#1 criteria to ease change and adaptability

There’s one constant in this time of confinement and it’s change! This season has required us to change, shift and adapt.

In our prison spaces, prisons residents shift away from their destructive lifestyles and into the human beings they always wished to be. We’ve learned that one quality makes this possible and more easeful than anything else. By a landslide. Change is only possible if this one quality is maintained. This quality is…

Safety

When we feel safe, it is possible to explore our beliefs and thoughts; to try new ways of doing things; to experiment with our behaviors, our thoughts, our word, our actions, the way we show up; to create a different possible direction for a work project, for way we engage with our kids, for ourselves.

And safety means that we feel seen, we feel heard, that we matter. We can ask tough questions. We can try new things. We won’t be belittled. Things we say and do are received, even if they rub people the wrong way.

And Google came to the same conclusion when it researched the perfect team. For two years, they looked at 180 Google teams, conducted over 200 interviews and examined 250 team characteristics. In their own words, “We were pretty confident that we'd find the perfect mix of individual traits and skills necessary for a stellar team -- take one Rhodes Scholar, two extroverts, one engineer who rocks at AngularJS, and a PhD. Voila. Dream team assembled, right?” Dead wrong, as they said. All their analysis revealed no correlation between the characteristics studied and the high-performance teams. It wasn’t until they studied the intangibles that a correlation appeared.

Google identified five characteristics of a perfect high-performance team, again quoting Julia Rozovsky:

5. Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?

4. Meaning of work: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us

3. Structure & clarity: Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear?

2. Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?

And above all else,

1. Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?

“Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dynamics we found -- it’s the underpinning of the other four.”

As we are in this season of adaptability, of change, of needing to shift how we do things, recognize the criticality of safety. You and your loved ones will not be able to create the positive change you wish to see if you do not feel safe. Therefore, the number one thing to focus on is creating safety. This is what all these daily video lessons are truly about.

For those of you who have had the privilege of attending our events or Circles, you will know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the incredible transformation that’s possible for individuals - and also for an entire team - and the incredible work output that comes out of this team (some success statistics on our TEDx events).

Our Core Team of prison residents became the highest performance team I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. All because we focused on building safety.

Invitation: What makes you feel safe? What doesn’t make you feel safe? What is one step you can take today to shift one of those elements that keep you unsafe. Because again, constructive change cannot happen until you feel safe.

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.