Hi there and a very warm welcome to Season 5 Episode 10 of People Soup. It's Ross McIntosh here. I've been floored by a heavy cold this week so instead of Part 2 of my chat with Andrea Watts (which will appear next week) we're revisiting the archives and sharing one of our most popular episodes, my chat with Alexandra Lechner. We talk about her ground breaking research on the challenges of building psychological safety in virtual teams. We cover the barriers and the enablers and it’s fascinating to hear Alexandra’s recommendations too.

Alexandra was a student on the MSc in Organisational Psychology at City, University of London and her research supervisor was Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock, our legendary guest from the first episodes of this season.

People Soup is an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioural science, in a way that’s practical, accessible and fun. We're all about sharing the ingredients for a better work life from behavioural science and beyond.

There is a transcript for each episode. There is a caveat - this transcript is largely generated by Artificial Intelligence, I have corrected many errors but I won't have captured them all! You can also find the shownotes by clicking on notes then keep scrolling for all the useful links.

• City Research Online - How to create psychological safety in virtual teams - Lechner, A. and Tobias Mortlock, J. M. (2021). How to create psychological safety in virtual teams. Organizational Dynamics, doi: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2021.100849
• Connect with Alexandra on LinkedIn

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[00:00:00] BEGIN

[00:00:00] Ross: Hi there, and a very warm welcome to Season five, episode 10 of People's Soup. It's Ross McIntosh. Pup. As you may, well be expecting part two of my chat with the brilliant Andrea Watts, but I've been floored by a fairly brutal cold, so you can expect part two next week.

[00:00:28] Alexandra: I've always been really interested in, teamwork and how we can increase performance of teams. I've worked, in a lot of teams myself in the past, and it was always wondering a bit, what can we do to improve this and to make this better? and then I came across this, study that Google did in 2015.

[00:00:55] pay supers. Thanks for tuning in this week. It's a chat with Alexandra latch now where we talk about her groundbreaking research on the challenges of building psychological safety and virtual teams.

[00:01:40] And it's fascinating to hear her recommendations too.

[00:02:01] Can't wait to get stuck into the second half I love it when new and helpful resources come my way. And in our later tweet, Melanie went on to say, thank you for a marvelous book and a fantastic interview. So Melanie, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. Glad you enjoyed Nick's book and yeah, if you haven't heard it folks.

[00:02:24] it was me and Annie gas going are proud to have launched our flexibility at work training program. It's a modular approach designed to share insights and a toolkit for how we bring contextual behavioral science to organizations to cultivate behavioral flexibility, wellbeing, and effectiveness. There are discounts for students and recent graduates as well as early bird offers. So follow the links in the show notes, or go to book when.com/flexibility at work that's dot com slash flexibility at work

[00:03:05] Interview

[00:03:10] Alexandra: Thank you very much for us looking forward very much to speaking to you.

[00:03:15] Ross: mind just introducing yourself to our listeners, please?

[00:03:42] Alexandra: we have 30 people and we're roughly in the area. Of, life insurances and, it's, it's a digital life companion to, protect people and their families. and yeah, that's what I'm doing at the moment.

[00:04:03] Alexandra: That's crazy.

[00:04:17] Ross: But today we're focusing on your master's research, which has now been published piece supers. Let me just tell you It's been published in organizational dynamics. Is that right?

[00:04:31] Ross: And the title of the article is how to create psychological safety in virtual teams, Alexandra Leccino and UTA.

[00:04:40] Alexandra: yes. Very exciting to me. So

[00:04:48] Ross: I'm so delighted that you've had this published because I think it's so important I think psychological safety is becoming more known the kind of concept of it.

[00:05:06] Alexandra: Yeah, that's true. I was quite surprised that there wasn't as much, or actually there was no research out there about psychological safety in virtual teams, which was very surprising to me. but yeah, now there is.

[00:05:18] Ross: indeed. So how did you decide on this topic for your research?

[00:05:40] Alexandra: Was that I I've always been really interested in, teamwork and how we can increase performance of teams. I've worked, in a lot of teams myself in the past, and it was always wondering a bit, what can we do to improve this and to make this better? and then I came across this, study that Google did in 2015.

[00:06:08] Alexandra: and I mean, there certainly is a lot of differences that we see and trust and communication and relationships in virtual teams. So I thought to myself, the way that we create psychological safety must also be different in a virtual team. and yeah, that's how I became interested in that. Yeah.

[00:06:35] Ross: so tell me how you did it. What type of methods did you use for your research?

[00:07:02] Alexandra: So I analyzed what the participants were telling me in the interviews and then could draw, my findings based on basis. Yeah.

[00:07:33] Alexandra: Yeah, I can very much relate to that. I found it at times very exciting at other times. Very frustrating. Just the amount of information that you have in an interview transcript, because when you first hear the interview or participate yourself, you hear completely different things, from when you then transcribe it and.

[00:08:12] Alexandra: And then like, take a step back and ask yourself now, what can I draw from.

