Psychological Safety — The Foundation for Healthy & Effective Teams

Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes”— Amy Edmonson

Collaboration is an everyday practice in nearly every modern workplace. Teams need to work across functions and disciplines, share insights, and the myth of great ideas being born in isolation is dead. Instead, Psychological Safety, a new star in the book of corporate buzzwords, has recently surfaced.

Unfortunately, as it’s often is with corporate buzzwords, lot’s of people talk about it, but very few actually believe, understands, prioritise and practise it.

We’ll like to invite you to look at Psychological Safety as a tool for building healthy and effective teams and understand why it can have a profound impact on your organisation to nurture and foster Psychological Safety.

Time For a Temperature Check?

To understand if you have Psychological Safety in your team, you can reflect on and answer these questions:

“Do you feel safe enough to tell your boss when he/she is micromanaging, interrupting, or mistreating you? That it makes you feel sad or frustrated at work?”

“Do you feel safe enough to speak up in a meeting when someone proposes a plan you really don’t believe in? Perhaps you’ve heard from your colleagues they don’t either, but no one seems to speaksup about it?“

“Do you feel safe enough to share with your team when you’re under a lot of stress or overwhelmed? Would you share being unsure what your role is in this team?”

If the answer is no, there’s not Psychological Safety in your team — and unfortunately, that’s the case for a lot of teams.

How did we end up here?

Over the last 100 years, our jobs and the conditions around them have completely changed in line with the technological development and economic growth of our societies. Three aspects, in particular, have reshaped the way we work.

1. In contrast to being hired for our physical abilities and stamina, nowadays, most of us are hired for our ability to use our brain to solve problems creatively, communicate effectively, and understand patterns.
2. We collaborate and communicate with others more than ever before. One study showed that we collaborate 50% more than we did just 20 years ago and another — that we spend around 75% of their workday in meetings, workshops, video-calls, emails, slack and other ways of communication and collaboration with others.
3. We work in increasingly global and diverse environments. Our teams are becoming more varied in race, cultural backgrounds, gender, religious beliefs, age, disabilities, experience, competence, education, etc.

Taking advantage of our differences

The world of work and context for organizations has changed dramatically, but how do these changes impact the individual? We work in cross-functional teams, where success primarily relies on the ability to create synergy as a result of our diversity. We are expected to make well-informed decisions, see things from a holistic point-of-view, and respond to potential challenges each team member experience.

Unfortunately, most diverse teams either end up in endless discussions because they don’t know how to apply their varied experience or they don’t feel safe enough to speak up about their contrasting points of view. What we as individuals are expected to do is to speak up. This is where Psychological Safety comes into the picture.

Have you ever experienced…

Let’s look at some scenarios you might be able to relate to.

You’re in a meeting, being introduced to a new strategy that your boss has put together. Once the lengthy presentation is done, you’re left unsure what the strategy actually means — other than a lot of new fancy words. Part of you wishes to speak up and ask clarifying questions, but you keep silent to avoid looking stupid for not understanding it.

You’re in a workshop with your team where the goal is to come up with campaign ideas for the new product you’re launching soon. Although you have an idea you’re really excited about, you’re not sure whether the risk of introducing it is worth it. After all, your colleague just presented her idea and the boss made fun of how stupid the idea was. You’re left hoping someone else shares a concept that gets the job done.

These are experiences people in organizations all over the world have every day. Situations where we choose silence over voice simply because we fear that speaking up will put us in the risk of looking stupid, incompetent, or negative. And as a result, we don’t ask questions, admit mistakes, offer ideas or question the status quo.

This not only results in un-informed decisions, poor strategies, time lost on unconstructive communication but also in low engagement and potential harassment for the people who don’t feel safe to speak up. The instant result is frustration, bad energy and lack of trust and in the long run, the result is switching job in the hope of finally being included and acknowledged.

Not having Psychological Safety truly is “bad for people and bad for business”. Let’s see what you can do about it.

How to build Psychological Safety

Creating Psychological Safety is not a journey with an end destination, nor is there a perfect travel plan for it. It all comes down to the individuals in the team and their needs in feeling safe enough to speak up. As an organization, we need to continuously adapt to these needs.

But to get you started, here are 3 aspects that in our experience are crucial to consider when building effective teams, and a culture that supports honest and constructive communication and knowledge sharing between members of a team.

01 Empathy

We, humans, have a tendency to forget that other people have emotions when the only thing we can see is their actions. While we see and experience others’ behaviours, the feelings that are driving these behaviours are invisible. When collaborating and communicating with others, we need to have in mind that:

This person has beliefs, perspectives, and opinions, just like me.

This person has hopes, anxieties, and vulnerabilities, just like me.

This person wants to feel respected, appreciated, and competent, just like me.

There are many ways to build relationships, empathy, and understanding of others, but in relation to a team, a simple suggestion could be to use a Team Canvas that allows you to better align with and understand your team members and their needs.

The Team Canvas, a simple tool to create alignment and empathy

02 Openness

The wonderful thing about openness is that it creates a safe space for others to be open as well. Sometimes all it takes for people to speak up is that someone else does it before them. Once we share our opinions, perspectives, and ambitions openly, we can collaborate more effectively and align on a common goal by utilizing each other’s strengths and supporting our weaknesses.

Start by finding the small and safe spaces in your workday, where you can open up towards your team members and thereby build trust. But keep in mind: opening up is being vulnerable about both joyful and tough emotional states. Opening up can mean you’re crying of joy or of sadness, or anything there in between.

The Openness & Trust Spiral is a model developed by Anders Wendelheim, PhD. The idea is simple. The more you open up the more trust you create which leads to more opening up — and the spiral continuous.

03 Inclusion

When we include other people into a conversation, we are not just saying “I’m interested in hearing your opinion on this subject”, we are also saying, “I appreciate you, your perspective, your knowledge and I think you could bring value to this conversation, so I’m interested in hearing your opinion on this subject”.

By including other people in the group and discussion, we are creating a safe space for them to speak up while acknowledging their competences and perspectives. This, as result, gives higher motivation and engagement for the person who’s included.

Next time you’re in a meeting, try to be aware of who’s voice is present and take the responsibility of inviting the quiet voices into the conversation — you might learn something new and make someone feel appreciated.

Check-in & Check-out rituals are a safe and easy way to work on inclusive structures and behaviours in your collaborative processes.

Can you measure Psychological Safety?

Are you curious to take Pschycologicla Safety to the next step — start with a small survey to test the level in your team? Here’s one of the many questionnaires that are developed to measure it:

Ask your team members how strongly they agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. If I make a mistake in this team, it is held against me.
2. Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.
4. It is safe to take a risk in this team.
5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.
6. No one in this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
7. When working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

You now have a better understanding of how the members of the team feel so that’s your starting point. Reach out to understand how we intentionally design work that increases Psychological Safety in your team or organization.

I’m Rasmus, an independent Org. Designer & Facilitator who supports empathic leaders transform their organisations by creating engaged, effective & psychological safe teams.

If you want to explore how we can work together, book a call.

Connect with me on LinkedIn to get insights and knowledge on how to create more resilient teams and organisations.