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Culture Code (Ideas for Action on Build Safety Creating safety is about…
Culture Code
Ideas for Action on Build Safety
Creating safety is about dialing in to small, subtle moments and delivering targeted signals at key points
Overcommunicate your listening
Prove that you are in sync with someone with body language, do not interrupt and listen.
Spotlight your fallibility early on
Show that you make mistakes and are vulnerable. Invite opinions, it is hard for people to answer genuine questions from a leader who asks their opinion.
Embrace the messenger
Be grateful for the messenger and the feedback and demonstrate that, so they will feel safe to do it again.
Preview future connection
Show how your future together could look like, the possibilities that comes with the relationship.
Overdo thank-yous
Thank-yous are not only expressions of gratitude; they are crucial belonging cues that generate a contagions sense of safety, connection, and motivation.
Be painstaking in the hiring
Deciding who's in and who's out is the most powerful signal any group sends, and successful groups approach their hiring accordingly.
Eliminate bad apples
No jerks - successful teams have low tolerance to bad apple behavior and most important and are very skilled at naming these behaviors.
Create Safe, collision-rich spaces
Increase the number of collisions buy planning the space and time with that intent. The more people get to connect with each other, higher the happiness and results.
Make sure everyone has a voice
The key is to have leaders who seek out connections and make sure voices are heard. Create mechanisms for that.
Pick-up the trash
Cultivate the mindset of seeking simples ways to serve the group and send the signal:"We are all in this together"
Capitalize on Threshold Moments
When we enter a new group, our brains decide quickly whether to connect, therefore, pause, take time, and acknowledge the new person's presence, making it special: "We are together now"
Embrace Fun
This obvious one is still worth mentioning, because laughter is not just laughter; it's the most fundamental sign of safety and connection.
Ideas for action on Sharing Vulnerability
Make sure the leader is vulnerable first and often
I screwed that up are the most important words any leader can say. His show of vulnerability carries the most power.
Overcommunicate expectations
Be explicit, clear and persistent on the signals to maximize the helping behavior.
Deliver the negative stuff in person
It is harder, but it is honest, avoids misunderstandings and strengthens clarity and connection.
When forming a new team, focus on the first vulnerability and the first disagreement
These moments are doorways to two possible paths - appearing strong or exploring together- and - winning interactions or learning together
Listen like a trampoline
Effective listeners aren't sponges. They are active responders, absorbing what the other person gives, supporting them, adding energy to help the conversation gain velocity and altitude.
In conversation, resist the temptation to reflexively add value
Suggestions should be made only after enough conversation was had, supporting the risks and vulnerabilities required for cooperation.
Use candor-generating practices like AARs, BrainTrusts, and Red Teaming.
Build the habit of opening up vulnerabilities so that the group can batter understand what works, what doesn't work, and how to get better.
Aim for candor, avoid brutal honesty
Feedback that is smaller, more targeted, less personal, less judgmental, and equally impactful.
Align language with action
Highlight the cooperative, interconnected nature of work in your language. I.e. instead of project manager -> design community leader.
Build a wall between performance review and professional development
Use Flash Mentoring
Brief interactions with someone you want to learn from help break down barriers inside a group, build relationships, and facilitate the awareness that fuels helping behavior.
Make the leader occasionally disappear
Give the team opportunity to figure out what to do by themselves.
Share Vulnerability
Create moments in which team members can be vulnerable and expose their own failures, be critical about their product and performance, ask for help, and build on the group intelligence to improve.
The key to create such moments is to share vulnerability, although it is counter-intuitive.
A series of humble exchanges can unlock teams performance and creativity (anybody has any ideas? Tell me what to do and I'll help you)
The process can get tense at times, it can be awkward, painful and look like the opposite of smooth collaboration, but it is a key ingredient in generating highly cohesive, trusting behavior necessary for smooth cooperation.
The vulnerability loop
Person A sends a signal of vulnerability
Person B detects the signal
Person B responds by signaling their own vulnerability
Person A detects the signal
A norm is established; closeness and trust is increased
The vulnerability loop is contagious
We tend to think that trust allows vulnerability, but science show that it is the other way around, leaping into the unknown along side others, sharing vulnerability, builds trust.
To create cooperation, vulnerability is not a risk, but a psychological requirement.
The mechanism of cooperation can be summed up as follows: Exchanges of vulnerability are the pathway though which trusting cooperation is built.
Cooperation is a muscle built according to a specific pattern of repeated interaction: a circle of people engaged in the risky, occasionally painful, ultimately rewarding process of being vulnerable together
For teams - if you keep asking and digging out what happened, then after a while, everybody can see what is really happening. People can share experiences and mistakes. They can see how what they do affect others, and we can start to create a group mindset where everybody can work together and perform to the team's potential
Build Safety
Experiment - Bad Apple
A Jerk/Slacker/Downer can bring down the performance of a whole team.
A good apple, someone who can make is safe, include people and show that they matter to the group can cancel the impact and improve groups performance.
Belonging Cues
Proximity, eye contact, energy, mimicry, turn taking, attention, body language, vocal pitch, consistency of emphasis, and whether everyone talks to everyone else in the group
They answer the question: Are we safe here? What's our future with theses people? Are there dangers lurking?
Qualities
Energy: They invest in the exchange that is occurring
Individualization: They treat the person as unique and valued
Future orientation: They signal the relationship will continue
The cues say: "you are safe here". They notify our vigilant brain that they can stop worrying and enter in connection mode. It is called psychological safety.
Good teams prefer to refer to themselves as family
Close physical proximity, often in circles
Profuse amount of eye contact
Physical touch (handshakes, first bumps, hugs)
Lots of short energetic exchanges
High levels of mixing - everyone talks to everyone
Few interruptions
Lots of questions
Intensive, active listening
Humor, laughter
Small, attentive courtesies (thank-yous,etc)
The informational content is not as important as the belonging cues. A group performance can be measured by
5 factors
Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short.
Members maintain high leels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic
Members communicate directly with one another, not just with the team leader.
Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with others.
Experiments on belonging cues
People worked harder/, longer, with best results on puzzles after receiving a note with a tip from a colegue.
People lent their phones 5x more to stranger because the borrower said "I'm sorry it's raining before asking"
Google beat Orverture to the ads market because it created a culture of safety and belonging among their team.
People who received monthly caring messages from the hospital after been admitted for suicide attempt, came back 50% less often.
Belonging and feeling part of a group happens from outside in
Brain scan reveals our amygdala reacts to belonging cues and changes reconfigures our entire motivational and decision-making system.
Belonging cues are important, but you need a narrative - a steady flow of them - to create a strong group.
Cohesion happens not when teams are composed by smarter people but when they are lit up by clear, steady signals of safe connection.