The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Ricky Robertson

[00:00:00]

Ross Romano: Welcome in everyone. You are listening to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us. This is a conversation about a really key topic in schools, not one that we have discussed much before but certainly one that will make a big difference in all learning environments, workplace cultures.

for teaching and learning, for employees, for staff, for peers, really everywhere, but we're going to talk about it in particular to how this takes place in schools and it's about psychological safety. So my guest today is Ricky Robertson. He is an educator, author, and consultant. As a consultant and coach, Ricky works with schools, school districts, education service districts, and state [00:01:00] departments of education across the country to develop systems of support to foster achievement, well being, and resilience among staff and students.

Much of his recent work focuses on creating workplace conditions that allow educators to thrive, including, in his new book, The Other Teachers, a guide to psychological safety among educators. Ricky, welcome to the show.

Ricky Robertson: Hi Ross, thank you so much for having me.

Ross Romano: So let's start by defining, for anybody who's not familiar with the term psychological safety, what is it,

Ricky Robertson: Psychological safety is the belief, the ability, and the opportunity to ask questions suggest ideas, make mistakes, even challenge the status quo without fear of punishment or humiliation or retaliation from colleagues.

Ross Romano: and what is its particular relevance to schools that inspired you to write the book about it, and how it relates to teachers, but how does it what are the dynamics happening in schools that are specifically worth attuning to?

Ricky Robertson: Sure, I mean, I'll [00:02:00] answer that question in a couple different ways. So, in terms of what inspired me to start writing the book, for the past several years, as a coach with different schools, I would always start my work with an educator resiliency needs assessment, because I'd want to hear from the staff, sort of, what did they need to feel more supported, valued, connected what did they and inspired by their impact.

Because in education, educators are so often told what to do, but rarely asked what they need. And so, rather than approaching sort of school transformation work from a top down approach, really listening to the workforce, listening to the educators in that building about where are their pain points and what can their school do to improve their working conditions.

And And so one of the common pieces of feedback that I would get were statements like this school is run by cliques. There's an in crowd or an out crowd or the principal listens to the same two or three people and making decisions, or I don't feel like I [00:03:00] have a voice or I feel like my PLCs or my collaboration time are a waste of time, they're unstructured, they become venting sessions, etc.

And I didn't have the language and the understanding for it at the time, but all of these are descriptors of a lack of psychological safety. And so in working with these schools, the first thing we would focus on are things like their collaboration protocols, their decision making processes, Things that would help to ensure there was greater equity of voice, that people felt heard, that their input was valued and respected, and also creating structures for collaboration that help to increase collective efficacy.

And when you start to do that, and you start to implement those structured collaboration protocols and clear decision making processes and communication agreements, you're really doing the work of building psychological safety. And then we were able to see. See a direct impact on improved student outcomes as a result, as well as increased job [00:04:00] satisfaction and higher rates of retention among the educators working in those schools.

I mean, some of the schools I worked with when I started working with them had as much as 50% turnover the year prior. And then after even just a year of doing this work, we saw folks staying in their positions, 92 percent or higher, saying they felt highly supported in their schools. So we saw some radical shifts in outcomes and I say we, meaning myself, as well as the individuals working in those schools that did this work, with us, with me and with each other.

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Ross Romano: I'm wondering, do you think there's something, beneficial about teachers in particular, I suppose feeling especially like close to their colleagues. I, I mean, there's something I've observed sometimes that happens in schools that, that is different from the standard workplace where the relationships that may develop between the [00:05:00] people that work in them.

It's, there's almost like an expectation that they have a closeness that's not necessarily always expected in us any general work environment of your peers or colleagues. And of course, that can create a heightened environment for the importance of things like psychological safety, the risks of psychological safety when there's that emotional involvement, but I guess I'm wondering, like, if we do it right, if there Are positives to come from that, or if it would be better to advise most teachers to to re contextualize collegial relationships and not I guess have them as integrated with personal relationships, right?

To say, like, that it's not expected that the people you work with should be your friends or should be the people you go to happy hour with, kind of [00:06:00] thing. Which, from my point of view my vantage point, it's more common of colleagues who work together in schools that they also expect that being work colleagues will lead to personal friendships than the media, I guess, across all workplaces.

If that makes sense to you.

