Throughout February we have been exploring ‘Psychologically Safe Management’. In this post we are offering further tips on how to create a ‘Psychologically Safe Workplace’ and position the wellbeing of staff at the heart of the organisation. We will share with you a further ten simple tips on how to support the wellbeing of staff during this pandemic.
We live busy lives and the pandemic has forced some of us to slow down. Although it is important to note that key workers, medical services and those working on the frontline are working harder than ever. For those of us working from home we have the challenge of separating work life to home life, and possibly juggling many responsibilities. Covid is a traumatic incident, it brings uncertainty and longevity, and therefore will increase our stress levels. When we feel activated into our stress response our concentration and memory go offline, and we can become either more withdrawn, or sensitive and irritated by those around us. We all need to find pause moments throughout the day. These moments are a time to reflect, take a deep breath and stop. In a psychologically safe working environment, we need to create space for reflection and learning to take place. Ten simple tips on how to support the wellbeing of staff during this pandemic.
Please contact FD Consultants for any management or staff training needs, or individual support sessions. We can offer our trademark ‘Stress Management & Resilience Building’, ‘Trauma & Vicarious Trauma Awareness’ or ‘Peer Support’ programmes. Additionally, we can offer any other training specifically tailored for your organisation. You can contact us at [email protected] If you are interested in learning more about this topic you can listen to FD Consultants webinar on ‘Psychologically Safe Management’ please click here For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly.
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In our last blog we explored what is ‘Psychological Safe Management’ and why it is important particularly during the pandemic. This week we are exploring how managers can create a ‘Psychologically Safe Environment’ for their staff, which in turn promotes confidence, creativity, trust and productivity.
Simon Sinek talks about a ‘Golden Circle’ of communication. He proposes that organisations which communicate from the ‘inside out’ create better leaders and are more inspiring. What he means by this is that most organisations talk about ‘what’ they do, ‘how’ they do it, and some organisations add the ‘why’ they do it. This is ‘outside in’ thinking. Whereas ‘inside out’ thinking starts with the why, what does the organisation believe in, why do they do what they do. Inspiring leaders often speak from their purpose and their ‘gut intuition’. We connect to individuals when we see their vulnerability, their dream, what they believe in and the struggles they’ve taken to get there. We follow those who lead because we want to, not because we have to. These individuals communicate from ‘inside out’ thinking. Psychological Safety Works promote six components to a psychologically safe working environment. These include:
Additionally, Deepak Chopra shares a model of leadership, that aligns with the above psychologically safe components. His model refers to the acronym LEADERS:
Leadership is a relationship-intensive endeavour. To build psychologically safe management we need to create space for reflection & learning, develop psychologically informed managers, and connect with others from the core of our being (inside out thinking). Now, more than ever, there is a need for psychologically safe management and a need to build connection between staff and teams in organisations. “We all have the capacity to inspire and empower others. But we must first be willing to devote ourselves to our personal growth and development as leaders.” (Deloitte, 2020) If you would like further information about training managers to create psychologically safe working environments please contact FD Consultants at [email protected]. We offer various wellbeing workshops for all staff. Additionally, we create bespoke trainings to support organisations and individuals. If you are interested in learning more about this topic you can listen to FD Consultants webinar on ‘Psychologically Safe Management’ please click here. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. This month we are sharing FD Consultants experience and knowledge about ‘Psychologically Safe Management’. It is more important, now than ever, for organisations to invest in training their managers in ‘Psychologically Safe Management’. An unsafe working environment increases our stress levels and makes us feel defensive, reactive and more emotional. We are all impacted daily by what is happening directly in our life’s and through watching the news. Living and working through a pandemic is highly stressful. Managers, as much as staff, need to be taken care of during this time, and given the resources and knowledge in how best to support themselves and their staff.
