Non-attachment to results

Psychological safety and Buddhist Philosophy

We’re in Barcelona this week for workshops and meetings, and we decided to visit La Sagrada Familia again. It’s an incredible building, and although construction began in 1882, it’s still unfinished. The architect, Gaudí, dedicated much of his career to the Sagrada Família, and from 1915 onwards, he was devoted exclusively to it, even though it was unlikely to be completed during his lifetime. The Sagrada Familia is now expected to be completed in 2026, the centenary of Gaudi’s death. Whether it’s finished or not, it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re nearby.

The Sagrada, and the fact that Gaudi was never able to see it completed, made me think of this verse in the Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture which is part of the Indian epic Mahabharata:

2.47: You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.

I first read the Gita when I was 17, and although it took a few more readings and some great teachers to understand it in any depth, that passage always resonated with me. It speaks to the notion that we should invest more in the actions we commit than in the results we expect from them. 

It can seem counterintuitive in a world where we are often told to focus on the outcome, but there can be real happiness in working for the sake of the work, without (or with less) attachment to the outcome. Working always for the end result, rather than for the enjoyment and reward of the work itself, can result in disappointment and dissatisfaction. It means we’re always striving for the next thing, the next reward or the next goal. 

Concentrating solely on outcomes can also give us a false sense of control. We can hope for a good result, we can even hope for a great one, but nothing is guaranteed. The results of our work (as we described last week) are not determined solely by our efforts; they’re also influenced by other people, the environment, the economy, the weather, and just plain chance. Letting go of attachment to outcomes can be a powerful catalyst for improved psychological safety. If everything is an experiment, we can free ourselves to work with passion, and be curious about the results without being fearful of failure or overly fixated on a narrow definition of ‘success’.

It’s even possible that by focusing entirely on our efforts and not the end result, we’ll realise even better outcomes. If we can enjoy digging the garden without anxiety about whether and how it will bloom, maybe we’ll do a better job, and perhaps we’ll appreciate the flowers and the fruits of our labour even more when they do arrive. 

That isn’t to say we shouldn’t have goals, ambition, or a mission, but if we can find reward in the work, the process, rather than the end result, we may not only be happier and more content, we may just have begun our own Sagrada Familia – even if we don’t see it completed in our lifetime.

Incidentally, this week in Barcelona has been wonderful. Meeting up with friends old and new, running workshops and absorbing the city. 

Catching up with fantastic illustrator Roberto Ferraro.

Happiness at work expert Joaquin Vinas and I at the psychological safety practices workshop.

We’ve just scheduled another round of workshops! And this time we have another new addition – Psychological Safety for Leaders. This is a 2.5-hour workshop where we’ll explore high performing teams, power dynamics & hierarchies, body language and unconscious signals. We’ll also look at 1-1s, reporting, meetings, and other behaviours and practices to foster greater psychological safety and performance in teams.

Psychological safety at work

We recently covered PSIRF and psychological safety in healthcare, but it’s worth highlighting that PSIRF and cultural approaches deal largely with everyday work. There are extremes of the spectrum of concern-raising and this is where whistleblower protections are critical. Here’s a BBC article on the need to strengthen whistleblower protections in order to avoid disasters such as the Mid Staffordshire Hospital Trust scandal. 

In previous issues, we covered human error, hindsight bias, local rationality and counterfactual reasoning. Here’s a neat article by a friend of the newsletter, Gareth Lock: “It’s obvious why it happened!! (In hindsight)” which dives (pun not intended!) into many of these ideas in the context of the loss of the Titan and its 5 crew & passengers on 18 June 2023.

Twice this week I’ve come across suggestions that a team can be “too” psychologically safe. This is our stance on the question of “Can a team be too psychologically safe?” (Short answer, no :))

On Monday, August 14, Dawn Emerick and I will be facilitating a Lean Coffee discussion on The Intersection Between Trauma-Informed Workplaces & Psychological Safety. Join us for a great discussion!

This week’s poem:

By M.

It took many
times of
getting lost
to truly find
myself