How to Create a Psychological Safe Workplace with Dr Julie Morris
Drawing on that experience, Julie discusses the six pillars of employee engagement and explains how psychological safety is woven throughout them. She also shares insights from the psychological safety program she developed for managers, including three practical strategies leaders can use to foster it on their own teams.
Along the way, Julie and Bart challenge common misconceptions about psychological safety and explore how leaders can create an environment where people feel comfortable speaking up, taking risks, and asking questions. At a time when people are asking more of their managers and leaders are looking for ways to create more engaged workplaces, this is an invaluable listen.
Show Notes
00:27 Show intro
01:04 Introducing Dr. Morris
02:07 Bart introduces the idea of psychological safety
02:36 Definition of psychological safety
03:09 Stats on psychological safety
05:03 Julie talks about her career path
05:44 What she was doing at Microsoft
06:52 What she discovered in the research at Microsoft
07:57 Psychological safety survey
08:15 If your org scores low on P.S., how do you improve?
09:38 Psychological safety - similar indicators as 'belonging'
10:29 What can managers do to foster this?
11:03 How did the program they developed work?
11:51 Experiences rolling out the program at Microsoft
12:09 Tapping into leaders' anxieties...
13:17 Are people looking for managers with these skills?
14:18 What do people learn in this psych safety program?
14:43 Negative reactivity - characterized by knee-jerk reactions
15:18 Shutting people down
17:24 Were managers willing to change?
18:46 Adapting these strategies to your managerial style
19:56 Bart introduces example scenario of tough environment
21:20 Give yourself a buffer to cool down
22:34 Tip 2: Listen without agenda
23:27 Schedule regular check-ins
25:39 All that small talk really helps!
26:37 Beginning of timing/misalignment
27:06 Tip 3: Model the vulnerability you hope to see
28:03 If you want your team to take risks, show them vulnerability
28:32 What is the distinction between weakness and vulnerability?
30:23 How do you model vulnerability?
33:56 Bart recaps 3 points
34:17 Common misconceptions about psychological safety
34:40 "It's not my job to be your mom"
36:17 "I'm just not a believer in all this touchy-feely stuff"
38:32 Final advice
38:46 Stick with it!
39:23 Thank yous
39:34 Outro
Show Transcript
Julie Morris: I think what we were really tapping into was a broader anxiety that managers often have wanting to be good leaders, wanting to know how to lead well, how to take, like, where is their li- lane of responsibility? What is actually within their realm of control? As you said sometimes we are in, in, broader companies that maybe are tough.
And where can we find places where we actually can make meaningful change?
Bart Egnal: Welcome to the Inspire Podcast, where we examine what it takes to intentionally inspire. I'm your host, Bart Egnal, president and CEO of the Humphrey Group. And if you've ever asked yourself, "How can you develop an authentic leadership presence?"
Or, "How can you tell stories that have people hanging off every word?" Then this podcast is for you. And it's not just for executives. This is a podcast for anyone who wants to influence and inspire others in their work, but also in their life
So my guest on today's episode of the Inspire Podcast is Dr. Julie Morris. And Dr. Morris who has a PhD in ethics from Duke, after getting her degree, she spent a career in tech, and you held interesting roles that we're gonna delve into in terms of the work you do, most recently at Microsoft, and where you did some pretty impressive work around understanding and fostering a culture of psychological safety.
So Dr. Morris, welcome to the Inspire Podcast.
Julie Morris: Thank you. It's lovely to be here.
Bart Egnal: Lovely to have you. And what I didn't mention in the intro, because I wanted to get all of your credentials and impressive career condensed, is that you also now work as a consultant with the Humphrey Group. And so we're very honored to have you on the team. And I know our clients, particularly in our, in the growing market of the US, are very grateful to the work you do. So thanks for joining us and for fusing your education, your career, and the work you do for this conversation today.
Julie Morris: Absolutely.
Bart Egnal: Psychological safety is a term that has, I would say, exploded into the lexicon of corporate world and of leadership development. And, just for people listening, how would you define what psychological safety is and explain why it's important?
Julie Morris: Sure. It's a really great topic. I think one of the people that defines it best is actually Amy Gallo. She works for the Harvard Business Review, and she defines psychological safety as, "A shared belief held by a team that it's okay to take risks, express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes, all without fear of negative consequences." And for me, I think that last part is really key.