So WHY do we need ‘Psychologically Safe Management’ and WHAT is it? Let’s start by looking at the why:
The above statistics clearly show that mental health at work is an issue for a large number of staff. This has significantly increased over the last 12 months due to the global pandemic. Research carried out by FD Consultants highlights several factors that add to an individual’s stress, such as an ‘always-on’ culture, being able to communicate through technology any time of the day and the challenge of remote home working. A study by Myers Briggs found that individuals who are ‘always on’ are usually more engaged at work but are also more at risk of suffering vicarious trauma, stress and anxiety leading to mental exhaustion. The impact of Covid on staff has been significant in a number of ways:
So WHAT is ‘Psychologically Safe Management’? Working in an environment that does not feel safe means it is harder to speak up about things, and can result in unequal treatment of staff, individuals being scapegoated, and a bullying culture. A person-centred organisation has people at its heart, both people it serves and people it employs. A Psychologically Safe Workplace creates a safe environment where people can speak up, share mistakes and learn from them. ‘If you want to improve the world, start by making people feel safer’ (Porges, 2001). Studies on psychological safety point to wide-ranging benefits, including increased confidence, creativity, trust and productivity. Managers need to learn and understand how to create a ‘psychologically safe environment’, which enables staff to:
‘Psychological safety is being able to show and employ one's self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career. It can be defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected’ (Kahn 1990). In our workshops we offer a stepped approach to management training. This starts with ‘Personal Resilience’. How do managers role-model good self-care and recognise their own signs of stress? The more we recognise our own stress cycle, the more we are able to recognise the signs in others and appropriately support them. We start our training focusing on wellbeing at the heart, before moving onto management skills. We also train managers to become more confident talking about mental health and provide tools and techniques on how to do this well. This helps to create a common language to talk about mental health and change an organisational culture to promote wellbeing. Additionally, we offer coaching session to help managers when they are supporting staff with mental health issues. Managers learn how to manage healthy boundaries and identify destructive communication patterns. I often hear organisations state there is no resource or finance for wellbeing training. The risk of not investing in this training results in a much greater cost to organisations due to sick leave, reduction in productivity, and high turnover rate of staff. The research from Deloitte’s report ‘mental health and employers’ (2020) evidenced a strong case for investing in the wellbeing of employees, “every £1 spend on staff wellbeing results in a £5 return” (Deloitte, 2020). Over the next two weeks we will share techniques and tips on what managers can do to create a psychologically safe environment. If you would like further information about training managers to create psychologically safe working environments please contact FD Consultants at [email protected]. We offer various wellbeing workshops for all staff. Additionally, we create bespoke trainings to support organisations and individuals. If you are interested in learning more about this topic you can listen to FD Consultants webinar on ‘Psychologically Safe Management’ please click here. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, you might already have had team members working from home, or this might be a completely new experience for you and your team. Working from home is a transition for all concerned and whether managers are seasoned in managing their teams remotely, or new to this, there is much to bear in mind to uphold effective and safe practice when working in this way. In this blog we outline some key considerations regarding remote working.
One of the biggest concerns for managers is maintaining a balance between being supportive of people who are working off-site and potentially coming across as a micro-manager. This is particularly difficult as home working removes the ability of the manager to monitor employees within the usual workplace setting. However, you can strike a healthy balance by considering the following:
Please contact FD Consultants for further information on how such training might be tailored for your organisation at [email protected] If you would like access to the full guide for managing staff remotely, then sign up to our newsletter as we’ll be sharing this in next month’s edition. To sign up to the newsletter click here: http://eepurl.com/wc4Zf For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Author: Felicity Runchman (Associate at FD Consultants) Date: Jan 2020 Authors: Yasmin Dunkley & Nokubonga Ralayo
Question: “How do you spot participant distress over the phone?”
Summary: This piece of work is a direct response to the literature review “How to conduct remote research with adolescents in South Africa.” That review recognised that in changing how we conduct participant interviews (with phone based modalities) the visual clues and cues which often inform the researcher when working face to face are absent. This means that the relationship between interviewer and participant is changed, and the visual cues that show when a participant is becoming distressed are equally absent. This document starts by listing considerations around phone-based interviews that researchers may need to be mindful of when conducting this research for the first time, including the increased perceived intimacy of phone based interviewing, an increase in blurred boundaries between participant and researcher, and the potential for increased disclosures. It then provides a list of techniques for spotting when participants are becoming distressed, as well as some of the techniques for mitigating that distress. This piece of work continues by looking at some of the principles of self-care, and seeks to empower researchers to stop when they feel uncomfortable or at risk of vicarious distress. The intended audience of this piece of work is research assistants directly working with the Hey Baby, Mzantsi Wahko and TAG teams in the Western and Eastern Capes of South Africa. This document is intended to be a living document, to support field workers carrying out their remote research. The document will form the basis of ongoing training, supervision and debriefing around non-visual cues of distress, as well as support qualitative and quantitative phone based research methods. We are living through an unprecedented time. We decided to create this document to be proactive in supporting our team during the COVID19 epidemic and beyond. We recognise that field workers, ultimately, have the knowledge, skills and expertise to conduct research. This document is a tool to support and complement the good work that they are already doing. Moving forward and recommendations: This section briefly outlines some already decided steps, and some recommendations for the management of Hey Baby, Mzantsi Wahko and TAG teams to consider when thinking about the future direction of this piece of work.
Considerations Research assistants will be using phone based interviewing for the first time with the Hey Baby and TAG research projects. In switching from face to face work to remote work, it is important to note that the relationship between participant and researcher can change. Here are some of the key considerations for researchers to be aware of before conducting these interviews.