[00:08:32] Ross: There's a lovely table table one P supers. If you want to look up this paper yourself, which, has practical recommendations for cultivating psychological safety virtually, is that the summary of your thematic analysis, which is.

[00:09:25] Ross: Thank you. I think you're quite modest in the way you, describe this because when you're in the midst of a pandemic, everyone's getting used to working virtually. We're not always thinking straight about, oh, how could we make this more effective? So I think using your findings as a guide could be tremendously useful to people out there as a starting point to consider.

[00:09:49] Alexandra: Yeah, that's true.

[00:10:10] Alexandra: Yeah, that's true. Although I think that the hybrid model will pose completely new challenges and probably even I didn't consider in that paper. Um, so yeah. Lots of new challenges ahead.

[00:10:24] Alexandra: Yeah, true. That could be.

[00:10:26] Ross: so Alexandra in your research, you. Came across some barriers and some enablers to cultivating psychological safety in virtual teams. I wonder if you could just give us some insight into those players.

[00:11:08] Alexandra: that just take more time and effort in a virtual team compared to if it's face-to-face team. and then the second barrier that we found is that team members tend to communicate in bubbles. So maybe that's a concept that you have experienced both in virtual and in, face-to-face teams before. But, very often we come into a new team and we quickly bond with one or two people.

[00:11:46] Alexandra: That can result in people communicating in bubbles. and that's a bit problematic in, in a virtual team. maybe what's interesting about that as well, is that, it's definitely a problem in face-to-face teams as well. But we found [00:12:00] it to be more critical in a virtual team because you don't have these, communications, for example, at the coffee machine, where you accidentally stumbled across a different colleague and those conversations kind of balance out these effects of communicating and bubbles.

[00:12:45] Alexandra: Yeah, exactly. And for me, that's actually a really critical point because what I feel like is one of the main messages, a lot of these things in a virtual team, you have to think of much more deliberately and you have to deliberately decide, for example, what team members should I have another conversation with?

[00:13:31] Ross: There's more intention behind it and, and taking action, devoting your energy to actually paying attention. And perhaps someone in, in the team is feeling, oh, well, I'm not in anyone's bubble. I'm all on my own. I'm I'm excluded. And that's, that's not why we want to be an in any team, whether it's virtual or face to face.

[00:13:53] Ross: so tell me about the enablers, please.

[00:14:38] Alexandra: And the second enabler is, connecting as human beings. So, what we found here is that, we really need to see that there is a human being behind the screen. We're not just communicating with a computer We're communicating with a human being that is sitting on the other side of the screen.

[00:15:20] Alexandra: it could also be creating bonding moments. So, if there is a chance, to do face-to-face meetings in a post COVID world, face-to-face meetings can be a great. To create these bonding moments and create new experiences, where we see how do our team members behave in a different environment other than our day to day work, for example, And then yeah, we have the third enabler, which is discussing the rules of the game.

[00:16:11] Alexandra: So if you're in an office and you, for example, you see, when do my colleagues take a lunch break or until what time do they work? How long do they take to respond to emails? You see all these things implicitly, and you don't have to speak about these things, but in a virtual team, it suddenly becomes very important that you actually talk about how do we want to work together?

[00:16:43] Ross: I really love that because you're right. It's, it's kind of seen as intuitive, but without you guiding us through this. And presenting it to us in this structured way, you can lose sight of this stuff. And also the assumptions we make. If we're sat around a table in a room, We might all have assumptions about what this meeting is going to be about and what we're looking to do.

[00:17:17] Alexandra: Yeah, exactly. And maybe to add to that, it also, there is a bigger barrier, for example, that the exact exempt that you just just made. if I just want to quickly make sure I understood something correctly, then it takes much more effort and much more courage to actually reach out to my colleague and maybe pick up the phone and ask them, Hey, like, can I just check in with you if that's correct.

[00:17:55] Ross: and it, you know what you're making me think. as someone who worked traditionally in our [00:18:00] face-to-face environment and an office in different offices, in different organizations, I think, we assume that the same techniques and skills were just magically transfer over to the virtual world and Nothing could be further from the truth. we have to reimagine everything.

[00:18:39] Alexandra: And then you can do amazing online events, but there has to be this point where you sit down and ask yourself, how can I slightly change or modify this event in a way that it works virtually as well. And that's exactly the same thing that we have to do with teamwork. We have to sit down and ask ourselves how can, what we do.

[00:19:02] Ross: Brilliant. we've had a look at the barriers and the enablers let's dive into those practical recommendations.

[00:19:33] Alexandra: So what we've identified as problems before, maybe you could also try and see that as an opportunity for growth and improvement and future performance of the virtual.

[00:20:06] Ross: It could be worth us, intentionally checking in with them to see what's up for them and trying to imagine what it's like from their perspective.

[00:20:31] Alexandra: And actually the one-on-one check-in would be my next practical recommendation as well. So if we continue with the next enabler connecting as human beings, the very first tip I would have is do regular check-ins with colleagues. even though you might regularly see them in team calls, I feel like there's always a bit of a different.

