How Top Marketing Leaders Use Psychological Safety to Build Trust
Successful marketing leaders are experts at relationship building with both internal and external stakeholders of the brand. Marketing, at its core, is a relational discipline. Relationships that withstand the test of time are built on trust and shared experiences. “I feel safe with you,” is one way to express trust.
WHY PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY MATTERS IN MARKETING
Psychological Safety is vital for both innovation and growth. Marketing organizations are riding continuous waves of change in market dynamics, customer preference, media complexity and competition, technology and product. Staying abreast of this level of innovation requires that the organization is continuously learning, testing and adapting. Psychological safety is key for teams to navigate these waves of change and thrive.
Psychological Safety, a term coined by Amy Edmunson in her 1999 research article, refers to an interpersonal environment where people feel safe and know that their voices are welcome. Psychological Safety is vital for all teams. If the individuals on a marketing team do not feel like they are welcome and their voice matters, how can they extend that promise of safety to their customers? How can they take the risks necessary to develop innovative programs that build lasting customer relationships? They simply will not be able to. Marketers may be able to use psychological manipulation like fear to incentivize a sale, but they will not be able to build true social relationships in a world that is increasingly moving toward relational or social marketing. Safe relationships are the only kind with longevity and lasting value.
AN INCREASINGLY ANXIOUS WORLD MAKES PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY FEEL ELUSIVE
The term psychological safety has made its way into common business vernacular and yet a question remains, “What is psychological safety?” The reason this concept remains elusive is that in order to truly appreciate psychological safety, you have to experience it firsthand and be able to discern when you are not. This is challenging for most of us, as most of us are experiencing the constant buzz of anxiety. This underlying anxiety can be a result of past trauma, the environments we have built for ourselves in the form of noisy and polluted cities or more recent macro-level stressors: climate crisis, geopolitical uncertainty, financial concerns or COVID. It is hard to have a baseline experience of what it feels like to be safe when we live enveloped in persistent anxiety.
It’s important to stay aware that nearly everyone is bringing in a level of anxiety. Therefore, having a “good” or “polite” culture is not sufficient. We must actively cultivate safety in ourselves and consistently build practices of safety on our team.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY NEEDS TO BE UNDERSTOOD TO BE CULTIVATED EFFECTIVELY
In order to understand and cultivate true psychological safety, we need to clarify what it is not as Timothy Clark has done in his Forbes article. Psychological Safety is not a shield from accountability nor a pass from offering structure. It's also not “niceness.” Decision-making suffers when everyone is always warm and hospitable. We do not create safety by coddling. It's also not the same as consensus decision-making. Claiming Psychological Safety does not automatically give you veto power. Most importantly: you cannot create safety with rhetorical reassurance - simply claiming that the team now has Psychological Safety does not make it so. Modeling the behavior is required as is the strategic development of a psychologically safe culture.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON'T HAVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?
In his book “The Four Key Areas of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path To Inclusion and Innovation,” Timothy Clark describes what it looks like when these areas are lacking. Everything from microaggressions, failure to keep projects moving, and a lack of innovation are all key symptoms of a lack of psychological safety. Here is a short primer on the four areas of psychological safety and symptoms of where safety is lacking:
Inclusion Safety - is it safe to be yourself and be accepted for who you are? We have two fundamental fears, death and exclusion from the group. When a team lacks inclusion safety, there will be microaggressions that signal, you are not wanted here. Inclusion safety also gets undermined, when people get fired or downsized, especially if it feels arbitrary or unfair.
Learner Safety - is it safe to ask questions, experiment, and make mistakes? People often talk about “making it safe to fail.” We do not really like the term failure because what we are really aiming for is - to make it safe to learn. When there is little to no learner safety, people don’t ask questions early on in projects. This results in missed details which can impact long-term project success. People will hoard information, and there is a tremendous loss of genius and creative collaboration on the team.
