Not a buzzword! Wikipedia defines psychological safety as:
‘… the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members.’
That sounds rather extreme doesn’t it… it can be, and in some cases is, sadly.
Without psychological safety, your employees won’t grow which means they will be reluctant to change and the success of your business will stagnate. Sounds grim? Well, it is if you are expanding, exploring, evolving and/or realise your business is impacted to some extent revolve around the levels of engagement your employees feel!
So what does a lack of psychological safety look like? You may find your employees reluctant to collaborate. They are scared to be honest as they are afraid for their jobs. Teams become fractious. Silos of information form. The job becomes nine to five. A toxic environment grows. Absenteeism and churn may be higher than expected. You may start to experience issues with growth as you don’t have employees willing to take on accountability or ownership. Initiative declines. A lack of skills may hinder developing into new directions as employees lack the motivation to invest in professional development that would be of benefit to your business. Sadly, this describes too many workplaces I have worked in, thankfully most of these were in the last couple of decades, so things are improving, but there are still businesses being run by dinosaurs.
A culture of psychological safety provides an environment in which your employees will speak up about where things need improving, provide ideas on how those improvements can be made, ensure the company or peers are not doing something that could damage the company, bring new ideas to the table for how the company can grow. They will feel empowered to take accountability and ownership of projects because they know that if it fails it will be seen as a lesson and not a fault. They will collaborate and share knowledge. They will feel invested in the company’s success because they see within that their success and growth. See any negatives yet? To put it bluntly, if you have a psychologically safe culture, you will grow as your employees will want to propel your business to success. If you don’t, that growth you want will take longer, if you achieve it at all. I mean think about it, why would your employees want to help you build a company they feel scared to speak up in?
So how do you create psychological safety?
- Ease up on the micromanaging. Empower your employees and trust their skills. After all… you employed them for a reason, right?
- Listen to your employees. No…really listen! Actively listen and show them you are interested by asking questions. Regular employee engagement surveys can help with this also, as it shows you are interested in their opinions. Don’t think the survey alone is enough though: take on board their feedback and make related changes that show you value their ideas!
- Encourage employees who don’t normally speak up to do so. These employees are the listeners in your team and you will learn a lot from them!
- Encourage new ideas to help the business to be brought to the table and for the employee that brings them, provide ownership to bring them to fruition (if heading in the direction the company wants to go, naturally!). Course correct tactfully and ensure you bring the employee along with you. The way to do this is to ask questions on how what they are doing will work in a particular situation. Work with the employee, but empower them to find the answers.
- Hold regular one to ones where you can explore these ideas and progress made on them. One to ones should never only be about work. Use them to build a good working relationship with your staff. Get to know them. Get them to share their talents, ambitions, interests… you never know when you will find an opportunity to help that employee shine.
- NEVER CRITICISE! The leader that criticises or downplays their staff, a team or an employee’s achievements should expect a resignation letter! If you find yourself doing this… think carefully of whether you are in the right job or role. And let me know where you next end up, so I don’t go there!
- Value your employees. You pay them for their skills and knowledge, they go, you lose their skills and knowledge, and whatever they have gained whilst with you.
- Celebrate wins no matter how big or small. This is a big deal! I once worked for someone who never celebrated achievements. It was disheartening, demoralising, and in the end we were left feeling there was no point. Can anyone tell me the problem with your staff feeling like that?
- Be transparent and authentic, and encourage your staff to be the same. This can be a scary thing for a lot of people, however, if you aren’t willing to be open, why should they? Feeling free to be yourself is an important part of psychological safety.
- Establish a culture of learning from mistakes. Holding retrospectives is a great way to do this in a safe way. Make the process of failing, the process for learning. A colleague was telling me of the mistake they made at one of their workplaces. They admitted it to their boss, expecting to be severely put down, instead their boss asked them ‘Well, what are you going to do about that?’ The first, second, third attempt to fix the issue failed. There was no help provided, only the calm acknowledgement and repeat of the question. When the employee finally was able to fix the issue, the boss then sat them down and asked ‘So, what did you learn?’ That is learning in a safe environment. Be more like that boss!
Commit to psychological safety and revisit it with your team, your leaders, your staff regularly to make sure it is still healthy. Investing in your employees in this way will pay dividends in the long term. I’ve included a couple of links that may also be of interest below.
References:
Psychological safety – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety
What is psychological safety at work? – https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/
©Fiona Doney 2024
kanyini.co.uk 