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Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
BONUS Creating Psychological Safety at Work With Mehmet Baha
00:34:42
BONUS: How to create psychological safety at work with Mehmet Baha In this BONUS episode, we talk about the essential elements of creating at work with Mehmet Baha, one of Facebook's first European employees and a renowned psychological...
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- [00:02]
Pasco Duarte
Hi there, Pasco Duarte here, your host. I wanted to share a story with you. You know how sometimes Agile just feels like following another checklist when like processes and frameworks feel more important than what we are trying to achieve and sometimes even like handcuffs. I was talking to a customer of the Global Agile Summit and he used a term that kind of stuck in my he said, I have Agile fatigue. And I've heard that a lot from people since then. But here's the thing, it doesn't have to be this way. So we started thinking and at the Global Agile Summit, which is happening this May, we're bringing together practitioners who've actually done that, who've broken free from this, you know, install the framework kind of mindset. We want to focus the summit on real life, first person stories of Agile all succeeding that inspire you to action. We're talking real experiences, practical solutions, and of course, amazing insights from leaders like Gojkoacic, who will be one of the keynote speakers, and Jurgen Apelo, who will be one of the keynote speakers as well. If you're ready to leave the Agile fatigue behind, just join us in Dalit. The early birth tickets are now available@the globalagilesummit.com and mark your calendar. We will have workshops on May 18th, that's a Sunday. And then the conference itself will happen on May 19th and 20th of 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. So let's make Agile exciting again. And remember, go to agile globalagilesummit.com that is, and get your early birth ticket. Now, it will only be available until early March, so grab it now. And now onto the episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to this very special bonus episode. And for today's bonus episode talking about psychological safety, we have joining us from Berlin in Germany, Mehmet Baha. Hey Mehmet. Welcome to the show.
- [02:23]
Mehmet Baha
Thank you, Oscar.
- [02:25]
Pasco Duarte
Or I should say Baja, right? Because everybody knows you as Baja.
- [02:29]
Mehmet Baha
Yes, Baha actually is my last name and everyone calls me Baha.
- [02:33]
Pasco Duarte
Everybody calls you Baja, so we'll go with that as well. Baha is a psychological safety expert and one of Facebook's first European employees. Has over 24 years experience working with top organizations. He delivers global talks, learning sessions, equipping leaders with practical tools and strategies to foster trust, innovation and collaboration and creating a safer, more inclusive workplace worldwide. And Baha is the author of Creating Psychological Safety at Work, a book that is available on Amazon right now. So let's dive into it, Baha. So in the book you introduced this framework, I think you called it 1632 64, which of course everyone with Computer knowledge will be happy that you chose those numbers, obviously. And you have some inspiring examples, some practical tools, and also some questions. So without giving too much away yet, because we will talk about that later, can you share why this framework is so impactful for creating psychological safety?
- [03:39]
Mehmet Baha
Yes. So the book is based on 16 inspiring examples from organizations around the world which create psychological safety, 32 practical tools and approaches to help us create psychological safety, and 64 questions that can help us create our psychological safety plans and strategy. So these approach actually is based on head, heart, and hands. It's an approach that I use in my learning sessions, in my consulting work. So head means we learn. It's about the cognition. We learn what psychological safety is. What are the tools. And as you know, cognition is not just enough for moving people. We also need to touch them emotionally. It's the heart aspect. And in the book, there are 16 inspiring stories. So head, we learn concepts, heart, we get inspired. And hence is about putting in practice what we learn. So the questions in the book are aimed at making us take this step and start implementing.
- [04:50]
Pasco Duarte
I really like that you have 64 questions, not because they're 64, but because they're questions. Of course, 42 questions would be even better, but I think 1632. 42 would not sound as well. Well as 1632, 64. But the topic of questions is really dear to my heart because I believe that when we coach people, we should really focus on what are the questions that can help them realize their own version of understanding what we are sharing with them. So why did you choose questions as a way to kind of, you know, make practical these ideas that you talk about? And. And how do you see questions affecting the way people see this content and learn about it?
