Tag: psychological safety

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Compliance Tip of the Day

Compliance Tip of the Day: Psychological Safety and Compliance

Welcome to “Compliance Tip of the Day,” the podcast where we bring you daily insights and practical advice on navigating the ever-evolving landscape of compliance and regulatory requirements.

Whether you’re a seasoned compliance professional or just starting your journey, our aim is to provide you with bite-sized, actionable tips to help you stay on top of your compliance game.

Join us as we explore the latest industry trends, share best practices, and demystify complex compliance issues to keep your organization on the right side of the law.

Tune in daily for your dose of compliance wisdom, and let’s make compliance a little less daunting, one tip at a time.

In this episode, we consider how to create psychological safety in your organization.

For more information on the Ethico ROI Calculator and a free White Paper on the ROI of Compliance, click here.

To check out The Compliance Handbook, 5th edition, click here.

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Blog

The Intersection of Creativity and Compliance: Lessons from Improv

In the most recent episode of the Creativity and Compliance podcast, Tom Fox and Ronnie Feldman delved into the fascinating intersection of improvisation and compliance with our special guest, Marla Caceres, an expert in applied improvisation. We explored how the skills and philosophies of improv can significantly enhance communication and leadership within the ethics and compliance community.

Marla introduced improvisation as the theatrical art of making it up on the spot. While it may seem spontaneous, successful improvisation relies heavily on technique, training, and practice. Like a basketball team practices fundamentals to be ready for any game, improvisers hone their skills to perform seamlessly as a team. This ensemble-based approach fosters a collaborative environment where each member supports the other, creating a space where innovation and quick thinking thrive.

Improvisation is not confined to the theater; its principles apply to various business practices, particularly in ethics and compliance. Marla explains that many students are drawn to improv not to pursue comedy but to improve their communication and leadership skills. Improv teaches others-focused communication, essential for building effective teams and fostering a positive organizational culture.

Communication that is others-focused is at the heart of improvisation. This concept involves shifting your focus from your agenda to genuinely listening and responding to others. In an improv scene, success depends on fully accepting and building on your partner’s input. This active listening and validation level creates a supportive environment where creativity and collaboration flourish. Marla highlighted that this approach can transform everyday interactions, making them more productive and meaningful. It also plays directly into the skills needed by a compliance professional.

Psychological safety is paramount for ethics and compliance professionals. Psychological safety refers to an environment where individuals feel safe speaking up without fear of retribution. Improv provides a low-stakes, fun way to practice the skills necessary to foster this environment. By focusing on deep listening and the “Yes” principle, compliance professionals can build trust and encourage open communication.

The “Yes, and” principle is fundamental in improv. It involves accepting your partner’s idea (Yes) and building on it (and). This technique fosters creativity and promotes a nonjudgmental and inclusive atmosphere. For compliance professionals, applying “Yes and” can shift their perception of their role from rule enforcers to supportive advisors. This change in approach can make employees more willing to engage with compliance, seeing it as a collaborative effort rather than a hindrance.

Marla and Ronnie discussed several practical techniques derived from improv that can benefit compliance professionals. One such exercise is the “Should vs. Could” activity. Participants pair up and share a problem, with one offering advice using “You should” statements and then “You could” statements. The difference in reception is profound, with “You could” fostering a more collaborative and empowering dialogue. This simple shift in language can significantly impact how compliance professionals communicate, making their advice feel more supportive and less authoritative.

Improvisation also teaches the importance of building trust and reducing fear in communication. By practicing techniques emphasizing validation and support, compliance professionals can create an environment where employees feel safe to raise concerns and seek guidance. This trust is crucial for effective compliance, as it encourages proactive problem-solving and early reporting of potential issues.

The principles of improv can be applied in various settings within the compliance field. For instance, compliance training sessions can incorporate improv exercises to make learning more engaging and memorable. Additionally, compliance professionals can use these techniques in their day-to-day interactions to build stronger relationships with employees and leadership.

