Psychological safety has been a prominent theme for me lately. I recently guided a cohort of leaders through the Applied Agility in Leadership 12-week program, and our conversations and explorations repeatedly revealed the importance of psychological safety and the leader’s essential role in cultivating it. The pinnacle of psychological safety is a ‘challenge culture’: Timothy Clark identifies ‘challenger safety’ as the highest level of psychological safety, and also the threshold required to enable an innovation culture.

How can leaders cultivate a challenge culture? Here is a stellar example. Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, collected criticisms of her leadership from employee surveys and reacted to them on video, then shared the video with the entire organization. She took the criticism graciously, admitted to her imperfections and spoke about how she was striving to improve as a leader.*

Amy Edmundson, in her book Teaming, shows how leaders can frame initiatives as learning initiatives rather than purely as execution. She shares the story of a hospital that ultimately became a market leader in a new surgical procedure by asking the team to learn the new procedure, not just implement the new procedure.

Some leadership behaviors to cultivate a challenge culture:

• Demonstrate humility. Admit to what you don’t know; acknowledge uncertainty.

• Proactively invite constructive criticism. Regularly ask someone to play the role of ‘devil’s advocate’.

• Visibly and openly reward people who challenge your own ideas and ideas of others - as long as they do so respectfully

• Keep disagreements about the task at hand; don’t let it get personal.

• Seek feedback on your leadership frequently, and openly show that you not only accept it but appreciate it and expect it. Do your own version of the Melinda Gates video!

*Grant, Adam. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. p. 214-215 (Viking 2021)

Join me at the Agile Heroes Summit online on June 21 where I’ll speak about the Four Levers for Shaping Organization Culture. Registration is free!