How do we identify distress over the phone? According to Dictionary.com, distress is “great pain, anxiety, or sorrow; acute physical or mental suffering; affliction; trouble” or a “state of extreme necessity or misfortune.” It can be the result of poor mental health, historic abuse, or even physical pain, which could be triggered by the interview process. Not all distress will require a referral. Sometimes the simple process of disclosing feelings can help the participant feel supported. Without visual cues, it can seem harder to identify when our participants are distressed with phone-based interviewing, however there are some techniques for assessing how participants are doing during interviews. 1.Assess the nonverbal: You will need to assess unspoken language to see how participants are doing. Ask yourself “Does the participant seem reluctant to respond?” 2.Tone of voice is a powerful form of non-verbal communication: Listen to the tone of the participant’s voice and listen to the words that they use, what could be “flag” words that identify all is not well? Listen for pauses, breathing, changes in voice patterns, background noises, as all of these will become significant. Listen to the tone and pace of the words being used, and the little inflections in the voice. On the phone, we can hear the slightest change in movement from our participants, what does that movement mean about the emotional state of the person you are speaking with? 3.Consistently check-in with your participants: Ask them “are you still OK?” If a participant sounds vulnerable, they may not speak up about it, so you can choose to ask them how they are feeling. To really find out what’s going on, we need to engage in a conversation with our participants, ask them how they are, truly listen to the answer, and encourage them to open up if they feel comfortable. Your pauses or silences for some young people will be difficult, and participants may wonder if you’re still there or whether you’re still listening. You will need to find a balance between letting the participant know you’re still present, whilst allowing the important silence for the participant to respond to your questions. Minimal encouragements can help to support this (mmhmm) or you might want to say more, ‘I’m still here…’ 4.Practice active listening: You will have been trained on some of the techniques of active listening (including the five key techniques to show you are listening. These are so useful when conducting phone based interviewing.
The best way that you can understand whether you participant is OK, is by listening to them, and asking them. Strategies to deal with distress: Often it will become clear very quickly if a participant is distressed. What can be more challenging is understanding what to do when a participant is distressed. There are levels to this, as if a participant is at risk of immediate harm, this is an emergency situation and requires immediate action in line with the HUBs safeguarding policies. Referrals are not discussed in this document, as they are covered in-depth in a separate referral pathways document. The referral pathways document specifically looks at what to do when a participant has made a disclosure in the following areas:
Techniques for managing distress:
What if the participant hangs up? This is a real possibility with phone based research. Debriefing can help you explore how you feel if a young person exercises their right to flee from an interview, or their emotions, by hanging up a call. Those who feel the need to escape or remove themselves from a difficult feeling or situation may find it easier to do so by putting down the phone than they would do walking out of an interview. It is important to consider what you would do and how you might feel ahead of this could, so you can mentally prepare for the eventuality if it does happen. What will it be like if you aren’t able to reconnect? When does a risk assessment come into play? How do you determine whether this was about their right to respond to a difficult feeling to look after themselves or whether there is something of a more serious nature at play that needs to be acted upon? These are questions to explore in training, debriefing and in supervision. Self-care strategiesSelf-care is very important when you are engaging with participants. This includes practicing self-awareness; when you feel overwhelmed and you are not OK in the middle of a conversation, don’t be afraid to take a step back. You can make any excuse to stop the call and find the time to look after yourself. Some of these measures may help you look after yourself during an interview: 1.Set clear boundaries: When you call your participant you introduce yourself and the purpose of your study – it’s a type of contracting. Do not be afraid to revisit the purpose of your call. We are not trained counsellors, therefore when you can sense the conversation is getting deeper than you are able to hold in your capacity, be honest with the participant, and tell them you can hear they are going through a lot, but that you are not a trained counsellor. You can then explore with them some referral pathways. Offer that resource to them rather than trying to bear the burden yourself. 2.Keep your team updated and debrief: It is OK to not know what to do. Take the time with your manager or a colleague and discuss your interviews. 3.Take time for you: Take a step back often. Being on the front line means being in the heat of the moment, and we always need time to reflect and flush out the heat. Take your time and give yourself space when interviewing participants. Take a break when you feel frustrated. Know that you are allowed to pause your interviews to collect yourself. Stop, go for a walk, whatever makes you feel relaxed. When you cannot keep calm, make any excuse to take your break and find that calmness. You don’t have to let it all in and listen and you are not there to fix all of the problems that you will hear. You need to look after yourself, so that you can be the best researcher possible for your participants. 4.Use a counsellor or call a helpline: Do not be afraid to use the services on offer for yourself. In many ways, hearing what are participants are going through will remind us of what has been happening in our own lives. You are going through this COVID19 experience as well. Do not be afraid to reach out. 5.Find out how to build your resilience and develop a resilience toolkit: Attached to this document, is an article about the RESPECT model. This is a model of self-care that suggests ways of building ourselves up to be able to withstand or manage stressful or traumatic experiences. The model suggests that we find ways to do the following when we feel overwhelmed:
6.Finally, be kind to yourself: You are not going to get it right all of the time. It is OK to make mistakes, and we can all learn from them. MIND Resources
References The content in this document was informed by the following professionals and agencies, and we are grateful for their support.
For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. |
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