Tag: words

Psychological safety at work | PODCAST #Biz_Culture

Simona ZdanavičiūtėLeave a comment

With Anne Sophie Gjems

Along with changes in our social norms, comes the changes in the Human Resources department, which is being affected not only by cultural differences but also accelerated by the pandemic and remote working conditions. Not understanding your employees or colleagues today might cause catastrophic losses, of which examples are visible not only in business, politics, or other public matters but also in our personal relationships with people we love.

Still, every social context forms a particular set of rules on how each person is framed by society to express themselves. In conversations and different types of communities, people usually are segmented into introverts and extraverts as well as alpha and omega personalities. Mixing with the native cultural background and the social context in which the conversation is taken – we start to label the people. This usually gives a push for stereotype development, taboo topics and even can cause social anxiety.

If you “google it” you will find many different articles about this “new” concept called “psychological safety at work”. We got interested to know, why we need to create concepts such as “psychological safety” in order to understand that the core value in humanity is the relationships among us. In other words, how to transform our discussions into something valuable for the long run in business, public and personal life?

…but first, let’s explore our guest, Anne Sophie Gjems’ perspective and her meanings of concepts such as:

Photo from Pixabay

CONCEPT: “CULTURE”

Culture is a key, and the people are the culture, the gold lays within the employees. I strongly believe that you can have as many strategy documents, KPI`s and SOP`s as you wish, if you do not have the people with you, employees that thrive, yes best case, love their work (or at least the people they work with), you have lost a great deal of the potential in your business.

According to PwC recent global survey of 3,200 workers in more than 40 countries; strong cultures drive better business outcomes. Bhushan Sethi Joint Global Leader for People and Organisation at PwC says: “Organizations with a view of culture as a distinction and source of competitive advantage, maintain a sense of community better, respond to customer needs better, innovate with a higher degree of success and deliver better business results.”

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

CONCEPT: “PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY”

Google studied 180 teams and interviewed hundreds of employees to find what characterizes the best performing teams in their study Aristotle. They found that psychological safety is the key element to secure a team to perform. Psychological safety as a key concept in business is no longer something anyone can overlook. So:

  • How do we create this safety in a group?
  • How do we create a culture where it is legitimate to ask questions, turn things upside down, question status quo?

I dare to suggest that the most important we as humans have, is our connections. That is what in so many ways defines us as humans, at home, and at work. To feel secure, safe in an environment it all comes down to connections, the basics of being human.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

CONCEPT: “RELATIONAL ARCHITECT”

As a company, we work as “relational architects”. We build and develop structures in organizations where people thrive and perform together. We help organizations build strong, robust, and crucial connections to release this collective potential. We claim that trusting connections create psychological safety in a group, and through psychological safety comes high performance.

For a connection-driven culture to take root in an organization one needs to work strategically, regularly, and over time. We use our tailored tool, FuelBox, to make this happen. Today it is used by a great number of private-public companies in Norway and internationally.

Photo from FuelBox personal Anne Sophie Gjems album

THE GUEST OF THE PODCAST:

With great pleasure, we would love to invite you to hear the conversation with our next #Biz_Culture guest, Anne Sophie Gjems from Norway. Her perspective on communication and cultural importance was trained with the biggest challenge of all times – YOUTH! Even though she had been a leader for many years, it was her job as a high school teacher that gave her the real manager challenges!

Today she is a partner in Fuel It, the FuelBox company, public speaker, and passionate about bringing great conversations into every relationship and arenas of the world. 

We caught her at the Lithuanian business conference REFOCUS. Anne Sophie Gjems present a very genuine and simple way on how the discussions can be a tool to build the belonging sense in the business organization.

It will be interesting to talk with her about how to create qualitative connections with people not only for money value but also those relationships, which help us grow as human beings.

Anne Sophie has many years of experience as a leader, and as a team-/leader coach and communication skills expert, and she will share her thought with us in #Biz_Culture in our next podcast episode.

Stay tuned!

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#9 PODCAST #Biz_Culture | Psychological safety at work by Anne Sophie Gjems – #Biz_Culture

The glasses of perspectives with the host of the PODCAST #Biz_Culture

Simona ZdanavičiūtėLeave a comment

With Dr. Brigita Dimavičienė

Nobody wishes to read long and vague texts. Especially when it comes to business. Business people want examples, numbers, and other materials which are concrete and solid. They want this information as justification for what ideas are explored in the text. As if it should be proved with KPI algorithms. Fair enough. However, before you start evaluating “performance”, may I ask you?

