Psychological Safety at the Workplace
by Angela Hummel, CBC and Dr. Peggy Marshall
We spend a lot of time making sure our workplaces are safe, physically that is. We post signs if floors are wet, so no one falls. We teach people how to report safety hazards and eliminate them. We even have a governing body in the United States called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA that sets regulations and monitors compliance. Keeping people safe from physical harm and hazards is important. Yet wouldn’t it be nice if we could put a sign outside of an organization or on their website indicating that workplace was also safe, psychologically. Or a warning sign if they aren’t?
So, what is a psychologically safe workplace? There are a few definitions and multiple thought leaders and researchers on the topic. The definition we like best is from Amy Edmondson who wrote the book “The Fearless Organization.” Test your psychological safety straight away – Fearless Organization. As a bonus, if you visit her website, you can take an assessment that measures the psychological safety of teams. It might be a great starting point for leading a discussion on psychological safety with your own team.
Returning to the concept of psychological safety, Edmondson defines psychological safety as:” a climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves.” Other components of psychological safety shared by Edmonson include employees feel comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution, employees are confident that they can speak up and won’t be humiliated, ignored, or blamed, employees can ask questions when they are unsure about something, employees tend to trust and respect their colleagues.
Sometimes to help us understand a new concept better, it’s helpful to know what it is not. Psychological safety does not mean that people always agree with each other for the sake of being nice. In fact, it’s the opposite. It is about candor, about making it possible for productive disagreement and free exchange of ideas. Psychological safety is also not a personality factor. It refers to the work climate and climate affects people with different personality traits in roughly the same ways.
According to a 2017 Gallup survey, three in ten employees strongly agreed that their opinions don’t count at work. Organizations miss out when they are unable to create psychologically safe environments where opinions do count. First, mistakes are not reported quickly or maybe not at all resulting in a lack of solutions for corrective action and avoidance of future incidents. Second, seamless coordination across all employee groups is stunted which leads to a siloed approach to organizational operations. Finally, innovative thinking is critical to idea sharing and brings crucial out of the box thinking to organizations which is missed when employees are not communicating.
Because leadership is key to creating psychological safety, what leaders do to create and impact this climate is important. Consider your own leadership and the clients you coach who are leaders. Also, think about the clients you coach that might not be working for leaders who create psychologically safe workplaces. Many managers, both consciously and unconsciously, still believe in the power of fear to motivate. They assume that people who are afraid, either of management or the consequences of underperforming, will work hard to avoid unpleasant consequences and that good things will happen. Yet, we know that fear is not an effective motivator. It actually inhibits learning. So, in workplaces, managers play an important role in making the environment safe for open communication about challenges, concerns, and opportunities.
Psychologically safe leaders are caring. They set the stage and get people to think differently about their work and when things go wrong. They help people feel safe when speaking up about problems, concerns, mistakes and risks. They set the stage for candor. They also welcome and invite participation. They have direct conversations and even offer focus groups to find out more and get ideas. A true test is how leaders respond when people do speak up. If a boss responds with anger or disdain as soon as someone steps forward to speak up about a problem, the safety will quickly evaporate. Leaders who respond productively create psychologically safe workplaces.
Dr. Timothy Clark, in “The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation”, Timothy R. Clark | LeaderFactor shares that employees have to move through stages of safety before they feel fully engaged as a team member. First, they have to feel inclusion safety which is about feeling safe to be you and form both a self-acceptance and group acceptance perspective. Next is learner safety which provides the individual with opportunities to learn, develop and grow. Contributor safety is the third stage which satisfies the individual’s need to make a meaningful contribution to the group. Finally, challenger safety allows individuals to ask questions and challenge the status quo in order to drive for results and make things better.
To conclude this discussion of psychological safety we need to consider the ever-changing workplace environment which is now mostly virtual. Amy Edmonson offers a few ideas for how to create psychological safety in virtual environments. How to Foster Psychological Safety in Virtual Meetings (hbr.org) She recommends the use of the chat, breakouts, hand raising, and polls tools to create collaboration and engage the teams in meetings. Because working from home can feel lonely to many employees, the more a leader can engage teams with positive, uplifting interactions the more psychological safety is created. Let’s not forget Barbara Fredrickson’s research on positivity including the Losada Line. PositivityRatio.com Her research suggests it take three positive interactions to one negative interaction to offset negativity. She also believes that high performance teams have a 6:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.
All employees have a responsibility for creating psychological safe environments with coaches being instrumental in the guidance and design of initiatives that foster psychological safety. Join us for the February 10th Global IOC webinar to engage in a deeper discussion and idea sharing about these topics! Zoom link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85671563794?pwd=TmNGbVNEYXc5LzdVcDdnUzhwdWhCdz09