Ricky Robertson: It absolutely makes sense. It's a very interesting question, and I want to sort of disentangle some of it from some maybe perceptions about what psychological safety is and isn't. So, psychological safety isn't sort of everybody becoming best friends with each other. In fact You can have individuals on a grade level team who personally don't know each other very well or get along very well, let's say but when they collaborate together, they do so in a way that is professional and respectful and also is structured in a way that moves them to focus on how to support their students.

So you can have a high degree of [00:07:00] psychological safety among a workforce of folks who may or may not have those personal connections. So I say that because those personal friendships and those happy hour moments or those close friends at work those are wonderful things. In fact, they might be some of the only reasons we make it through the school day or make it through the school year.

I mean, we need each other in this work. This is incredibly, working in education is an incredibly demanding profession. The more we care, the harder it is often. And so we need that sense of connection and belonging and in a number of ways. When we think about psychological safety though, we're looking at it more within the context of our professional collaboration and workplace culture.

Does everyone feel a sense that they are welcomed, that they're included, that their voice is heard, that their contributions are valued? So I wouldn't say so what, the reason why I say that is because what's interesting is that when I'm coaching a principal, I will tell my principal, your job is not to make [00:08:00] So and so this teacher, invite this other teacher to her baby shower.

That's not psychological safety. Your job is to manage protocols, not personalities. So when educators collaborate, are they doing so in a structured way? Are they doing so in a way that prevents those conversations from getting derailed by workplace bullying behaviors, or a pecking order, or two people who talk the entire time during a meeting, and meanwhile there's ten other people on their team who haven't talked in like a decade and nobody notices, but we call that collaboration, right?

Like, so the role of my administrator, if I'm coaching them, is like, You're going to help that team to collaborate in ways where folks feel heard and they're engaged in a process of collective problem solving or collective growth and improvement. And that's as much as you can manage. Those sort of personal relationships that's sort of outside of our lane or outside of certainly the lane of an administrator.

So the only time that can become a problem is if those relationships aren't [00:09:00] healthy and there are maybe some workplace bullying behaviors or inappropriate behaviors that take place, especially during the workday that inhibit people's sense of safety and belonging in the workplace. I mean, in writing this book, I spent over two years interviewing educators across the country about their experiences, Positive experiences of belonging and connection and collaboration, as well as harmful experiences of harassment, workplace bullying, working in schools that have a very fear based culture.

So, I say all that to say that I think that The relationships you spoke about are a wonderful thing when they're positive and enriching, and the question then becomes during the workday, even though I'm friends with so and so, do I also say good morning and thank you to everybody else and greet my other colleagues and make sure there's some sense of professional collegiality think what's interesting, and I'll say just one more thing, and I know I'm rambling a bit, [00:10:00] But that sort of, you spoke about sort of a pressure sometimes maybe to form those relationships.

But I would also argue that increasingly I work in schools where the opposite is also true. People are so busy and so stressed that everyone is on their own little island and they have very little opportunity to truly feel connected or supported with their colleagues. So you can see sort of both extremes play out.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah, I, I. You know, as a way of trying to get at what of course. Psychological safety is important to ensure that it exists in all workplace environments, right? All other kinds of environments. And the opposite can be brought about by the leadership and culture across the place and trying to think about the things that are unique about schools or at least specific about schools, right?

And some of the things that create potentially fertile ground for particular risk factors, [00:11:00] right? You mentioned the clicks and of course that can kind of manifest over time, especially if you have A small group who have had a tenure and then a lot of other turnover and then turnover can lead to more turnover, right?

As people come in and have a hard time finding their footing or feeling like they're not welcomed in or they're outsiders. And those things are challenging. Let's. talk about some of those things that create the psychologically unsafe schools. So you mentioned, you referenced bullying and cliques and fear based leadership.

And there's also I know collective burnout one that's referenced in the book. Can you talk a little bit more about what these look like in practice and what somebody listening, of course, may recognize it or have experienced it or also need to just reflect and think more deeply about how some of these things may be unintentionally occurring.

Ricky Robertson: Absolutely. Absolutely. So [00:12:00] I think I'd start with I, every individual within a school plays a role in shaping the psychological safety of that school culture. The leadership obviously has a significant influence. I would say that Administrators don't necessarily define the culture of the school, but they shape it significantly.

They also, if they're a skilled administrator, learn how to navigate it and listen to it and learn from it. So that being said I think the first place I go is thinking about what I, in the book, call fear based leadership. And those tend to be leadership styles that are characterized by a pattern of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn behaviors.