- [05:40]
Mehmet Baha
Yeah, when I was writing the book, before writing it and during writing it, a fundamental question in my mind was, how can I make this interactive? Because just writing text is good. Maybe, you know, as an author, you feel, you know, expressing yourself, but the question always in my mind was, how can I make readers take action? And I believe that posing questions is a powerful way for. To make readers think through and give their own answers and put them into practice. And when I started writing the book and I had different sections writing the questions, I collaborated with a group of professionals around the world. So as I was writing the book, I was sending them the articles and they were giving me feedback. So I wrote it in a very iterative way. And one of the reviewers was my. Is my father. He's a management consultant, trainer, and I Finished writing the book. And then he says to me, you know, you have 16 inspiring examples. You have 32 practical tools. And I think at that time I had like 60 questions. And he says, why don't you make it 16, 32 and 64?
- [07:05]
Pasco Duarte
So great idea, by the way.
- [07:08]
Mehmet Baha
Yeah. He's an engineer and also, you know, management consultant. So I did four more questions to make it 16, 32 and 64. Long story, short questions are powerful to make readers think and put these concepts into their own context and then create their own blueprint.
- [07:28]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah. We started a while back adding what we call self reflection questions to the show. Notes of every episode. Exactly. With that thought. Right. Like, it's not enough to listen to an inspiring story. We then need to make it ours by reflecting on what that means or how would we adopt that tool, or how would we practice certain things. And I agree, and I think it's great that you have questions as a core aspect of the book that you're bringing us, because I think, I really think, as you say, that it helps us put all of these ideas into our context.
- [08:04]
Mehmet Baha
Exactly.
- [08:06]
Pasco Duarte
So psychological safety can be even a little bit abstract. I know there's a lot of research and it all started with the project at Google, which was then of course picked up and used all over the world. What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about psychological safety?
- [08:30]
Mehmet Baha
Yeah, basically I see three big misconceptions. One, certain business people think that psychological safety is all about being nice to each other, not talking about, you know, difficult issues. This is not true in psychological safety. We can, you know, be nice and at the same time deal with difficult issues. Low performance, we can be polite and at the same time have high expectations, very high standards. Second, misconceptions, consumption is certain people think that psychological safety is all about and criticizing others, seeing glass half empty, arguing with each other all the time. Unfortunately, this creates a negative and toxic work culture. It's not psychological safety either. And the third misconception is that psychological safety does not add any value to our business. It's something soft. It's abstract. And that's not true either. So according to the research of Gallup, when employees feel that their opinions count, actually, it's a place of psychological safety. You feel safe to express your opinions and you feel that your opinions count. We see 27% reduction in employee turnover, 27% reduction, 40% reduction in safety incidents, and 12% increase in productivity. So these are huge benefits of having psychological safety.
- [10:08]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that at Least I have faced in my own practice. One of the things that I see as a misconception is more related to this number one that you mentioned, that psychological safety is about creating an environment where everybody just feels that everything is swell and good and nothing wrong can happen. And what I have found that comes out of that misconception of psychological safety is that we end up not creating psychological safety because when everything is always dandy, as the Brits would say, then nothing can be wrong. Because when something is wrong, then you get judged, you get blamed. And what I have found useful in my own understanding of psychological safety, and I would like to hear your thoughts on that, is that psychological safety is all about allowing people to bring up tough topics where the topic becomes the center of attention, not the person who brings up the tough topic. Is that something that would be useful here in our conversation?
- [11:14]
Mehmet Baha
Exactly. So psychological safety is a work environment where employees feel safe to express their questions, concerns, ideas and mistakes. And it's a key aspect of high performing teams. Coming back to your question, when people show, demonstrate, you know, psychological safety, foster psychological safety, they can talk about difficult issues. I can give you one example. Recently I met one leader at a traditional organization. This organization is a mining company. It's a Canadian mining company, copper and zinc, and it's their operation in Turkey. So this operation in Turkey, the company in Turkey, this Canadian company in Turkey, they have an inspiring leader. CEO and CEO recognize that there are some accidents occurring in the, in the workplace. And as you can imagine, if an accident can happen under the ground, it can have huge implications, health, etc. So this leader is a big believer in psychological safety and he has very high standards and high expectations from employees. And at the same time, this guy is very compassionate. So he brought all the team together and he said, look, he listened to all the employees, understood their pain points, why are these accidents happening? And he's to go to talk about accidents. Previously, when such an accident happened, the person involved in that accident could end up in a disciplinary action. So he said, come to us with near misses, serious, you know, risks that you see, even accidents, you will not be put in a disciplinary action. Instead of pointing who did this? We are going to ask why did this happen? Going to details and instead of seeing employees as reasons for accidents, we will see you as part of the solution. So it's a big mind shift in mind shift, listening to the employees, understanding their concerns. He created special teams who receive these reports, suggestions from employees, and they immediately start taking action. And they also inform employees that here are the actions taken and here are the improvements. And even if the idea is not implemented, they even contact the relevant teams and employees and say, look, at this time, we are not going to implement this because of X, Y and Z. And we just wanted to let you know. And for the last 850 days, this organization has not had any accident, ever. Zero accidents. And when I was talking with this leader, he says to me that he takes the time as CEO to meet with employees one by one. He organizes breakfast in his office, he invites employees in groups of 10, he listens to them, he gives them space to express their concerns. And he also takes the time to get to know employees at a personal level. And he taught me that many employees feel touched by this because previously they didn't even meet CEO face to face. So this is a great example of psychological safety having high standards, zero accidents, high expectations, high performance, and at the same time showing this compassion, listening to them, understanding them, empowering them, seeing them as part of the solution. We need such leaders and it's a beautiful case. So psychological safety, talking difficult issues, finding solutions, and doing this in a humane way.
