Welcome to the APM podcast. APM is the chartered body for
the project profession. My name is Emma DaVita and I'm
the editor of Project APM's quarterly journal and your host.
The subject of this podcast is Psychological safety and I'm
joined by James Evans, Programme Manager at NHS Wales Joint
Commissioning Committee, who has a deep interest in the subject
and contributed to the forthcoming APM e-learning
course on Psychological Safety. James is here to tell me what
psychological safety actually is and what it isn't and the
reasons why it's such a hot topic in project management.
He's here to give advice on how to get started with
psychological safety as a project manager or leader and
how to make a success of it. Psychological safety is no
longer a nice to have. It's become a critical factor in
managing projects successfully. So listen on to get some expert
advice from someone who's spent years putting it into practise
in highly complex projects. Welcome James to the APM
podcast. Thanks for finding the time to
speak to us. No problem at all.
Thank you for having me. That's OK.
Why don't we begin by you telling us a little bit about
your current role of responsibilities?
OK. So I'm a programme manager in
the NHS Wales Drunk Commissioning Committee, but as
part of my role as a programme manager I also lead the PMO,
which for us is a portfolio management office.
And my sort of primary responsibilities within that is
the sort of oversight of our portfolio of work within the
Drunk Commissioning Committee, monitoring things like
governance. But the more important part and
where this sort of conversation comes in is where they're to
really enable delivery. And that is both the more hard
skills like governance, but also some of the softer skills like
psychological safety as well. And but I like to really think
that it's all about the roles, not about making projects look
good in any sort of way. It's just making sure that we
have a real sort of transparent reality of what's going on,
whether that's good or bad, and that's what my sort of core role
is. I need to ask the obvious
question, which is what is psychological safety?
Because people might have an idea of what it is, but
particularly when it comes to project culture, I guess it is
to do around the culture and leadership and management of
projects. But how do you define
psychological safety? What does it mean in the kind of
messy world of delivering projects?
So I suppose the the definition I was first introduced to was
the definition that Amy Edmondson shared, which was that
shared belief that a team is safer interpersonal risk taking.
But for me, when I was trying to work on this with my team and
introduce it to the organisation, it was actually
came down to around 3 sort of core principles.
And it was the ability to speak up early, the ability to
challenge the decisions and also admit mistakes and those 3
without any fear of any sort of repercussions or being held.
And to a different there's, there's the difference between
being held to account versus punished.
And you don't want to be punished forever doing any one
of those reactions. But I think it's also really key
that when we talk about the definition of psychological
safety, we talk about the definition of what it's not.
Because sometimes it can be really easy to mix it up with
being really nice or lowering standards or going too far.
And actually psychological safety is never about saying yes
to everything or being overly nice.
It's actually just creating a culture and environment where we
can actually just challenge in a professional way.
That's interesting, you say, because it sounds as though
there's an art to getting it right because on the one hand
you could be too nice, but then in contrast, like, can you be
too nasty? Can people take it kind of
permission to really, you know, be nasty?
I mean, I'm joking, but is that actually a real does that?
Is that something that happened? Yeah, I've I've actually seen
both ends the scale a bit. So when you've got no
psychological safety, teams do tend to shut down, delivery
tends to shut down and starts to fail because people are afraid
to talk to speaker and things like risks start to become
issues. And it becomes it just spirals
into a bit of a mess. But also going the opposite way
where teams are trying to be too supportive and too far to
enabling everyone and coming back to what we talked about
start pleasing everyone really going into that side of it.
And you start to lose accountability because you've
start the teams don't want to basically put any pressure on
people. So they go, oh, that's OK.
And we, we want, you know, there's no one to blame.
And like I said, there's a difference between blame and
accountability. And when we're talking about
right, something has gone wrong, right?
Where's the accountability set with that?
Well, it could be an individual or it could be a team.
But what we're seeing is now is that person is accountable, but
what we're saying is how do we actually learn from that?
What are the lessons we're taking from that?
But where we go to to, we don't do the lessons learned.
We don't pick up the lessons from it.
