and welcome to share, 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 excited. I'd be looking at things like skeptical to see, okay, is this person creating or even things like mischievous or to see if this person's creating an environment where people might feel threatened or might feel that there's potential backlash coming against them for sharing, sharing their thoughts.

30:42So 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? Certainly, that's something my team would be interested in taking a look at. I don't know how many data points you might have or how much we could share together. But, you know, for me, that would be really interesting to say, what are these patterns that are showing up in these teams that, say, are in the comfort zone?

31:20Or what are the patterns that are showing up for teams that are in the anxiety zone? Well, hey, Brian, I think you're actually spoiling my next question here. Oh, sorry. I should have read ahead. No, you're good. Hey, that's fine. Because let's get to it. Because, I mean, I guess we'll start with you, Melvin. You know, do 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 likely to influence which scales are important.

31:55But 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 person naturally to, first of all, to do it in practice, to see that in any team intervention. But also for them naturally to feel more comfortable to assert their opinion.

32:26Whereas lower ambition, lower sociability, that person might naturally say, you know, I might be willing to do it, but I might not be comfortable doing it, for example. If I take, again, on the safety side, you know, I'm comfortable reaching out to everyone whenever I want to. 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.

33:02And if my favourite example of perhaps just picking up on what you said about sort of contradictions there, somebody who's very ambitious, sometimes one of the things I see with senior teams is very ambitious people that don't want to play. And what I mean by that is we dare us to do an exercise, which they don't see as relevant, it doesn't perhaps have the same face validity.

33:34But 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, again, perhaps that driver behind the scenes, you know, do I feel at ease making mistakes or getting it wrong to try and learn from that particular perspective? So, we do see examples and practically in team interventions where those sort of characteristics and Hogan scales are playing out from a positive perspective or emphasis perspective in the HPI.

34:18Yeah, I can see that, Melvin, that example there showing up a lot, right? So, somebody who's highly ambitious, driven, motivated, maybe even high power on the MVPI in an environment where they don't feel psychologically safe, that's really going to drive them towards that anxiety zone, right? Where you said they don't want to play, right? I'm not going to say anything, I'm not going to get involved because I just feel like there's, you know, I can't win, right?

34:49Or I don't know how to win in a game like this. And so, I can certainly see that showing up a lot and showing up as a position in the anxiety zone. And again, I think you'd say here, well, a highly ambitious person, you know, they tend to not have a lot of anxiety, right? There's, that's a pretty common pattern that we see. In fact, there's no social anxiety component 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.

35:28Yeah, absolutely. And then the flip side really is sort of HDS can be really useful and powerful in these examples. So, 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. You know, I'm quite open, I'll share my thoughts and feelings. But, so they're likely to respond quite positively there, but might not realize that the impact on the team makes other people feel less at ease speaking up.

36:10So, for us, the HDS then is powerful to say, what are the things that we might be overdoing, either as individuals or collectively, that might be damaging the safety and engagement? Yeah, I mean, again, sorry, Blake, I'll just say, another one there that makes a lot of sense to me, Melvin, is that, again, that moving against cluster of the HDS, you see bold, colorful as sort of prioritizing engagement, prioritizing competing, prioritizing, you know, sort of time on stage over creating psychological safety.

36:50And this is where we see different people within the team, their view of safety, from their perspective, might be totally different from a colleague without them even realizing.

37:04Okay, 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, my guess from what we see, certainly if we start with values, the intention behind it. So, often lower average status drivers with things like higher affiliation or higher altruism. So, it's more about the care for one another and the team safety, if you like, or the team getting along in the relationship is often a driver behind that.

37:45And then in terms of sort of what drives up that safety, interpersonal sensitivity, for example, is a key one around getting along. But equally, if we start to think about HDS impacts, if we start to see things like cautious, dutiful, leisurely, these are the things that are starting to sort of show up as not confronting the elephant in the room, maintaining relationships, perhaps at the expense of engagement.

38:19Equally, things like sceptical, so is there a little bit of a risk that I don't feel comfortable speaking up because I'm not sure what people will think about me or say about me. And then reserved, so I'll just keep my mouth shut, it's easier rather than engage. So, typically, the moving away from cluster and a little bit of dutiful as well there.

38:54Yeah, Melvin, one of the questions that comes to mind for me in thinking about this is what's the frequency of this sort of, I don't know if imbalance is the right word, but 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?

39:27Don't have that off the top of my head, Ryan, so my gut would say we typically see more reported around things like I feel energised, I'm willing to assert my perspective. So, again, at the sort of sub-level, the things that aren't as obvious are the safety questions that come out.

39:58So, partly because, you know, the question, do I feel comfortable asking questions without feeling stupid is not going to be as obvious because it's not happening or it's probably not highlighted as much. 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 or we're already, you know, well-established or high-performing and we want to take it to the next level.

40:40So, we tend to see teams reporting closer to the high-performing zone on average and then underneath the surface, it'll be 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, in these teams that, you know, 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,

41:15you mentioned sort of looking under the hood or digging a little bit deeper into the details. 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, ah, this team scores really well on this assessment and seems to be in the high-performance zone, what are the kinds of things I might work with a team like that on? Ian, perhaps I'll share a couple of examples to bring it out. There was one team where this piece around, so two questions, do I feel at ease speaking up?

41:47Do I feel comfortable asking questions without feeling stupid was lower in the team. And setting the scene, this is a senior leadership team.

41:58We'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. We'd also got a bit of other data suggesting this theme of, you know, the boss taking too much control. And we talked to the leader about 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.

42:38And in the environment where we're all together in a room working on this, 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. So I want everybody to know it's OK to challenge me on things. I want you to be making the decisions. You come up with them. I'm perfectly fine with that. At the end of that meeting, the laptop lids went down.