People are unlikely to take risks if there is a concern for retaliation or professional consequences. So moving on from there, why does it matter? There's so many reasons it matters. If we wanna actually just jump right into the numbers,
Bart Egnal: Yeah, please ...
Julie Morris: studies have shown that teams who have psychological safety are 74% less stressed. 27% less likely to quit, so it reduces employee churn. There is a 12% increase in productivity. And one thing that I found really interesting is for teams who have safety incidents or safety concerns, if they have psychological safety on their team, there is a 40% reduction in safety incidents.
So our brains really- So it's really, it's
Bart Egnal: not just psychological safety, it's phys- Yeah ... psychologically, it ties to physical safety as well.
Julie Morris: Yeah, the more relaxed you are, the more confident you are, the more you feel empowered to be your full self at work, the better you do your job, the more accurate you are, the more productive you are.
So yes, it's wonderful to just talk about the human component- ... for psychological safety being something that feels positive, that feels good and respectful, but also there's a real bottom line impact for businesses to invest in this.
Bart Egnal: And I think, people are coming to acknowledge and the value of it, as you say, the impact of it.
And so that really brings us to this conversation because, I've had the privilege of working with leaders across so many industries, and there's often this disconnect between saying, "Hey, this is what I wanna create. I understand creating a more psychologically safe workplace is important," and then wondering, "How do I do it?"
Or even when they start doing it, they say I don't wanna lose X, Y, or Z." So that's why I wanted to have you on the show. I think you can really demystify what psychological safety is, and then I know you actually built a program at Microsoft on how that fosters. I did. So we will we will take people inside that program today.
But let's wind it back, and to you, and tell us about, tell me about your journey. Like, how did you go from ethics at Duke to Microsoft and psychological safety?
Julie Morris: Yeah, it's a little bit of a wild journey with some fun twists and turns along the way. So as you mentioned, I got my doctorate in ethics from Duke and taught for several years.
While I really loved teaching, and still do, it's one of the reasons I love being part of the Humphrey Group, I identified pretty early on that I was on a direct highway to burnout within higher education. So I made a wi- rather wild career pivot into instructional design and then into tech which is how I ended up at Glint, which is the company owned by Microsoft So to give you a little bit of context for the kind of work that I was doing at Microsoft, Glint is an employee engagement platform, and this whole- Okay
product was built around this really interesting question that they were asking, which was, what actually causes people to be engaged and high-performing at work?
So Glint had this team of social psychologists who had analyzed hundreds of millions of employee survey responses- Okay ... trying to figure out the answer to this question, and there were a handful of things that consistently connected with high-performing teams.
And this was things like purpose, empowerment, connection, well-being. And so they used all of this research to create a survey system that companies could then use to learn how they could build more engaged- ... and higher performing teams. So that environment is really where I started thinking more seriously about what does it take to make a high-performing team?
What actually makes people feel engaged and supported in work? And that's what led me to start asking questions about psychological safety and what it actually looks like in practice.
Bart Egnal: When we were prepping, you said there are six kind of pillars that Glint measured. What were they, and then from there what did you learn when you started looking into these?
Julie Morris: So the six pillars of success that Glint found that measured employee engagement was purpose, empowerment, connection, growth, well-being, and clarity. And when we started asking questions about this, one thing that I noticed was psychological safety actually impacts almost all of those categories. So what I started realizing was if we could figure out how to help managers increase the psychological safety on their team, it would also- impact and help them increase all of these other categories. It would help people have a greater sense of connection. It would inform their sense of purpose, all of it.
Bart Egnal: Because I imagine the managers looking at these scores would say great, I've got a high sense of belonging," or, "I have a low sense of belonging, but what do I do with this?
Like, how am I-
Julie Morris: Exactly.
Bart Egnal: Yeah. And so that you were the, the position to come in and help them answer that, right?
Julie Morris: So we had developed this amazing survey program. HR loved it because suddenly they had something that had been rather nebulous and ethereal. How do you even measure something like that?
We had the science- ... behind saying, "You can measure it." They were loving getting this data and these scores, but then we started hearing from managers. They would get their survey re- results back, see that their teams didn't have a strong sense of connection or belonging or well-being, and they would be asking, "Okay, great.