And actually we just sort of sweep the lens of the carpet and
move on, which is not more supportive either.
I did want to ask what what, what your where your interest
came from in psychological safety, but actually as well how
it fits into the bigger picture of what you're describing, which
is about having that transparency, transparency and
clarity when it comes to project delivery, especially complex
ones. Yeah.
So my interest in psychological safety was actually was actually
born out of accidents if it's the best way of describing it.
So about four, 4-5 years ago, I rose just embarking on my
master's degree in project management, and it was coming up
to the point where I was having to pick a dissertation topic and
I wasn't really sure what I was going to do.
I knew deep down that I wasn't going to touch anything around
leadership and management or any of those soft skills.
I was really trying to steer clear of them.
But I happened to go to a a conference at the time which was
on patient safety in a clinical setting.
And then there was a psychologist there who presented
on a case study from the NHS and it was a case study around
Elaine Bromley and a clinical setting where something went
wrong in the operating theatre where no one felt safe that they
could speak up. And then the outcome was
actually quite catastrophic. And then the patient didn't make
it. And when I heard that and was
actually listening to what they were describing as clinical
psychological safety, something just clicked.
And it then took me back to a week earlier when I was at a
project board meeting and everyone in the room knew
something was wrong with this project, but no one was coming
forward and actually saying not something's not, not right here.
There was almost like an underlying fear and tone in that
in our meeting. And it just clicked.
Then I thought, well, actually, if they're promoting
psychological safety so big and so around clinical settings and
around people, why aren't we doing it in delivery as well?
Because it's the same, same thing.
We're delivering something, we're producing something.
And that was the, the start of my sort of deep dive.
And I went on to do a master's dissertation into it and really
got interested then and how and the subtle changes that we can
make, make such a big impact. And even though the study I did
around my masters was quite small scale at the time with
just a small team and the information I started to gather
was huge. And that's only grown as time
has gone on. And I've realised that 4-5 years
later, psychological safety seems to have become a real big
topic area now and it's becoming bigger and bigger and project
management and it's really, really good to see.
But yeah, that's where my interest came from.
That's really interesting. It reminds me of this is a big
deal within the aviation industry, isn't it, with airline
pilots and the hierarchy, strict hierarchy they used to be and
how they needed to overcome that because people were too scared
to speak to those senior and there was a lot of work in that.
Is that was that? Is that something you've heard
about too? Yeah, it it was interesting that
like from the clinical setting that's what that's this type of
examples they use as well around the airline example.
And it was the same the clinical that people just felt that
because the hierarchical nature that some of the positions come
in to where you would have consultants and then you would
have the sort of fear to nurses. And then some of the supporting
roles that sort of come in. They just felt like, well, they
were a lot more experienced. Like I don't want to say
something because they obviously know what they're doing and it's
not always obvious. And so I guess it's that we need
to just reflect on and those situations that we put ourselves
in. And I think some sectors are
really more prone to it than others.
I'd love to find out from you because you've been thinking
about this so much and putting it into practise.
What have been if If you could draw out some key principles
about how to get it right in practise, what might those be?
So you mentioned the word clarity earlier on.
I think clarity is probably one of the key, key principles here
and clarity around expectations, the tasks.
So we focus a lot on roles and responsibilities when we set up
any project or programme, but around that as well, it's the
clarity of what's expected of the individuals, the teams and
the overall project and what it's trying to deliver as well.
So everyone is in tune with that message.
How do you actually make that happen?
Is it sitting down individually? Is it a group meeting?
This is This is really useful to know how you actually achieve
that. What works?
What doesn't work? So for us it's, it's making sure
we try to adjusting different mediums as well.
So we want to make sure that we're asking better questions
and to try and get back clarity. So we will, we have sort of
prompt sheets as well that can be used to actually really
interrogate what we're trying to get out to this, the project,
the teams, the roles, the responsibilities.
Some of it is stuff that you would typically expect to see
around core project roles and responsibilities.
But what we want to do is bring everyone together and have a
discussion as well to really invite that challenge as well.
