Critical Knowledge inSight: Psychological Safety for Effective Team Communication

October 24, 2022

Psychological safety and intentional meeting design and execution are important elements for collecting diverse ideas from your team.

In this video clip, Bob Faw, Author and Chief Energizing Officer at Matchbox Group, provides advice on harvesting your team’s ideas by creating a meeting atmosphere that generates suggestions from all participants.

Video key learning points:

1.
Psychological safety in a team generates ideas because everyone feels safe to contribute and speak up about their ideas. This safety also pushes team members to share and not hold back any ideas.
2.
A clear meeting agenda and goals posted somewhere visible before and during a meeting allow both introverts and extroverts to contribute more ideas.
3.
Leaders should express openness and actively request ideas no matter how wild or half-baked they may be.
4.
Give solo time during a meeting to allow a broader, more diverse set of ideas to be presented. This solo time allows both introverts and extroverts a chance to come up with or formulate their ideas in the meeting.
5.
During the meeting, allowing pairs to discuss and then present suggestions together sets the stage for more ideas to be exposed. Having pairs work together and present provides more comfort to present off-the-wall ideas than one might have as an individual presenter.
6.
Leaders of meetings should make sure to include activities that appeal to both introverts and extroverts such as giving time before collecting ideas for introverts and quick brainstorming that might appeal to extroverts.
7.
Leaders should call on people and pause to give them time to think and provide their responses. This will give people that need more time a chance to provide ideas after some thought.
8.
Ask people in advance what they would like in future meetings so better meeting structure can be designed.