Building Trust

and Creating
Psychological Safety
David Mantica
VP & GM SoftEd
[email protected]
Agenda

• Being an Adult, Treating Your Team like Adults

• Basics of Trust
• The Truth and Reality of Accountability
• Mindset for the Agile Group
• Mindset for Agile Leadership
• Psychological Safety
• Two tools to Support employee on road to gaining Psychological Safety
Agile Practitioner Must: Understand and Belief
Section One

Trust
The Foundation of Trust… Being an adult?

• A Leader must consider the team a group of adults

• The team must see each other as adults
• What does it mean to be “treated like an adult”
• Acting like an adult
• Adult definition
• N: One who has attained maturity or legal age
• Adj: Fully developed and mature
• Adulthood
• The state (responsibility) of a person who has attained
maturity
• Self-Esteem
The Speed of Trust

Trust Speed Cost

Trust Speed Cost

* Adapted from: The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M.R. Covey

Trust in more detail (authority position)

• Provide guidance / advice but allow the team to make the

decision
• On the schedule, cost estimates, work product released,
quality judgments etc.
• Foster the ability for the team to test / fail / try again, lean learning
• Give the team opportunities to gain trust and build trust
• Watch your body language, do you mean what you are saying
• Cut pain points FAST don’t allow a “sore to get infected”
Trust in more detail (Squad member)

• Rational understanding you are not getting everything you want, or think is
right
• Rational understanding you will need to delay gratification or accept a
decision that hurts you in the short term
• Ultimate acceptance of decision without continuous back seat driving
• Your choice to say means you participate at 100% effort, regardless of belief
• Less effort because it wasn’t your decision is completely unacceptable
Accountability and its Role in Trust

• Account for what you do

• Accept responsibility for your actions
• Disclose results
• Provide honest feedback (good or bad)

• Expect continuous improvement

• The starting point to driving away the “fear” of mistakes
• Require, effort, results and positive attitude
• The “meat” of the daily stand-up
Section Two

Mindset
Community of Inquiry

• Discuss: “why do people hold on to knowledge in

your organisation and how can they be encouraged
to share it with those who can benefit from it?
What kind of mindset do you have?

Growth
Fixed
Mindset
Mindset

• I can learn anything I want to • I’m either good at it, or I’m not
• When I’m frustrated, I persevere • When I’m frustrated, I give up
• I want to challenge myself • I don’t like to be challenged
• When I fail, I learn • When I fail, I’m no good
• Tell me I try hard • Tell me I’m smart
• If you succeed, I’m inspired • If you succeed, I feel threatened
• My effort and attitude determine • My abilities determine everything
everything
Community of Inquiry

• Discuss: why a Growth Mindset is

considered fundamental for Agile?
Learned Helplessness

• Learned helplessness:
A condition in which a person suffers
from a sense of powerlessness,
arising from a traumatic event or
persistent failure to succeed.
• Initial experiments that formed the
basis for this theory were conducted
in the late 1960s and early 1970s by
psychologists Martin Seligman and
Steven Maier.
• Worker gives up the ability to make
decisions and be autonomous
Fear vs. Seeking System

• The Seeking System makes people Panksepp's Primal Emotional Systems

curious about their world and promotes
learning and behaviour directed toward
pleasurable outcomes or objects
• The Fear system is a self-protective
neural system for avoiding pain or injury.
It gives rise to freezing, withdrawal,
avoidance, or flight when activated.
• Fear and seeking systems are highly
evolved circuits and the fear system will
overrule the seeking system. If it is done
enough, the seeking system may never
recover, it just shuts down.

Panksepp, Jaak, and Lucy Biven. 2012. The archaeology of mind: neuroevolutionary
origins of human emotions. New York: W.W Norton.
Fear vs. Seeking Systems

System Location key neuropeptides/ Associated Action Tendencies

neurotransmitters Feelings
that arouse system

Fear Central and lateral amygdala Glutamate (+), CRF (+), Threatened, Narrow Attention;
to medial hypothalamus and CCK (+), Alpha-MSH (+), Anxious, Worried when threat comes from
dorsal periaqueductal gray Oxytocin (-) within group, submission
(PAG)

Seeking Nucleus accumbens -- ventral Dopamine (+), Glutamate (+), Curious, Excited, Play, experiment, explore,
tegmental area, mesolithic Opioids (+), Neurotensin (+), Enthusiastic learn from enironment
and mesocortical outputs, Orexin (+)
lateral hyptothalamus to PAG

Source: Montag, C. Panksepp, J. Personality neuroscience: Why it is of importance to consider primary emotional systems!
In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
Fear vs. Seeking Systems

E KING
SE

R
FEA
Section Three

Mindset-Leadership
Community of Inquiry

Discuss:
“What is the role of leadership in Agile environments?
How might "Agile leadership" differ from traditional leadership and why?”
The Learning Consortium Report

“ A universal feature of transformation success is

the leadership mindset. Where agile and
management practices and methodologies were
implemented without the requisite mindset, no
benefits were observed. With strong leadership
and agile mindset, transformations succeed
regardless of methods and practices.”