And I've seen it from the meetings we've had in the past
that we bring together the entire project team and
basically say, right, this is what we're looking to deliver
over the next 24 months. The role of the data team will
be this, this, and this. And the role of the project team
will be this, this, and this. And then you sometimes would get
a discussion starting because the data team would go, oh,
well, actually that doesn't quite fit into our remit.
We need the project team to be collecting that.
And the data team will analyse the, the information coming
through, for example. But to get those decisions
really flowing, we needed to present that information.
And it comes back to that thing around clarity of expectations.
And when we're presenting these roles and responsibilities,
clearly people can actually go, yeah, that is right.
But I appreciate as well not everyone is comfortable with
presenting or talking in those situations.
Or sometimes if you haven't got the psychological safety there
to begin with, some people might be afraid to speak up.
So the ways we start to encourage that then is giving
them other mediums. So we've used things like forms
where they submit in advance or post meetings where they come
away from the meeting, they reflect on it a little bit and
then they can reply back and say, do you know what, I'm not
happy with this, not happy with that.
And we might have a bit of a like post mortem later to really
just sort of analyse the results that are coming in.
But also it's around the leadership in particular,
whether that's the leadership from the organisation or the
project leadership to be really mindful of who you've got in
your settings. So if I'm ever hosting a project
board or any type of meeting, to be honest, I'll always look out
for who's quiet and just try and ask them questions, see if they
interact. And if they don't, again, it
might be because they just don't feel comfortable thing.
But what I'll tend to do is if someone's been and usually quiet
or haven't really interacted, I'll follow up post meeting with
them. I'll give them a one to one call
and just check in. Was everything OK?
Was there anything else that they wanted to add into that
space? And quite often you get quite a
lot of information come through from them.
You're only talking about kind of leadership style, aren't you?
And being very kind of aware, I guess it's being emotionally
intelligent about the people in your team and how they best
communicate. And you're talking about even
before the project starts. So getting everyone together and
discussing all of this, which leads me to ask you about how do
you go about establishing a culture of psychological safety?
And I think you're already already kind of indicating that
it's you're sort of role modelling as a leader, you're
setting expectations as a project leader or project
manager. Could you, could you tell me a
bit about that? Like how, how would you go about
establishing a culture of psychological safety on a
project right from the start? Because it sounds as though
you've got to start on the right foot.
Yeah. So I think you're absolutely
right. It it starts with leadership,
It, it definitely you can't delegate the sort of
introduction of psychological safety.
It starts at the top and I think from a cultural level it's
really built in moments and not meetings as well and which kind
of contradicts some of the stuff I was just saying a bit, but I.
Forgive you. I forgive you.
We. Need to.
We need to like set the expectations early.
So when you again, it doesn't just have to be like your
project boards or your project meetings, but when you bring
that initial group together for any type of task, we need to be
really clear that we expect issues to be raised.
What we just want is them to be raised early and we need to
start to turn the the language around escalation.
So escalation over the years I keep hearing throughout most of
my career actually I keep hearing the term report by
exception, but to me that it has its purpose, but because it's
becoming overused, we're we're losing some of the quality
around what escalation is actually for.
Sorry, can I, could you just I'll stop you there just to ask,
what do you mean by? Report by exception, sure.
So report by exception, it's often we're finding it used in
sort of project boards or governance meetings, but instead
of instead of listing everything that they want to report by,
it's usually just stuff that is glimly obvious or might be the
the highest priority stuff. So by exception, what is the top
priority things we need to report on today is where they're
bringing this in. And I think it does, it does
have a purpose, but we also see that it's degrading some of the
bits around psychological safety because you'll have people
within those meetings as well who want to report on
information, but just because it's not seen as important to
one particular personal body, they don't get to report or
escalate their information. So that escalation is not
happening and it's actually being stopped.
So that that's one of the things I'm starting to see.
