Before we begin, let's do a quick experiment. Grab out a piece or blank paper and write this sentence:

Nothing unusual about that, right? Pretty easy. Pretty normal. Fun fact, by the way. 

Okay, now, do it again but... this time, use your non-dominant hand.

Go on, I'll wait. 

What happened when you did that?

My guess is that even though you know perfectly well how to write, in fact, you have an example on your page of how good your writing is, suddenly, writing felt really clunky and awkward when you switched hands, like your hand and brain suddenly weren't on speaking terms. AND I bet it took way longer to write too. I know it did for me, here's my rather impressive example below.

That tiny experiment captures, in a very small way, how people can experience change in the workplace.

Our brains are wired for efficiency

The human brain loves patterns, which run efficiently in the background and are managed by the basal ganglia. We are obsessed with patterns! We love them, can't get enough of them. They make life easy for us. And by having a part of our brain that runs on autopilot (basal ganglia) our attention then gets freed up for more interesting things.

For example, if you can drive a car and you've been doing it for a while, that's why you can do all the driving things while also being on the phone with your Mum. Your basal ganglia takes care of the driving things while other parts of your brain focus on the conversation. Cool, huh?

When we are asked to do something new, those smooth, habitual pathways are interrupted and that's when the prefrontal cortex has to step in, dragging us into deliberate effort.  

The prefrontal cortex takes A LOT of energy. It's not exactly efficient for our brains. So when we are in 'deliberate effort' mode, much more cognitive energy is required.

And that, friends, is why change can feel pretty exhausting at times. Because it is! It actually, for real, is burning up a fair bit of brain energy.

That IS exhausting.

It's why even the most capable and intelligent people can sometimes stumble when asked to let go of one way of doing things to adopt another. It's literally biology, baby.

Let's talk about psychological safety

This is where psychological safety becomes soooo important for businesses. 

Aside from just being really great to work in a psychologically safe place, without that safety, the awkwardness of workplace change can very quickly tip into the Realms of Way Too Overwhelming.

Go back to our writing experiment at the beginning but now add the pressure of someone standing over your shoulder (awkward). Now imagine they're judging your little non-dominant-hand-chicken-scrawl. 

Let's pretend they're judging every letter you're doing your best to write. They're also timing you, because you're taking too long. Oh, and let's also imagine they just announced that your entire job - the thing that pays your bills - now depends on you writing perfectly with your non-dominant hand by the end of the day. 

What happens in your body then? 

The awkwardness doesn't feel so playful anymore, does it? Now it feels a little bit... threatening. 

In that imaginary scenario, your brain would switch into protection mode, narrowing your focus and heightening your stress responses, which pull your brain away from the learning that you need to succeed.

Not productive. Not nice.

In workplaces, that switch can show up as resistance, complete disengagement or withdrawal. And often, sadly, leaders can accidentally misinterpret any associated behaviours as laziness or stubbornness.

But in truth, what we are often seeing is people's nervous systems doing precisely what they are designed to do when uncertainty and fear are high: protect the individual at all costs.

Psychological safety provides the counterbalance

Psychological safety in the workplace creates the container in which people can wobble without shame and ask questions or experiment without fear or ridicule. 

In fact, it makes the absolute difference between someone abandoning the pen in frustration (like I considered doing when I spelt 'ultraviolet' wrong, see my example above) or someone persevering until their awkward new scrawl begins, little by little, to feel natural.

This is why change and psychological safety cannot be separated.

Change demands energy, effort and exposure to uncertainty, whereas, safety allows people to stay in that awkward space for long enough for the New Way of Doing Things to embed. 

When leaders invest in creating environments where people feel secure to stumble, the very clunkiness of change becomes part of the growth rather than a signal to retreat.

The question to hold onto here is not only, "What do we need people to do differently?" but also, "What does this experience feel like in their bodies and do they need to feel safe enough to try, fail, and try again?"

Next time you're watching someone stumble their way through change, think back to your own shaky, non-dominant scrawl. 

Progress rarely looks pretty at first but with safety, patience and practice, those awkward lines eventually start to flow. 

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