Contributor Safety - are your ideas and your work appreciated, welcomed, and acknowledged? If there is a lack of contributor safety, you will not get everyone’s best thinking and contribution. Ideas worth considering may never see the light of day. Because in order to allow ideas to flourish, you need input to make them even better. But to do that, it also has to be safe for everyone to challenge.
Challenger Safety - is it safe to speak up and challenge the status quo? When a team lacks challenger safety you will hear phrases like, “this is how we have always done things” or “we always have this problem.” Teams will stick with old ways of doing things or rush after the next shiny object that has caught the eye of a visionary leader. To change things, you have to be willing to hear feedback. In psychologically safe environments, people are trained to emotionally attune and ask permission to provide feedback and then learn to give feedback that leads to growth vs. diminishment.
THREE SIMPLE WAYS MARKETING LEADERS CAN CREATE SAFETY
First, connect to yourself. If you are on the phone, late or rushed, you are not creating safety. Take a moment to find your presence, and then bring that to your team. Start each encounter or meeting with a moment to connect to the person or team you are working with. This can be a simple check-in or a deeper share. You want to respond to whatever is going on in a way that most effectively gets everyone present and energetically engaged in the current moment.
Growth mindset and psychological safety: Lead with vulnerability and ask for feedback. As a leader, you develop learner safety by modeling a growth mindset. You can ask open-ended questions such as “How did this go for you?” “How can I support your work?” “Do you have feedback on my presentation?” By opening yourself up for feedback on both your leadership and your work product, you set the tone. Vulnerability begins with sharing your struggle, your learning, and your emotions.
Build repeatable structures for Psychological Safety. Two key structures for building safety on your team are retrospectives and feedforward.
Retrospectives
These are set practices where the team can evaluate what worked well and what can be done better next time. To keep retrospectives safe, avoid focusing on individual shortcomings and put attention on the places where the team process of communication came up short. Keep the learning focused on the team.Feedforward
PIXAR is renowned for its creative culture that continuously produces critically acclaimed animated films. They practice feedforward as a cornerstone of their culture but they call it “Plussing.” The teams of animators meet each morning to review their previous day’s work and give feedforward on how to make them work better. This free flow of feedforward is key to producing exceptional, groundbreaking work. Feedforward is a skill that must be learned. Here’s a quick guide on how to do it for yourself:
In a feedforward conversation, there is someone who is offering and someone who is receiving. It takes courage for both parties but there is a difference in what is required for each party to give and get what is needed at the moment to maintain forward progress on work.If you are the recipient, are you ready for feedforward? Do you have specific areas of interest that you have not yet addressed at all? What level of detail is useful now? Do you feel comfortable asking for the type of input that you would like?
If you are offering feedforward, focus on where you have specific ideas or questions. If you have a concern, use the words ``Yes and have you thought about…”. By starting with affirmation and then adding possibility, the receiver knows you are valuing their work and contribution. Separate the people from the problem. Talk about the work, not your work. This depersonalizes the situation. We all can only produce the best we can with the information, materials, and resources available. When you are giving feedforward you are expanding what the receiver has available to work with.
As a receiver, be open and ready to receive all information. Later, evaluate what Feedforward you can use now. If the information does not feel useful, true or relevant, let it go. If you do not understand the input, ask for clarification. This is especially important in cross-departmental conversations where each team may have a different work vocabulary.
AS THINGS ACCELERATE, PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY ENSURES STABILITY FOR TEAMS
Things are moving fast, particularly for marketers. Your team will only be able to incorporate learnings, build lasting customer relationships and produce consistent value if they are safe. We partner with Infinite Edge Consulting to cultivate marketing teams prepared to add consistent, sustainable value in a volatile world.
To learn more about building a custom Playbook For High Performing Marketing Teams, contact us.
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Infinite Edge is a consultancy of marketing and culture experts that helps companies build trust and navigate today’s rapidly evolving market environment while providing all the marketing services you'd expect from a top-tier integrated agency. Invite us in to help you transition your marketing operation from reactive to responsive and develop a roadmap to help you thrive through the coming unknown.
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