And we need to be really clear when we're setting those
expectations early that we want the things like risks, issues
and even things around decision making to be escalated early
when they need to be so that there's no sort of punishment
around it either. And also, I guess you have to
convey the ideas that the earlier you escalate something,
the perhaps easier it is to solve or to deal with quickly
and efficiently rather than something that's been festering
and kept unspoken for a long time because you might not then
have a chance to rectify all all come together as a team to sort
of improve things. Yeah, absolutely.
The, and that's the one of the core messages we tried to pull
out there. And the even before like
psychological safety, that was one of the messages we would
always have around risk management.
And issue management is let's address the risks and the issues
as early as possible, get them escalated because the earlier we
can tackle them, the more chance we have of mitigating them and
reducing the impact of the issues if they have actually
happened. And and I think it's given the
forum spaces for this to happen as well.
So to create that culture of psychological safety, you've got
to have the, the right spaces for it to, to grow.
And, and too often we see stuff being quite rigid with
governance being established. But actually, we just need to
make sure that we're having things like regular check
insurance that we are revisiting conversations.
So as as I previously mentioned that if you notice someone's
been quiet or you noticed someone might have become
visibly frustrated or you know, emotional within the meeting
because of a point they were trying to cover, go and like
cover it off with them following the meeting and encourage those
open conversations. Especially where we're in this
day and age now where remote working is becoming, well, it's
increased massively and it's only getting bigger.
And with more virtual presence and AI coming into it as well,
we need to start encouraging those water cooler type
conversations again, where in the office you would go up and
have those more, right? Do you know what?
I got a bit of a concern. My gut's telling me this.
And people would feel more comfortable raising those
conversations virtually. I think it's almost the fear of
dialling the button and ringing someone to actually have that
conversation now because it's a, it's a, it's another barrier in
between two people. Yeah, you have to work hard.
Is that, do you get around that by just how do you recreate
those water cooler moments virtually?
Is it just by giving someone a ring?
I think that's probably the one thing we're still, still trying
to find the answer to ourselves. There's, there's some things we
found that have worked and putting deliberate time in
whether it be with individuals or teams.
And from a typical sort of leadership management point of
view, you're going to be doing your sort of 1 to ones and your,
your line management conversations where they need to
be. But for us, we've tried to,
we've tried everything. We've done virtual water cooler
type meetings. We're just like grab a coffee
and that and then just come on for a call and just check how
everyone is. And we've tried to do daily
stand ups where it's less about project delivery in the
mornings, but it's more about just a well-being check in and
seeing if there is any big barriers that they want to talk
through at that point. It sounds as though it's it's
not necessarily about the formal process.
It's about finding common, sensical, informal ways of
allowing people to communicate sort of freely, more openly.
Yeah. Absolutely.
I guess it's about having in an office you would if you did have
an office or your own office. It's that open door policy isn't
it? Like, but it's trying to
recreate that online. Thank you.
Were there were there any other points of advice you'd give
around establishing a culture of psychological safety that you've
learnt by by actually doing it over the past few years?
I think if anything, the last point you made then around that
sort of open door policy, it is making sure that it's really
clear when you are working with your team that they understand
that anything, anything that's going wrong or anything that
they need to talk to about, there is a, there is a clear
process, but a clear path. And they've got clear points of
contact for people they can just go and talk to about these
problems. And as I say, everything is seen
as a learning opportunity, not as a punishment opportunity.
And that's, that's one of the things we really try to heavily
promote is that yes, people will get frustrated, things will go
wrong. There is no such thing as a
perfect project. And you can always guarantee in
almost every project there will be something that goes wrong.
But what we need to do is just learn from that.
And psychological safety really comes into that.
But the more learning actually comes from the projects that
have the greatest psychological safety.
That's a really good point and whilst I'm talking to you, I'm
wondering do you have any advice to people who are managing a
project, managing others, about how do you then deal with the
situation? If someone comes to you and says
like I'm concerned about this, what is the best way to handle
that that you've you should learn?
And so for me, I've, I think it's some of it sounds almost a
bit, a bit too simple. But the, the first part is
whenever anyone has come to me with any sort of problem and you
want to thank them. Like first of all, because
especially the ones who are not very confident or you can tell
there's actually being a bit of fear of it is thanking them for
coming forward and sharing the concerns and start talking to
them about, right, OK, you've brought me brought me this.