Marla emphasized that organizational culture and communication nuances trickle down from the top. Leaders play a critical role in modeling the behavior and communication styles they want to see throughout the organization. By incorporating improv techniques, leaders can demonstrate openness, active listening, and collaborative problem-solving, setting a positive example for their teams.

Improvisation offers a unique and practical approach to enhancing communication and leadership within the ethics and compliance community. By practicing others-focused communication, fostering psychological safety, and embracing the “Yes, and” principle, compliance professionals can transform their interactions and build a more supportive and proactive organizational culture. If you want to explore how improv can benefit your compliance efforts, consider incorporating these techniques into your training and daily practices. As Marla and Ronnie have shown, a little creativity can go a long way in making compliance a collaborative and engaging endeavor.

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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to More Effective Compliance Through Culture: Day 12 – Fixing an Unsafe Workplace

We continue to look at fostering an ethical culture through psychological safety, using as a starting point the “Fostering Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety” whose authors believe that “when psychological safety is lacking, it may be a consequence of the employee having witnessed unethical behavior.” The more unethical behavior a person sees, the more likely they are to feel psychologically unsafe.

The authors basically state the obvious when they write, “It makes intuitive sense that being in a work environment where unethical behavior is prevalent might diminish psychological safety.” Put another way “people are most reluctant to speak up in ethically troubled environments, where we most need them to do so.” This is an important issue for every CCO and business leader. To overcome such a deficiency, they found that “several other factors correlated with strong speak-up behavior, keeping everything else constant: moral engagement, moral attentiveness, and organizational justice combined with clarity of expectations.”

Moral engagement. As a CCO you should endeavor to create an atmosphere where ethical conduct matters, “so that when employees recognize a potentially unethical situation, they will be motivated to do what’s right.”

Moral attentiveness. You can educate employees to recognize the ethical dimensions of situations. You can have managers highlight examples of ethical and unethical behavior with their teams and encourage dialogue on workplace ethics.

Organizational justice. Obviously, talk is cheap and it is actions, not deeds, that matter. The DOJ has made clear in the 2023 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs that the keeper and responsibility of institutional justice sits with the CCO and the authors find that this same concept “is vital to building a reputation of organizational justice.”

Clarity of expectations. CCOs must communicate a clear message to employees so that employees will have “an understanding of organizational standards and are clear about expectations.”

Unethical conduct can remain hidden for a time but is likely to be discovered eventually, causing far more harm than if it were caught and corrected early. Psychological safety thus can help organizations respond and improve quickly instead of allowing misconduct and unethical behavior to fester and further degrade workplace psychological safety, thus triggering a vicious cycle.”

 Three key takeaways:

1. Without psychological safety, corporate culture will suffer.

2. When your CEO engages in illegal behavior, what is the impact on culture?

3. Use moral engagement, moral attentiveness, and organizational justice to foster an improved culture.

Do you want to improve your culture? How can you assess your culture and develop a strategy to improve it going forward? In this free webinar on the new tool, The Culture Audit with Tom Fox and Sam Silverstein on Tuesday, November 28, 12 CT. For more information and registration, click here.

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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to More Effective Compliance Through Culture: Day 11 – Psychological Safety in the Middle

Advancing ethical culture through psychological safety can be a powerful tool. But how can you determine the state of psychological safety in your organization? Once again using the article “Fostering Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety” as a starting point, “there are a number of things organizations can do to make it more likely that people will speak up when they observe unethical behaviors.” But one key is psychological safety, defined by co-author Edmondson as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” — or, put another way, that “we can say what we think” or “be ourselves around here.”

There is a non-siloed nature of psychological safety at the workplace. Ethics, risk management, legal and compliance functions, plus HR all share an interest in fostering such an environment. This mandates a cross-functional approach as an essential requirement of molding an organization’s culture to include psychological safety. The authors believe, “Managers throughout a company must become aware of the blind spots created by a psychologically unsafe environment, along with the associated risk of underreported misconduct.” They also caution that a formal program such as a reporting hotline “may capture only a fraction of the problematic behaviors that occur.” This leads the authors to posit that gauging psychological safety “may help companies determine whether misconduct is being reported and, in turn, enhance the effectiveness of their formal speak-up programs.”

