​​“Welcome to another day in paradise everyone!”
 
This is the somewhat ironic good morning that my hubby greeted me with on Day 12 of the covid-19 pandemic self-isolation.  You can’t knock the guy - he’s doing his best to keep things light.
 
As his words rolled around in my head for the rest of the day, I reflected that he may be onto something…in psychological terms his morning greeting would be known as reframing the narrative or cognitive reframing.  With cognitive reframing, we can change the way we look at things and consequently change how we experience them. Transforming the more negative thoughts into positive ones.   Like the thoughts we may hold when we experience the grim realities of a pandemic caused by fear, physical distancing, economic uncertainty, self-isolation, worry, and being quarantined in our homes for indefinite amounts of time.
 
With reframing the narrative, we challenge ourselves to illuminate positive sides of challenging situations, avoid seeing only the negative, and identify a brighter version of what is happening.
 
If you’d asked me 6 months ago for my definition of paradise, I can assure you that it would not have included being house-bound with my husband, and 2 teenagers; being limited to only virtual connections with colleagues, friends and family; while watching the world and society as we know it, temporarily unravel. 

In the last blog, I introduced the concept of psychological safety. Researchers at Google discovered that teams that nurture spaces where team-members can be themselves, will move from simply surviving the daily uncertainties, complex interdependencies and ambiguity that our work presents to us, to thriving in them.   
 
A few years ago, a colleague and I had the opportunity to work with and advise a senior leader who was facing many large changes within her team, from structure to strategy to systems.  She modeled the following leadership characteristics:  
 
1.Curiosity: She was open to consider new ideas and learn from others’ experiences.  She surrounded herself with different groups of people (at all levels), advising her, drawing from the wealth of knowledge throughout her organization. By modeling this attitude early on, she fostered an open-door policy of ideas, feedback, reflections and early warnings, if things went a bit sideways.  No-one feared this leader.
 
2.Lifelong Learner: She was comfortable with failing fast, or as we re-framed it: learning fast. To her, the very act of doing something outside of her comfort zone was a positive move as it signalled that she had an intention to do things differently and that this would include a learning curve, even for her. She was forgiving of herself, and those around her, as they learned fast in their commitment to the end-goal, even if there were a few missteps along the way.  I remember early on, in an effort to increase this leader’s accessibility and reach across her large employee base, we tried a new communication technology.  And as with new technologies, there were a number of “glitches” and the experiment was less than perfect.  For some leaders this would have shut down their openness, but this leader was able to see the upside of the parts that had worked well (e.g., hearing directly from employees about issues that were bothering them) and learn from what had not (e.g., improving our technology capacities).
 
3.Carved out the Space:  As a senior leader, she had NO extra time in her day, but she would ensure that the meetings with her network of “advisors” always had dedicated time on her agenda. Even if she missed a week or two, she would instruct her office to find the time, the space, for these important conversations.  This was important to her and she advocated for this space.

Over the course of my working life inside organizations, I often had the opportunity to be a member of a team.  And as a result, I quickly came to recognize familiar team pain points (if you’ve ever been part of a team, you these may resonate for you too):
-too much or too little communication, 
-not enough trust, 
-the challenge in valuing diversity (of opinions, strengths, values), 
-the ongoing quest to align around shared focus & mission, etc.  
Getting the team-thing right is a tricky challenge with no simple silver bullet of a solution. 
 
Turns out that Google was also seized with this challenge and in 2012 embarked on an initiative to study hundreds of teams inside their organization to learn what made some stumble and others soar.  The main finding was that a team’s dynamics are more important than the talents of the individuals that make it up in determining a team’s performance.  And of the 250 team-dynamics identified, psychological safety was by far the most important one.
 
And what you may be asking yourself is psychological safety all about? Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor defines psychological safety as an environment where all employees can feel safe to speak up without fear of being embarrassed or rejected. It’s a team climate characterized by trust and mutual respect where people can be themselves.  Google found that when teams have psychological safety in place, team members are more likely to own up to their mistakes, be better partners to colleagues, open to diverse ideas and are less likely to leave the organization.

When it comes to Spring yard-work I have, over the years, developed certain habits & rituals of prepping my gardens.  One such habit is raking leaves.  I enjoy the physicality of the work, the discovery of the shoots of green that manage to grow under the dark, cold, mucky leaf covering, and I even get smug satisfaction from my lightly calloused hands.  This year, however, my raking happy place had to make room for the leaf blower.

You see, my hubby broke his leg (that’s a whole other blog post!) and was unable to take on this job, HIS job.  So one brisk spring morning, he gleefully handed over the ear plugs, the gloves, and the mighty leaf blower -- exhibiting full confidence in my ability. I on the other hand was overcome with a chorus of voices, all fueled by fear:  
 
-The voice of Distrust: what if this power tool exploded the minute I turned it on?  

-The voice of Incompetence: I will never succeed at this, and will blow more leaves into the garden than out of it, which I will have to rake out later anyway.

-The Judging & Comparing voice:  I will never be as good as my husband at this, why even bother, I’m defeated before I begin.

-The Rigid voice: I don’t DO leaf blowers, this is just a fact, that’s not how I’ve ever gardened, why start now?