So those might be things like intimidation using evaluations, not as a tool for professional learning and growth, but as a tool for punishment or retaliation sort of a gotcha culture rather than a we got you culture. And also behaviors like fawn behaviors, [00:13:00] people pleasing, avoiding conflict.

I mean, psychological safety is not the same as being nice, quote unquote. And what I mean by that is. Superficial and pleasant to your face, but then behind your back, there's gossiping and there's scapegoating and there's throwing people under the bus, etc. Other types of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn behaviors can also include things like favoritism.

Or the opposite, hiding from the staff, not being seen all day, trying to get out of the building as much as they can, or shutting the door to the office and not being responsive, right? So when we see a pattern of those behaviors coming from leadership, It certainly erodes the sense of psychological safety for the entire staff.

I mean, there's a lack of a sense of trust. There's a fear. There's sort of a, I got to cover my butt. There's a hypervigilance that can set in, or there's even just a profound lack of accountability among the staff. And then people start to cut corners and kids suffer as a result. I think other factors that contribute to psychologically [00:14:00] unsafe schools certainly another one is is workplace bullying behaviors.

I mean, we have some research to show that education and healthcare are two fields with higher than average rates of workplace bullying, but it's common across professions, especially ones that are highly stressful, that stress is going to go somewhere. And sometimes it goes towards our colleagues in ways where we might engage in, in gossiping, excessive criticism.

social exclusion, et cetera. And so those workplace bullying behaviors can have folks feel not just profoundly hurt, but excluded from their professional community. Even dreading coming to work for fear of what folks are going to say about anything from their appearance to how they do their job.

Right. And can be a significant reason many educators give for transferring schools and sometimes even leaving the profession. And I think that that another and I'll just share one more. I think another aspect that can contribute to a lack of psychological [00:15:00] safety is if there is a lack of structure.

And I mean that in terms of if there's a lack of clear multi tiered systems of support, a lack of clear protocols for collaboration, When there's a lack of structure, personalities tend to take over, and sometimes that, that can work in our favor, sometimes it doesn't though, and that's a significant risk, right, people can have their own agendas and priorities that don't always align with what's best for kids and what would help their colleagues to work together more effectively.

So those are some areas that I think create psychologically unsafe schools. And what's interesting is that while we talk about burnout quite a bit in the book at least in chapter two, when we talk about phases of burnout, etc. You know, one of the things I wanted to make clear is that we know that as psychological safety increases, burnout tends to decrease.

And that's in research from a variety of different professional fields, we see that. So that sense of, I feel, Connected. I feel valued. I feel supported. I have an experience of that. [00:16:00] I offer my colleagues that type of support and inclusion that decreases our sense of burnout and collective stress.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the examples of this that I've scene that falls under the fear based leadership category that I'm sure to most of the leaders who might do this, they don't realize that it would fall under that. And they think of it as, as having high standards or being efficient is not having clarity around what the outcomes are for teachers. After the results of, say, like, year end assessments, like, we have these high goals for like, in our district, there, there's a standard of X percent proficiency, and we're going to set extra high goals, and it's going to be this. And it's meant to have Have ambitious goals for students, right?

And it's meant to set a [00:17:00] high standard for educators to say that we're not gonna aim for the bare minimum. We're gonna aim high and try to do better. But also understanding that yes, a high percentage of student success is related to how effective their teachers are and the things they do during the year.

But a lot of it is out of the teacher's control because each student, who are the students you have that year and how are they doing? And when we're focused on benchmarks over. progress there's certain things that may or may not be within or out of reach. Now, if I'm working toward that and I know I'm giving my best effort and I have and I have a fear about, okay, if we don't hit this goal, then what?

You know, like I'm operating in fear the whole time. And there's a, there's different ways to do it that doesn't undercut. the ambition of the goals, right? While still saying, like, we can recognize the progress that's happening here, the clear effort, we can course correct where things aren't working the way they should, but [00:18:00] ultimately it's another way of feeling like, especially if it's year over year, like, no matter how many on time payments I make in a row I never build up any equity, because I'm always worried that if I miss one payment, that You take away the house, right?

Because of that the way that some leaders Again, who feel like they're setting high goals that, that they're actually instilling a culture of fear, and then you can see how that would also lead to the burnout, the collective burnout of, okay even if we've done this five years in a row and been successful, I just can't do it anymore because every year is this uphill battle, and I never feel as though I'm going to be supported regardless of the outcomes.

I don't know if if that's some, if that's a a dynamic that you've observed in particular.