- [15:14]
Pasco Duarte
Absolutely. I really like that story. Very inspiring. And it links really well with the next question. Of course, because we want to help our listeners, grandmasters, leaders in the software industry, to be able to foster this psychological safety even when they themselves are under pressure. Because let's not forget it that very often what happens is that pressure is conveyed towards the rest of the organization by the vet very leaders who should be helping create the psychological safety. So in your work and in your practice, how do you help leaders balance this pressure to perform with also the need to create that safe space for their teams that ultimately leads to that performance?
- [15:57]
Mehmet Baha
Yeah, actually I do not see pressure and the need to create psychological safety as contradictory. Actually, we need to have psychological safety to be able to deliver at a high level. And the way to do it again is to listen to employees, understand them, involve them in creating solutions, and provide them with learning opportunities, appreciate them when they make mistakes, see them as learning opportunities and move forward. Previously I worked in one organization, this was a tech company and I was working directly with the CEO. And I was in charge of expanding sales partners in Latin America, Spain, India and Middle East. This organization had ambitious goals. Yeah. And there was a lot of pressure on employees. And the CEO's leadership style was command and control. So from his perspective, we need to hit the targets, there is pressure. And by using this command and control management style, we could achieve targets, we could achieve results short term. And when you look at the employees, there was lack of collaboration among colleagues, lack of sharing information. It was a toxic workplace. And whenever, you know, you ask a question to the CEO, sometimes you could get the answer. That's a stupid question. What's worse, employees started to imitate this as well. So by putting pressure, we can get results in the short term. And many employees were not giving their heart to the workplace, many employees were feeling burnt out, etc. This organization was always number two to in the world in its area and was never number one. Of course, there are many reasons for that, and one of the reasons is its lack of psychological safety in the workplace. If there was a higher level of psychological safety in the workplace, employees would be more engaged at work and could be even more high performing.
- [18:16]
Pasco Duarte
So of course, engagement is definitely an aspect that managers care about. I mean, often we hear questions from team managers, team leads, Scrum masters, agile coaches, you know, how do I keep my teams motivated? That's a very common question that comes up. And obviously in that regard, you just gave a great example of what not to do. Right? Call questions stupid or criticize people for sharing ideas or chastise them for making mistakes. That's the fastest way to get people to hide their mistakes, Right? But, but we need to make this practical. Baha. So what are some of the concrete tools, say two, three tools that Scrum masters and leaders out there can start using right away to start their journey to creating that psychological safe space for their teams?