The authors also confirmed a greater problem which is that “in a global context, psychological safety is not uniform across nations.” Survey respondents from “the Americas and Europe tended to score higher on psychological safety than respondents from Asia.” This suggests to the authors that “the potential effectiveness of tailoring interventions that promote speaking up in order to address the specific circumstances of different groups of employees.” Moreover, “global organizations that seek to build psychological safety must assess its various region-specific drivers and derailers to adjust their activities to specific seniorities and cultures.”

 Three key takeaways:

1. How can you determine the state of psychological safety in your organization?

2. Psychologically safety at the workplace is non-siloed.

3. Middle managers are critical.

Do you want to improve your culture? How can you assess your culture and develop a strategy to improve it going forward? In this free webinar on the new tool, The Culture Audit with Tom Fox and Sam Silverstein on Tuesday, November 28, 12 CT. For more information and registration, click here.

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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program Through Culture: Day 9 – Fostering Culture with Psychological Safety

How can you improve corporate culture through speaking up? In an MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer edition, entitled “Fostering Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety” authors Antoine Ferrère, Chris Rider, Baiba Renerte, and Amy Edmondson asked such questions as “How do organizations encourage people to speak up about ethical breaches, whether inadvertent or deliberate?” and “Why do some employees choose to remain silent when others report misconduct?” Additionally, they “analyzed the perceptions of those who report misconduct against those of “silent bystanders” to help “better understand both the drivers and derailers of speaking up — and revealed insights into how leaders and compliance officers can encourage employees to make such reports.’”

The authors believe today, “it is more essential than ever that when misconduct happens or difficult problems arise, there is a strong ethical climate for surfacing information so leaders can respond quickly and appropriately. An environment in which employees feel comfortable reporting such issues is also vital to preventing future misconduct.”

The authors believe that a “healthy organizational culture is one in which speaking up and listening go hand in hand, reinforcing ethical standards. If concerns are expressed, changes can be made promptly.” This is important because it moves from the detect prong to the prevent prong, which is by far the most important and effective prong in any compliance regime. Further ideas or innovations, rather than simply reporting untoward actions, can make a company more efficient and more profitable. This means a company can receive far more benefits than monetary fines or penalty avoidance if psychological safety exists.

 Three key takeaways:

  1. How a speak-up culture improves your culture.
  2. What is the role of psychological safety in improving culture?
  3. What is the role of externals in your corporate culture?

Do you want to improve your culture? How can you assess your culture and develop a strategy to improve it going forward? In this free webinar on the new tool, The Culture Audit with Tom Fox and Sam Silverstein on Tuesday, November 28, 12 CT. For more information and registration, click here.

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Daily Compliance News

February 15, 2023 – The Ghost of Hoffa Edition

Welcome to the Daily Compliance News. Each day, Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance, brings you compliance-related stories to start your day. Sit back, enjoy a cup of morning coffee, and listen to the Daily Compliance News. All from the Compliance Podcast Network. Each day we consider four stories from the business world, compliance, ethics, risk management, leadership, or general interest for the compliance professional.

Stories we are following in today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Speak up within teams. (FT)
  • Does visiting a museum = an ethical issue? (NYT)
  • Hoffa corruption still haunts organized labor. (The Globe and Mail)
  • Qatar Emir to make a case to Marcon. (Politico)
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Blog

Fostering Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety: Part 3 – Fixing an Unsafe Workplace