Ricky Robertson: Certainly, and I think the way the leader responds to that is so critical. I mean, I think that [00:19:00] in terms of a fear based leader is going to see those results. They're going to obviously have a considerable amount of fear and frustration and demoralization and all the things that come with it.

But then that gets turned against the staff. And then the staff understand that next year, certain members of the staff are going to be more targeted, more scrutinized in evaluations, not supported, but scrutinized. We're probably going to have another initiative piled on our plate, another new curriculum or new strategy that, or new approach that, that is going to get added to the, 20 other things that we're already being asked to do, and we're going to be expected to do it perfectly right away. So, in other words, they're going to be in our classroom right away, observing and making sure we're implementing everything perfectly, not giving us any grace time to learn, etc. And that creates that fear based culture and perpetuates it.

And so when I think about a situation like that, where a school has gotten that sort of devastating news of despite our hard work, here we are again, being labeled a low performing [00:20:00] school. A psychologically safe leader is more what I call connected and firm. There's a certain degree of their ability to form empathic relationships, but also supportive accountability.

And so that leader is going to share in some of the sadness and obviously the disappointment and the exhaustion and fatigue that come from giving it your best and then seeing you didn't produce the outcomes that you hoped for. And so they're going to be able to. honor the hard work of their staff, express appreciation for the hard work of their staff, point out the ways that there was growth, even if there wasn't proficiency, the areas where we did see significant improvement, and also encourage staff to celebrate some of those wins and those victories that are never measured by a standardized test, right?

I mean, every day teachers are doing work that. That literally is life saving for kids in terms of the amount of social and emotional support they provide [00:21:00] kids, the amount of behavioral support, the sense of connection and inspiration that they offer that are never going to show up on a standardized test.

And so, A psychologically safe leader is going to be able to honor that hard work, honor the difference that was made, but then also still be curious, right, because psychological safety isn't comfort. It's still, okay, if this is where we're at, which students seem to benefit and make the most growth? Which ones did not?

Where can we start to get more intentional and specific about ways to improve, listening to their staff in that process? What seems to be getting in the way of you supporting students in ways that are going to make you and them the most successful? And also to advocate for the needs of the staff in that school.

And especially because I often have a one, I mean, this is a wondering I often have is when I'm looking at these state report cards and these state metrics, I sometimes wonder if they're really even constructed in ways that that honor the growth that students make, or if they're [00:22:00] constructed in ways that are intended to make public education look like it's failing for a variety of financial reasons.

And political reasons. So the thing about burnout and the thing about the lack of psychological safety and that I try to come back to again and again in my work is to understand that when we think about burnout or workplace bullying or fear based leadership. We work in a field with the conditions to produce those outcomes.

So burnout is not a personal failure. It's a systemic outcome when you work in education, especially public education. When we look at research on what professions have the highest levels of burnout, we see nurses, social workers, educators. These are fields that have certain things in common. They're highly demanding.

They draw people who want to make a difference, and they're also incredibly under resourced. Those are the perfect ingredients to produce a burnt out workforce. Now, when you have folks under chronic stress, you're going to see more fear, more exhaustion, more [00:23:00] fatigue, which means you're going to see more stress responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses.

You're also going to see more workplace bullying. You're going to see less productive and inspired collaboration. So a lot of those barriers to psychological safety are built into the conditions of the work we do, which is why in the. We don't just throw our hands up and go, nothing I can do about it, because then it's going to be miserable for me and everybody I'm working with.

We have to look at how do I care for myself, and how do I care for myself, and how do we care for each other in this work, because it is so meaningful and so important. And also how do we advocate individually and collectively for our needs. And so that's very much at the heart of how psychological safety I think can be transformative for schools is it helps folks focus more on the collective in terms of both our needs as well as our strengths and our growth areas and our response to some of the challenges we face.

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Ross Romano: The [00:24:00] collective is, It's important and it also it relates, of course, to the way leadership behaves, the way colleagues behave to one another, and I think with a lot of these things, there can be a fine line sometimes between like excuses and explanations, right?

But, a culture, I'm sure, with psychological safety would be one where there is an opportunity to have ongoing dialogue and discussion to talk about, here's what we're struggling with. Here's where we need more support, right? Versus not being able to discuss it. And then at the end, it's okay, what happened?

And if something didn't go right, then Anything we try to explain about it just sounds like a bunch of excuses versus throughout the process saying, look, this thing we're working on right now. It's not going the way we want. I can project moving forward. If it keeps going like this, we're not going to get where we want to go.