What do I do with this information?" "How do I improve?" They didn't know what to do with the data. So we had this whole subset of managers who wanted to improve, who wanted to cultivate high-performing teams, but they didn't know how. And that
Bart Egnal: was a problem. Because
Julie Morris: I imagine you-
Bart Egnal: Yeah, like you hear about oh, I'm low connection, like do I have more parties?
Or, I have sense of belonging. These people maybe don't fit with my team. Do I, how do I make someone belong? There, it's very difficult, I can understand, even for a conscientious, capable manager to answer that question of how do I adjust this?
Julie Morris: Exactly.
Bart Egnal: So you really said, all right, if you can Foster psychological safety, you will improve these...
the scores will improve because that, that was your belief, right?
Julie Morris: That was the question I started asking and exploring. And the work that we did with social psychologists on Glint's team really supported that theory. That if we could help managers increase their team's sense of psychological safety, that they actually would lead to better scores when they ran those surveys again.
Bart Egnal: Did you test it? So- Like, how did you reach that conclusion with the psychologists?
Julie Morris: I think what we learned when we started digging into it, Bart, was that psychological safety has a lot of the same indicators that a sense of belonging has, that if you- ... feel empowered at work, you are also empowered in yourself.
So there was just a lot of- ... points where we started say- we started seeing if people are having a sense of clarity, if they have a sense of purpose, if they feel like, they can ask questions at work, that those things mapped directly to a lot of the- ... categories that Glint was measuring that led to these high performing, high engaged teams.
So we started figuring out, okay, we think that there's a one-to-one relationship here, or at least- ... a pretty strong correlation. So then the question became, what can managers actually do in their day-to-day work? Where do they actually have agency to build psychological safety on their team? It's not always up to just one person, but are there things like practical actions that managers can take that help cultivate this?
Bart Egnal: And I think that's something that people listening are going to wonder, because I think that is the gap of saying, "All right I understand that an engaged workforce is critical. I understand the psychological work safe-," but I often hear managers or leaders say, but the company culture is leading to it," not- Right
or, "What can I do? I'm just one voice." So- ... so you really built a program to answer that question. And so tell me about the program. What did it, how did it work? If I was a Microsoft manager, what would I, what kind of modules would I take? And then let's dive into what was actually taught in it.
Julie Morris: Sure. So what I built was a webinar series that we ran quarterly, teaching managers basically these, these exact actions that we're about to talk about. Okay. So we invited our customers to send their managers to us to come to these trainings, and what was really awesome to see is that it actually became one of our most highly attended and highly requested- courses. So- Wow ... what we had created actually was really landing with people. It was filling- Wow ... some questions that they were asking based on the data and research that they were seeing. And Microsoft actually also caught wind of this and began running this program internally. So I delivered it to a couple different orgs within Microsoft.
Which I think told us a couple of different things, Bart. It told us that there was a need within the specific product of Glint where people were trying to figure out, okay, we have this survey data, what do we do with it? But even beyond that, I think what we were really tapping into was a broader anxiety that managers often have wanting to be good leaders.
Wanting to know how to lead well, how to take... Like, where is their li- lane of responsibility? What is actually within their realm of control? As you said sometimes we are in, in, broader companies that maybe are tough. And where- ... can we find places where we actually can make meaningful change?
And it was very awesome to hear that response from people, that this was clearly questions- ... that a lot of managers were asking.
Bart Egnal: And I think j- that, that's really neat to hear. I think, it really shows the desire that people have to reach their people and create that environment.
I also think, and I'd be interested in your perspective, that in the last f- six years, the expectations of managers, on managers and from managers have evolved.
Yeah. That, that employees are not willing to just accept everything, and they are demanding workplaces that support them, help them thrive. And the people that are demanding that of are managers. So d- is that supported by what you saw that people were looking to managers more intently for this kind of support?
Julie Morris: I think so. I think that, I think it was a two-fold thing, that managers- ... are feeling this press from employees to create environments that people wanna work in. Managers' responsibilities also shifted a lot after the COVID pandemic, where- ... they were having to learn to manage in different ways, to manage, globally dispersed teams, and so I think you're, I think you're exactly right.
There is this new value, I guess we could call it, that a lot of employees have. Yeah. Where they're looking for teams that they feel empowered, that they feel they can be- bring their full self to work.
Bart Egnal: Yeah. Which I have to say is a very positive development, and I think it's a great sign.