How do you think we can solve it?
And where do you think we go with this?
And they start to have a think about it then and they start
talking to her about it and go, great, this is brilliant.
Now, if it's the type of thing you think they can actually give
it back to them, take, let them take ownership of it and say,
right, go and then explore these options.
Come back to, to me or come back to, you know, at the project
board. We'll get you to, to talk
through this in a bit more detail now with the, the
solution you've come in and I've got your back in our meeting.
So if anything, you know, I'll step in and, you know, jump in
where needed. If anyone does start to cause
any tension when needed, they know that they've got your back
in them. Full support.
That's probably the more like straightforward example I could
give on that. No, it sounds, it might, might
sound obvious to you, but I mean, if, if you you've never,
if you want to be more like this, there's some basics you
need to get right. And I think yes, that's right.
It's acknowledging that it must have been hard for that person
to come and tell you these things.
If, if they're fearful of the repercussions or I mean, one of
the questions I was going to ask you is that how, how common
psychological safety is across projects.
I know you're you're within the NHS and I don't know what the
culture is like where you are, but it sounds, you know, I mean,
for you to be doing all of this stuff, it sounds very positive.
But I imagine there are many project teams where it's still
very much a blame game. But like, how do you judge
things are generally? Are we do you feel as though
people have seen the light when it comes to psychological
safety? Or do you sort of think it's a
bit of a battle that the challenge what you know, what
are the challenges to establishing psychological
safety? Is it seen as a fluffy soft
thing? I think there's there's a risk
that it's seen as a fluffy soft thing.
And whilst I was doing part of my master's research and I was
having conversations about a year ago as well on the topic,
it was really clear then that people were seeing it as a bit
of a soft, soft issue and seeing it as always nice to have.
It's not something we can really waste company resources on.
And in fact, more recently I was with another organisation and
saw saw that first hand that the room was almost divided.
You had half of the room that were very pro psychological
safety and you could tell that they'd done their research on
it. But there was a minority within
the room that just didn't seem to really connect with it or
engage. And there was you could almost
sense the the reluctance to buy into it.
And then I was quite interested to try and explore that a bit
more. So as some of the questions I
was asking about what it was and what it was and I think and the
ones who were seen it as a fluffy type subject, the I was
getting a lot of well, you know, we can't please everyone.
We can't just keep doing this and doing that because it means
we can't operate as they as an organisation or a business.
It's catch. And I was like, well, actually
then it's not being done correctly.
It what we were talking about earlier.
You've got the two far, one side too far, the other side sounds
like the balance is shifting like either too soft or too too
harsh. You need to try and get it
somewhere in the middle. And so within projects.
And I am seeing a greater focus on psychological safety.
And as you mentioned my backing from the NHS, it's been there
for a while, psychological safety.
But when I first started, it's mostly been more in the clinical
settings. I think it's only now that it
seems to be transitioning across to other areas of the NHS and
delivery and sort of team working and it's, it's now that
I don't think it was always called psychological safety when
they were referring to it in that space.
It was something else. What was it called?
What was it? Tied up in the whole sort of
well-being agenda and focusing on well-being.
I suppose there is a lot of connections in that space and it
does promote a thing around well-being.
But I saw an article actually on the weekends about the
difference between psychological safety and psychosocial safety.
And psychosocial safety is more around the sort of well-being
agenda and focusing on that aspect of it, where
psychological safety is the cultural and creating an
environment where you can actually be safe.
It's two very different areas. I thought that was quite a nice
little contrast that it's a. Good distinction to make.
Well, why don't we? Why don't we make a comeback
against all those naysayers who just see it as a fluffy thing?
So what to spell out the obvious?
What benefits, what's what advantages does psychological
safety, if it's done in the right way, bring to a project
team and to the delivery and outcomes of a project?
So I think there's there's loads that psychological safety does
bring really for me, one of the the early parts of just
introducing very minimal psychological safetyings for a
team that didn't have any at the time.