43:09People started putting their jackets on. Somebody took a phone call and there was a problem.

43:15Given what everybody had talked about and the new ground rules they'd set, 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 now I know that's pretty rare and pretty extreme, but that's an example, if you like, of sort of what we see as a theme coming through.

43:41And again, I won't go into sort of the detail behind it, 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.

44:01Equally, I'll share an example of a similar sort of leader, but a leader who is, in Hogan terms, very diligent and very low interpersonal sensitivity. So very task focused, but quite thick skinned. But with a Hogan driver, for everybody that's familiar with it, of high altruism. So really cares about doing the right thing for both the team, the staff, the report to this leader. And can't understand why people don't challenge her back.

44:35So she's quite open to it. She likes people to challenge her. She likes the detail. But again, because she comes across as a bit hard to please, a bit perfectionistic and a bit direct. It's creating an environment where people don't feel comfortable doing that. 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 you're not paying attention.

45:06And 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 the degree to which these engagements with these organizations or these teams are more of an individual leader intervention or a team structure intervention. Is it either or, sometimes both, or is there?

45:37Or, 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 really ends up being more of an individual leader intervention than it is a team structure intervention. But how often is it the other one, I suppose?

45:54Yes. If I was thinking about sort of the team issue, if you like, 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. And we're actually, when we think about safety and engagement, they're creating a high degree of safety. But actually, what leaders outside of the team want is we want HR to challenge us more, challenge our thinking around business, et cetera, not just be the person or the team that sorts out the HR solutions.

46:34But 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 outside of the team is slightly different. What people want from them is over and above what they think people want.

47:05So again, all about reputation, perception and other people's reality. So to answer the question, Ryan, it can be both. For a leader we're interested in, what do they need to focus on in their behavior to try and create that balance in the team that reports to them? But within the team itself is, you know, how do we need to start to change the environment and the behaviors within the team for us to be more effective?

47:37Well, Melvin, those are great examples. But I'm curious, 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 services were very much needed, whether that's, 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.

48:09Are there any that stand out as like, wow, we made huge, tremendous strides here in 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, OK, because usually that means, you know, there's been a learning. So just to share a couple, one, as recently as yesterday, Mike in our team has been working with a group of leaders.

48:46And as part of these interactions, what came back was 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 individual level, but my understanding in that team environment, it was opened up, it was discussed, and people were giving that individual pointers on how they could adjust their behavior to be more effective.

49:17So that's an individual that's learned something they weren't aware of, but also should benefit the team. Another example of a team a few months ago, it would have been just before Christmas. So one of those occasions where the team thought it would be a good idea to invite us to run a team session, which is probably more of an excuses and a get together before a Christmas celebration.

49:48So perhaps expecting a lighter touch. But for this team, they're high on engagement.

49:59So their view of themselves is they ask lots of questions. They're energized, they engage, they feel at ease speaking up. But that particular team, what we were able to show them is they don't listen to each other. So they feel comfortable disclosing errors. They feel comfortable sort of asking questions. But again, they're not taking it to a deeper level to create the engagement or the accountability.

50:33And this is a team where I certainly speak to them regularly. And what I hear is that they now use some of the questions that we used with them, with each other, to hold themselves accountable. So for us, it's not often big changes that a team needs to make. It's small changes, small tweaks to the way they operate together that can create the insights and the step change.

51:03Well, it sounds like, despite the fact that 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 success story to me. Ryan, that's probably my blunt and direct style. Maybe too much engagement and not much safety for them. 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 think whenever you look at each thing, psychological safety and engagement on the surface, you know, they are, you know, they're hot topics that people care about in our space.

51:49But 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. 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 in what you have to say. And then maybe also how they can work with teams moving forward from a similar approach through the same type of lens. So appreciate all the insights you've given us here.

52:19But I have one last question before we let you go. Sure. And that's for the team leaders out there. So my question, 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? I suppose the flippant answer to the first part of that question, Blake, is give us a call and we'll run the questionnaire.

52:49That's the easy one. But I think the first thing is to ask the questions and go and seek feedback. So, again, if we think about, you know, the premise behind Hogan is around creating that self-awareness about how we come across. 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 the same way people are perceiving it?

53:29And is that good, bad or indifferent? So, again, for us, that's why exercises, observations of people, feedback, such as these sort of questionnaires, are vital. The second thing really, particularly for teams, is do we have an agreed, consistent 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.

54:03We'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. But the critical thing is, are we all clear on that we're going to approach it the same way? So we've decided that, we've agreed it up front. And then if people are stepping out of line or it's not working, you know, does somebody call it out and do we address it and say, is there a different way or a better way going forward?

54:34So, 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 try and improve effectiveness? Yeah, and I think, Melvin, that's one of our key takeaways with teamwork as well, is that on the one hand, you know, 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, you know, tie into that information and give them some, you know, some hard data to point to what those dynamics are like.

55:12But 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 consulting practice that you are all engaged in is so valuable. You know, there's only so much you can get 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 interpretive guidance, some experienced professional who can take that information and say, okay, here's what we recommend that you do going forward.

55:51And I think that's what's really powerful about the team intervention or the team setup that you've all put together at APS. And really appreciate you sharing that with us today. So, yeah, thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing about this with us. No, thanks for the opportunity. And I know we've talked about psychological safety before, as you say. I think it's perhaps been talked about on podcasts before. But I think you're right. It seems a real key topic at the moment. But for us, as we say, the safety without the engagement is still not going to get the results.

56:27Well, Melvin, really appreciate you joining us. I think our listeners are going to love this episode. And we, hey, we'll look to maybe have you again a year from now whenever we 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. This 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. We'll see you next time.

57:26Bye.