Webinar Recap: Implementing User Guides to Strengthen Psychological Safety – A Case Study from the McCarter Theatre
March 16, 2023 (Replay at end of page)
In 2022, ABA undertook an ambitious research effort to determine exactly what talent wants from work coming out of the pandemic. As part of this research, we wrote a series of case studies of organizations that have made important progress on culture. In this webinar, we were joined by the McCarter Theatre’s Director of Equity and Organizational Culture, Gina Pisasale, to learn about the implementation of their employee User Guides and how these tools have contributed towards a more inclusive culture. We invite you to explore recordings and recaps of our previous case studies in this series profiling the Houston theater Stages and the LA Philharmonic.
The Compelling Offer
If you’ve joined us for our previous webinars in this series, you’ll be familiar with our research highlighting the critical value of inclusive culture to workers in the arts sector. For those new to this research, we began with a question: “After two and a half years in the pandemic, what aspects of the job offer are most (and least) important to staff?” To answer this question, we employed a survey technique that’s typically used for product marketing called conjoint, or tradeoff analysis. Conjoint surveys ask people to choose between potential offers, for example: would you take a job with more pay, but fewer health benefits? A better manager but less flexible work? After you’ve made several choices, the computer begins to learn what you care about, and forces harder and harder tradeoffs until it learns how much more you care about some features than others.
This conjoint analysis allowed us to determine what people care about in absolute terms, as well as put a financial value on intangible workplace attributes and improvements by combining this ranking of what people value with how much money they would trade off to get it. We could then assess these factors as in the charts below, where the dollar value inside each pie slice represents the financial value of moving from “good” to “great” for that given attribute. From these charts, you can see that inclusive culture really, REALLY matters.
An inclusive culture
That is all well and good, but in the workplace, what do we actually mean by an “inclusive culture?” To answer this, we developed the following framework:
Inclusive culture implies that everyone feels welcome, that they belong, that the organization values them enough to equip them with all the information they need and invest in them by finding opportunities across the organization for learning and growth, and the organization has put in place mechanisms to share power. In our Stages case study webinar, we focused on the “identity” columns, then in our LA Philharmonic webinar we focused on “voice.” Today we’ll be discussing “power.”
McCarter Theatre’s User Guides
McCarter Theatre is a mission-driven organization committed to creating “stories and experiences that enliven minds, expand imaginations and engage communities via performing arts.” In their mission statement, they express that their work is led by their values of “justice and joy, beauty and belonging.” And when they speak of joy, they mean “the way we work together is as important as the work we make. We center generosity in all we say and do with each other to create life affirming experiences that celebrate our shared humanity and help us make meaning in our world.”
Living up to that promise takes work, and work the team took on headfirst when Gina Pisasale introduced their McCarter User Guides. At the time, the McCarter Theatre was in a reemergence phase post-pandemic, having added new staff members and recently made a major commitment to inclusion and diversity. Pisasale’s User Guides are intended to be a manual for how to get the most out of working with someone. Each staff member is asked to thoughtfully contribute to a document describing their preferences for logistical work environment information (hours and location, communication, availability), personal inclinations and preferences, and additional insights. The documents then go into a library made available to all staff members, and all are encouraged to read these documents to understand the best ways to engage with their fellow staff.
To roll out User Guides, Pisasale began with a single draft which she shared with department heads. With their enthusiastic buy-in, they gathered an interdepartmental group to develop a User Guide prototype suited to McCarter’s culture. They created an online repository for completed User Guides and released them to the full staff and encouraged completion. They then created a modified guide for guest artists. To date, several departments have enthusiastically embraced the User Guides. Those who have most successfully adopted them took the time to incorporate them into their work culture. They spent two hours as a team reading and discussing each others’ guides.
Although it is early days in McCarter’s journey with User Guides, other organizations have employed similar tools, and reported that they foster permission to be yourself, fewer misunderstandings, higher trust, and an acknowledgement of power dynamics. For arts organizations, they provide a wide range of potential use cases: to facilitate (re)introduction of colleagues coming out of the pandemic, provide proof regarding organizational transparency to job candidates, accelerate onboarding of new staff, improve the collaboration of cross-functional teams working together temporarily, and resolve conflicts on productions and among staff experiencing collaborative challenges.
In Conversation with Gina Pisasale
Following the overview of the case study, we held an open Q&A session with Gina Pisasale. Below are some highlights from our conversation.
On the genesis of their User Guides:
I have been with McCarter for a year and 4 months. When I first arrived, Omicron was at its peak. A huge part of my work was guessing what that meant. I noticed three specific groups of folks: the staff who stayed throughout the pandemic retraction in staff, the new staff who hadn’t experienced a new production, and people who were brought back after the pandemic, but hadn’t experienced it together. How do we get to know each other and collaborate with these covid restrictions and this staff makeup? So we started this process. It was interdepartmental and inter hierarchical. This was a tool to invite self-reflection and understand our differences first. How are we going to engage with those differences?
On effective implementation:
Just releasing it into the world is not enough. There needs to be a map of committed persistence. Creating space to talk about each other’s is important. I would give myself an A-/B+ on how we’ve released them. We’re still figuring out how to make them accessible. The idea is fantastic, but how we implement them, how they factor into the bigger piece of the puzzle, is the question.
On a collaborative approach:
We started with department heads, and then asked for feedback – would this be useful for their staff? Overwhelmingly yes – they bought in. It was collaborative from the beginning.
The content of the user guides changed before we distributed to the greater staff – we maintained maybe 60% of the original, and took 4-5 weeks to discuss together and change.
On adapting user guides for guest artists:
In one production, we had an ambulatory wheelchair user, trans identifying and black folks. We showed them the user guide and asked what would be useful for them to ask. This collaboration was sent out to the rest of the cast to complete.
In another production with children, they created an “All About Me” user guide, where we had the children ask the adults. We then posted them in a room for everyone to read.
Ask who has the lease amount of power, and how can you offer them power and help others recognize differences.
On intent:
I frame this user guide as a tool to prepare for your wellbeing and acknowledge and honor your differences.