Bill J. Allen died last week. Not familiar with the name? Then check out his New York Times (NYT) obituary. Perhaps outside of Illinois or Ohio, he ran one of the most brazen state legislature corruption schemes around, in the state of Alaska. His power and influence were so great that he was the cooperating witness who brought down a sitting Senator, Ted Stevens, although the Indictment was withdrawn after conviction but before sentencing due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Allen held court at a suite at the Westmark Baranof, a luxury Art Deco hotel four blocks from the State Capitol in Juneau, where he and his cronies “dished out money and told their visitors what they wanted in return. Mr. Allen and his circle seemed to revel in their shamelessness. He and Mr. Smith always booked Suite 604, and Mr. Allen always sat in the same chair. He bragged that he kept $100 bills in his front pocket, the easier to dole them out to friendly politicians. The girlfriend of one politician even had hats embroidered with the letters CBC, for “Corrupt Bastards Club.””
Allen and his brazen corruption schemes seem like a good way to introduce the concluding Part 3 of my series on fostering an ethical culture through psychological safety. This series is based on a recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer edition, entitled “Fostering Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety” by Antoine Ferrère, Chris Rider, Baiba Renerte, and Amy Edmondson. In Part 1 we introduced the concept of psychological safety and why it is so important to creating an ethical culture in a business. In Part 2, we considered how to determine the state of psychological safety in your organization. Today in Part 3 we consider what happens in an organization where psychological safety is lacking and steps an organization can take to remedy this deficiency.
The authors believe that “when psychological safety is lacking, it may be a consequence of the employee having witnessed unethical behavior.” Moreover, the inversion of psychological safety “correlated to the quantity of unethical behavior noticed. Put simply, the more unethical behavior a person saw, the more likely they were to feel psychologically unsafe. This suggests that the experience of seeing more unethical behavior may diminish the psychological safety experienced by an employee.” Simply put if your bosses engage not only in corrupt behavior but simply unethical behavior, it will send a message throughout the organization that reporting unethical behavior will not be favored. One only need think of Jes Staley, former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Barclay’s who engaged in illegal behavior in attempting to unmask an internal whistleblower. In November 2021, Staley resigned amid a regulatory probe into whether he mischaracterized his relationship with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In many ways Barclays has never recovered.
The authors basically state the obvious when they write, “it makes intuitive sense that being in a work environment where unethical behavior is prevalent might diminish psychological safety.” Put another way “people are most reluctant to speak up in ethically troubled environments, where we most need them to do so.” This is an important issue for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and business leader. To overcome such a deficiency, they found that “several other factors correlated with strong speak-up behavior, keeping everything else constant: moral engagement, moral attentiveness, and organizational justice combined with clarity of expectations.”
Moral engagement. As a CCO you should endeavor to create an atmosphere where ethical conduct matters, “so that when employees recognize a potentially unethical situation, they will be motivated to do what’s right.” At Novartis International AG, the authors noted the company “created a decision-making framework called the Decision Explorer to support associates in making ethical decisions. Rooted in the company’s code of ethics, the tool helps employees work through a situation to surface ethical considerations.”
Moral attentiveness. You can educate employees to recognize the ethical dimensions of situations. They point to the example at Novartis who “runs practical ethics training sessions that immerse employees in hypothetical scenarios where they must practice ethical decision-making. Another approach is to have managers highlight examples of ethical and unethical behavior with their teams and encourage dialogue on workplace ethics. Such grassroots employee contributions build trust and commitment by giving employees a role in strengthening the code of behavior by which they are expected to live.”
Organizational justice. Obviously talk is cheap and it is actions, not deeds, that matter. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has made clear in the Update to the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs that the keeper and responsibility of institutional justice sits with the CCO and the authors find that this same concept “is vital to building a reputation of organizational justice.”
Clarity of expectations. CCOs must communicate a clear message to employees so that employees will have “an understanding of organizational standards and are clear about expectations.” Second, CCOs must act decisively in response to employee reports of misconduct to show that there are consequences for unethical behavior. To foster greater psychological safety, coach and empower line managers to create safe spaces for discussing ethical concerns, and help them react appropriately when such issues are raised.
The siloed nature of this issue must also be addressed. As previously noted, this issue touches multiple corporate disciplines including HR, ethics and integrity, risk management, legal and compliance. There must be a cross-functional approach in building a culture of ethics and performance. For example, Novartis created a cross-functional working group focused on the notion of ethical leadership.
The authors concluded, “Building a psychologically safe environment to facilitate speaking up about ethical conduct is relevant to both company reputation and long-term business performance. Unethical conduct can remain hidden for a time but is likely to be discovered eventually, causing far more harm than if it were caught and corrected early. Psychological safety thus can help organizations respond and improve quickly instead of allowing misconduct and unethical behavior to fester and further degrade workplace psychological safety, thus triggering a vicious cycle.” Every compliance professional should use the research from the authors study to craft a program to create or improve the psychological safety at your organization. The authors frankly state that organizations which have relied on speak-up channels or ombudspersons as mechanisms for reporting unethical behavior is no longer sufficient. “They need to be complemented by efforts to actively shape and promote an ethical climate in which managers are equipped to support employees’ ability to say what they think and react appropriately to what they hear.”