I'm happy to
Julie Morris: see it.
Bart Egnal: That's right. Yeah, I'm happy, yeah. Okay. So let's say here I am, I've signed up for the program.
Julie Morris: Okay.
Bart Egnal: And what are the things I'm going to learn? And, you can give me and the people listening to this podcast a mini course in how to create a more- Yeah
psychologically safe workplace. Let's
Julie Morris: do it.
Bart Egnal: And I think you have- Let's do it ... you have what? Three big things that you teach?
Julie Morris: I have three big tips, big juicy tips- Okay ... that you can start practicing today. So the first one that I often recommend to managers is to check your reactivity.
Bart Egnal: So what even is checking your reactivity?
What I'm trying to get at
Julie Morris: with that idea is this idea of negative reactivity. Okay. And negative reactivity is an impulsive response often characterized by knee-jerk reactions. So think about times when someone questions your decision, when people express concern or frustration that something is happening.
Basically anything that makes you feel like things are escalating very quickly, and this could look like a sudden feeling of defensiveness, a racing heart, irritation, feeling insulted- ... flashes of anger, or I've seen it also with managers, just this response to just want to shut the person down and explain why they're wrong And often this understandably leads to conflict, or at the very least, a breakdown in communication.
Because when you react this way, you're actually teaching your employees that it isn't safe for- ... or welcome for them to express their questions or concerns or, you know- ... voice their feelings.
Bart Egnal: This is the very antithesis of react- of psychological safety. Yeah. It's basically saying, "If your response or if your question or your statement is gonna trigger me, I'm gonna just shut you down or snap at you."
Yeah.
Julie Morris: I do not welcome that kind of interaction, and nobody wants to experience feeling shut down or just- ... told in front of their peers, "That's not right. You're not allowed to feel that way." And so what everyone else observes in those moments is, "I'm not gonna do what Judy just did, because that did not go well," so they learn based on how you respond in those moments what's actually an acceptably... what's the behavior that this team and this manager- ... is okay with. And what we see from managers who slow down and react to their employees with openness and curiosity are ones that actually end up helping to foster this sense of inclusion and rapport- and honest questions when people are really wondering, "Can I ask questions about this? Is it okay to say that I don't know the answer to something- ... or to question this leadership's decision on this?" So there's a
Bart Egnal: couple ways that- so let me just, let- Yeah ... let me just ask you about this one, because I think, I totally agree with you.
I think anyone listening, here we are in a psychologically safe conversation, would agree with it. And yet I think people would also say, particularly people who have been, in their workplace, achieved a certain level of success, often have adopted this, style of s- frankly snapping at people or getting aggressive.
Yeah. A- and they seem to conflate it with their success. Were you... What... Did you find that people actually were, A, willing to check their reactivity, and B, had a desire to modify it? Or did they tend to say, "This is just who I am, and that's why I'm in this role"? What was your experience?
Julie Morris: It's a really good question, Bart, and I think one thing that I have seen with any of the, suggestions that I have is that there are leaders who are resistant to it or think "Oh, I just don't need to change that way."
But mostly, if people are asking questions where they wanna learn about this, something isn't working for them. Something is-
Bart Egnal: Okay ...
Julie Morris: is not... Some- there's something that they want to change. There's a reason they're at my doorstep wanting to- ... hear, "What can I do differently?" And so most of the time I hear from leaders that doesn't really work for me," or, "I'm not like that."
But they'll think about it. They'll entertain the idea. But I think your question also brings up something else that's really important which maybe is a really important way to actually caveat and frame this, our whole conversation, which is anything that I'm about to share with you or guidance cannot and should not look like you suddenly trying to become a Dr.
Julie Morris manager out in the world. N- no way. We don't need a ton of me running around. You need to f- do the work to figure out, okay, so there's this idea of checking my reactivity, but I'm, like, a really, quick-thinking person, and I just... I'm candid, and I'm frank, and I love that about myself.
So maybe the question then becomes how do you take the wisdom in that teaching and apply it to your managerial style, where you can figure- ... out, "Okay, I could make it look like this, for the way that I manage." Maybe it looks like, yeah, I still speak really quickly, but sometimes I'll just take a quick breath and pause before I just respond, or maybe if it's something that I'll respond quickly unless I notice that I'm actually quite angry.
