Psychological Safety in the Boardroom with Carolyn Grant

Psychological Safety in the Boardroom with Carolyn Grant | Ep. 40

Carolyn Grant is an advisor, author and founder of 6peas marketing and engagement; an agency creating tools, frameworks and training founded in neuroscience to provide insights to leaders to improve critical decision-making, team performance, customer advocacy and innovation. Their aim is to create high performing, valued teams and mitigate the personal and organisational risk. Carolyn is the author of Legacy Leadership – the emergence of a new model of leadership after more than a decade of crisis. And she is the creator and publisher of the recently completed People + Science Boardroom Psychological Safety Benchmark 2020-2021 (in Australia).

Her research around psychological safety in the boardroom is the topic of our conversation. An HBR article reminds us that “The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake.” However, Carolyn’s research has shown that 45% of board members feel unsafe in the boardroom, the majority of the time. So what’s driving this? How do you have the type of robust / fierce conversations necessary in the boardroom whilst maintaining psychological safety? How do you effectively balance these two factors without falling into the trap of group think and fake harmony just for the sake of not upsetting others?

Carolyn shares her perspectives from working with leaders and board members and shares what we can individually do as board members to create a psychologically safe environment AND maintain sufficient and effective discussion and debate.

Connect with Carolyn on LinkedIn.