How Big is Your Island of Sanity?
Knowing and accepting your limits is an important component of contributing to a culture of psychological safety.
What is an Island of Sanity?
An island of sanity1 is a small, protected part of the world where it is possible to look directly at reality even when it hurts, claim agency and responsibility for what is in one’s locus of control, and maintain curiosity and enthusiasm.
Can You Create Your Own Island of Sanity Yet?
Before you can create an island of sanity for others, you must be able to look at reality even when it hurts, claim your own inner authority and responsibility for what is in your locus of control, and regain curiosity and enthusiasm when they falter.
All children are born unable to create their own island of sanity. Developing the capacity to create safety for oneself takes time.2
If you have not yet developed the skills to create this environment for yourself, it is important to seek out the people who create it for you.
Many people turn to friends and family who make they feel safe enough to be courageous at work. Some need to work for bosses who provide that sense of security. Others turn to coaches or therapists.
Knowing under what conditions you can create your own island of sanity is an important piece of self-awareness if you care about psychological safety in a group. An easy way to create psychological danger in a group is to unconsciously require the group to provide safety for you.
Some questions for reflection.
What do I know about how I shift from fear to curiosity?
How do I know when I feel safe?
What feelings do I avoid?
What tools do I have for shifting from feeling like a victim of circumstance to being the hero of my own life?
How skillfully do I create my own courage?
Under What Conditions Can You Create an Island of Sanity for Others?
For most people, some situations bring out the best in us without us consciously doing anything. Others stretch us and we need to work consciously to be and do what is necessary to bring out the best in others. And for most of us, there are some situations that overwhelm our capacity to create safety for ourselves or others.
Being clear about the limits of our safety-building capacity protects us from the trust-destroying impact of over-promising and under-delivering.
Some questions for reflection.
What life or work situations tend to make me irritable or anxious?
Am I better with big groups of people, small groups, or 1-1?
Are there emotions it disrupts me to witness others experiencing?
What do I need to have in place for my relationships to feel easy?
Are there problems it is easy for me to help other people solve?
What kinds of events seem to create interpersonal drama around me?
What unmet needs do I have a hard time letting go of?
Ask For Help When You Reach Your Limit
If you have identified a situation where you cannot create an island of sanity for yourself or others and there is a need for action, asking for help is the power move. Asking for help is a form of agency.
You may need to ask many people before you find someone who can and will help at a price you can afford.
If you have difficulty asking for help, find opportunities to practice.
If you are sensitive to rejection and find it hard to ask someone else after hearing a “no”, you might find Jia Jang’s TED Talk on rejection or his book Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection inspirational.
Creating Psychological Safety at Scale Comes Through Building a Community Committed to Co-Creating a Culture of Safety.
It is not possible to scale psychological safety alone.
If you want to create psychological safety in a team, you will need to collaborate with your teammates, whether your team is a Board of Directors, executives, managers, or a small team of individual contributors.
If you want to create psychological safety across an organization, you will need to collaborate with your colleagues in all departments.
Start wherever you feel safe enough to be courageous. Even if your goal is to transform your organization and the only place you feel safe asking for help is with a professional like a coach or therapist or your friends and family.
Start where you are. Creating safety for yourself and others is a skillset. The skills reinforce each other over time. It doesn’t matter where you practice as long as you practice.
The phrase “island of sanity” comes from Margaret J. Wheatley’s wonderful book on leading during times of disruption, Who Do We Choose to Be? You can listen to a discussion of the main ideas in the book on episode 8 of the Leadership Arts Review podcast.
According to Attachment Theory, early childhood caregivers who provide the conditions for secure attachment provide the easiest environment for children to develop the capacity to provide their own sense of security. However, there are many ways to develop this capacity at any stage in life.