And maybe that's a moment where I will actually employ this particular technique. So I think it really- ... depends, but ultimately, I think you do need to figure out how to make this, these skills something that feels natural to you.
Bart Egnal: So if you ha- that's helpful. So if you have someone who came to you and said, "Look, I recognize this in myself.
I have these reactions. I get angry. I get defensive. I feel criticized. I operate in an environment though-" Yeah ... "to be honest, where you have to be on your guard at all times because, you know- ... say I sit at the executive table, I compete for capital, and our CEO kind of pits us against each other."
How would you advise that person to begin practicing this kind of psychological safety technique when they're conditioned, or at least they're telling you they believe they're conditioned, to be in an environment- ... where they have to be aggressive or defensive?
Julie Morris: It's a really good question, Bart.
I think there's a couple of things that you can do, and again it would have to be something that you'd have to work out in the nitty-gritty details of like- ... what's actually... what's, what kind of change is actually possible in your particular company or org or setup? But generally speaking, there's a couple of things that I would advise that person.
Okay. I think the first is to really build self-awareness in yourself.
What does it- Okay ... look like? When you start feeling angry, when you start- ... feeling defensive, when you're not responding out of a place of, "This is actually what I think and the best way forward, and here's why" but you're just, feeling gritty at somebody and- and wanna take something back for your own self. So if you can start identifying what does that feel like for me? How do I recognize those moments? That gives you a really important data point to then say, "Oh, you know what? When my heart starts racing like this, I know it probably means I'm pretty angry.
So maybe now is not a moment for me to just respond." And- ... if you're in a high-paced environment, maybe it's saying, "Dave, I'm gonna get back to you. I have to, jump to a meeting in five minutes, but can I follow back up with you at 12?"
Give yourself some kind of a buffer-
Bart Egnal: Right
Julie Morris: to cool down before just, running ahead- ... and f- there's always just this feeling that we have to respond in the moment, we have to rush through, we have to show that we're on our toes. But I actually think there's a lot of wisdom in saying you don't actually have to. Just take five minutes.
Step outside, look at trees, breathe air, whatever it is that helps you reset. And come back where you're more regulated in your own body, you can respond with more- ... intentionality and clarity, and that kind of response leads to more productive outcomes.
Bart Egnal: I love it. So the, the first, your first point is really to check your reactivity, and the, the number one way you can do that is by developing a self-awareness when you are being triggered.
So it's not that you won't be triggered, but it's that you can be- we're all gonna get triggered ... aware of it. We're all gonna be triggered. We're humans. We're humans. But you can then- I just get mad
Julie Morris: sometimes.
Bart Egnal: Exactly. You can be then conscious of that and intentional around how you respond- Right
and therefore reduce the kind of reactions that can, you know- Exactly ... roadside okay. Yes. So let's go to your second point. So that's tip one. Great. What's tip two?
Julie Morris: Tip two is to listen without agenda. And- ... what I'm getting at with this idea is I think managers often fall into this trap of thinking that listening to their employees is either to get new information or to solve their problems.
Bart Egnal: Okay.
Julie Morris: But listening is also about being with people, seeing them, hearing them, basically at its barest bones, just being humans together. So when I talk about listening without agenda, I'm talking about a practice where we focus on understanding and empathizing, rather than only ever problem-solving or explaining.
It just has a totally different purpose.
Bart Egnal: Okay.
Julie Morris: So there's a few ways that I think leaders can practice this, and these are pretty practical.
Bart Egnal: Okay. Let's hear them. If
Julie Morris: you're not already doing it, you can schedule regular check-ins with your employees. So making sure that you ha- are seeing them, checking in with them on a da- on a regular basis, and this could be, once every week, once every two weeks, but having a moment where you see, how is this person showing up to work?
How are they? What does their face look like? Getting to this, human interfacing- ... where you're seeing how are they? How are they holding up under the weight of their job a- and work and life? And-
Bart Egnal: So listening to them as a person, not just to solve a problem or tackle something.
Julie Morris: If we only ever have that transactional relationship where we are just like, "I need this from you. I need this from you," we what actually happens is, it's really interesting from a social psychology- ... point of view, is that we are less inclined to assume best intent when something- goes wrong. We are less inclined to say you know-" I can understand there's broader context here for why this person is late on this deadline, because I know what just happened, with his kid last week, or whatever the thing is. And that's not to say that we don't have accountability at work, or that, you can't s- hold expectations and ex- expect your employees to meet deadlines.
