Democratising the "Human Work"​

What’s the hold-up? Why do we talk so much about Psychological Safety and solid happy teams and we do so little?

Well, if you imagine an axis starting from “just concept” and ending up with “execution (aka sustained and habitual human work at the team level with a focus on Psychological Safety that translates into higher performance and clear business outcomes), we see teams and enterprises at every level of that. Interestingly, most wouldn’t be able to place themselves on the same point because many don’t view it as a journey but see the awareness-building or even semi-practice moment they are in as the be-all-end-all ultimate piece of work they have to place into the very engine behind team performance: psychological safety. So they lack the helicopter view to tell them that’s only a step on the ladder so they can’t take the next step as they can’t recognise there is one.

As we said last week, the first step is awareness building and that in itself has several pieces from the general, science and facts parts that are to be imparted at large to the entirety of the enterprise, to the more personal and emotionally significant parts that are to be done at the team level so that they have more effect.

What happens once we have enough awareness and it becomes clear to everyone that we “have to do something about it”? Well for one thing, like we said yesterday, it will take the whole organisational village to execute on the key part of this: demonstrating the need for the human work. No bettering of any behaviours in the team will happen before we popularise the fact that we are called upon as professionals in this new world of speed and collaboration to work together in ways we never had to before so as a point of extreme urgency we have to better our EQ so that we can deliver and doing so is only possible through sustained, human practice work of interacting, quizzing and learning from ourselves and our colleagues.

In this video you’ll find that expressed again, alongside a checklist of what to ask yourself to assess what level your organisation is at.