“We found a very strong statistical relationship between the sleep debt of a leader and the psychological safety of their teams.” – Kristen Holmes, VP Performance at Whoop
Last week was pretty tough, but I’ve just discovered a scientific explanation of why, and this learning is worth the struggles! Read on if you’re interested…
I started this year super excited, determined to be intentionally intentional in living my purpose, “…adding value to people’s lives by vulnerably sharing my life experiences and learnings”. I was invited to speak at a conference in March about How Psychological Safety Enables Everyone to Thrive. As I prepared the talk, I found a level of passion and excitement, believing that the opportunities I’ve had to learn, practice, and teach psychological safety would be enormously impactful to everyone who attends. The opportunity to share how I’d personally grown by becoming psychologically safe to my children, wife, and friends was truly inspiring.
Unfortunately, this excitement quickly eroded into a feeling of deep hypocrisy. My wife and I rarely argue, but on Monday we had one of those rare arguments, culminating in raised voices and anger towards one another. My motivation to write and teach about psychological safety came to an abrupt halt. In that single argument, I was not psychologically safe. I didn’t listen, I didn’t empathize, and I invoked fear into my wife that her voice wouldn’t be heard. All of my learnings about psychological safety felt meaningless, and I began hearing that voice in my head saying “You’re a hypocrite. You have no right teaching about psychological safety when you continue to fail at being psychologically safe.”
Unfortunately, Monday’s argument was only the beginning. We had another argument on Thursday, and this argument ended even worse than the first, we both agreed we needed a few hours to cool off. After the call, the voice in my head got louder, “You’re a hypocrite.”
The day progressed, and I found myself in another situation. I became angry and frustrated with one of my children, and I immediately knew that my behavior had damaged my explicit goal of modelling perfect love toward my children. The Bible’s definition of psychological safety is in 1 John 4:18:
Perfect Love Casts out Fear Because Fear Expects Punishment
The voice became louder. “You’re a hypocrite, you don’t have a right or the credibility to teach others about psychological safety when you failed three different times this week!”
Fortunately, the voice didn’t last. I practiced what I’ve practiced a thousand times before, what Dr. Talley calls Integrity “Minimizing the time span between mess up and fess up”. I asked for forgiveness, and my wife and children quickly forgave me, but unfortunately it will take them a while to feel psychologically safe with me again, and it’s on me to learn and grow from my mistakes.
Integrity is minimizing the timespan between mess-up and fess-up
A wise counselor of mine, Pam, specializes in addiction recovery. I’ll never forget the time when a client of mine who struggled with addiction was beating himself up with shame. This client had stumbled and didn’t know what to do. Pam asked the question, “Do you know the purpose of a relapse?”. The client didn’t have an answer. “The purpose of a relapse is to learn. Never waste a relapse.” She asked the client what he learned, and he shared the events leading up to the relapse, and committed to make changes based on these learnings.
The purpose of a relapse is to learn. Never waste a relapse
In a sense, the arguments from last week with my wife and one of my children were relapses. I’ve spent the last few days trying to learn from these stumbles, and last night all the pieces came together.
On my drive home from skiing I listened to a podcast with Kristen Holmes, VP of Performance at Whoop. She mentioned a study her team had recently conducted on the impacts of sleep debt on executive function and psychological safety. The takeaway from the study?
Kristen and her team partnered with McKinsey and conducted a study of 70 CEOs and their direct reports. They measured daily sleep debt in the CEOs. In conjunction, they asked each of the CEO direct reports to fill out a daily survey of the level of psychological safety they felt that day when interaction with the CEO’s. The results were fascinating.
- 45 minutes of sleep debt resulted in a 5-10% reduction in mental control (known as executive function, neurologically based skills involving cognitive control and emotional regulation).
- 45 minutes of sleep debt resulted in a significant reduction in psychological safety as measured by their direct reports
- The relationship between sleep debt and psychological safety is linear, meaning the more sleep debt the lower the psychological safety, culminating in as much as a 30% reduction in psychological safety!
- The leaders themselves were unable to cognitively realize that they had sleep debt, yet those closest to the CEOs experienced the impact of their sleep debt by the way the CEO’s interacted, how they physically looked, and how effective they were at creating an environment of psychological safety, an environment where everyone on the team felt safe for interpersonal risk taking, Amy Edmonson’s definition of psychological safety.
Unfortunately, according to a study by McKinsey, nearly 66% of business leaders are dissatisfied with the amount of sleep they get. Furthermore, according to a 2022 study by US News and World Report, only 13% of people report regularly waking up feeling rested. Given that psychological safety is the #1 predictor of team success, and around 10% of teams have all members feeling psychologically safe, ensuring adequate sleep may be one of the most significant things we can do to improve!
After listening to this podcast, I reflected on my previous week where I’d struggled to be psychologically safe with my wife and children. As I reflected, I remembered that my sleep was terrible last week! Every day of the week I woke around 3 in the morning and was awake for 2-3 hours! Everyday last week I felt tired, lethargic, and edgy. My sleep debt (the gap between needed sleep and actual sleep) was off the charts last week, and as a result I wasn’t psychologically safe!
BOOM. The purpose of a relapse is education. These learnings make perfect sense and now I get to practice what I learned and vulnerably share my failures with others so they can learn! I’m recommitting myself to pay more attention to my sleep, and to experiment with different mechanisms to improve the quality and consistency of my sleep!
Questions to Consider?
- Do you have a desire to improve the performance of your team?
- How psychologically safe do members of your team feel?
- Are you proactively improving psychological safety on your team?
- Are you getting sufficient sleep to ensure that you are psychologically safe and your brain is functioning optimally?
If you’d like to learn more about how psychological safety can enable you and your team to thrive, I’m writing a book to help you. Click below to get a free copy!
If you’re ready to proactively improve psychological safety on your team, I’d love to help. You can schedule time to talk by clicking the link below.