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Blog

Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety: Part 2 – Safety in the Middle

According to Juan Toribio, writing in MLB.com, Blake Grice waited patiently with his right hand raised for about two minutes to hear his name called inside the Dodgers’ interview room. When he was finally noticed, LA Dodgers star pitcher Clayton Kershaw asked “Whatcha got?” The 10-year-old related that his dying grandfather, Graham, had created a bucket list of things he still wanted to do, one of which was to meet Kershaw. Blake was credentialed by MLB to attend the Post-Game Press Conference and when he did, he dedicated the moment to his now deceased  grandfather.
As reported by Toribio, Blake told Kershaw ““My grandpa loved you. He watched the 1988 [World] Series and he wanted to meet you and Vin Scully one day. So this moment is important to me because I’m meeting you for him.” Before he finished telling Kershaw the story, Blake began to cry” and Kershaw responded by going over to Blake and consoling him with a hug. Kershaw the said to him, “Come here, dude, great to meet you. Thanks for telling me. That took a lot of courage to tell me that. Great to meet you. Your granddad sounded like an awesome guy. Thanks for coming up.””
With a nod of the (St. Louis Cardinals) hat to Tim Erblich for sending me this story, I thought it was a very good way to introduce Part 2 of my series on advancing ethical culture through psychological safety. This series is based on a recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer edition, entitled “Fostering Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety” by Antoine Ferrère, Chris Rider, Baiba Renerte, and Amy Edmondson. The authors believe “there are a number of things organizations can do to make it more likely that people will speak up when they observe unethical behaviors.” But one key is psychological safety, defined by co-author Edmondson as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” — or, put another way, that “we can say what we think” or “be ourselves around here.” Today, we look at how to determine the state of psychological safety in your organization.
The authors’ research concluded that while many employees “said that they spoke up after witnessing perceived unethical behavior, a substantial minority said that they did not speak up.” The authors found that “those who felt less psychologically safe were significantly less likely to report those behaviors via channels where organizational leaders might act on them.” Conversely, employees “who felt the most psychologically safe were most likely to have reported the misconduct they observed. This held true even after taking into account a range of other psychological factors that could influence incident reporting, such as perceived levels of organizational justice, fairness, and trust. Psychological safety is therefore important for more than just team effectiveness and well-being; it may also be critical for forming strong ethical cultures where employees feel comfortable speaking up.”
Interestingly, the authors realize the non-siloed nature of psychologically safety at the workplace. They note that ethics, risk management, legal and compliance functions, plus Human Resources (HR) all share an interest in fostering such an environment. This mandates a cross-functional approach as an essential requirement of molding an organization’s culture to include psychological safety. The authors believe, “Managers throughout a company must become aware of the blind spots created by a psychologically unsafe environment, along with the associated risk of underreported misconduct.” They also caution that a formal program such as a reporting hotline “may capture only a fraction of the problematic behaviors that occur.” This leads the authors to posit that gauging psychological safety “may help companies determine whether misconduct is being reported and, in turn, enhance the effectiveness of their formal speak-up programs.”
After 15 years of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other regulators talking about “tone at the top”; the authors credit that most organizations appear to have senior leadership that talks about ethics positively. They believe “CEOs emphasize that integrity is a core value of their organizations, and that point is reiterated in calls with shareholders and during employee town hall meetings.” Unfortunately, while this messaging is important, the research indicated “it is not sufficient to prevent the derailers of ethical conduct that occur deep within an organization.”
The authors recognize what compliance professionals have known for some time, that it is middle managers, and “not just official speak-up channels are often on the front lines when it comes to hearing about unethical behavior.” They found that 80% of employees who did report internally, went to their direct managers, who are almost always in middle management. This is because middle managers are the company leaders play who play the critical role in ensuring that an employee speaking up feels supported and heard. The authors noted, “Our data shows that how line managers act has a disproportionate impact on the way potentially unethical behavior is addressed within organizations.”
Unfortunately, simply because a middle manager may feel psychologically safe you must not assume that their direct reports feel the same way. Confirming the findings from the ECI Report of its 2021 Global Business Ethics Survey, “managers and senior leaders tend to feel more psychologically safe than their employees and have a more positive perception of their organization’s ethical climate than the rest of the workforce. When you put these two findings together it makes clear that the higher up in the organization you go, there may well be “an ethical blind spot. That makes the role of team managers even more important when it comes to fostering an environment conducive to both engaging in ethical behavior and talking about ethics in an open, constructive way.”
The authors also confirmed a greater problem which is that “in a global context, psychological safety is not uniform across nations.” Survey respondents from “the Americas and Europe tended to score higher on psychological safety than respondents from Asia.” This suggests to the authors that “the potential effectiveness of tailoring interventions that promote speaking up in order to address the specific circumstances of different groups of employees.” Moreover, “global organizations that seek to build psychological safety must assess its various region-specific drivers and derailers to adjust their activities to specific seniorities and cultures.”
Join us tomorrow in Part 3 where we consider why a company that does not have psychological safety throughout it can not only be so toxic but in serious danger as well.