[00:21:08] Alexandra: So just introduce the concept of a coffee chat and just make sure that everyone in your company knows that it's okay to also call someone and just have a coffee chat. It's not like they're stealing time from, you know, from their working hours. it's completely okay to just, reach out to someone and ask, Hey, can we have a quick coffee chat?

[00:21:44] Alexandra: Send our teams into breakout rooms. Normally the conversations, are not that interesting, especially during COVID people don't really, have much to talk about if they just talk about their weekends, for example, or their holiday plans, just because there's not [00:22:00] much going on. and then we created a little toolkit with just some deep conversation, starter questions, which it can feel a bit like speed dating.

[00:22:17] Ross: Beautiful. I love that idea of giving someone a framework. So you're not just awkwardly discussing the weather all the time or

[00:22:25] Ross: Anything else in that category, connecting as human beings that you'd highlight for us.

[00:22:53] Alexandra: So people are free and welcome to choose their own questions that they want to answer about themselves. It could be something like what drives me crazy. It could be something like what's the best way to communicate with me. And you just have a. Individual space that is dedicated for you to explain yourself to everyone else on the team and explain your communication preferences and your work preferences.

[00:23:31] Ross: I love this idea. It's like a, a guide to working with.

[00:23:35] Alexandra: Yeah, exactly.

[00:23:45] Alexandra: Yeah. That's true. That's true.

[00:23:55] Alexandra: Yeah, I think it can really also stimulate interesting conversations. for example, [00:24:00] let's say you have a coffee chat with a colleague and you read their user menu before you have the coffee chat with them. and then you can start the conversation with something that you read in their user menu.

[00:24:19] Ross: it gives more points of contact. Doesn't it. And more areas where we think, oh, this person is a bit like me because they've, they've read slow to house five or whatever the book might pay.

[00:24:32] Ross: Okay. How about the, the third now I think we call this, we call this here at here. I am taking credit for your research. How about the third day discussing the rules of the game? Tell me about that. What are the recommendations?

[00:25:10] Alexandra: Zoom before. And they didn't know about the, the function that you can blur your background, for example. and they didn't feel comfortable sharing, their private rooms with other members of the team. So that resulted in them not using the video function at all. and then what they did was a very simple.

[00:25:48] Alexandra: So that could be, for example, the rules of engagement. It could be boundaries, it could be something like, where do we want to keep our decisions? for example, if you work with slack, what does our slack status [00:26:00] mean? So can you, put in a specific status when you're on your lunch break or when you're about to go on holiday or things like that?

[00:26:16] Ross: I love this. It's just laying out stairs for, the listeners think of it in terms of these enablers, and this would be such a useful framework for you to think about it. What might be the points that could really foster and cultivate that psychological safety in your team?

[00:26:36] Ross: so was UTA Tobias. Mortlock was UTA your supervisor for this research.

[00:27:03] Alexandra: she, yeah, she was a great support and the entire process from really. First moment of defining the topic until, sending in the final draft to, the jury.

[00:27:42] Alexandra: Yeah, it's very true. It's very helpful to do like a little brainstorming session with her. And she always keeps coming with new ideas. So that's really useful.

[00:28:02] Alexandra: yeah, definitely. so now that I've been working in a virtual team myself for almost six months, I definitely discovered that lots of these points are much harder to translate into practice than I was hoping. I think we're already trying a lot. And, uh, I think, things are definitely going, going okay in our virtual team as well.

[00:28:44] Alexandra: but now what I'm realizing in our company, at least, uh, we are about 30 or 35 people. and people don't really have. Static teams that they constantly work in, but we work very project-based. Um, and it can happen that you work with a set of 10 different people in one month. And then in the next month you work with 10 completely different people.

[00:29:19] Ross: Hm. So the practicalities can be more, perhaps a little bit more complex than you imagined, but look at the foundation you've set for us to help us consider this. And that's where the scenario you've just described. That's where the user manuals could really come into there.

[00:29:46] Ross: Hm. Alexandra. Thank you for giving us such a great insight into your groundbreaking research. I'm really grateful. You've come on the podcast. It's great to see you again, and I can't wait to see what you do [00:30:00] next.

[00:30:06] Ross: Brilliant. I can't wait. Thank you so much. And see you.

[00:30:11] Pay supers, that's it in the back. Thanks to Alexandra for bringing to life, her original research, which I think we could all find useful.

[00:30:38] The show notes@rossmacintosh.co.uk. And this includes links to a few different platforms. I love to hear from you and you can get in touch at people. Souped up pod@gmail.com. We're at people's soup pot on Instagram, where at people dot soup and on Facebook, we are at peoples soup pod.

[00:31:02] and most of all, dear listener, thanks to you. Look after yourself, peacekeepers and bye for now.

[00:31:12] Alexandra: no, she doesn't know. I will tell her now I will ask her for the link as well and tell her.