What it means is that the person that you're working with is also a human, and that actually impacts your psychology- ... of how you relate to them, which then creates a different kind of con- con- condition and environment for your working relationship.
Bart Egnal: Yeah, so it's really being able to take that time where it's not just transactional, as you said, where there's safety so that when you do need to tackle something, there's a bro- there- there's, they understand you and there's you've built up some, credibility-
Julie Morris: Yeah
Bart Egnal: with the person.
Julie Morris: Yeah. It just ends up being a little bit of like social lubricant, where you're like I"-
...
Julie Morris: "That didn't feel great, but I know this person. I have a trust"- Yes ... and a working respect for who they
Bart Egnal: are. And they've cared about me too. Yeah.
Julie Morris: They've extended to me in the past and helped me out with different things, so-
Bart Egnal: Right
Julie Morris: there's a little bit more reciprocity here.
Bart Egnal: So all that small talk really helps. All the listening, caring about someone, it may seem pointless, but it's actually quite-
Julie Morris: Yeah ...
Bart Egnal: an important point.
Julie Morris: I love that you said that, Bart, because something that I have talked about in these sessions before is I think a lot of people sometimes feel frustrated with small talk, and it gets a bad rap where you're like- I have to talk about the weather before we're allowed to get to what we're actually doing this meeting for. But what I would challenge you to think about and reframe it is think about small talk with a purpose. This isn't just something to fill silence, but how can you use that time at the beginning to talk about something that's a little bit more meaningful, that builds- some kind of human connection, especially if you are in a remote environment. You... That time needs to do double work, where you are... you're not passing them in the hall or seeing them at the water cooler. So you need to have moments where you can actually build some kind of connection with somebody, some kind of, point of common interest.
Bart Egnal: Okay so yeah, I think it's a really simple and yet powerful second point you're making, which is that this listening without an agenda and putting the time in, whether it's, as you say, small talk or in your regular checkpoints, and really investing the time to build a social lubricant. You build a safe time so that when you do have to talk about something more serious or you do have to, have a tough conversation, you've built the trust.
Okay. Exactly. So that's point two.
Julie Morris: Exactly,
Bart Egnal: yeah. Let's go to your third point.
Julie Morris: Okay. So my third tip for building psychological safety is to model the vulnerability you hope to see.
And what I'm talking about when we explore this idea of vulnerability is a lot of managers, I think, get ambitious and excited about, "Oh, I'm gonna do this.
I'm gonna have the safest, most supportive team ever." Yes. But it takes time, right? And I think one of the components of that is understanding that trust is not suddenly built by deciding you're gonna be a safe manager and then expecting your team to respond with absolute candor. Because people are way more inclined to risk vulnerability, to s- you know, ask a question, to say that they don't know something, to ask for help, to, a- That's right
say that they disagree with leadership when they see that it's been received well, when they see that those moments are not punished or interpreted as weakness or dismissed. So if you want your team to take risks, to ask questions- ... y- to share their perspective, you need to show them that it's safe to do that.
And I think one of the most practical ways that you can start doing that is by modeling your own vulnerability, by making your own imperfection visible. So-
Bart Egnal: Okay. So let's delve into this because, I do- Yeah ... I think there's a really important distinction between vulnerability and weakness.
Julie Morris: Yes.
Bart Egnal: Like showing, like- Yes ... so for example, in our coaching at The Humphrey Group we would talk to our clients about avoiding m- unnecessary minimizing modifiers where someone would say, "Oh, I really messed that project up. I didn't know if it was gonna be successful. It was a, I thought I didn't know what I was doing."
We would advise against that, and yet vulnerabil- as, unnecessary diminishment and weakness, but vulnerability's very different, isn't it?
Julie Morris: Yes. Yes. This isn't about diminishing your efforts or not acknowledging w- where you have, either succeeded or not succeeded as a leader. It's about a level of candor, and it does come up more frequently- when you have made a mistake, and this is actually where I think The Humphrey Group and my own work in psychological safety pairs very nicely. Because one of the things that we talk about at The Humphrey Group is this idea of vision, right? That we have an idea- ... about where we're gonna take the team, and that doesn't mean that we do it perfectly every time.