So how can we amend this? How can we try something? Where can I get support, etc. And I don't have to be [00:25:00] afraid to say things aren't going 100%. The way we would like right now, right? Because I know that probably somebody else is also having the same challenge, or even if not I know that what I can do by surfacing that concern is to get support versus to get blame or criticized or bullied and all these things, right?

And and that as a collective with like, We are all here. We could use our shared mission around student success as a something that binds us in our work together versus something that, that backfires and burns us out, right? And because when we don't meet our goals, we care about that.

And when it's it's taxing. And when we don't feel like we have the resources. You know, and or support to do that. Then it kind of diminishes the [00:26:00] interest in continuing to pursue the profession, I would think. If you don't really feel like you have a chance at success, right? And then it's an impossibility.

And then that leads to other outcomes. Who can take charge of identifying what challenges a school might be having? Can that happen at the teacher level? Does it happen at the leadership level? A little bit of everything.

Ricky Robertson: That's an excellent question. I mean, I think it's a little bit of everything. Something you spoke about just now as you were talking about that willingness to sort of ask questions about how might we improve and not get stuck in sort of, Explanations is used that could might be excuses or might be blame, right?

Because I think that can be a very seductive trap. We know that from social science, that as educators and as human beings, when we express blame, so in other words, it's these kids, it's these families, it's this administrator, etc. When I say that the reason for the problem is entirely over there, right?

[00:27:00] When we express blame, It feels good. That's why we call it venting. It lets off some of the pressure. But the tricky part with blame or with excuses is that as they increase our sense of personal responsibility and personal power decreases. So we get stuck, trapped, admiring the problem. And like you said, there comes to a point where you're like, okay, well, if we keep doing the same thing, we're going to keep getting the same results.

So we have to try something different. So as you were talking through that, what I was imagining was if you were a principal, my next question would be, well, how do you turn that into a system? Because we shouldn't be leaving it on the shoulders of individuals to necessarily have to advocate or push their team into a more productive direction.

We have to look at how we create structures that invite that. Right. So one example I referenced in the book is things like the tuning protocol that was first developed, I think it was by the school reform initiative for collaboration. And we also have great protocols and approaches to PLCs like PLC plus, et cetera.[00:28:00]

There's great things out there that can help create more structured collaboration for teams. And that's one of the things I talk about in one of the later chapters of the book are what are some of those best practices so that you create systems or protocols that invite folks to share or to ask them questions that have them inquire about, okay.

What are some of the real challenges we're facing? And within what we're facing, what can we do about it? What is the most feasible and impactful next move in terms of our instruction or in terms of our behavioral support system, whatever it might be? So, so structuring the collaboration protocols is critical.

And that's something a school leader can be part of. It's also something a team, whether it's a grade level team, a PLC, an MTSS team can be part of. There's also a lot that just the individual can do within their work environment to create a more psychologically safe place. I mean, any of us, regardless of whether we're the principal, a paraprofessional, a teacher, a custodian, can think about just how we engage with our [00:29:00] colleagues.

Just noticing who we talk to and who we don't, noticing if we, reflect back to folks that we've listened to them, that we've heard them, that we express appreciation for their contributions or input, noticing the ways that we're vulnerable and admit when we don't have the answer or we ask a question and really receive feedback in a way that's gracious.

So there's a lot we can do to model that. Those psychologically safe behaviors that have a ripple effect on our teams and on our colleagues. I think administrators play an interesting role because there's a lot that can be done school wide. I mean, I have schools where we've done a psychological safety assessment and really large schools of every single team within the school in 1 as a whole system.

I'm going to turn it over to the staff just to see where are some of those breakdowns in psychological safety and then what could we do to improve this so that we have both a richer sense of connection and collaboration, but also a [00:30:00] greater impact in terms of our collective efficacy because one of the things we haven't really spoken about is the research on.

Team effectiveness and psychological safety, which is where so much of the current scholarship was birthed out of, was some initial studies that showed that one of the greatest influences on a team's effectiveness is the degree of psychological safety. In fact, it was shown to be in some schools.

So it's not who's on the team, but it's how they treat one another when they're working together that makes the greatest impact. And it's not about people just being kind or nice. It's about making sure that when we meet, we have communication agreements. We have structure to our meeting in terms of what questions are we exploring together?

How are we then looking at our instruction and then identifying next steps and then also what accountability conversations look like. So we are a grade level team and we come back together in a month and three of us have promised to implement a strategy. And I said I was [00:31:00] going to do it, but I haven't done it that impacts all of us when we look at our data.