Scrum Alliance Learning Consortium

The Servant Leader
L e st o m
Cu
ad
er ers
Ma
na

s
ee
emg

l oy
en

mp
t E

t E
mp

en
lo y

em
ee

g
me ana
s

sto M
rs
Cu ader

“
Le

Traditional Leadership Servant Leadership The servant-leader

shares power, puts the
needs of others first
and helps people
develop and perform
as highly as possible."

Robert K. Greenleaf
Agile Leadership

• Creating an environment of trust

Agile leadership • Demonstrating and expecting
is… accountability
• Sharing power with the group

• Always being the nice guy

Agile leadership • Watching the team crash and burn
is not… • Hold a committee meeting to discuss
every decision

“The goal of many leaders is to get people to think more highly of the leader.
The goal of a great leader is to help people to think more highly of
themselves.”

J. Carla Nortcutt 22
Adaptive leadership, making decisions
at Point of Work

“ Solutions to adaptive challenges reside not in the

executive suite but in the collective intelligence of
employees at all levels”

"Adaptive Leadership is the practice of mobilizing

people to tackle tough challenges and thrive”

Ronald A. Heifetz & Donald L. Laurie

Section Four

Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety

“ One is psychologically safe when one is “able to show and

employ one's self without fear of negative consequences
of self-image, status or career”

William Kahn, 1990

“Psychological Safety is by far and away the most

important team dynamic, it underpins everything else.”

Google Re
Psychological Safety

High
Psychological comfort zone learning and
Safety high performance zone

Low
Psychological
Safety apathy zone anxiety zone

Low Standards High Standards

Edmondson, Amy C. The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018.
Community of Inquiry

Discuss:
• “What destroys psychological safety in teams?
(psychological safety is a team-level phenomena)
• How can we build psychological safety in teams?
Enabling Psychological Safety

Setting Inviting Participation Responding

the Stage Productively

Leadership Frame the Work Demonstrate Situational Humility Express Appreciation

Tasks • Set expectations about failure, • Acknowledge gaps • Listen
uncertainty, and • Acknowledge and thank
interdependence to clarify the Practice Inquiry
need for voice • Ask good questions Destigmatize Failure
• Model intense listening • Look forward
Emphasize Purpose • Offer help
• Identify what’s at stake, why it Set Up Structures and Processes • Discuss, consider, and
matters, and for whom it • Create forums for input brainstorm next steps
matters • Provide guidelines for discussion
Sanction Clear Violations

Accomplishes Shared expectations and meaning Confidence that voice is welcome Orientation toward
continuous learning

Edmondson, Amy C.
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth
28
. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018.​
Section Three

Tools for Trust / Safety

 Employee Journey Sample

On-
Pre-Journey Trigger Application Selection Week 1 Month 1 Year 1 Year n Exit Alumni
boarding

working
resume resigning old meeting team settling into working away, repeating
Employed at Friend makes settling into a away, found other
Doing competitor referral
updating, job and and learning light duties,
rhythm
nothing
nothing job
cycle in
interviewing counter offer ropes lots of admin notable other job
notable

“unsure about “need to “not sure of

“expected
“Happy where I “worth pros and clarify what is “not sure I’ll “stuck in a “need to “glad to be
Thinking am” checking out” cons of contract
“lots to learn”
expected of make bonus”
better
rut” change” out”
training”
leaving” terms” me”

“Disloyal to very anxious excited for a bit left out a bit let down
a bit stuck in a not as good
Feeling rut where I am
current on multiple new still excited of social
as I expected
by promises flat gutted negative
employer” levels opportunity groups of training

A friend says
good things Offer well process
good good a bit flat OK OK Jaded Jaded Jaded
Experience about articulated stressful
company ★★★★ ★ ★★★★ ★★★★ ★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★ ★
X

prompt better team more one-on-

Referral fees, confidential don’t allow don’t allow
feedback, plain English “best-selves” and inter- one time better training Alumni
Opportunities Social Media after hours
transparent contracts induction team while settling & dev
employee employee
gatherings
targeting interview stagnation stagnation
rating socialization in

page #28 workbook

Employee Journey Dimensions

1. Doing — what is the persona doing at this point in the journey? Describe it
like a movie scene

2. Thinking — what are the rational thoughts the persona is considering at

this point in the journey?

3. Feeling — describe what they are feeling and plot their emotional state
(high or low)

4. Experience — rate the overall experience. Is it neutral, positive or

negative? Use stars or other score ranking

5. Opportunities — what are the opportunities for experience improvement?

6. Emotional state (the wavy line) — how is the person generally feeling,
high or low?

page #29 workbook

Stretch Goals as a Tool building Psychological Safety

• Stretch Goal is giving someone the opportunity to do something

they have not done before but have the skills and capabilities to do:
• Communicating with them at every step
• Making sure there is psychological safe
• Knowing there will be mistake, anticipating and enjoying
mistakes as part of growth process
• Celebrate success
 PDU

Credit: 1 Leadership PDU

Course Identifier: BTPSWeb020620X
PDU Claim Code: 4102Y5CH76
Thank you!!!
I appreciate your time.
Books:
The Energy Bus, ISBN 978-0-470-100028-8
Radical Candor, ISBN 9781509845385
Speed of Trust, ISBN 9781608475650
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, ISBN 9781422105764