Architecting Psychological Safe Spaces at your Workplace
If you are a manager, a SCRUM master, a leader/founder or a community builder, the importance of Psychological Safety in your organization, company or community, can no longer be overlooked. The Emotional-debt and Psychological-debt that get accrued can not only be toxic but catastrophic. Google has done significant research within its own teams to determine, “the secrets of high-performance teams at Google.” Code-named Project Aristotle. And the #1 contributor to team effectiveness at Google was found to be “Psychological Safety”
Types of Safe spaces needed within Organizations today.
As we start, let me remind you of Leo Tolstoy’s remarkable quote from Anna Karenina.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Companies, Communities are no different. They can be dysfunctional in several different ways, but the efficient, high-performing & happy ones are alike in their sharing of the singular attribute of psychological safety. Psychological safety is an organizational climate, where people feel safe to discuss crazy new ideas, give feedback, make assumptions, experiment and learn from their mistakes.
So, what then does Psychological Safety translate to, in day-to-day operations? What should companies focus on?
Psychological Safety at Workplace translates to people honestly believing that they can be themselves, speak up from their own experience or perspectives, develop heretic opinions, challenge the status quo, take measured risks, etc. A truly good organization will create multiple types of safe-spaces. Below I list and define some of them.
4 types of Safe-spaces.
Safe-space for Stationaries:
This is a safe-space where people can co-labor and co-create. Space is largely about ideas or assimilating new employees/interns. Its a mind-led, bookish world (hence called Stationaries). This quadrant is low in performance pressure, low in psychological safety. People do feel inadequate and insecure, but companies can create this safe-space where seekers like new interns or new employees feel welcome. It is also a world where Gyan-gurus will offer their mentorship. Hence this is the safe-space for Stationaries.
Safe-space for Revolutionaries:
This is a safe-space where people can challenge status-quo, take-on old-winning habits, with proven new-pathways. Its action-led, battle-field world (hence called Revolutionaries). This quadrant is high on performance-pressure, high in psychological safety. Even though its a Conflict-ridden zone, people here are extremely secure, challenge each-other. An organization which creates safe-spaces for Revolutionaries, provides immunity from oppression, victim-hood etc. Hence its a safe-space for Revolutionaries.
Safe-space for Solutionaries:
This is a safe-space where people can feel included, treated fairly and listened-to. Its largely about affirmations, acceptance and nurturing. Its an emotion-led, open to new solutions & growth world (hence called Solutionaries). This quadrant is high in psychological-safety, low in performance-pressure. Even though its a low performance-pressure, people here are inclusive of gender, title, position, authority. An organization which creates safe-spaces for Solutionaries, provides cross-pollination, immunity from marginalization or rejection. Hence its a safe-space for Solutionaries.
Safe-space for Transitionaries:
This is a safe-space where people can engage in self-discovery and all aspects of discovery including staying with questions, not necessarily jump to solutions. Its a knowing-led, volatile world (hence called Transitionaries). This quadrant is high on performance-pressure, but low in psychological-safety. People can feel exiled, outlawed, lonely and yet resourceless to fight the demanding high performance-world. Organizations that create safe-space for transitionaries, help address the VUCA challenges better. Whether its a thorny problem to attack or a new breakthrough needed, providing safe-space for transitionaries, helps organizations rediscover themselves.
Challenges to building Psychological Safe spaces. What can be done?
Today, most organizations are still called FIRMs. This word comes from an Industrialization era, where companies and organizations were only looking for Stability and Productivity and hence the nature of the organization was to be FIRM. Today’s world demands Fluid Organizations. However, most companies are still firms and are stuck in old-ways of doing business, which has created spaces which are completely psychologically unsafe, and hence people inside firms today experience severe stress, burn-out, toxicity, back-stabbing, etc. There are systemic challenges to build Psychological Safe spaces.
Also, one of the most critical needs for Organizations is to have holistic solutions. Organizations cannot design fragmented safe-spaces. Most organizations only try to build Stationaries or Revolutionaries, while completely ignoring Solutionaries or Transitionaries. In the past 1 year, I have myself been involved in helped organizations think about also building Solutionaries or Refreshed.Space for Transitionary Entrepreneurs.
I have in multiple previous articles, here, here and here argued that handling psychological messiness is a critical need of the hour. Handling Psychological messiness and creating psychological safety doesn’t simply happen when a leader commits to being a nice-person. The climate, organizational culture or psychological safe-space is a by-product of any leader’s emotional-intelligence.
I have been meeting Entrepreneurs, Leaders and Executives in various capacities over the past 3 years, and noticed that most believe only in one archetypal journey the Heroes’s journey, and hence their emotional-intelligence is limited to handling only the warrior and competing mindsets. As I try to nudge people to look into their emotional profiles, and psychological patterns I find that there are several dominant psychologically unsafe identities. Frustrated Fighter, Sober Work-o-holic, Fidgety Disruptor, Restless Striver, Compulsive Tinkerer, Burnt-out Bricoleur, Recovering Nurturer, Stuck Perfectionist, Isolated Maven, Overwhelmed Skeptic, Depressed Underachiever, Helpless Procrastinator, etc. Tolstoy’s above quote applies here as well, all identities have unsafe characteristics of their own, and they can be fixed, with the universal understanding of the nature of psychological safety.
Conclusion: How to go about correcting unsafe characteristics of psychological identities and creating psychological safe spaces?
Are you battling with unsafe characteristics of your psychological identities? Are you itching to create psychological safe-spaces at your workplace or lifespaces? Are you a manager concerned about the psychological safety of your team? Do you want to learn how to design psychological safe-spaces? If these are some of the questions you are grappling with, then you must attend the Urja Programs. Urja programs are designed around experiential interventions that increase empathy, relatedness and compassion, which are especially important in increasing emotional intelligence, which helps in creating psychological-safety within teams, and architecting psychological safe-spaces in your own life-spaces and workplaces.
If old mindsets remain entrenched, psychological safe-spaces cannot be built, either in the individual or in the organization. Change can only happen if you willfully seek it and make it happen volitionally. Are you ready to deliberately rub your own magic lamp, to call out your inner genie, the hidden treasure inside of you?
So then, what are you waiting for? Visit the website, apply to participate and spread the words to your friends and fellows. Look forward in anticipation to work with each and everyone of you. Good luck and all the very best!
