 Hi All right, good afternoon And so happy that you're all here So long before I knew what psychological safety was Actually long before I knew what applied improv was I was just a girl who found improv on the stage performing crazy characters Joining troops with names like spongeball space cookies and two girls three eyes. I Loved it. It was silly. It was the only place that I could create without boundaries and I needed that because I did not have that in my work and I am a creative person So I loved it Fast-forward ten years and like many of you I discovered its application To helping teams and individuals Be better at work and life And after experiencing the benefits of improvisation firsthand in my own career and business-to-business sales I became very driven and very passionate To share the improv mindset With every workplace I could get my grubby paws on Right so fast forward another five years and I'm throwing yes and around the workplace like bagels and donuts Yeah, I Loved it and I'm one of those AI practitioners I've weaved in and out of making this my main hustle and then my side hustle and then my main hustle and then my Side hustle and then I'm just hustling because it turns out a lot of people don't want to hire me to throw pastries around the office Yeah but I really really really enjoyed the work and the bulk of the work that I do is Team development and skill building and the work that keeps finding me more and more is the team development piece Bringing teams together to do more bringing diverse mindsets together to create And that's hard to do in today's global economy Organizational landscape that we're in there's a lot of ego. There's a lot of competition. There's a lot of silos So I really found myself working with a lot of teams to solve big problems when it came to some of those issues Can we all just get along right? So I was a couple of years ago heads down doing some research for a talk that I was giving on Creating a culture of cross collaboration in the digital age when I first came across the work of Amy C. Edmondson and Google's two-year study project Aristotle Enter psychological safety and I set my Google alerts like any AI nerd to psychological safety and I'm getting like a couple of articles a week and Then I'm getting like five to ten a week and now I get like five hundred Week so the recent the release of Amy's book all of the podcast and all of the Articles in the New York Times and all of the blogs. I mean, it's a big deal But just in case you were in a cave somewhere at its very simplest form psychological safety is the shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking So the AI nerd in me is looking at that like duh That's just an improv principle. I Mean we can correlate improv to anything. That's what we do as AI people Not getting along with your partner improv for couples want to be a better cook improv for chefs improv for arborist improv for acrobats improv for yoga improv for dogs. I Mean, that's we do it. We if you don't believe me look at our agenda At this conference. We do a very good job of that, but I mean improv and psychological safety Twenzies like seriously I began to connect all The principles of improvisation to psychological safety. I mean it was so easy and And also we had all of these stats now and research and science and psychology and Studies and a bunch of smart people at Google backing it up What else do we need? I? Started weaving that into all of my learning experiences at every opportunity. I Mean I had to write any time we're working with a team where the goal is to increase levels of trust Increase team collaboration and communication teams need to know that climate matters and now I nailed it boom maybe or Maybe we pivot right so a few years ago I found myself in a job that I loved. I mean I was uber passionate about this work like a kid that loves candy. I It's kind of job that I was like Everything I've done in my life up to this point. Let led me here. I Was confident that I was in a culture where I could create Where I could share ideas where I could be myself. Oh God finally I can be myself and I felt safe. I'm pretty sure I walked around the halls of that place Just like this all the time. I Know I probably freaks some people out a big smile on my face all the time. I was beaming And I was just so happy to be there And I remember once the honeymoon phase was over two months in I was at my house because I worked remote and I got a call from the bosses Boom boom boom boom and it was to two people. So that was already intimidating that every time I had an interaction with My leader my bot was two people. So they called and I'm like, hello Beaming and they're like, yeah, well Christy, um word on the street is Is that you've been a little pushy with sharing your ideas with the team? So we're gonna need you to Kind of bring it on down and by that we mean just stop it's probably gonna be best and I'm like What? I mean, I love this job. Why would I do anything to piss anybody off? I was like fighting back tears. I literally think I said that and I couldn't breathe And so I stopped sharing ideas and After a few interactions very similar interactions with my bosses. I stopped asking questions I stopped being me and I didn't contribute unless I just had to I lost my soul That's what I felt like so I just got out of there, right? So as I thought about my experience recently as I'm trying to work with these teams helping them create a Psychologically safe climate, which is so important. I had one of those moments. We have as AI practitioners facilitators trainers. Ah This seems too hard. Why am I asking them to do this? It's so hard. And so I like this definition better It spoke to me and it frames it differently Psychological safety is being able to show and employ oneself without fear of negative consequences of self-image status and career Because that definition puts the onus on the person It is not reliant on a leader or a shared belief because that is a little bit out of our control Right What does this really say? It says I'm gonna be me and I'm gonna go to work and I'm just gonna have the courage and I'm gonna be brave And what might happen? I might influence change Right. I might leave my job. I Might get fired We can drive more change if we teach people how to cultivate it for themselves Shifting the message from helping teams to create a climate for interpersonal risk taking to helping people be brave and Courageous and willing to take risks no matter what the outcome It's it's a subtle difference, but it's really really important If I could go back to that girl that I was three years ago. I Would say to her You know People shouldn't have to work in this culture You are walking in fear You are scared Be courageous Be brave follow your gut Even though it's scary You will come out happier on the other side You can create psychological safety within yourself Thank you very much