Classroom/ Online: Yes/ No
Scheduling Date(s):
1) Mar 10, 2025 (classroom)
Note: Please click specific date for detailed venue and course fee etc.
Psychological Safety & Leader Vulnerability – a 21st century super skill
We’ve heard the benefits of a psychologically safe environment. For innovation, creativity, high performance and joy.
Maybe we’ve tried it in our teams but nothing has changed too much and we don’t know why. Or maybe we’re curious and want to know more.
Based upon research from acclaimed organizational psychologist Adam Grant, this is an experiential taster of “leader feedback sharing”, which you can practice in your own workplace. As a leader, you will learn psychological tools to model authentic vulnerability in front of your team. Far from compromising your seniority, the tools encourage vulnerability loops, giving your team permission to speak up with ideas, suggestions, concerns and mistakes. Without fear of ridicule, punishment or other adverse consequence.
Maybe we’ve tried it in our teams but nothing has changed too much and we don’t know why. Or maybe we’re curious and want to know more.
Based upon research from acclaimed organizational psychologist Adam Grant, this is an experiential taster of “leader feedback sharing”, which you can practice in your own workplace. As a leader, you will learn psychological tools to model authentic vulnerability in front of your team. Far from compromising your seniority, the tools encourage vulnerability loops, giving your team permission to speak up with ideas, suggestions, concerns and mistakes. Without fear of ridicule, punishment or other adverse consequence.
Objective
- Learn the power of psychological safety.
- Understand why leader vulnerability is critical for progress. Understand how vulnerability is always a super power in life and work.
- Understand why operating in a corporate hierarchy based upon competence can naturally create a feeling of psychological unsafety - it’s nobodys fault. Understand why change has to come from the top more than from the bottom.
- Learn some simple, easy to implement behaviours to model vulnerability for the team, thereby improving psychological safety.
- Learn some simple behaviours to suggest to your teams, and implement yourself, to enable them to respond in kind.
Outline
- Introduction to Psychological Safety
- Vulnerability as a super power (and NOT a weakness)
- How do decide appropriate sharings
- Experience the power & vulnerability of leader feedback sharing (small groups)
- What can you and team members do to support your own and their vulnerability journey?
Who should attend
- Leaders at any level of seniority, from any corporate business domain, who wish their teams to speak up more with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. Find ways to change what’s often observed as silence in meetings or conformity to status quo thinking.
- Leaders who want to increase levels of creativity and innovation. Or improve a culture of anxiety or even apathy around performance goals. Leaders who want to develop greater appetite for risk when trying new activities. Leaders who believe failure when trying something new should be celebrated, as long as there is valuable learning.
- Those who feel employees are giving the organization their hands, some of their heads but none of their hearts.
Methodology
- Discussion and authentic introspection in real time, in order to investigate fears, concerns, ambiguities and vulnerabilities.
- Emphasis is on experiential practice and subsequent awareness of group psychological changes. Feedback and transparency with others in small, persistent groups and the wider class. None of us are invulnerable, nor should we pretend that we are.
- The class itself is “psychologically safe”. Appropriate levels of safety are modelled by facilitator who also leads with context. Encourage group feedback and learning throughout.
Testimonials
"We [leaders] realize we are only an inch ahead of the rest, if at all"
"You can skip me if you want to progress your career. Can even go directly to [senior department head]. A manager should not block anyone’s career"
"The experience brought a bit of magic back into the corporate life that we often forget"
"I [senior leader] am still on that learning journey [said to team of junior colleagues]"
"In corporate setting, we do wear our corporate mask. But [senior leader] shows her authenticity and it is inspiring"
"You can skip me if you want to progress your career. Can even go directly to [senior department head]. A manager should not block anyone’s career"
"The experience brought a bit of magic back into the corporate life that we often forget"
"I [senior leader] am still on that learning journey [said to team of junior colleagues]"
"In corporate setting, we do wear our corporate mask. But [senior leader] shows her authenticity and it is inspiring"
Profile of Ravi Agarwal
Business agility transformations in financial services; coach, facilitator and mentor for human centric leadership skills. Critical thinking, emotional intelligence, decision making, empathy, psychological safety
Ravi Agarwal, British born, raised and educated, has over 25 years’ experience in financial services and software engineering leadership roles around the world.
He believes the most powerful learnings happen when we touch the depth of our own humanity. When we do this authentically, it feels like magic. His facilitation style reflects this conviction. By engaging empathetically and individually with learners, whether one-on-one or in class settings, he allows people to uncover their depth, thereby bringing them into these precious learning zones for themselves.
Though intimate with information technology over several decades, he believes access to information can never allow you to flower to your greatest potential. So he focuses on the specifically human, character-centric skills. Emotional intelligence, critical thinking, paying attention, decision making in ambiguous contexts, empathy, psychological safety, mentoring & coaching are his life blood.
Not only does he create original content for such learning, he implicitly demonstrates the learning in real time via his facilitation techniques and who he is, so that attendees can absorb their learning from many dimensions. This is by far the best way to teach character skills.
So please join him. Learn how to blossom your humanity and your leadership journey in life, in the only way that really matters: your own.
1. Paying Attention and Critical Thinking with Emotional Intelligence: Taylor Swift – Lyrics as Poetry (for individuals & teams) (half day with writing homework)
2. Hands-on Introduction to Agile Product Development (for teams) (full day)
3. First Time Manager - the basics. One on ones; feedback, coaching & delegation (for individuals) (two full days)
4. Psychological Safety & Leader Vulnerability – a 21st century super skill (for individuals & teams) (half or full day)
5. Manage your Personal Finances & Spending - A Layman’s Guide (half day) (individuals)
Ravi, a natural polymath, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. He is extremely grateful to have studied Mathematics, French & English Literature under the guidance of some extraordinarily gifted teachers. Though many years apart, he is proud to call both Isaac Newton (English polymath, world pioneering mathematician) & Lee Hsien Loong (former Singapore Prime Minister) his college alumni.
