What the chapter on building trust misses about creating psychological safety.

Anna Swayne: Okay. Hello, everybody welcome. We're so glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Missing chapters, and as everyone joins, please put in the chat where you're zooming in from. We'd love to hear yeah where you're where you're zooming in from Kiki. I don't even know where you're zooming in from where.

Kiki Wilkinson: Great question I'm on. I'm on the central coast of California, so kind of right in between LA and and San Francisco on the coast.

Anna Swayne: Oh, fun!

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: It's beautiful streamy right now, with some ocean waves. I'm in a landlocked state, so we get lakes. I'm in Salt Lake.

Kiki Wilkinson: Like city. Okay.

Anna Swayne: But yeah, it's really hot right now.

Kiki Wilkinson: Early.

Anna Swayne: Hot like. I don't know if I'm meant for the heat, because it's kind of desert here. People think, oh, mountains green, but it's desert here, with mountains.

Kiki Wilkinson: Is the lake, so do you go and jump in the lake like? Is that something you can go do to like? Cool off.

I mean, there are lakes. You can do that. There's an assumption that the Great Salt Lake, but it's so much salt you don't want to get in it. No, but it's cool, like when you fly. If you ever fly into Salt Lake, it's really pretty to see. Yeah.

Anna Swayne: And there's some salt flats that look. They're just like bright white that you can drive out to, and it feels like you're at the beach.

Kiki Wilkinson: Crazy.

Anna Swayne: Definitely not. You're definitely, not.

Kiki Wilkinson: Nuts. I need to go see ya city. I've never been there.

Anna Swayne: Oh, you should. The mountains you can't beat like when you fly into Salt Lake. It's just like these mountains are just so picturesque, so gorgeous.

Yeah, it really is pretty. But it's hot. Yeah. So you go to the mountains like, I'm at 4,200 feet or at my house, and I can go hiking up to almost 9,000 feet within a few.

Kiki Wilkinson: Wow!

Anna Swayne: Yeah, to get to a trailhead and then hike yeah, it's pretty.

Kiki Wilkinson: That's incredible.

Anna Swayne: Really good views.

Kiki Wilkinson: Wow, okay, so so incredible.

Anna Swayne: If you're joining us, please tell us where you're zooming in from, we'd love to hear what part of the country you're you're joining us from. Oh, super excited for today's topic. This is something I've been waiting for. All right, Susan. Yes, Orlando. Awesome.

I bet it's hot there.

Kiki Wilkinson: Oceanside. You're not that far away from me, Allie.

Anna Swayne: Okay, cool, excellent. Yeah, please put in. We'd love to hear. Represent, represent your area and tell us where you're calling him from. Okay?

So. Yeah. And if you don't want to tell us where you're calling in from, if you're having a favorite snack right now, or favorite drink. put that in I'm always looking for new snack ideas. but I'm very excited to jump into this session. Missing chapters, if this is your 1st time joining us missing chapters really is this series that we do where we talk about and uncover different topics that weren't addressed in the Hr. Handbook. And so we love to get a little bit dirty, a little bit spicy, if you will, and I'm so excited for Kiki to join us, because this is the topic I've been wanting to talk to her about for a really long time now, and she's got such an expertise in this topic, and we were just talking to before this about her journey to where she's at today. So I'm excited for her to share with all of us.

I will be your host.

I'm Anna, and I've been at Nava for just a little bit over a year, and if you're not familiar with Nava, Nava is a full service modern benefit brokerage. We help small medium sized businesses get better access to healthcare. And so we design and build those plans for You know, those companies want that want to offer great benefits to their employees. Okay, so Kiki, let's get into you. We had to like literally stop talking right before this, because I was just so excited about this topic and her journey. So yeah, Kiki. introduce us to you.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, definitely. My name is Kristen. Most people know me as Kiki, and it's easier to hear in a crowd. So it's great for Starbucks or anytime. I'm in a coffee shop. But either one works.

I started thrive, mind collaborative after a corporate career really burning out of a corporate career. I spent almost a decade at Airbnb, started when the company was really small. Funny, not funny story. My parents actually thought I was potentially going to get trafficked, because when I got the job they were like Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! They're flying you to San Francisco.

You've given them all of your personal, identifying information. You're staying with strangers at a stranger's house like this does not seem okay and fast forward. You know, it became what it became and we had so many, you know, crazy experiences along the way. It taught me so much. It was an incredible company, incredible people that I worked with And when I left I had spent most of my time in the learning and development and leadership development space mainly in trust and safety, so focused on. How do we take care of people that are dealing with?

You know the worst of the worst cases, or trying to mitigate risks from happening. How do we take care of those folks? It's a much different. It's kind of like, if you think of 9, 1 1 operators like, how do we take care of those folks and ensure that their wellness is taken care of because they're hearing about things that are potentially stress inducing. Or there's like this vicarious stress or vicarious trauma that people experience. So that was kind of my background. And I thought, Okay, well, if I'm gonna start my business, it should be in learning and development consulting obviously. So I started doing that. I worked with a couple of companies, Doordash, a couple of smaller companies as well. Supporting them and creating learning and development courses within their organizations. So it. It was great. I knew what I was doing. I was getting great feedback, but it just wasn't super fulfilling, and I think I had gotten to a point after burnout where anything that wasn't super fulfilling, felt kind of like a waste of time.

And I started to realize it mainly because when folks would contact me they would contact me to come in and bring a training. So some sort of a transfer of knowledge. You know, we're gonna talk about psychological safety. Okay, so what is it? How do we promote it? How do we repair it if it's been lost or ruptured? which is great. Transfer of knowledge is a great 1st step.

But it doesn't actually cultivate behavior. Change some of the folks in that room, you know, whoever I was training or or doing a workshop with, would you know, if they were highly motivated and highly self aware, may start to shift some of their behaviors.

But that wasn't the typical case, and so it just didn't feel as fulfilling. And I around the same time my attorney, actually the attorney that filed my Llc. For my business reached out. She was like, I'm so burned out. I'm gonna run away from my practice. I'm gonna move to remote island. I need you to coach me. And I was like.

