Can you be candid with your team?

Challenger safety is the culminating stage of The 4 Stages. It empowers teams with a voice and allows them to challenge the status quo and innovate.

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™

Stage 4: Challenger Safety

Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better. It’s the support and confidence we need to ask questions such as, “Why do we do it this way?” “What if we tried this?” or “May I suggest a different way?” It allows us to feel safe to challenge the status quo without retaliation or the risk of damaging our personal standing or reputation. As the highest level of psychological safety, it matches the increased vulnerability and personal risk associated with challenging the status quo. When we create challenger safety, we give air cover in exchange for candor.

Does my team have challenger safety?

When you have it...

Your team is excited to tackle new problems and challenge old ways of thinking.

Everyone has a voice and is listened to.

There’s no tiptoeing around bad news.

Teams are comfortable sharing their half-baked ideas.

There’s evidence of everyday innovation.

When you don't...

You have a silent team that’ll execute for you, but is scared to innovate.

Fear is the primary motivator for getting things done.

Disruptive ideas are discouraged and ignored.

Arguments get heated and usually aren’t productive.

Groupthink and echo chambers are your normal.

Diverse office team in conference meeting watching female presenter

Air cover in exchange for candor.

Your people aren’t going to speak up until they know it’s safe to do so. Before you ask your teams to be brave, make sure that you’ve created an environment that’s ready for their bravery.

Request a Demo

Disagreeing is part of their job.

Are you ready to be wrong? We shouldn’t look to leaders to have all the answers. But we should expect them to draw out those answers by tapping into the creative potential of the organization.

Read The Book

How do I help others feel safe to challenge the status quo?

Try these eight things to introduce challenger safety into your organization’s culture:

Challenge Your Own Decisions

Leaders make decisions that are right today and then wrong tomorrow. make the wrong decisions, period. Help your team know that are willing to revisit old decisions, courses of action, and points of view.

Encourage Half-Baked Answers

Encourage your team to come to you with unrefined thinking. Mature ideas aren’t born that way. We need time and we need each other to help us sharpen our questions and potential solutions.

Respond Constructively to Disruptive Ideas

Your positive emotional response to disruptive ideas and bad news is a clear signal that you have a high tolerance for candor and will protect your people in their right to dissent.

If You Reject Feedback, Explain Why

When you reject a team member’s input or suggestion, explain why you didn’t adopt it. Your response will encourage them to continue giving feedback.

Weigh in Last

Speaking first when you hold positional power softly censors your team. Listen carefully, acknowledge the contributions of others, and then register your point of view.

Model Vulnerability

Remember that vulnerability is exposing yourself to the possibility of harm or loss. If you model and reinforce a pattern of vulnerability, others will do the same.

Reward Shots on the Goal

Not all ideas and suggestions will have merit, but if you encourage the attempts (shots on goals), those shots will increase and you will be more likely to have some successful challenges (goals) that add value and move the team forward.

Ask For Bad News

Asking for bad news is a way of speeding up the process of identifying areas for experimentation and innovation. When there’s bad news, it allows us to challenge the status quo more easily because something is already broken or not working right.

Keep Exploring The 4 Stages:

Explore content and resources related to each of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™

Inclusion Safety: Can You Be Your Authentic Self?

Learner Safety: Can You Grow?

Contributor Safety: Can You Create Value?

Challenger Safety Podcast Episodes

What Psychological Safety is Not

In this episode Tim and Junior discuss the seven misconceptions surrounding psychological safety. Some organizations and some leaders dismiss psychological safety because they believe that it means a whole host of things, that it doesn't mean. So they dismiss it and they ignore it. When helping leaders understand the topic of psychological safety, defining what psychological safety is not can be just as helpful as defining what it is.

Podcast

(Pt.3) Competitiveness and Innovation

What's Driving the Demand for Psychological Safety?

Agile Doesn't Work Without Psychological Safety

Challenger Safety Articles

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety framework acknowledges that we’re humans first and employees second. The framework follows a universal pattern that reflects the natural progression of human needs in social settings. These needs exist across demographics, psychographics, nations, and cultures. Just like humans need water, food, and shelter to survive, teams that want to innovate need four things in order to thrive: they need to feel included and safe to learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo. Teams progress through these stages as they intentionally create cultures of rewarded vulnerability and psychological safety.

Articles