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Blog

Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety: Part 1 – Introduction

What is perhaps one of the most recognizable movie themes of all-time? One that certainly falls into that category is the James Bond theme, written by Monty Norman, who recently passed away. According to his New York Times obituary, Norman took the job only because the producer, Chubby Broccoli, offered him a trip to Jamaica to watch some of the filming, in addition to more traditional monetary compensation. Norman was “struggling to come up with the theme, he said, until he remembered a song called “Bad Sign, Good Sign,” from an unproduced musical version of the 1961 V.S. Naipaul novel, “A House for Mr. Biswas,” on which he and a frequent collaborator, Julian More, had worked.” However, the opening line had an “Asian inflection and relied heavily on a sitar, but Mr. Norman “split the notes,” as he put it, to provide a more staccato feel for what became the theme song’s famous guitar riff. Norman said, “And the moment I did ‘dum diddy dum dum dum,’ I thought, ‘My God, that’s it. His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness — it’s all there in a few notes.” (Listen to the James Bond theme here.)
I was reminded of the psychological nature of this great movie theme when reading a recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer edition, entitled “Fostering Ethical Conduct Through Psychological Safety” by Antoine Ferrère, Chris Rider, Baiba Renerte, and Amy Edmondson. In this article, the authors asked such questions as “How do organizations encourage people to speak up about ethical breaches, whether inadvertent or deliberate?” and “Why do some employees choose to remain silent when others report misconduct?” Additionally, they “analyzed the perceptions of those who report misconduct against those of “silent bystanders” to help “better understand both the drivers and derailers of speaking up — and revealed insights into how leaders and compliance officers can encourage employees to make such reports.’”
The authors believe today, “it is more essential than ever that when misconduct happens or difficult problems arise, there is a strong ethical climate for surfacing information so that leaders can respond quickly and appropriately. An environment in which employees feel comfortable reporting such issues is also vital to preventing future misconduct.” Over the next couple of posts I will be exploring this article and some of the issues it raises. In Part 1, we look at what questions you should consider to determine the amount of psychological safety in your organization.
The starting point for any analysis for psychological safety is with one of the authors, Amy Edmondson herself and her seminal work The Fearless Organization. The authors began by modifying her original 1999psychological safety scale to emphasize a specific focus on employees speaking up. Interestingly, they added “the idea of thinking before speaking up in the hope of measuring hesitation.” They did so to “capture comfort levels in speaking up, based on the intuition that in a psychologically safe climate, people tend to say something right away, and when they don’t feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to keep incidents to themselves.”
By looking at how psychologically safe an organization is, the authors posited they could then  measure variance in psychological safety across teams and regions by surveying employees. They believed that this approach would allow them to then “focus efforts on teams who need the most help and to identify teams whose psychologically safe cultures may offer examples from which other teams can learn.” To do so the authors’ developed a survey which asked the following, “on a scale from 0 (completely disagree) to 10 (completely agree), their level of agreement with the following statements:”