I'm not a coach, and I'm like Googling like, can I do this? Is it like monitor? Do I need a certification like, how do I do this? So we did just a beta test and we did. 3 months together. We were meeting weekly, and after the 3 months she she exchanged feedback for the coaching coaching, which I was like, what is this had to like? Take a lot of courses last minute and figure out what I was doing. and by the end of it she was like, how do I book for the rest of the year? And I felt like it was so fulfilling, so to have that on both sides. Not only the really great feedback from the client of like Whoa. I haven't felt this good in a long time. You've made such a difference for me. And she changed a lot of her habits based on on the coaching. It really was like the behavioral change part is so hard learning something new, not as hard, but applying it so much harder. So I think that's that's where I fell kind of fast backwards into coaching, and I just found it to be so fulfilling. I love it so much. And that's now 90% of my business.

Anna Swayne: So fascinating, and I know you do a lot of individual coaching group coaching, leadership coaching which is very exciting, so we can.

Kiki Wilkinson: And.

Anna Swayne: Those of you out there listening like this is Kiki. I know someone just recently joined us. So this is Kiki. She's gonna we're gonna talk about psychological safety today. But I think it's important to know your background and like how you came into this, what you've learned. And so we were talking right before this. And what you just mentioned of like, yeah, it's good to like, have this learning and development. I know a lot of Hr leaders and professionals think about. Okay, yeah, what is our strategy for learning and development? And that's great. That's a great 1st step. But there's these other steps that need to fall in place if behavior wants to change. And I think that's really cool, that you have found this you know, this unique opportunity to take companies on that journey all the way through. Which makes you more than qualified to talk about this topic. So let's jump into it. Kiki. Let's let's let's just start out. I know psychological safety is a buzzword. It's a hot topic. I see it all over Linkedin and and different communities that I'm in. So let's just start out by how do you define it? in like working with leaders and teams like when you go into a company like what it? What is that grounding that you do around this time?

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah. great question. So I think, the 1st person that I started reading her work was Amy Edmondston. So oftentimes, if I am doing a workshop on psychological safety. That's 1 of the 1st slides is what is psychological safety. Let's ground in what this is. So we're all using the same definition, and she defines it as a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.

And I think the only thing that I would adjust there, because I think there's a lot of confusion. We talked about this right before the session between trust and psychological safety. And I can talk a little bit about that more. But I think it's really the environment when we're talking about psychological safety, we're talking about creating an environment where people feel safe enough to take risks. share their truth. I think we all have our own unique lived experiences. And so we may have different truths, and sometimes it's messy. Sometimes it's hard, but they folks feel safe to bring that up and folks feel safe to admit mistakes, because they know they're not going to be punished, or you know, embarrassed by that. But rather it's going to be seen as a learning opportunity or a growth opportunity.

I think just being able to. One of the easiest things is, do you feel like you can in your work? And maybe there's, you know, if folks want to share in the chat too like, do you feel safe enough to go into a room with your team or your broader cross functional team and say, Hey, this isn't working. Can we figure out a different way to approach this?

If you don't feel safe to say that, or you're like. Well, I could say that in some rooms, but not others.

I would then start to look at what level of psychological safety you have in different areas in that room where you feel like you could totally do that. What are the elements that make that room feel safe? And then you can start to expand it from there. But that's really, that's really how I would define it is you. It's an environment where you feel safe enough to bring things up. And you know it's going to be met with curiosity instead of judgment.

Anna Swayne: Oh, that that's actually really important. Evaluation met with curiosity versus judgment. how do you? How do you know if that's happening?

Maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but like.

Kiki Wilkinson: Totally.

Anna Swayne: Like that is like so so valuable to be like as you're walking through and really being honest like, am I in an environment where I can, you know, share my opinions, etc. What you just said. yeah, one know or evaluate that.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, I think as leaders, I think it's becoming more self aware we're all we're all in such a fast paced environment. So I don't think that most leaders, I don't think, have negative intent. But when we're in a very safe or a very fast environment, we're moving very quickly. We can inadvertently kind of not think about safety. And so it could be as some as simple as you know. Hey? What if we? What if we tried doing it this way. Maybe then we could solve for this problem as well, and feed 2 birds with one scone right like. And then the person says, no, we've always done it this way. even if it's like, you know what we've always done it this way. So let's just keep doing it the way we've done it right like that in on the surface. That doesn't seem like it would rupture safety or even trust.

But underneath it you're you're dismissing an idea. So I think that's an example of not showing up with curiosity an example of showing up with curiosity. I honestly, I think at the end of the day as humans. We all just want to feel, seen and heard and understood.

And so, if you can remember that as a leader and showing up in a way to go. Huh! Anna, tell me more about that. Why, why would we move in that direction instead of this direction that we've been going in. Tell me more. Right? And so it's that takes time. So if you're in a super fast paced environment, right? That's totally like the opposite of what you think of when you're like, okay, we have to be efficient. We gotta make decisions quickly. And we have to.

Anna Swayne: Agile.

Kiki Wilkinson: And you know which you can do both. But I think there's an investment upfront, especially with teams like an investment upfront of that curiosity of building that relational trust so that you can build an environment of psychological safety.

Does that answer your question?

Anna Swayne: Oh, my gosh, yes, there's just so much there. I I love that, too, because it really is at the individual level. But then, like, you know, start to expand. So so why do you think that you know the psychological safety often gets overlooked, even even in like very trust, focus oriented cultures or organizations.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, I'm so interested in the connection between trust and psychological safety, because I think it's where a lot of leaders or teams get tripped up.

Anna Swayne: Okay.

Kiki Wilkinson: Trust to me, feels really big and conceptual. So I've done presentations on trust before and defining trust. There's actually a really good book that was suggested to me by a dear friend. And it's called the Thin, the Thin Book of Trust by Feltman. I forget his 1st name but Feltman Charles Feltman. Maybe the thin book of trust, and it really is thin like it's a it's a thin, quick read.

Anna Swayne: Brilliant Title.