And so how do we navigate that in ways where we don't overstep our boundaries? We don't try to be one another's boss, but we give ourselves some opportunity to say, what's working for you about this strategy? What isn't? Are you stuck with it? Are you, did you just, say I'm not going to do it and just allow some space.

I call it like a red light, yellow light, green light conversation to just check in around accountability to each other so that there's a sense of trust among colleagues. So it's not all top down, right? The leader can play a big role in assessing the psychological safety of their school and identifying an action plan and working with colleagues.

All of us, however, can model those psychologically safe behaviors and can be part of teams that look at ways to, to systematize it or build some structure around it. I hope that was a clear response to your question. I don't,

Ross Romano: Yeah. I mean, I believe so. And and of course like the book, I mean the title of the book, the other [00:32:00] teachers refers to the fact that the one's peers, right? The other teachers in the building are, can make a. significant impact on the psychological safety, right?

And there, of course, are things that individual teachers could do but without a leadership who understands and buys into this, it, by the very definition of what we've talked about, it would be difficult to really create that culture. So I'm thinking, so I had a recent, episode with Karen Gazete about the neuroscience of reading.

And one of the things she explained is that you know, evolutionarily, reading is an unnatural thing. It's only been around for a couple thousand years of human existence, right? Prior to that, it didn't exist. So it's a good context to explain how Why it's important to understand the science, why it's important to focus on the [00:33:00] fundamentals of reading, and why it's something that is challenging, and to understand that going into it so that we don't make it into a thing where like, this is easy, anybody can do it, and if you're struggling with it, it means that you're either a bad teacher or you're a dumb student or whatever, right?

That the status quo is this is a challenging thing. It doesn't just happen naturally in our brains. And relatedly, I'm wondering, like, what is the, kind of, the status quo of psychological safety within the school environment, right? If we just built a new school, And we populated it with leadership and with teachers who hadn't worked together before.

So it was a whole new school environment. What happens naturally, because I guess why I'm thinking about it is some people listening may hear the terms, and these terms have emotional weight to them, right? They have certain connotations, and some people may think of it as, well, if it's psychologically unsafe in your school, it must [00:34:00] mean that there are people in the school who are explicitly You know, removing the psychological safety, because if nobody was doing that, it would just exist, and there's people who are tearing it down, but I'm wondering if there's human dynamics, right, just the way human personalities work, if there's interpersonal and workplace dynamics, or just something within the system of the way schools work that makes this easier said than done.

That's good context to say, look, these challenges exist regardless. You know, you may be in a school where specific things are happening because leadership is doing this, or there's a certain clique that's doing this, but realistically, the natural state of being is that there are certain things we have to be mindful of to overcome, because if we all just settle into our comfort zones or the status quo, it's going to leave these gaps and we need to actually explicitly address creating psychological safety [00:35:00] versus just thinking that if it doesn't exist it's because we are removing the status quo, if that makes sense.

So I'm wondering from your perspective though, is that the case? And if so, what are some of those challenges? It's like, we have to be specifically mindful of this because if not addressed, this thing will likely happen. And it's there can be such a thing as just a lack of intentionality, I guess, around psychological safety.

Yeah.

Ricky Robertson: I mean, you started to answer your own question in that way. It was brilliant because you sort of hit the nail on the head in terms of common misperceptions about this topic, which is that, first of all, that it's just sort of some ambiguous thing that let's just have people be nice to each other.

And sometimes aren't nice. And the misperception that psychological safety is getting everybody to like each other. That right away is not psychological safety. It's that ability To have structure in place that can encourage people to learn from and with one another, to collaborate in ways that are structured, [00:36:00] to be able to address challenges in ways that are professional and respectful, and that requires exactly as you were starting to say, a lot of intentionality, because the default is not going to be that, right?

The default is, let's go back to your example, we open a new school, we put a whole bunch of new staff in there, and then we say, okay, great, run with it. Now, I will tell you something, my work is pre and this is sort of the weird thing is, if you had talked to me five years ago and said I was going to write a book about psychological safety, I would have thought you had two heads.

I mean, this was not on my radar as I said it. As I said at the beginning of our conversation, even though I was doing work related to psychological safety, I didn't understand that that's what it was. My work is primarily on trauma informed care and building trauma informed behavioral and mental health supports in schools that both support the staff as well as students and families.