- [19:10]
Mehmet Baha
Yes, I can share two practical tools, general, without knowing the specifics of the challenges. So the first tool is about how to deal with resistance. Sometimes we as Agile coaches, team leads, Scrum Masters, we might see resistance from team members or colleagues. So this tool is called Movers, Movables and Immovables. This was created by Jason Little. It's a change tool. So movers, movables, immovables. Normally in any change initiative, there are three groups of employees. The first group is movers. Movers are employees who are interested in this change, who say, you know, we would like to do this. Whether it's Scrum or any change initiative, they have interest in that. They have the competence and they want to move things forward. The second group is Movables. It's a bigger portion. And these employees sit on the fence and they say, let's wait and see. Now there's a new approach, Scrum or Kanban or whatever, let's see if this will work. If it works, I'm happy to join. So they wait on the fence and see their neutrals. And the third group is immovables. These employees resist to the idea. They say it was better in the past. This status quo is good. Why again, a change. We do not want this. So for us to be able to successfully lead this change, we need to start with movers who are movers in our area, interested in this, willing to take action, take steps. We work with them. We create small wins, so small successes. And we proactively communicate these small wins to other teams, to other team members, so that we can gain movables who are neutrals and then create this momentum. And ideally, we also listen to immovables, people who resist, try to understand their concerns. The key point here is not to spend big portion of our time and energy with resistance. We start with movers, get small wins, present small wins to others, gain movables, and try to make this momentum bigger. So don't start with resistance. In that case, start with movers. The second approach, sometimes in retrospectives, we do these sessions and then we notice that employees are quiet due to different reasons. One approach that we can use is an approach called green card. It's a real case. I explain you this story and then the practice. So once a team director, she joins a new company, and then in the new company, she starts doing weekly team meetings. And in the weekly team meetings, she asks team members questions, and then no one responds. Total silence. And then she thinks through, what's the reason? Why is this happening? And it turns out that the previous team director, the director, had the command and control management style. Employees were afraid of talking, expressing their ideas or questions because when they did had negative consequence on them. So they were afraid of this. They did not trust the new director. So they're quite. So this new director tries different approaches to make team members speak up, and none of them works. And eventually she comes up with an idea. It's called green card. It's basically a green card. She brings this green card to the weekly team meeting, and a person, one of the team members who has a green card, plays the devil's advocate. That person can express dissenting views, can mention the risks involved in that project, can point out what we are missing. In every team meeting, a new person has that green card. So a person has a green card, expresses dissenting views, and the team director appreciates them, says them, thank you. In the second meeting, a new person has a green card, plays a devil's advocate. Again, the team director appreciates that. So this continues every week. And it came to a Point where the employees realized, okay, we are expressing our ideas and no one is criticizing us. It's on the, on the opposite and on the contrary, the directory is encouraging us. So the green card is one of the tools that in case in retrospective the team members are quiet, we can use it to, you know, break the silence to enable them to speak up.
- [24:11]
Pasco Duarte
I really like that story because it makes two things clear. First, that there's an explicit permission to dissent. Right. And that's very important because it doesn't come with the stigma of being the annoying person who always see the negative sides.
- [24:28]
Mehmet Baha
No.
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Pasco Duarte
And it goes around. Right. And the second thing which I find is incredibly powerful of what you shared is that the leader just takes that in and thanks them. Right. And that expression of gratitude for that dissenting view, of course it created psychological safety in that specific team, but it also highlights the leaders, how would you call it, acceptance of their own vulnerability. Right. Because the dissent could be towards the leader.
- [25:05]
Mehmet Baha
True. You captured the essence of the idea.
- [25:11]
Pasco Duarte
So green cards and the movers Movables Immovables tool from Jason Little's Lean change management book. So be sure to check those out. Now when you, you know, in the book you talk about these 16 examples, but you also talk about and the 32 practical tools, but you also talk about these 64 thought provoking questions. I would like to, you know, ask you to give us a few examples of what are these questions and then explain how they are supposed to be used by us when we are dealing with the teams, when we are interacting with the teams.
- [25:52]
Mehmet Baha
So 64 questions. One example, the first chapter, the first part of the book is about how to create trust. Creating trust. Creating trust is one part of creating psychological safety. And the book includes one approach to create trust, like competency. To what extent are we competent in our job? The more competent we are, the more likely it is to create trust. Openness. To what extent are we open with our team members? Open in terms of giving feedback, asking for feedback, sharing expectations. The third aspect is walking the talk. Consistency. To what extent are we consistent saying, you know, and doing what we say? Doing what we say. Another aspect is about honesty. So promising something and then delivering it. And the last aspect is good intentions. To what extent do people perceive us as, you know, leaders with good intentions? If they perceive us as such, then it's easier to create trust in the team. So considering these five aspects of trust. One of the questions in the book is considering these five aspects of trust. What do you think are your area? What do you Think are your strengths? What do you think are your areas of improvement and what is one action you can take to strengthen trust in your team?
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Pasco Duarte
So these questions kind of help us to focus on the different aspects that you explain in the book and kind of create like, almost like a self reflection practice as we go through the book.
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Mehmet Baha
Yes.