That doesn't mean our execution is flawless. But what it means is that when we have hiccups, when we say "You know what? I made the wrong call there," that you reframe that with this idea of, "But this is where I think we're h- this is where we're headed as a team." "This is where I want us to go."
And what happens in that reframe is you have suddenly made it a culture about learning and growth towards a specific goal and not one where you have to perform perfectly.
Bart Egnal: Okay. So- I like it. So let's say you want to create that culture, and by through modeling vulnerability.
Julie Morris: Yes.
Bart Egnal: How should you do it? Yes. What does it look like to model that kind of vulnerability?
Julie Morris: I think it's a little bit of what we just talked about, right? That when you do have these moments where you don't know something, where you made a mistake, that you are candid with your team, that you say, "This is, this was not the call that I think I should have made, and now that we have this extra data, here's how I would do it differently."
It's saying, Bart, I don't have that information exactly in this moment, but I'm gonna go find out and report back to you," so that you are modeling that leadership and strength actually can look like not knowing something sometimes. Sometimes it looks like we make mistakes, but it's what do we do with those moments?
What do we do with those moments of information?
Bart Egnal: I like that. I think it's not... And what I like the way, the example you're describing is it's not that you're casting, self-doubt or leaving people to doubt your leadership, just the opposite. You're modeling- ... that leaders don't have all the answers.
Yes. Leaders have to work through problems. Yes. And often the path to solutions is meandering, if you will.
And so that's, it's critical to do that, to give people the psychological safety to do the same.
Julie Morris: Yes. There is, there was this moment at Duke where Duke Graduate School is a wild and intense place.
Students are always assigned s- maybe 1,000 pages of reading a week on top of courses and papers, and your ability to perform in class, ask good questions, participate in discussion, all this is going to influence your chances of getting a letter of recommendation. So there's this h- there's this atmosphere that's actually has a lot of crossover to high-pressure corporate environments where, we're surrounded by capable people, but the stakes feel so high.
And there's this constant pressure to perform well, to look like you know what you're doing. And this idea of modeling vulnerability was something that, I think for me, started showing up way back then. Because when I was teaching Duke graduate students, part of the challenge was helping them navigate that environment, was to create a space where they felt like it was actually safe to learn.
That's literally what- ... they're there to do, and there was this energy that they felt like they needed to show up to class already knowing everything. And so what I did in that environment, and it goes back to exactly what you were just talking about, Bart, with this idea of what does actual strong leadership look like.
Sometimes it looks like not knowing something. Sometimes it looks like- ... the point is growth and- ... and working towards a shared goal, not having it all together s- quite in a perfect, tidy little box. And so often what I would do when I was working with them, if they mentioned something that I didn't, a- an article or an author that I hadn't read, I would tell them, "Oh, I don't know about Foucault.
Can you explain to me who this author is- ... and the relevance to the rest of the class? Let's all learn together."
Bart Egnal: I
Julie Morris: like that. And what that did was if the professor, if the leader at the front of the class is openly admitting that it's totally normal to not know everything-
...
Julie Morris: Then it changes the dynamic to one where we are all growing together, we are all learning together.
So I think that this really translates- I
Bart Egnal: love that. Yeah ...
Julie Morris: handily to these other environments, right? Where we're trying to figure out what does actual strength look like in a leader. Yeah. And I think this is what I'm trying to get at when I talk about modeling vulnerability.
Bart Egnal: I love it. I love it. So to recap, we're, the, the three points.
One, manage your reactivity. Two, listen without agenda. And three, model vulnerability.
Julie Morris: Yes.
Bart Egnal: So three very practical ways that you can begin to foster a climate of, psychological safety.
Julie Morris: Exactly
Bart Egnal: So Julie, I know- Yes ... I know we're reaching the end, but I don't wanna end before we tackle some of the common things that people say that might not be accurate-
about psychological safety. Yes. Because it can be a loaded term, right? Ah.
Julie Morris: Yes. Where,
Bart Egnal: There's just a visceral reaction to it. Like maybe I'll start with one, and then you can share one or two from your experience.
Julie Morris: Yeah. Great.
Bart Egnal: And I've heard someone, I remember once talking about psychological safety, and someone said, "I don't need any of that.
It's not my j- this is a workplace. It's not my job to be their mom."