  1. Where is your attention directed when receiving information? Have you noticed?
  2. More importantly, how do you use that information after?
  3. As each of us has a different viewpoint on details, facts, and names, how to know, which information to follow in order to make your solid decision in business?

In the business world, concepts, structures, models, or numbers/facts drag our attention as a stick on the board at the eye doctor, which is used to check how far we can see. The same as with those solid business examples, containing numbers, names, or structures/models. Every “labeled detail” will direct you to particular information, which you will be able to see, or not.  However, what about that detail, which you are not able to see? Usually, for that we get glasses, right?

The glasses are a separate object from us with the lenses, which helps us to see everything around us clearly, no matter where the stick will direct our attention. However in order to see what is not visible, first we need to put them on and make a solid decision in business with minimized risk to be wrong in our choices.

Those glasses as the glasses of perspectives PODCAST #Biz_Culture offers you. The choice to see half of the view or fully – here, it is left for you to choose.

Photo by Spencer Selover from Pexels

LET’S GET TO KNOW THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOST

The host of the PODCAST #Biz_Culture, Brigita Dimavičienė is a lecturer, the creator of “Speak Up” school, a linguist, and social studies supporter. Speaking at TEDxKaunas2019 about how to “Unlock your fair by doing it”, today she is hosting the PODCAST #Biz_Culture.

During the conversation with the podcast’s guests, Brigita goes forward with difficult questions, misunderstanding of other people or falling out of the communication games. The guests have been asked, how do they understand concepts used in their work routine? This question not only set the topic for the discussion, but also allow us to understand the perspective of the speaker.

Just this time, the answer and the perspective on the concepts will be Brigita’s. This is what she feels is important to discuss today in more depth:

“At the moment, I guess the most important business feature is its ability to adapt in the changing markets and its situation. So in this case both adaptability and flexibility are the key concepts. In addition, business responsibility towards its employees and clients is at its utmost importance. It’s not ‘a client always right’ concept anymore, now it is more ‘if an employee is happy, the client is happy’ idea. Creating a safe, motivational environment for the company’s employees provides many long-term benefits.”

In her focus point, the “teamwork and well-developed listening skills while running a small business” – appears as two main concepts of her perspective. She stresses the meaning of these two words by saying that “in our situation listening and examining each client individually is the core of long-term success. This is the only way to stand out in a highly competitive business sphere.”

No matter if you are a business person or just trying to adapt to the new job within the company – we are all a part of communication and behaving process, which later on forms into the so called “business culture”. Thus, what Brigita points out for us here, is the ability to learn how “to stand in other person shoes”, how to learn to direct your focus to the right direction and how to use the skill to speak in perspectives for the business benefit.

“I have always been interested in how the norms, values, and behavior of a group are reflected within a culture. Especially, such small cultures, as Lithuanian. We do know that culture is a key player in the business that often influences its strategic direction, so why not turn it into a competitive advantage.” – Brigita puts a cherry on the top.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

THIS TIME AT THE PODCAST #BIZ_CULTURE – THE PEOPLE BEHIND THIS PROJECT

During one of work days, Brigita (the host) and I (producer) had our casual chat via sms. That day we talked about leadership and management of an organization team. We discussed how the team accept information, digest it and form into action. In a way, we discussed, how people understand shared information.

Brigita stressed that the key of delivering information is – from what position or perspective you are talking to people. As Brigita expressed “I am the manager to them. And when I talk about teaching I am a teacher among them.” Also, we noticed that another key factor in order to understand others as well as be understood – from what level you are talking with them. If you are the head of organization and you only speak to your team from “top to bottom” – you might lose people focus on the main message you want to deliver to people. However if you speak to the people as being one of them (or their perspective) – you might establish the bond and the trust on your words.

Thus, the self-positioning as well as what perspective we need to take in order to share the information we have – can open the door to mutual understanding. It gives us the glasses of perspective of other and at the same time connects us on the understanding level.

This conversation on the diversity of perspectives and how to understand each other better in business, we moved on to the next PODCAST #Biz_Culture episode. This time, our listeners finally meet up with the people behind this project and hear what the meaning of all the topics discussed here are actually hiding.

#4 PODCAST #Biz_Culture | The rules of the game. Do we call it right? By dr. Brigita Dimavičienė – #Biz_Culture