- [27:37]
Pasco Duarte
And this self reflection can be extremely powerful also because. And perhaps you can talk about that since you've worked with so many leaders, at least in my experience, there's a lot in being able to create psychological safety, there's a lot about us understanding how we feel psychological safe ourselves. Right. So that we can, you know, express or manifest that aspect of our personalities as well. Right. So how do you see that leader transformation? What are some of the things? Maybe you can share a story or something that exemplifies that importance of the self reflection process for that transformation that happens with leaders.
- [28:21]
Mehmet Baha
Self reflection process Recently I was listening to one podcast in Germany and I heard from one German psychologist, Dieter Helmut. He said something beautiful that remained in my mind. He said, everything in life grows from within. So an egg inside the head hen, you know, it goes out, it becomes, you know, and he says it's the same for us as human beings. Without leading ourselves, we cannot lead others. Without loving ourselves, we cannot love others, etc. So you point out a good insight there. It starts with ourselves, you know, understanding ourselves and then taking the next step to make this transformation. Two things. First, we need to be aware of certain things. As leaders, we need to say, okay, to what extent is there psychological safety in our team? Or to what extent I am good at fostering this? We need to be aware of this. Okay, once we are aware, again, it's not enough. We need to have an interest to improve it so we are aware. And then the next stage is, okay, to what extent I am interested in fostering psychological safety in my team. The third point, again, interest on its own is not enough. I am aware, I'm interested. But the next question is to what extent I have the knowledge to be able to create psychological safety in the team. And ideally, with books, podcasts, trainings, learning sessions, we can get the knowledge what to do, how to do it, etc, so we are aware, we are interested, we have the knowledge. And the next part is, I know many people who knows things, who knows what leadership is, who knows what agile is. Knowing is not enough. We need to apply, implement. So the next step is implementation. To what extent are we implementing what we know? And the last point is, how can we sustain this implementation and going back to your question, few things that leaders can do. One, feedback. How often do you ask proactively feedback from others, not giving feedback, asking proactively for feedback, what is it that you are doing well? What can you improve on a specific topic? When was the last time you asked this? And now what's the next time you can ask for feedback from others about a project, about a presentation you did? Doing this regularly, every time I do podcasts, I'm going to do it with you. In the end, I'm going to ask you asko, what did I do well in this podcast and what can I do? What can I improve? I will listen to you, you will see it. Once we finish, I will take notes and I will say thank you to you. I'm not going to defend myself. And I do this every time I do a podcast or public learning session. And this helps me a lot to improve even my performance. So proctor last for feedback. And second, try to encourage the same thing using meetings. Ask what are we missing? Who thinks different on the topic?
- [31:43]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that you said that I do want to emphasize that one way, one very practical way in which we as leaders can create psychological safety is to model how to receive feedback. Right. And we interviewed Marshall Goldsmith recently and one of the things that he said in the interview is when people give you feedback, listen, thank them, and then do whatever you do with the feedback. But don't defend or criticize back or anything like that. Right. And I think that's so powerful because that's how we create safety for others. Right. At the same time, we're creating safety for ourselves because we don't enter conflicts that are not necessary because at the end of the day, we decide what to do with the feedback that we receive.
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Mehmet Baha
Exactly.
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Pasco Duarte
So, Baha, your book creating psychological safety at work will be in the show notes linked for people to go and check that out and purchase the book and learn how to do this in practice. But if you would have to add one resource, could be a book, a video, or something else that you'd recommend for listeners that want to dive deeper into this topic. What would that be?
- [32:55]
Mehmet Baha
There is one website which I created. It's ww.sample folder together solution folder.com/free-resources so solution folder.com free-resources on this website you can access video series on psychological safety. You get one video per week for eight weeks in total, eight videos where we can learn different aspects of psychological safety and start, you know, fostering psychological safety at work.
- [33:32]
Pasco Duarte
Absolutely. And everybody take action. It is a very important role that we have as leaders. Baha, before we go, where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?
- [33:43]
Mehmet Baha
You can find me on LinkedIn. When you write, Mehmet Baha, you should be able to find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I share content, videos and links.
- [33:55]
Pasco Duarte
Absolutely. And we'll definitely put the link to that on the show Notes. So, Baha, thank you very much for joining us. And thank you for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.
- [34:05]
Mehmet Baha
It was my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. Master.
- [34:12]
Pasco Duarte
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