And I'm going to tell you this, I have seen so many schools that struggle because everyone in the building is doing their best. And I know that's counterintuitive, but it comes back to your example. We open a new school [00:37:00] we staff it appropriately, we get all the administrators, teacher, counselor, let's even throw in a social worker or two.

We got, in other words, we got all the positions filled, which for many schools right now would be a miracle. And yet the default is we see folks putting out fires all day, reacting and not responding. We see folks that are exhausted from doing their best, but not being on the same page. I can think about some of the toughest schools I've worked in where students were literally running the building.

I mean, running through the hallway is a long line, waiting to talk to the principal. The counselor's having heart to heart conversations. The assistant principal's being really stern. We got paraprofessionals chasing kids around the building. Everybody's quote unquote doing their best. These are not negligent adults.

And yet, at the same time, because they're not on the same page, because there isn't that structure, We have folks reacting and trying to put out fires and there's no sort of collective clarity response and systems, right? And so in terms of the default is going to be [00:38:00] human beings responding to the needs that these kids bring in.

But the reality is, as educators, we often encounter needs that are way beyond our capacity to respond individually. So we need each other. And when we start to work together and we're under stress and things are difficult and we are in a school setting where we barely have time to use the restroom or catch our breath, if we're not intentional, then we're going to be reactive and we're going to feel more stressed.

We're going to feel more isolated. So to your point, when we think about building psychological safety, It's something that's intentional. It's about asking the staff, what do you need? Hearing what those needs and pain points and frustrations are, and then thinking about meaningful ways to address them, and just in that act of listening and responding.

psychological safety starts to be nourished and nurtured. Now we put that into an action plan, and that's one of the things I talk about in the book is, what is the action plan to then look at? Where do we need to focus? Is [00:39:00] it our MTSS process? Is it our PLCs? Is it just even in building a sense of inclusion?

Because I have some schools where people tell me, Ricky, I hardly even know my colleagues. My day's over as soon as it begins because of how much I have on my plate. There's people I see in the building, and I don't even know I know their name. I mean, seriously. So sometimes the foundation is really just to start with let's get to know each other.

Let's have some clearly defined roles and responsibilities. And then let's look at how we structure our collaboration. And that process is how we build psychological safety. And it has to be done with intention.

Ross Romano: Yeah, and a great point you said is asking the educators what they need, because ultimately it's in the eye of the beholder. I mean, whether somebody feels like they're in an environment that's psychologically safe is their perception of it and how they feel when they're operating there.

And even though there's You know, a variety of best practices and things that research shows work, in most [00:40:00] environments or for people generally, it's going to look a little bit different in individual buildings and it's important to tap into what specifically is happening here, what do we need to address, and make sure that's provided.

Are there a couple of like guidelines or protocols for like having productive discussions about, okay, we we still are professionals here, right? We have to have, we be be able to have constructive feedback and dialogue about doing our jobs correctly, but that are respecting psychological safety and doing this in a in a way that's effective and appropriate.

Ricky Robertson: Absolutely. I mean, I had mentioned, and if, specifically to collaboration protocols, I mean, I had mentioned the the tuning protocol from the School Reform Initiative, structures like PLC Plus, learning lab structures we can also look at things like pineapple charts and ways that we think about creating agreements around giving and [00:41:00] receiving feedback.

I think the question is, because we actually have a lot of options, it's just to, And be intentional. So make a list of who are the teams in your building, if you're an administrator or leadership team. What are the roles and responsibilities or the key decisions that those teams make? I call this decision mapping, so that we know who's responsible for what and which teams make which decisions.

And then, to be curious I'm curious about when those teams meet, how do we make sure that their time isn't wasted, that it's not a venting session, or everybody's on their laptop and people are shopping on Etsy and planning vacations, or they're grading papers, or they're responding to parent emails, or they're, right, like, or we have people that don't even bother to show up to the meeting, even though they're on the team, or they're not invited to the meeting, even though they're on the team.

So, in other words, how do we make sure that when those teams meet, there's a clear structure, and then we might look at, okay. PLC plus, or we need a tuning protocol, or we need a [00:42:00] stronger MTSS protocol. And we might go to something like whether it's a free resource or it's an organization that allows us to have a platform we can use that structures and holds our data and structures our meetings.

So I think the first step before you start to choose those protocols is first identify who are those critical teams within your building. And what kinds of roles and responsibilities and key decisions do they make, and then let's make sure that when they meet, that meeting is as productive as possible so folks feel like their time was worth investing in that.