Kiki Wilkinson: Brilliant, right? Very, very logical. But but trust does feel really kind of big and conceptual in general. If you ask anyone what trust is define trust. Right? You're gonna get a bunch of different answers. But you'll start to see themes if you start to ask, what does Trust feel like to you. And I think that's where we can kind of start to get to the root like go beyond theory. And so, you know, trust is more about the relationship that you have with one another.

I trust that you'll show up on time. I trust that you will do what you say you're going to do. I trust that you'll have my back as my leader. Right? You could have high trust with a manager, but then within a team maybe you don't have any psychological safety, so you can have both and not and have one, but not the other. In certain instances. Because I think psychological safety. I said it before, it's more about the environment. right? So trust is more relational. Psychological safety feels smaller and maybe more practical. And I think that's why it's become a buzzword, because safety feels practical, right like we know what safety means.

Anna Swayne: Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: But I think, and it shows up in like the smallest moments. It's not like this big, overarching policy. It's not. It's it's how we run our meetings. It's how we give feedback. It's how we handle mistakes.

Anna Swayne: Hmm.

Kiki Wilkinson: And I think because it's a little less obvious, it tends to get missed.

Even in cultures where people feel like there's high trust. there can be a lack of psychological safety in the environment.

An example of this right? An example of this is like at Airbnb when we just started to take off. And you know we had high trust. We were very, very innovative. You have to have trust and and psychological safety in order to be innovative. I think we did have psychological safety at the time as well.

But we started to ramp up right, and people started to know what Airbnb was. We had like an actual website. And it was working. You know, we had different teams, and we started hiring these like quick sidebar before Airbnb. I was a surgery scheduler for 5 orthopedic surgeons and a pain management doctor and I was planning to go to Med school meds or the nursing program had a 2 year. Wait list. I saw this thing called Airbnb. I was like cool. I can work work remotely and study on the side. So this is great, you know.

Anna Swayne: And.

Kiki Wilkinson: And then it was like 10 years later, and I was like, I guess I worked at a tech company. And you know.

Anna Swayne: Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: Dreams of being in the medical field are long behind me. But the you know, that was who they were hiring.

Anna Swayne: Hmm.

Kiki Wilkinson: They weren't hiring ex Googlers, or ex face or twitter, or even pinterest, right? Like we weren't hiring. We weren't well known enough to to get those types of folks?

So they were hiring ex surgery schedulers, right? So who had no idea what they were doing in terms. You know I had customer service knowledge, but that was about it.

And once we got a little bit bigger we started hiring folks from these bigger companies that had all this knowledge and our psychological safety plummeted. Did we trust those people absolutely? They had amazing expertise. Most of them were very nice. But man, an ex surgery scheduler in a room of ex googlers talking about what this policy should look like. I was like, I'm not gonna speak up. I might have ideas, but I'm.

Anna Swayne: That's that is so fascinating.

Kiki Wilkinson: Right? And that can even yeah, that. And then snowball right?

Anna Swayne: Oh!

Kiki Wilkinson: So I I think, changes and shifts. I think you can. You can have a really, psychologically safe environment, and then quickly, it kind of gets ruptured. But nothing bad necessarily happened right like it wasn't a bad. We were so excited to hire people who actually knew what they were doing, because we sure didn't. We were just figuring it out as we went, you know. So. But the psychological safety, even though the trust was still high psychological safety. Yeah, because I think.

Anna Swayne: You because the environment had changed. All of a sudden these new people come in. Okay, that makes sense. The task sense.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, trust builds that relationship right? So all of a sudden, these new folks came in that we didn't have relationships with. So maybe there was a little bit lower trust in terms of the relationship. But psychological safety is what really shapes that environment. So they're not the same thing. But you need to. One feeds into the other. You have to have both. You can't have a psychologically safe environment with no trust, and you also can't build trust. If there's not some psychological safety.

Anna Swayne: wow, man, that is like power. Right there, especially for us in leadership positions, you know and understand the difference, because i've seen that now that you're describing that, I've seen that at other places I've worked and and don't know if I've labeled it that way. But now that you're saying it. I'm like, Oh, my gosh! That's exactly what happened.

Kiki Wilkinson: And I think.

Anna Swayne: Gets. That's why it's so important for these conversations. So we can all kind of understand. And you sharing that example, kind of just put it all into perspective. So as leaders like, what is, what is our role like? What is our role? How do we play in this? How do what behavior should we be taking on? Or, you know, navigating in this in this scenario that you just described? Like. yeah, how how does the leader navigate that.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: What role do they play?

Kiki Wilkinson: I have so many things to say about this. Let's see how I can be as succinct as possible. You know. I think that it all starts with leadership. I think we oftentimes those folks that feel like there's not psychological safety. They're not going to speak up and say, Hey, I don't feel psychologically safe to their to someone above them. Right? And so I think it's the leader's duty to really model this in everyday moments.

You know, it's not just what's on your core values list, or what's what your vision statement is right like, those are lovely things and very important. I do some like business coaching as well for small businesses, and that is definitely an anchor. That's important.

Anna Swayne: But again similar to a training.

Kiki Wilkinson: It is. It's not something that cultivates behavior, change or behavior shift in general. And so a leader who is modeling. taking accountability for their mistakes and sharing the mistakes that they've made and the learning lessons that they've had from it. Growth, mindset, right? How can you model that growth mindset for.

Anna Swayne: Years.

Kiki Wilkinson: In front of your team or in front of the broader team. I think that's what builds safety, especially because vulnerability like that is contagious.

I don't know if you've ever been in a room where a question is asked and everyone's kind of silent, and everyone's waiting for someone else to speak up first, st and then the 1st person, the first, st like, brave soul. This always happens in my group coaching. I'm like, there's gonna be awkward silences. It's okay and then one brave soul will speak up and they'll be like, Oh, well, you know, I feel like we could do better in this area or whatever their answer is.

And then all of a sudden someone else speaks up and someone else speaks up, and someone else speaks up. And it's this beautiful kind of knock on effect, because that type of vulnerability is contagious. If if that, if you know Scotty over here can say.

