Episode 153: Giving Voice to Safety

This week's episode of the "Leading and Learning through Safety" podcast, hosted by Dr. Mark French, delves into the dynamics of silence and voice in the workplace, particularly their impact on safety and team motivation. Dr. French emphasizes the significance of creating a safe environment for employees, both physically and psychologically. He discusses a journal article from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology titled "Too Depressed and Anxious to Speak Up," which explores how mental health fluctuations influence employees' willingness to communicate.

Dr. French highlights the importance of safety as a foundational need in the workplace, referencing Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He stresses that without safety, both physical and psychological, employees cannot progress or feel part of a team. The podcast also covers the critical distinction between voice and silence, noting that they are not opposite ends of a spectrum but can coexist in complex ways. Dr. French shares a personal story about addressing confined space safety issues in an organization, demonstrating the challenges and importance of open communication.

Overall, the episode underscores the vital role of safety in fostering a productive and empathetic workplace culture, encouraging leaders to prioritize and actively maintain safety to support their teams' well-being and performance.

Transcript

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This week on the podcast, we're talking about silence. And we're talking about voice, how they merge to create a better experience in safety and in your workplace this week on the podcast Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now here is Dr. Mark French. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Hi, I'm your host, Dr. Mark French, and I am so happy that you have joined me, you have a choice of what you spend your time on. And you have chosen you spend your time with me. I recently came across a quote from one of my favorite leadership authors, John Maxwell has an expanded quote, he has been well known for saying leadership is nothing more nothing less than influence. But then he adds, he says the most important thing that a manager can give is their time. And so you have chosen to give 20 minutes to me. And I am honored by your investment in leadership in safety in people. And trusting me with your time. So thank you. This week, I came across a wonderful journal article that shocked me a little bit about just how in depth it went. And how much it sparked some passion within me and I want to talk about that. This is from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. So it's from the American Psychological Association, one of their journals. It is current it is from the recent addition that came out, I'll post a link. Unfortunately, you'll probably just be able to get to the abstract unless you go behind the paywall. That is what it is. But I do want to walk through it with you is called to depressed and anxious to speak up the relationships between weekly fluctuations and mental health in silence at work. Now at first, I'm sure you were like me and thought wow, what does this have to do with safety. It has everything to do with safety. It begins with safety, it ends with safety, everything all around it is safety. And it just really struck me and how important this message is. And also how frustrating this message is, when we get into it. The idea behind the research, what they were looking at is the difference between when people speak up. And of course, no doubt when someone is depressed or anxious. They're less likely to speak up or speak out about things. But there's a great difference that they put in here. They talk about voice and they talk about silence. And they're not two ends of the same. They're not the opposite ends. They're the same. They come together to create a very interesting dynamic in the workplace that you can be both high voice and high silence. How does that work? All have I got your attention yet? I hope so because the background research that they did is really where I found so much interesting idea and a theoretical model of what is going on in the workplace. Let's take one step back. When we look at behavioral functional needs in the workplace. Oh yeah, I'm going back to Maslow's theory, the hierarchy of needs. It starts with food, water and shelter. By having a job you inherently have the food, water and shelter if you want to progress in Maslow's hierarchy if you want to gain that next level. The next step is Safety, there has to be physical first, the feeling that you're not going to be hurt, or be killed or die, that there is safety involved safety enough to protect what you've created with your food, water and shelter. And then secondly, it evolves further, it shifts into psychological well being, that I feel psychologically safe, because the next step in that Maslow's hierarchy is the need for team the need for belonging. So it makes sense, you have your core basics, you then feel safe enough that you can expand your core basics, and then you become a team. And when we don't have that psychological, and when it starts with physical safety, then we cannot progress as human beings we're, we're stunted at that point, we can't move forward, we don't have the we're not equipped to move forward, we're not we don't have the energy to progress to that next level. So when this publication, when I was reading through it, I'll point out some of the key facts that really blew my mind. And I love the Tsar actually wrote the, the author of the key, the first author of the end gave them some kind words, because I was very, very excited by this. And what is interesting. Let's start again, here with without safety, if you are in a workplace, if you are in an organization, that is not, that does not care about your safety, first, your physical safety, second, your psychological safety, there's outside research that absolutely suggests it creates depression and anxiety. I mean, think about it, if you were to if you have to, there are people who every day have to go to work in this, we see it that we see the outcomes of it through injuries and death and dismemberment and all the terrible things that come with bad safety. And we see it come out in legal suits of where discriminate discriminatory practices, in bad working conditions come out, we see this we see the outside of it, the end result of poor safety, both physical and psychological, that creates depression and anxiety, to have to go into an environment that does not care about you as a human being or a leadership person or a a boss that does not care that you're a human being, and that you have fundamental needs by coming into the organization. And so inherently, even from the title, they're looking at weekly fluctuations and mental health, we continually have the opportunity and the responsibility to maintain and to promote physical and psychological safety in the workplace as a basic human need. cannot say that enough, a basic human need. And when these fluctuations occur, it creates a very negative, very dangerous outcome within an organization. So let's go into the research. I have spoken so much about it. And I have yet to do a whole lot of really getting into it. They in their research section where they're citing research and the background research of what they are doing. They talk about silence and silent motives. silence And this is a direct quote denotes intentional withholding of information, ideas, questions, concerns about potentially important work related issues. In other words, it represents a conscious decision to withhold voice to a certain degree. Wow. How many times as safety people as leadership has something happened and you've been innocent, and I've been there, embarrassingly, and sometimes not embarrassingly, sometimes. Frustratingly, I have been there where something has happened, whether it be a near miss, and hopefully it was a near miss for you, but it was a near miss, or something that could have been much worse and someone goes, I knew that could happen. I've been telling people about that for so long. And finally I just quit, because no one was listening, or I felt that it would be an unpopular opinion. Therefore, I didn't do it. And I have a really interesting story about that real life story of how we all was created silence and or we did in a way, but we had to overcome it again in an organization. I'm going to tell you that story and we're going to continue to talk about this article. On the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, you are listening to the leading a learning through safety podcast with Dr. Mark French, D is D consulting, learn you lead others, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr. Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more. Individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at t is da consulting.com. And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So this week, I'm talking about an article from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. And it's talking about giving voice or also being silent and withholding your voice. So I told you right before that short break, in case you forgot that I am going to tell you a story. And this revolves around confined spaces. We discovered at an organization that we had an issue around confined spaces, we didn't have anyone properly trained to go in. And someone spoke up about it and said, That's a confined space. I'm not trained, I can't just go in there, they were right, was it very hard to say because the easy route would have been just keep doing the work or the maintenance that needed to be done. Of course, it would have been easy. But it was not the right thing to do. And so we reached out to a consultant because I needed help getting training fast and good training and I wasn't really ready, or have the equipment or capability or time to do it. So I reached out to a friend who was a consultant locally. And we got all the maintenance team into a class and some of the production supervisors into a class so that we would know how to do our confined spaces at our side how to, we were going to do risk assessments, we were going to get ready for recovery, rescue if we needed it, but most importantly, how to protect the space so that no one would get her going in it. And the first thing that happens is one of the supervisors who really felt like that this was just not important because it just it safety. It's not important, was like I can't believe we're wasting our time here in this class, all because of that person, and pointing the finger at them. So they had to speak up and tell everybody it was a confined space and refused to do the work. And now we're here in this class, I thought the instructor was going to choke a man out. Last and I lost it. And it wasn't long after that supervisor was on with us. Because we are not going to be known as an organization that when someone says the right thing is brave enough to say it, that we're going to punish them for saying in too many, too many times when positioning for power, when positioning for the wrong things. non human related. That's what happens. And it's very difficult to overcome that. Because you've probably heard analogies of the Trust Bank or the love bank, that when you're making deposits in someone's Trust Bank, or their love bank, they're tiny. Whenever you met, you can only make tiny deposits of trust and love, little bits. But when you make a withdrawal, when you have to pull that that out is big. There's no such thing as a small amount when you're withdrawing from those banks. And so as an organization, it's even compounded. Because you think about weekly interactions, because this is where this is. It gets down to daily, which is highly complex. When you're talking about a human being. They're measuring on a weekly scale. And it certainly showed that on a weekly scale, anxiety and depression had an effect significant effect on how that person communicated. And if they communicated, which was even the most critical part for me because communication is so important. As a safety professional, or anyone who cares about leadership and safety. How are you? How do you consider yourself a leader if you are not communicating or have open communication with the people you were leading? That's not leadership. If you're not communicating that supervision, maybe being a boss maybe being worse, if there was a, I mean, there's worse terms, I'm just not going to throw them out there. If we're not convinced, number one, the time we invest in time isn't me looking over your shoulder berating you, it's interacting in a productive way that we march toward the similar goal. So let's, let's go back to the research again. And so we talked about silence. What is that silence. And there's another point that they bring up about voice, what is voice on that spectrum, that you may be very vocal, someone may be exceptionally vocal when they're under depression or anxiety, or when they're choosing to be that intentional withholding of communication. And I love this is a little technical, but I love the way they say it. However, it is important to clarify that silence and voice are not opposite ends of the same continuum. Rather, they are distinct constructs that generally exhibit a weak negative relationship. So you can have high voice and high silence, what does it mean to be voiced? Have you ever been in a situation where you knew you had to say something, and you knew you couldn't say the negative thing? So you just went? You just found the one good thing you could say and go? Yep, I love that part of it. And let's Yes, I love it, I'm going to speak out about it. They found a correlation there, that when someone was under some stress and anxiety, they were more likely to reassert themselves to the person they're talking to in a very positive way. So to avoid any negativity. So the silence was chosen, I'm not going to tell you the bad things that could come up because of what we're doing. But what I am going to do is find anything good, anything at all. So I can say something to stay under the radar or to stay on your good side. And I guarantee you can think of examples in your work in your life in an organization that you may have been with, or someone you've talked to and heard about it. Where it was a there was danger, there was risk there. But instead of talking about the risk, because of all the trouble, they talked about only the reactors upside to that, yeah, there could be some good things. Let's just talk about those because I know that's a safe place to go. It's not dangerous to talk about those things in an organization, I don't feel at risk. But that only compounds the anxiety and depression. And so it only curves, it's a spiral, you begin to spiral down this road of where you're hearing a lot as a potential as a supervisor, as an organization, you're hearing a lot of these positive things. And the elephant in the room, the the big issues, the problems are not being talked about, we're not hearing about it. Wow. It's important that we keep the communication we keep things flowing, so that we're talking about it, we're learning from each other. And that only comes from safety. From people feeling safe enough to work, and feeling safe enough to talk. We're gonna continue this conversation. But for now, let's end this podcast. And we'll keep going on the next one. I'll leave you in suspense. But I appreciate you joining me I think you this one is right after the fourth. It's a long weekend coming up and n will be in it for this podcast. I hope you are well. I hope you are safe. Hope you stay hydrated and make sure you keep that sunscreen with you. And until next time we chat. Stay safe. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online@www.ts da consulting.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast