Cultivating Contributor Safety and Understanding Mistakes
Contributor safety invites every member of the team to actively participate and contribute more than what their role demands. This phase is where permission and approval are established and the boundaries and expectations are clear. What can we do to nurture members of the team in this phase?
1. Encourage Dialogue and Not Coercion. When others are hesitant to express their views or experiment with other ideas, learn to encourage them to think out loud and set an example. Each member of the team has their role and for the new manager, it will take time until team members can find their voice and provide their unique contribution. The real challenge is how to encourage them to contribute without having the fear of negative consequences of self-image like threat or embarrassment.
The exposure of one’s vulnerability and encouraging a team dialogue are complimentary. It forces people to reciprocate such acts and show their flaws. The purpose of dialogue, according to David Bohm, is to reveal incoherence in our thought. Some managers consider every conversation as a game and the goal of the game is mostly “to win” and winning means to have one’s views accepted by the majority. Adding emphasis on winning can potentially impair the desire of the team to contribute.
Dialogue is the source of team IQ and it can be greater than the individual IQ. And in dialogue, the individual is not trying to win, there is no opposition rather a meaningful discussion with a common goal to achieve an insight that is inaccessible to the individual. If the team can connect to the rhythm of this free-flow conversation, each can be a valuable contributor. Success is not a one-time bulls-eye but a small and quick iterative process, like pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough — as Jim Collins described how a change in an organization can happen.
2. The Willingness to be Wrong. Progress comes in stages and the first stage is to understand how people formulate their solution to the problem, especially when their views are opposite from your own. It forces you to review your idea and check if the person involved is on the same page.
Being open to new information or disconfirming information is a great opportunity to explore in finding flaws in your views. Actively inquiring others like “what are your views?” “How did you arrive with that idea” questions will keep the ball rolling and can ignite a meaningful discussion. The best mental restriction in asking questions is: Do not use questions to maneuver or a way to blame or put down others.
Managing a team is not about providing all the solutions to every problem or drive everyone to follow your messianic vision. Its means having the confidence to say “I don’t know” or the willingness to be wrong and facilitate the team dialogue to stimulate critical thinking that will lead to the best possible insights.
3. Learn to Examine the Problem and Suspend Assumptions. Suspending one’s assumptions does not mean suppressing them, it means holding and examining them. Conversely, it doesn’t mean that we need to agree or share the same goals.
The need to explore complex issues calls for expressing different views and conflict is essential in the discovery of this new perspective. This can be an indicator that a team is continually learning. The free flow of healthy conflicting ideas is critical to team development because no individual could come up with his own.
Seeking agreement is not the main goal of examination, the purpose of examining an issue is to have a better understanding of the issue that can lead to a new course of action. These new actions can be the by-product of meaningful discussion.
Understanding Mistakes
We are all capable of committing mistakes. This is the inevitable downside of having a functional brain. A person commits a mistake when the outcome is different from the intended output even if he has a theoretical and practical understanding of the task. Even experts commit mistakes.
A contributor safety environment does not guarantee a smooth and efficient process. What we need is to create a system that will help people to bounce back when there are slight to severe mistakes that happened while fulfilling their desire to contribute. It is important to discuss the rules in committing mistakes and make clear to them that they are responsible for the learnings and the course to take to fix the mistakes being committed. And one way to mitigate the unwanted reactions toward unexpected occurrences is to understand the types of mistakes.
There are three popular types of mistakes:
- Honest Mistakes. It occurs when a person carries out the wrong procedure.
- Black-outs. It occurs when a person forgets the part of the process.
- Slip-ups. It occurs when a person implements the process incorrectly.
There are levels on which common mistakes occur. These are — Skill-based Level, Rule-based Level, Knowledge-based Level.
This remarkable model of causes and effects of mistakes is from the Swiss Cheese Model by James Reason.
Another interesting view of mistakes published by Mindset. In their newsletter they described the following:
- The stretch mistakes. This happens when a person would like to extend his current ability. The unintentional error is intended to push the current limit without the support of other people.
- AHA Moments. This happens when a person feels that he achieved what he intends to do but failed to complete it because of mental lapses.
- The sloppy mistakes. This happens when a person is doing something routinely but completed it incorrectly because of inattention.
- The high-stakes mistakes. This happens when we truly mess up when something is critical.
Conclusion
In a growing company, new mistakes are healthy as long as it is reversible and not fatal. It means there are areas and blind spots that need to explore.
Understanding how to create a contributor safety environment and describing the type of mistakes committed will help educate your judgment, avoid unnecessary action, and have a better grasp of understanding the real issue while learning from them. Because a working environment that belittles, demeans, or unjustly corrects members of the team, can potentially tear down the effort of individuals to contribute.
