Practice with Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is a powerful tool you can use to immediately put some of these lessons into practice. As your everyday AI companion, you can role-play and practice the basics of psychological safety with Copilot. Make up your own prompts or use some of the suggestions by copying and pasting from into Copilot from the table below.
| Lesson | Prompt |
|---|---|
| Check your reactivity | I want to practice a skill by role-playing with you. You play the part of my employee, and I'm your manager. I’m going to try not to be reactive by being self-reflective and not take things personally. I would like you to ask me hard questions about a decision I made asking the team to work late on a Friday. Your tone is frustrated, and you're doubtful of my decision. Your questions should make it easy for me to feel defensive and frustrated with you. We’ll role play back and forth with you responding and asking questions until I say the exercise is over. |
| Listen without agenda | Let’s role-play a scenario where you, as my employee, express your concerns about recent layoffs and how they affected your sense of job security. You feel scared, frustrated, and resentful. I’ll practice my listening skills by affirming your feelings, asking open-ended questions, and not jumping to problem solving. We’ll role play back and forth with you responding and sharing more about how you're feeling until I say the exercise is over. Begin by sharing your feelings about the situation. |
| Risk the vulnerability you hope to see | Imagine I'm a team leader who has made a difficult decision that didn’t turn out as well as expected, leading to a setback for your team. I want to address this in my next team meeting to model vulnerability and encourage open communication. You play the role of a team member responding to my approach. I’ll start by sharing my feelings about the decision, the doubts I had, and the lessons I learned. Your role is to listen, ask questions, and share your own thoughts on the situation. We’ll go back and forth, with you responding and sharing more about your perspective until I say the exercise is over. Begin by asking me how the difficult decision went. We'll role play back and forth with you responding and asking questions until I say the exercise is over. |
Practicing with Copilot provides a safe place for you to make mistakes and apply these lessons in a way that feels natural to you. Much like the experience of managing people, Copilot can surprise you with its responses, giving you a chance to improvise these lessons into real life situations.