We just started to identify risks and issues so much earlier
and we were able to resolve them so much quicker as well.
And I don't mean resolve as in we had the answer to basically
mitigate them, but we're actually able to come up with
some sort of mitigation plans. And we went from a raid log at
the time that had very little on there.
So actually people were were stepping up and you know, we
couldn't get enough on there to be honest, where people came up
with the different bits, which is another problem to have.
But it was great to see people actually come in with it.
But with that, it led to much better decision making.
So we had less group think. We had less of the sort of
nodding the heads on teams calls.
We had more people actually talking, discussing the points.
And you know that you had an actual everyone was on point
with it. Everyone agreed.
People weren't just nodding along and going with it because
they were afraid to challenge it.
We were actually starting to see real, real discussion and the
decision then made sense and we know that people were bought
into the idea, which then meant more engaged teams.
So these benefits, having a more engaged team that can do quicker
decision making, better quality decision making, and that's able
to identify risks and issues much faster and more accurately.
This all basically comes to your projects just work more
streamlined, they work smoother, accuracy goes up, quality goes
up and in the end of it, people are actually really proud of
what they do and come away happier and they want to put in
that extra 10% effort to actually deliver something
they're proud of that's. Brilliant.
When when you introduce psychological safety where you
can imagine if you're trying to do it in an organisation that
perhaps isn't used to it. What what are the teething
troubles? It was interesting what you just
said, like people identifying so many risks and so many.
Is there a way do you need to be?
Do you need to establish some parameters of what is
problematic and what isn't? What do you need to know about
what what you don't need to know about?
And is there some correlation then to the people knowing what
power they have over decision making?
So who owns the decision making as well?
Is that a hand in hand thing with psychological safety?
Yeah, I think it comes back to that, the clarity aspect of it
and understanding what your role is in the in the bigger system
of that project. But just because you may not
have the final decision making authority, you do have the you
do have your individual decision making ability and you do have
the your individual discussion ability as well.
So it doesn't matter what Saturn you're in, if you don't feel
you're confident or have the ability to raise an objection or
discuss, then why are you in the meeting in the 1st place?
Because if you're not actually able to get any points across,
and this is what historically I would start, I saw a lot of in
meetings, which you would have meeting people in meetings who
were silent all the way through in every single meeting.
And you could just tell that something wasn't wasn't right
there. And it's not to be horrible
saying no, what's the point in them being in this meeting?
We either need to change the meeting to make it more
inclusive of everyone who sat there and not just have the
loudest voices talking all the time.
Because actually some of the quietest voices, they tend to be
the reflectors in the rooms. They tend to be the more
analytical ones. And they actually had a lot of
valuable information that the decision makers need to have to,
to make those informed decisions.
But if they can't speak up or don't have it, then that's the
problem. So you need to really get that
out of them. So you either change the meeting
to suit or you pull them out to the meeting and get the
information in another way. But for me, I think it's more
about getting them included in the meeting.
And, and there's a couple of different ways to to go about
doing that. Some we talked about earlier.
Some can be as simple as just making sure that everyone has a
bit of time on that meeting to, to raise anything they want to.
One of the most powerful things I've actually seen is where
possible and don't cheer the meeting yourself, Give it to the
quietest person in the room or rotate the chair around because
someone who is naturally introverted, so I'm naturally an
introvert myself. I can remember in some of my
early days, especially in the project sector, I was terrified
going into project board meetings.
I can remember just being that shaky mess, not, you know, but
wanting to say something couldn't do it.
And actually thinking back on it, some of those meetings did
have quite low psychological safety, but something changed.
Then in one of the meetings I went to where they did start
this rotate rotating chair type thing.
And the chair was given to me for the one meeting.
And it gives you the ability because it's the chair.
Yes, you would have your standard agenda, but it also
gives you the ability to to add anything else you want in and if
you're on the point and talking. So like you've asked me this
question, I can Chuck something else in because I'm I've got the
mic at that point and it's the same in that meeting set.