Hey, I don't think this is working. Then maybe I can say you know how I think it could work or what shift I think might be beneficial, right? And so I think, leaders model that if you're if we're watching, it's kind of like the don't do as I or do as I say, not as I do like. gosh, I used to use that as a leader, and I'll never forget I had a an individual on my team, and I would always send emails late at night because I was just trying to keep up on everything. Don't do that. Take your breaks, go home. Don't look at your computer. That's what I would say. But then people were getting emails at 10 pm. At night, right? And so what did my team end up doing? They were checking their email at 10 o'clock at night, because that's what their leader was doing. So, even though I was saying all the right things, I wasn't modeling it and that caused, you know, problems down the road. But I think so. Going back to your question, what can leaders really do like? Yes, what is what role do leaders play. I think they play the role. They are center stage. They are the ones that need to model the behavior first.st If they want. If they're expecting their teams to show up in that way as well.

And the cool thing about psychological safety is part of it is making mistakes and owning them in front of people. So it's okay if you don't get it right, you know, I think we're like, Oh, I need to do it in this way, and it has to be perfect. I'm definitely in that boat as a recovering perfectionist like you have to do it perfectly. But the cool thing about psychological safety. And I learned this really as a parent, too. Right like have I raised my voice at my children? Absolutely. I have.

And it's not so much the mistake that matters as the follow up. That happens. So when a mistake happens, or when someone gives you feedback, and you already had a super stressful day, and your response is like, I can't deal with this right now, and you completely shut down their feedback, or you show up with defensiveness.

I think automatically that person feels shut down. You're degrading trust if you can come back around and say. and I am so sorry I you gave me this feedback, and I was having a super stressful day, and I reacted defensively. And I really shouldn't have done that. And I apologize that that happened. I'd love to hear more. Can you tell me a little bit more about this feedback and what I can do to shift in the future? That moment of coming back and repairing. That's what builds psychological safety and trust.

So it's not about not making mistakes. I think that's oftentimes people are afraid, or they won't do anything, because they don't know what the perfect way of doing it is, or they're afraid of making a mistake. But that's the cool thing about trust and psychological safety. The more mistakes you make and and being open about it and showing that you're also learning from them. Right? I think that's really what builds that psychological safety so creating the space for open and honest conversations.

Listening without interrupting. I think that's a big one. Validating.

Anna Swayne: One.

Kiki Wilkinson: Right and even just reflective listening. So once the person is done repeating what you heard? Did I get that right? Is there anything else you want to share there? Did I miss anything right? Just making sure that you're really aligned on what the person was saying, and how you interpreted it.

I think the other thing, too, that could be so easy is like in in this fast paced environment. Oh, Anna, that's a great idea. Let's just move forward with that. And poor Jake over here is like, but I had an idea, too.

Anna Swayne: And we're like, yeah, yeah, so that's.

Kiki Wilkinson: Different idea, right.

Anna Swayne: That's that's it. Because I think often that happens without us, not like we're trying to be supportive. But in doing that we've maybe silence. Somebody else or not give an and an opportunity. City.

Kiki Wilkinson: Exactly.

Anna Swayne: I think I've done that. Okay, that's a really.

Kiki Wilkinson: Totally.

Anna Swayne: Right.

Kiki Wilkinson: Right. And this is like what coaching is all about. Right. It's bringing that self awareness of that exact.

Anna Swayne: Talk, about.

Kiki Wilkinson: That you just had. That's what happens in a lot of coaching conversations where someone I ask a question or I state something. And someone goes. Oh, man, I've totally done that.

Oh, I need to apologize for that. Oh, I need to repair that situation, you know, and all of a sudden, they're taking notes. And they're like, okay, okay. But then the process of coaching they're building, they're rebuilding trust with their employees. And so it's okay. It's okay, if that mistake we all make. We all have mistakes. Right? Like a mistake is just a mistake you get. Take 2, or maybe even take 3 but you have to own it, and you have to listen to the feedback, no matter how challenging it might be to hear that feedback and that takes practice. But yeah, welcoming folks into the conversation. Validating different viewpoints. Hey, Jake, I can totally see where you're coming from with that, because it would solve for these things. I do think Anna's solution might help us do these other things. Is it okay? If we move in that direction and test that out and see how that works, and then we can come back together and make a decision if we really want to move in that direction. So validating. What other? Yeah. Oh, Jake, there, there is a Jake up in here. Sorry.

It's like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yeah.

Anna Swayne: Sorry about me.

Kiki Wilkinson: Totally. It's all about validation. Again, going back to what we said before, all humans want to feel heard and understood and supported. And so.

Anna Swayne: Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: How can you create the space for that and really approach feedback or input with curiosity rather than defensiveness or shutting it down And I think a lot of times it's so funny because we talk about how do we build psychological safety? But oftentimes we don't talk about what erodes psychological safety. And so I think.

Anna Swayne: Exactly.

Kiki Wilkinson: Same time as we're trying to build it. We're also eroding it, and we don't go anywhere. We're like stuck in the mud, and it's like, What am I doing wrong? I'm doing all the things that I should be doing. But I think there's also this element of like, what's eroding psychological safety within your team or within your organization. and there's a lot of things that come to mind when I say that. I think at the end of the day.

It's about asking the team and creating a safe environment where folks feel like they can say, this is what safety feels like to me.

You know, eroding psychological safety could look like being dismissive. So I think I said it before, like, Oh, we've always done it this way, right. It doesn't even have to be mean like it could be like, Oh, you know what? That's a great idea. But like we've always done it this way. So let's just do it this way, right? It could be so minimal and not feel on the surface like a negative thing. reacting harshly to mistakes or punishing people, especially if it's like in front of other people. So like publicly criticizing someone publicly correcting someone. you know, even bringing in like oh, man, Anna made this mistake, and I want to make sure we all learn from it right? Even something like that. Where now Anna's like. Oh, God! I made a mistake.

Anna Swayne: Very nice.

Kiki Wilkinson: Set it in front of everyone right, and that.

Anna Swayne: Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: Degrade psychological safety for that person right? And maybe for the other people in the room, too, because they're like, well, I don't want to get called out, I'm not going to be open and honest about my mistakes, you know. Yeah. So.