  • On my team, if you make a mistake, it is often held against you.
  • Members of my team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
  • People on my team sometimes reject others for having different views.
  • It is safe to take a risk on my team.
  • It is difficult to ask other members of my team for help.
  • I tend to think about how raising a concern will reflect on me before speaking up.

Interestingly, the authors acknowledged relationship to whistleblowing, in the context of both psychological safety and an ethical business, they strove to make clear “an important distinction between external whistleblowing and those who speak up about perceived misconduct at work.” Moreover, recognizing the vital role external whistleblowers play in the detection prong of any best practices compliance program, if a whistleblower goes to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or other external actors, it is almost always because “they felt their concerns could not be expressed, heard, and addressed internally.” The authors believe that a “healthy organizational culture is one in which speaking up and listening go hand in hand and thereby reinforce ethical standards. If concerns are expressed, changes can be made in a timely way.” This is important because it moves from the detect prong to the prevent prong, which is by far the more important and effective prong in any compliance regime. Further ideas or innovations, rather than simply reporting of untoward actions, can make a company more efficient and more profitable. All of this means that if there truly is psychological safety a company can receive far more benefits than simply monetary fine or penalty avoidance.
Join us tomorrow in Part 2 where we consider the role of psychological safety and moving it through an organization.

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Jamming with Jason

Vulnerability is Sexy and Psychological Safety with Genevieve Georget and Corey Blake


Did you know vulnerability is sexy?
In this #jammingwithjason #podcast, I talk with Gen and Cory from Roundtable Companies about #vulnerability, creating #psychologicalsafety so you can feel free to be vulnerable, and how we all have a story to share with the world.
Perhaps you think you don’t have anything special to share with the world, but the truth is that some of the most amazing stories are experiences that the world may see as ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Plus, sharing our stories helps us and others heal.
There’s a lot packed into this episode.
Genevieve Georget is an executive editor with Round Table Companies, where she specializes in brand storytelling and the Story Hero curriculum. She is also a credited co-author on the new release from Conscious Capitalism Press, Gathering around the Table, with Kari Warberg Block, CEO of EarthKind.
Corey Blake began his storytelling career as an actor, starring in one of the 50 greatest Superbowl commercials (Mountain Dew, Bohemian Rhapsody) and campaigns for American Express, Miller Beer, Mitsubishi, Wrigley’s Gum, Hasbro, and other name brands. Today, Corey is the founder and CEO of Round Table Companies (RTC), the publisher of Conscious Capitalism Press, and a speaker, artist, and storyteller.
Learn more about Gen and Corey on their website: https://www.roundtablecompanies.com/
I’m in their The Story Hero course, and it is amazing and life-changing. Check out this and their other courses, and get registered at: https://www.roundtablecompanies.com/courses.
FOR FULL SHOW NOTES AND LINKS, VISIT:

E270 Vulnerability is Sexy and Psychological Safety with Genevieve Georget and Corey Blake


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