How Challenging Each Other Makes Your Team Stronger

When I think about what it takes to challenge your colleagues, to question the status quo, to speak up and use your voice (even if it shakes), I can’t help but picture Ruth Bader Ginsberg. So even though we’re talking about the fourth stage of psychological safety – the safety to challenge ideas in the workplace, the safety to speak up, ask questions, and disagree – I’m framing it as dissent. In this episode we’ll explore the role of dissent in psychological safety.

Episode Highlights

[02:22]: The three stages of psychological safety we’ve covered so far: Inclusion Safety, Learner Safety, and Contributor Safety. Today we’ll dig into the role of dissent in psychological safety and explore how institutions create a culture where folks are in the habit of disagreeing in order to get better.

[05:22]: What “the safety to challenge the status quo” can look like at work – and how I used it in my role as “the purpose girl.”

[8:35]: An example of how an organization can have varying levels of psychological safety based on differing team dynamics, and how that can be exacerbated by race and gender bias.

[13:44]: “Where psychological safety is high, there is necessarily a high level of inclusion and belonging.”

[15:30]: The role of discipline in creating a culture where people can disagree. That’s discipline as in consistent behavior, not as in punishment.

[21:00]: Recommended strategies for embracing dissent, inclusion, and discipline, no matter your role, style, or level of leadership.

[30:50]: Hey have you left a review yet? Please do it today!

Resources

Inclusion Uncomplicated, by Nika White.

The Fearless Organization, by Amy Edmondson

The Fourth Stage of Psychological Safety: Challenger Safety. Tim Clark & The Leader Factor

Why Many Women of Color Don’t Want to Return to the Office. Joan C. Williams, Olivia Andrews, & Mikayla Boginsky, in the Harvard Business Review.

Reducing the backlash effect: Self-monitoring and women’s promotions. Olivia O’Neill & Charles O’Reilly. Published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

The ‘angry Black woman’ as intellectual bondage: being strategically emotional on the academic plantation. Nadena Doharty.

Dear Corporate America: Stop Tone Policing Black Women. We Have Every Right To Be Angry. Dana Brownlee. Published in Forbes Magazine.

Against a sharp white background”: How Black women experience the white gaze at work. Verónica Caridad Rabelo, Kathrina J. Robotham, Courtney L. McCluney. Published in Gender, Work, & Organization, from Wiley Online Library.

Discrimination and a Struggle for Legitimacy: Faculty of Color and Female Faculty Experience An Uneven Playing Field. Ana Le. Published in the Higher Education Research Institute.

The Struggle Continues: Women of Color Faculty and Institutional Barriers. Lourdes Torres. Published in the University of Washington Pressbooks.

Related Episodes

How to be Her Ally. Episode 3.

From Toxic to Vibrant: The One Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Campus Climate. Episode 15.

Mentors & Allies. Episode 23.