Anna Swayne: Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: But I think it is ultimately about how you consistently show up.

It's not about just one time being curious, or one time having a feedback conversation with your team. It's about integrating it into the small moments. So maybe it's 15 min at the end of every team meeting where it's feedback time. and we go around the room and we share any sort of feedback for how things are going as a team. How do we feel like we're, where do we feel like we're moving? Do we feel like we're all moving in the same direction? What questions are there? What feedback do we have? It could also be in one on ones. If that feels a little too scary. I've suggested that to people before and leaders eyes will get really big. And I'm like, all right, let's start in one on ones.

Anna Swayne: Imagine a CEO being like. I'm not sure I want to have that conversation at the executive level.

Kiki Wilkinson: Right? Right? It's so so true. And I think it's also about at the end of the day. I think it's just really about inviting ideas, honoring that people can have different like perspectives. They can have different lived experiences. It doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong. They're all valid. Everyone's lived. Experience is valid. We could both be in the same room experiencing the exact same thing and have completely different takeaways, right? And so.

Anna Swayne: Yeah,

Kiki Wilkinson: Creating that safety is being able to bring that person into the fold, and and they feel safe enough to share. Hey? You know I didn't I? I didn't really feel like this went well for these reasons. and I can. I've had this situation before where I spoke up about something myself, and a couple of other members were like, Oh, that wasn't good, you know, and so I spoke up about it, and I I made the mistake of like me and some of my team members think this right, and I was like, oh, I probably should have just owned it for myself. Because then what ended up happening is that leader went to every single member of the team and came back to me and said, Well, it was only really you that felt that way, and everyone else didn't feel that way. And so it completely kind of eroded the psychological safety for for me and also for the other 2 people who were like thanks for speaking up on our behalf. But also that didn't go well, so maybe we should do that again right was buying.

Anna Swayne: Right.

Kiki Wilkinson: Message there, so.

Anna Swayne: That's that's interesting. And I've seen that because there's a really good question in the chat. Let's just pause for a second and go there. love mistake totally. I think that should be like a whole chapter on its own.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: Absolutely but the question is, can you talk about how sometimes employee interactions between each other can erode psychological safety and.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: You know, leadership may or may not be aware of it, and I think, too, like, if you're an Hr professional leader, you're you're almost having to navigate and coach like on the side and mitigate some of this erosion, maybe happening or or employees are coming to you. And you're like now trying to influence leaders like, I know, what would you like in that scenario? Answering this question, how would you approach.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, I mean the first.st The 1st red flag here for me is like, if a leader isn't aware of it. why, like are there spaces. Is it safe enough for that in for that employee that maybe had that felt like their psychological safety was eroded because of another employee situation?

Do they feel safe enough going to their manager? Do they have enough trust or psychological safety with their manager to be able to say, Hey! This situation happened with Joe, and you know I really felt like, you know, he wasn't listening to my idea, or I really felt like he. you know, put me down in front of everyone else in the meeting, or whatever it was, do they feel safe enough to bring that to their manager?

If the leader doesn't know about it. That's my 1st question is like, there's a lack of psychological safety or trust between the employee and the manager relationship. So I do think that that's something that's not really the answer to this question at all. But I I just need to call out that red flag.

Anna Swayne: Yeah. Hmm.

Kiki Wilkinson: And I think, I think that can happen absolutely right, like I've definitely going back to the example that I shared before when we were hiring folks that really knew what they were doing, and you know little me. I was a post surgery scheduler, and here I am in this tech world. And we're talking about how to create a policy on.

I don't know. What do we do? If there's some sort of sexual harassment on the site, you know, either on the site or off the platform. Right? How do we deal with that? Right?

I don't know. Like I'm a surgery, scheduler I used to be, anyway. So like, I don't really. So I'm sitting there like I don't really. But I have ideas. I'm very one thing I didn't mention at the beginning. I'm very neuro spicy. Definitely have Adhd, and which is such a gift and also can be challenging in some ways. But one of the gifts is a plethora of ideas. So I come into this meeting, and I'm like,

Oh, what about this? What about this? What about this? What about this now? I haven't thought about every single idea, and how implementation would go, and what that would look like. I haven't thought that deep yet. I'm just spewing out ideas. Well, one of my now dear friends who at the time joined our team. He was, ex Facebook. and he joined our team. We're very dear friends now. But, man, we did not get along, and we totally butt heads. And I, we're we're just very different people. And so I was like ideas, ideas, ideas, and he was like, you haven't thought through any of these ideas that you're putting out on the table like that was. He was so logical and linear. And like, Okay, let's logically think about everything and put it all together. And I was just like, here's all these ideas. Let's talk about it right? And so he in in a meeting in front of other people, was like, you just need to stop because he was very overwhelmed. It was his own reaction to his own experience. based on me, kind of like continuing to put ideas out. He was overloaded and reacted in the moment which I understood later, I again.

I've raised my voice at my kids. I've reacted in the moment, not because they're doing anything bad, but because there's so much noise.

And I'm overstimulated. And I react right? So yeah, this can totally happen. And then I think in that situation I had a trusting relationship with my manager at the time. So and my manager at the time actually knew this gentleman who was hired he worked with him in a past role at Facebook.

So I went to him, and he kind of knew both of us in different contexts. And 1st of all, the 1st thing he did. Was he validated? You know. Yeah, Nick can sometimes come off a little brash, or he can come off. You know he really likes to think about things really, linearly and logically. And what I've learned from you is you're really creative.

And so he didn't put me down. He made me feel validated for my experience. He asked me questions. He approached it with curiosity, so that continued to strengthen our trust with each other, our psychological safety.

And then he suggested either a moderated conversation where he would support, or, if I felt comfortable, a conversation directly with this gentleman. We started meeting on a weekly basis. We started building trust. We were sharing feedback with each other. Not all of the conversations were great. I cried in many of them.

But we got to a point where we trusted each other so much. And we actually ended up doing like an internal podcast at Airbnb together. And he's just. He's a lovely human so, Nick, if you ever watch this recording shout out

Anna Swayne: We'll send it to him.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, I'll send it. But yeah, absolutely. And and I think it does come back to like bringing it up. How can you bring it up.

Anna Swayne: Yeah. Well, that's such a great example of almost repairing.

Kiki Wilkinson: You know, or or I guess it's maybe building and repairing. Yeah, both.

Anna Swayne: I think I think I think what you've said earlier about just repairing in general. I think that's so important to kind of like. Maybe dig a little deeper on, because oftentimes I think there's this perception of it's done like.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: Leadership. They don't even care, you know, whatever. And leadership's like, whatever you know, or maybe that's too brass. But like or to simplified. But I let's let's dive into the repairing and rebuilding a little bit, because I feel like that's so important. So you know, talked a little bit about building you between you and Nick like building something maybe wasn't quite there. But you guys then dove in and you took steps to actually build that trust and re maybe reestablish the psychological safety that was.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: Kind of already there. But yeah, I would just love to hear you like, like, maybe some other examples around that. Or how can teams, rebuild trust or repair

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: Has eroded because.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah. Great great question.

Anna Swayne: Really painful, I would imagine. And maybe that's when you're getting called in, like, you're probably getting called into these coaching sessions because some of that has already happened.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yep, absolutely. Yes, so 1st of all, when I was preparing for this session, I put together a couple of Linkedin posts, and just to promote the session. And one of the Linkedin posts that I posted, I asked. I put a poll up and I asked, What's the hardest part about creating psychological safety. And 73% of people said, it's repairing trust and psychological safety when it's broken or when it wasn't there. In the in the 1st place.

So yeah, let's talk about it. I think.

Anna Swayne: Yes.

Kiki Wilkinson: And I'll go back to Nick real quick, and I'll share an example. And then I'll kind of talk through. Why, that worked maybe I think the 1st thing that Nick and I did again, based on my own managers. Suggestion was to have something called a designed alliance. I did not create this term. He did not either. To be quite honest, I'm not sure who to attribute it to. I learned it while I was at Airbnb, Airbnb and I use it with my clients today. So a designed alliance conversation is really just what it sounds like. It's a mutual conversation to better understand each other's preferences and experience so that you can show up in a way that works for them. So a really easy example is like, if I have a new team member join my team, and I have a designed alliance conversation. Some of the questions I might ask in that conversation is. and and I'm doing 2 things. When I ask a question. One, I'm sharing my intention. and then 2. I'm asking the question, so I might say something like, you know, hey? I'm so glad that you've joined our team inevitably. There's going to be moments where I have constructive feedback for you, or opportunities that I want to share with you, and feedback is like a big, you know, bad f word, and it totally needs a rebrand.

Anna Swayne: But it totally does.

Kiki Wilkinson: It needs a rebrand.

Anna Swayne: Can I help? I'm I wanna fully support that. Yes.

Kiki Wilkinson: Well as a marketer. Maybe you can help me with how we reverse.

Anna Swayne: Okay, yes, let's do, because it's so subjective. And yeah, okay, so that's a side note, everybody. But please chime in, if you agree that needs to be.

Kiki Wilkinson: 3 h feedback. Oh, man, I say feedback, I say, like the big bad F word, and I say feedback, and people are always like, Oh.

Anna Swayne: That is so perfect. Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: How most people feel about it. Right? And I think a lot of that just comes from the fact that we take feedback. Very personal. It is personal, right. And so it can feel like an attack on our being, our personality, who we are when really feedback should be about specific performance opportunities right? It's not so much about the person or the personality. It's more so about the performance. So even if and I'm kind of going off on a tangent here. But like, even if you know, someone is perceived in a negative way on the team, and you're trying to give feedback about that. How do you give? That's a hard one, right? How? As a leader, how do you give feedback to someone when you're getting feedback from the rest of the team like God. This person is just so hard to work with, and they're so negative all the time. And there's like an attack on their personality or how they're showing up.

I think I've had this situation. And so talking about it in terms of perception, right? Because I think a lot of people have really good intentions, but sometimes there's a big delta between their intention and their impact. and so giving some like shining a light on that for people and sharing like, Hey, you know, I don't think your intention is. you know, to be challenging to work with. I don't think that's what the problem is here. But I think that sometimes that's the impact in these types of situations. And it's the perception that you're trying to shift, not the person.

Anna Swayne: Reception.

Kiki Wilkinson: Of the person right, if that makes sense so. Coming back from that, I think the you know, half having that design alliance conversation with a team member might be. Hey? I'm going to have to give you feedback at some point. That's part of the job. It's part of the role, I think of feedback as data to help you learn to help you grow to help you achieve your goals. It comes from a really good place. but despite that feedback can still be difficult. So what's your you know. What? How do you best receive feedback? Is it in the moment? Is it over? Email first? st So you can have some time to think about it before we discuss it in our one on one.

Is it? That I just bring it up in our one on one right, and you can change your answer to this like, tell me what you think it is, and we'll we'll go in that direction and guess what the 1st time the manager has feedback and does it in a way that the person said they wanted it to be done. Oh, I need an email first, st and then we'll talk about it in our one on one. Well, guess what? Maybe that person has positive feedback. They send them an email. They're like, Hey, you did a really great job on this. I'd love to give you more feedback in our one on one when we talk on Thursday. Right immediately. You just deposited money into the trust bank because you listen to what they said. You took an action in accordance with what they said. That's basically what Nick and I did. It was. you know, for him it was. I can never get a word in edgewise. I've gotten that feedback a lot, because I have a lot to say again. Intention very positive. I'm like.

Anna Swayne: Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: To say that might be helpful. Let me get them all out, and you can pick what's helpful. I have no ego attached to them, but like I got to get it all out for you to pick what's helpful right? And so for him it was like, I need you to pause and welcome me into the conversation, because I don't want to interrupt you. That feels really uncomfortable for me, and I was like, Oh, but just interrupt me like tell me to pause for a minute, you know.