Julie Morris: Yes.
Bart Egnal: Ugh. Meaning the employee. What- Yes ... how would you respond to that statement?
Julie Morris: I heard that one too, Bart. It's such a good one. The, I think the first thing I would say is, that's correct. It is not your job- ... to be your mom your employee's mom or friend, or another one I hear is your therapist.
But what I would say is, that doesn't mean you are excused from creating good working conditions for your employees. I think part of being an effective leader means that you put in the extra work to create the structure, to create the clarity, to create the environment and boundaries necessary for your employees to feel respected and empowered to do their best work.
And I think that this can look a lot of different ways for a lot of different leaders. If you're, we talked about this earlier, right? If you're not a warm and fuzzy person, that's fine. The work isn't here to just become one caricature of a, quote-unquote- ... psychologically safe person, but figure out what does it look like to, for me to be creating an environment where people are respected and treated with dignity?
Bart Egnal: Good. Okay, so what's another one you hear a lot of? Yeah. A reaction to psychological s- that you wanna debunk or address.
Julie Morris: Probably one of m- the first times I delivered this course, there actually was a manager who maybe was voluntold to come, and I remember distinctly him putting in the chat I'm just not a big believer in all this touchy-feely stuff."
Okay. And it brought me up short, 'cause I had approached this from such a science-backed perspective. This is about research and data, sir. But there is this assumption, I think, that people often make about psychological safety that it's, it's just touchy-feely stuff where we're gonna talk about our feelings.
It's not serious. It's not something that belongs in the business world. And to that, I think I respond, that's absolutely incorrect. It is absolutely about data. It is not something that is, you know-
Julie Morris: Only fluff. It's about using all of the tools that we have available to us to build effective and engaged and high-performing teams, and the data tells us that part of the foundation for that is built on psychological safety.
It's built on building trust and mutual respect. So in that sense, psychological safety's actually just a very effective and efficient way to do just that, to be an excellent manager who is leading a high-performing team.
Bart Egnal: Which is what hopefully everyone wants.
Julie Morris: I would hope so.
Bart Egnal: Yeah. Julie, I really appreciate this conversation.
I know psychological safety is a term that gets bandied about a lot now. Yeah. And I think there is a dawning awareness or an emerging consensus that it's great to have, and yet I think that's where the consensus ends. Very few people can define, as you have today, what it is, and even fewer can say, "How do I actually go about creating it?"
And so people- ... are left in this, this gulf between, "Yeah, matters, but I don't even know what I can do to address it." But what do I even do about it?
Julie Morris: What do I even do?
Bart Egnal: And so they just go back to it's the company. So what you've done today is you provide three very, clear steps, and I think left everyone with clarity that you, whatever company you're in, whatever organization you're part of, you have the ability and opportunity to foster psychological safety.
Exactly and it's not touchy-feely to that manager, but it's instead something that's foundationally part of driving high performance.
So-
Julie Morris: That's exactly right ...
Bart Egnal: I appreciate it. H- what is the- Yeah, thank you ... what is the final message that you have for people listening as they perhaps begin their journey towards psychological, fostering psychological safety?
Julie Morris: I'd say stick with it. It's something that as you begin exploring and asking questions about this for your own leadership style, can feel uncomfortable at first, and can feel maybe a little awkward and weird. And what I would say is that's gonna be normal anytime we are making some kind of behavioral change that, we wanna make in our lives.
And if you can press through that moment of feeling a little- Discomfort ... awkward in your own skin-
Yeah that, on the tail end of it is where you're gonna see real results with your team and their level of performance and ultimately, how much you enjoy working together.
Bart Egnal: A good call to action, and Dr.
Julie Morris, thank you for coming on the Inspire Podcast.
Julie Morris: Thank you for having me, Bart. It's wonderful to be here.
Bart Egnal: I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Inspired Podcast and the conversation that I had with our guest. And hopefully you left with some really practical, tangible tools and tips that you can use to be more consistently inspirational. If you're enjoying the pod, I'll ask you a favor. Please rate and review it.
I love the comments, appreciate the reviews, and the visibility allows others to discover the pod. It's really how word of mouth has spread the Inspired Podcast to so many listeners and helped us keep making this great content. Stay tuned. We'll be back in two weeks with another inspiring conversation.
Thanks so much for listening. Go forth and inspire