So I think that would be my sort of backtrack, and then I give some additional resources and recommendations for sort of my favorite. Great places to look for different resources and protocols based on the type of team because the needs of an MTSS team are going to be different from the needs of a PLC or professional learning community.

So, so I think that would be my 1 thought before moving in that direction. And then I'm conducting some research right now with some researchers at Duke University and. And we're [00:43:00] looking at really strengthening collaboration specifically around meetings having to do with students mental health and or behavioral needs, and just ways to help educators feel a sense of, because those conversations are often really painful and difficult, and to be able to have a sense of, okay, within our sphere of influence, right, because we're not therapists, nor should we be where we only have, we have students with maybe some significant behavioral needs, what can we do, and how can we celebrate our small wins, and how can we notice an impact, and help to also improve student behavioral outcomes, and then increase learning, which is our job and our calling, so we're.

Still exploring and building some of those protocols as well as we speak. I mean, that's a project I just launched a couple months ago that will go on for the next three years, but hopefully will inform what trauma informed care and collaboration within that can look like in schools. So, yeah, it's an ongoing space, but I think start with who are your teams?

[00:44:00] What are their decisions? And then what is their collaboration look like? And then where are the right resources for those teams?

Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, it's a good thing you referenced students because as we're wrapping up this conversation, I think it's worth specifically talking about them a little bit. And it's been woven throughout throughout our conversation, but to really address it directly. How does a psychologically safe work environment for educators benefit students?

Ricky Robertson: To answer that question, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go for a moment just back to sort of one of the big moments in psychological safety research, which was around, I think 2015, Google the huge company, right? Conducted a study to look at what are the most significant influences on. Team efficacy, team effectiveness, and they looked at I believe it was over 180 different influences, probably over closer to 250 different influences on team effectiveness, and they observed teams and interviewed folks, etc.

They found that psychological safety had the [00:45:00] greatest influence on team efficacy. Now, when we look at education in terms of what has the greatest influence on student learning and achievement, and especially if we look at the research of folks like John Hattie and his visible learning research, which is the largest meta analysis on what causes students to learn, and it.

Going on, being updated constantly and constantly evolving and that being said, and has different growth areas and isn't perfect, but gives us a lot of insight. I mean, it's a tremendous resource and we see that collective teacher efficacy is shown to be the number one influence on student achievement schools with high levels of collective teacher efficacy typically have students who make good grades.

Over a year's worth of learning, often up to two years worth of learning in a year's worth of time. It's one of the only influences on student achievement that's shown to mitigate the harmful effects of poverty on learning. And it has to do with the process, not just the belief. Sometimes we focus too much on the belief and not [00:46:00] understanding that that belief is informed by a process of collaboration, continual improvement that is informed by evidence of impact.

And in order to engage in that process, in order to collaborate and build and realize that collective efficacy, in order to look at evidence of impact in ways that are productive and meaningful and don't get us trapped in blame or resignation or frustration or isolation, we have to have psychological safety.

So to answer your question, psychological safety fuels teacher collective efficacy, which in turn has perhaps the greatest influence on student achievement.

Ross Romano: Excellent. So, Listeners, the book is The Other Educators, or sorry, The Other Teachers, and it is available from Corwin or wherever you get your books. Ricky, I know you have some other resources, a video series and some other things. Anything in particular you'd like to have our listeners check out?

Ricky Robertson: Yeah, absolutely. I will put in a link to The Other Teachers, A Guide to Psychological Safety Among [00:47:00] Educators which can be found anywhere books are sold, but I'll put in a link for the publisher, Corwin. I'll also throw in a link to a trauma informed teaching video series, which is a project that I did along with WETA.

and the National Education Association to create a free resource for educators to learn the foundational principles, strategies, and practices of trauma informed teaching. So we'll put that in there as well. And folks can reach out to me I have a website, teach4trust and they can also find me on Twitter, although I'm not too active on social media because Well, I have my own mental health needs.

So I try to modulate how much I'm on those devices, but folks can still reach out to me. And and yeah, thank you so much for having me and for this conversation. I very much appreciated it.

Ross Romano: Yeah, thanks for being here and listeners will put the links to the book page and all those resources below so that you can easily find them and check out anything that's beneficial to you. Please also do subscribe to the authority for more author interviews like [00:48:00] this. If you are enjoying this episode or any of our recent episodes, please check out some more or visit bpodcast.

network to learn about all of our shows. And Ricky, thanks again for being here.

Ricky Robertson: thank you..