Anna Swayne: Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: And it was like, no, you need to do that. You need to pause yourself and welcome me into the conversation. So that's those designed Alliance conversations. It wasn't just one. It was multiple. It usually stemmed from. Something happened in a meeting. One of us was negatively impacted by it. And in our next one on one we would have another designed alliance conversation about that situation, and how we could do it differently in the future. So I think when you're building or rebuilding, it starts with just naming the situation.

What happened? What was the situation? Right? Just being open and forthright about it? So like, even if it's like, Hey, I realize I might have handled this poorly and it may have impacted the trust in our relationship, or it may have impacted psychological safety with our team. I wanna work with you to figure out a way that I can do this differently in the future, or maybe in the future I'd like to do it in this way. I really apologize that that I did it in this way right? So it's like naming the situation and taking ownership or accountability for it. sharing your intention. I want to have high psychological safety, and I want folks to feel like they can share their ideas, and by cutting you off in that meeting. that's not what I was creating. And so you're stating your intention. You're stating the situation very clearly. You're taking accountability for your part.

You're owning your part in in the the situation. Own your part is, I'm I'm using air quotes because there's a wonderful woman. Deborah Roberts.

She has a whole training. It's called the Communication Protocol, and she talks a lot about building trust through communication and owning your part is a main part of that so, owning your part, stating the obvious, stating, stating, upfront and stating your intention. What do you want to have what happened? What do you want instead of that thing? Right? And then inviting conversation in the moment, being able to say, How did you feel in that situation? What came up for you?

Right? Did you feel that, too? Did you feel like trust? Was was eroded in that conversation? How did that feel right? But just get which might feel awkward but like and you can even say that right like I know this feels like an awkward conversation. But I really want to hear from your perspective how that felt so that I can shift my behavior and make sure that I'm I'm focused on creating psychological safety in our team, right? So really inviting and making that person feel comfortable enough to share their perspective and then collaborating on how to move forward. So maybe that's revisiting feedback norms. How do we?

How do we give feedback on this team? Maybe it's revisiting how we share ideas. Right? Like leaders often will talk to me about like, okay, yeah. I love the idea of having everyone give their opinions.

But if we did that in every single meeting we would not. We would not be able to move as quickly as we need to move right. And so giving people like creating a norm or a process. For when and how we share our ideas. Which, as someone who spent a lot of time in project and program management, it's so essential to be able to have those pockets of time where you are bringing in ideas feedback. Right? There's periods of time. It's not throughout the entire project. But there.

Anna Swayne: Is this?

Kiki Wilkinson: Pockets right? These pockets. It's where it's like, Oh. alright! Here's here's a moment where we're gonna come into a room, and it's literally just a brainstorming time. We're not gonna talk about which ideas work, which ones don't. We're not making a decision. We're just talking about ideas, or we're just talking about feedback. Right?

Anna Swayne: Hmm.

Kiki Wilkinson: And so creating those pockets for folks to kind of come back and do that. But yeah, I think.

Anna Swayne: That.

Kiki Wilkinson: I think that's.

Anna Swayne: It feels so tangible. Yeah, I think you know, it feels so massive because you're like psychological safety. Oh, my gosh, that's so big. And it's like it is. It's like this environment. You just talked about creating that environment.

And you know things that you can do to do that. But the rebuild feels like so foundational. And you just outlined a really solid framework that I think a lot of us can be like, Okay, yeah, I can do that cause you just named the steps. and I think for a lot of you know our audience, Hr. Has to go in influence has to make it really simple to for any leadership team. Maybe their own leadership team to like adapt. And I think what you just did was like made it really simple to follow these certain things. I love the pocket analogy because it is so timely.

But you're doing it in a way that creates that space to just feed the framework

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: Been amazing. This has been incredible. I know we could probably do part 2, part 3.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yes.

Anna Swayne: Back on our series.

Kiki Wilkinson: Love, to.

Anna Swayne: For those who are looking at the clock thinking, Okay, how are we gonna wrap this up? We got 9 min. I just want to kind of hit on just a couple of things. Because now we have this framework, we're solid and like, okay, we could go and do these things? What is? You know. we have this, I ideal framework. What does it look like in a on a regular, just teams, daily daily rhythm. Maybe an example, cause you're cause. It's like, even if us, as leaders have this framework, how does that translate to? Not just a slide in a deck.

Not just like yes, one on one space for this like talk to a little little a little bit about that, and then flow that into like what Hr pros leaders on this call to start doing this week to ensure. There's that environment, either. It's you. Maybe they already think it's happened like, yes, we have a solid psychological, you know, environment. But like, what can they continue to do this week just to ensure that they're on the right track?

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, so.

Anna Swayne: It's a loaded 2 part question, but just to kind of guide us to the end here, and hopefully.

Kiki Wilkinson: Wow!

Anna Swayne: Yeah, wrap it all up.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I think it all starts with communication. So I think when we're when we're thinking about like, how, what's the day to day.

It's how are you creating those pockets? Since you liked that analogy? How are you creating those pockets from a day to day perspective, where you can really see what's happening, the within the interactions of the team. So asking your team. And this is things that folks can do right away right like asking your team, or as Hr. Professionals encouraging leaders to kind of do these little mini pulse checks do you feel safe to speak up? What gets in the way of you feeling safety.

Anna Swayne: Speak up!

Kiki Wilkinson: What is an example of a time when you felt really safe to show up as your true self, and share your ideas without fear of rejection or judgment or punishment.

Right? What does that look like for you? I think it's also, how do you model this? So the question is like.

Anna Swayne: Oh!

Kiki Wilkinson: Maybe it even just starts with sharing a really small mistake, or even starting like the, you know, mistake right? Folks liked that. That analogy like using that right having a little section in your team meetings that's like, make it fun right? Or have a slack channel that's called like mistakes, right, and it's like, Oh, man, I made this.

Anna Swayne: Funny.

Kiki Wilkinson: Stupid mistake. Right? Like I need to take 2. Can someone grant me a take 2 because I made this mistake? This is what I've learned now.

Anna Swayne: Good.