And so it actually gives more chance to the quieter ones to
speak out and it improves our psychological safety in those
settings. That's really good advice.
What advice would you give to to project manager or leader who
might feel hesitant about approaching a or trying to
create a project culture that is psychologically safe?
Because is there a fear that you might open the door to something
that you don't necessarily want to hear or that it's going to
create a load of problems to stack up for you to deal with?
I can appreciate that it must be a little bit daunting if if, if
perhaps you want to do this well and properly and you're just
saying, I just want to hear it all, all the bad stuff that's
happening. What advice would you give to
people who are feeling a little scared, a little wary of it?
Yeah, I think it's don't do it all at once because you would
never survive if if you did open a place women all it's it's
finding a small, small iterative changes you can bring in and
just see how they start to land. So.
Could you give some, could you give some of the examples of
that? Because that sounds great.
Yeah, so it it could be as simple as just starting to focus
on yourself more than the overarching organisational
project. So have a look at how when
something goes wrong, for example, so be that sort of like
shining an example that you're admitting your own mistakes and
being quite transparent about it.
So in the project board, owning up to the mistakes, but being
this is the lesson we're going to learn from it as well.
So showing that there's nothing wrong with actually being wrong
actually sets a massive example and you'll find the teams will
start to to follow that example as you go as well.
That's like one of the quick things you could do that doesn't
actually open the floodgates because it's more about your own
internal behaviours. But start to some of the bits
we've mentioned throughout. I would also look at reviewing
your project teams, reviewing the teams in the organisations.
Start to look where the quieter voices are who who to hear from
the least in the in the meetings.
See if you can work out why. Maybe introduce the odds extra 1
to one pick up after them following the the meetings as
well. See if you start to gather that
information that way. Because you're not again.
Yep, you're almost doing it by silos at this point.
You're not completely opening those floodgates, but you want
to really reward, start rewarding transparency in your
processes. However you do that.
Sometimes it's just a simple thank you.
Sometimes it's through the notes and everything you send out
following the meeting. And we're not just rewarding or
celebrating success here. We're actually celebrating the
stuff that's gone wrong, which sounds really like backwards.
So this has gone wrong. Great news.
We've picked it up early and Joe Bloggs is going to do a great
job now in mitigating this and going forward.
It's celebrating the third, the thing that's gone wrong instead
of actually permishing it. And for me, one of the greatest
things I think they could do is actually make reflection time
part of the norm. And this is where you are
starting to open it up a bit. But we're all, we can all lose
focus. Well, we can all hyper focus, I
suppose more than anything and get really stuck into things,
but not actually spend any time reflecting on is everything
working? Has that project gone OK?
And focusing on the softer sides of the skills, not just the yes,
they did deliver on time, quality, cost, and the sort of
iron triangle. Some was starting to think more
about what's if we were to develop a sort of human
triangle, what would that human triangle be?
And I imagine one of those points on that triangle would
probably be psychological safety.
One of them might be something like well-being and the other
one might be culture. And I think those 3 might be the
things that interlinked together.
And there as as important as the other more traditional three
points are. So in terms of delivering a
project successfully, that's that's pretty.
I would like to talk to you for another hour, but I'm afraid
it's time to wrap up. Have you got any takeaways that
you'd like to give to people about psychological safety and
getting it right? I think for me that one of the
biggest takeaways is that it's not a nice to have.
It's actually a real delivery enabler.
And I think going forward in this really sort of uncertain
world as well, it's only going to become more important and
more key in the way that we deliver projects going forward.
Thanks, James. That was so fascinating to get a
proper understanding of what psychological safety is and why
it matters and how you can go about doing it.
So I just want to thank you again for joining us on the APM
podcast. No problem at all.
Thank you again for having me, we really enjoyed that.
Thanks again to James for joining us and to you for
listening to the APM Podcast. If you're interested in finding
out more about psychological safety, including accessing the
new APM Learning module, which is available to APM members,
please go to theresourcesareaoftheapmwebsite@apm.org.uk/resources
slash APM Hyphen Learning. Don't forget to look out for
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