Kiki Wilkinson: Take 2 like, give me some energy to like. Take on, take 2 right like. bring some levity to it. I think most of us? Are not brain surgeons. And so bring a little bit of levity to it like, how can we feel more safe? You and I are talking about trust falls at the very beginning, before we started all of this, and I was talking about how, at one of our 1st trust and safety offsites we did actual trust falls. And I was sitting in the corner as someone who created the offsite. And I was like, this is not okay, like this is bad. Someone's gonna get hurt. It's not. I'm gonna be in trouble like this is not okay. But using that analogy is like, what does it feel like when you make a mistake. and you've been caught by your manager, by your team, by your cross functional partners or stakeholders. What does that feel like when you trip and fall, and someone catches you in your work. What does that feel like? Whatever that answer is double.

Anna Swayne: So beef.

Kiki Wilkinson: Right? Yeah, double down on that. And how do we create that type of a culture? And it's gonna be different for everyone. I think that's also why psychological safety is hard is because what makes you feel psychologically safe and what makes me feel psychologically safe. And what makes someone who's maybe been marginalized, or, you know, has a completely different lived experience than you and I. How? What makes them feel safe? Right? How do they show up and how do we show up around them to support them? It might look different. And so, being open minded about it, Even encouraging leaders to like, end every conversation with like. Is there anything that I didn't hear that you wish I would have heard in this.

Anna Swayne: Conversation? Right? Or is there? Good. Yeah.

Kiki Wilkinson: Right. If there's a single thing you want me to walk away with from this conversation, what would it be.

Anna Swayne: And what.

Kiki Wilkinson: Welcoming that in. I think again, like you said, it feels so big. But psychological safety is built in these really small moments, and it just takes self awareness.

It takes your own accountability to show up in that way. But the really cool thing is, there's this like ripple effect that happens. And so even if you're in a culture of an organization that doesn't feel like it's psychologically safe, you can still create a very psychologically safe team. and that ends up rippling outwards, which that was another experience at Airbnb, not to say that Airbnb wasn't psychologically safe. We got there, but, like I mentioned before.

Shifts and changes happened. We were moving very quickly. It was no one's fault that psychological safety was eroded. but it felt that was my 1st burnout was like, I just I was completely shut off because I didn't feel like it was psychologically safe. And what what could I do as a middle level manager at the time.

But your leadership does matter, and that trust and the psychological psychological safety is built in moments. And so, being very clear with yourself or with. If you're an Hr person supporting leaders being very clear with the leader, like, what is the type of moment that you want to cultivate? How do you want people to feel when they leave a team meeting when they leave a 1 on one? You know, and and just determining and being intentional about that moment that you want to create.

Anna Swayne: Oh, it's so good! And I love, I mean, I know we were joking about Trust Falls, but it's such a great example of like setting up to help you understand what your team, how they feel safe cause it's it's hard to just go in and be like what makes you feel safe. And you're kind of like, I don't know. But when you set it up of like, okay, trust fall like hypothetical like, I think that I'm gonna go. That's like, immediately thing I'm gonna go do with my team of like, okay, yeah, what does make you feel safe? If this is the scenario to try to pull that out of them, because sometimes we don't know like our teams don't know. Leaders don't know until they're like.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yeah.

Anna Swayne: This, the the experience is actually set up like that. Micro pocket is actually created to like help. You understand? As a leader. So okay. Well, Hr leaders like, if you are on the call, listening to this live or post in recording like Kiki like, I want you to come talk to us. Talk to my team like this has been extremely valuable. I can see why people from all over the country are knocking on your door to have them come and coach have you them, you know. Come and coach them, and their teams and individuals like this has been incredible. Your wisdom. Your advice just us walking through that framework I mean, valuable like gold, because this is like Hr. Gold right now. oh, I love it like team leadership goal. I think any leader, regardless of what kind of industry you're in. This is incredibly valuable. So thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to share your wisdom with us.

Kiki Wilkinson: Absolutely.

Anna Swayne: Lovely. Thank you so much.

Kiki Wilkinson: Probably me.

Anna Swayne: Yeah. So where can people find you? Linkedin, like, where, if there.

Kiki Wilkinson: Interesting.

Anna Swayne: And contacting you, signing up for your services. What's the best way.

Kiki Wilkinson: Yep, absolutely so on Linkedin. I'm Kristen Wilkinson. It's not actually, I think it says Kristen Kiki Wilkinson is how it shows up.

I have my glasses. I have super long blonde hair, so it's fairly easy to oh, and it's the same photo. I think that was on this originally and then my website is thrive, mind collaborative. So it's a take on hive, mind. We're constantly learning from each other. I try to pull in experts, in situations, especially working with clients. If there's something that comes up and I have an expert in my you know network, I pull them in. So thrive mind collaborative is the the name of my website. You can learn more about me. There, you can book a time to meet. But yeah, reach out via Linkedin. I try to share every week. I try to share a post of some sort with some sort of infographic that can be helpful like. It's meant to be something that people can print out and kind of keep at their desk and be like, Okay, here's my framework or my steps that I can take. So maybe I'll go back and create one for psychological safety and and send it to folks if if that's something that folks would benefit from.

Anna Swayne: Absolutely. That's fantastic. Well, again, thank you so much for those of you who, you know, want to learn more about Kiki, follower on Linkedin. We also have a few other webinars coming up. So we have another missing chapters. Follow along, you know. If you follow us on Linkedin, you'll get notified of all these different webinars, but one that we're really excited about, because if you're in the Hr. Space trying to navigate what benefits look like after legislation was passed. Come this Friday, we have a webinar breaking down all the different changes there, so check it out, and we also have just other, you know, specific topics that we like to cover like this one coming up next month in a couple of weeks about menopause. This is a topic that doesn't get talked about either. So please join us for that, and please follow Kiki on Linkedin. We just a lot of good information out there, and really good people. that are sharing it. So thank you, Kiki, for all that you have done for this community. And yeah, hopefully, you'll join us again. We can have another part 2, or maybe.

Kiki Wilkinson: I would love it.

Anna Swayne: You were been fabulous. You've been fabulous.

Kiki Wilkinson: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Anna Swayne: Awesome. Well, thanks, everybody. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye.

Kiki Wilkinson: Thank you.

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