ELITE PERFORMANCE SERIES
Unlocking Business Value with Psychological Safety
Over the years, it has become increasingly clear to me that an organization’s ability to innovate is closely intertwined with its culture of psychological safety. Innovation usually manifests at those moments in time when the organization’s culture is powered by a transient group of people who are expressing a set of shared values that create a psychologically safe environment — one which actively enables, resolutely supports and relentlessly promotes the actualization of an employee’s skills, goals and dreams in tight unison with key business objectives. This is a culture that embraces ordinary workplace freedoms — which when practiced consistently leads to transformative and innovative results over time.
How can I create Psychological Safety?
Any organization can create a psychologically safe environment by providing employees with the following opportunities:
1. Opportunity to be you
You can make valuable contributions with your unique strengths and don’t feel pressured to conform to cookie-cutter expectations of how to be a great employee at the company. The organization embraces culture addition — as opposed to enforcing culture fit or culture adherence.
2. Opportunity to do what (you believe) is right
There is a general environment of trust where you feel you have the opportunity to try-and-fail at work. There is no need to ask for permission. If things don’t work out, you can learn the lesson and ask for forgiveness instead. You are groomed to grow as a leader instead of a follower. You are allowed to follow through on your convictions. You have the opportunity to do what you believe is right for the business.
3. Opportunity to make mistakes
You will be allowed to make mistakes and won’t get penalized for them — regardless of whether it is small or big. Mistakes are instead sincerely accommodated by leadership and viewed as a sign that an employee is pushing their personal limits as they grow in their career. Your organization truly embraces the adage that failures are the stepping stones to success. You have the opportunity to be a new you, every day. There are no glass ceilings and invisible boundaries. You can do, dare, dream… you can fly.
4. Opportunity to try new and radical ideas
You can try something that has never been done before. You can succeed and shine in that attempt. You will also be recognized for the value you have created. You are allowed to lead without title. The organization willingly embraces change and rewards individual thought. It knows that the next big idea can come from anyone — including the new intern.
5. Opportunity to question the status quo
You have the opportunity to question the value of established business practices — even if those are industry-wide practices, some of which exist purely because no one has been strong enough to question their present validity. Your organization wants to be a thought leader. It is comfortable blazing the trail with new ideas. It is not concerned with instant popularity — instead it dreams of unlocking new value by breaking through barriers that no longer serve either the current reality or its future aspirations.
Is Psychological Safety easy to achieve?
As I journey into my late career, I often wonder whether it is possible for organizations to consistently execute on true psychological safety in a manner that stands the test of time. Some believe that it simply has do with company size — smaller teams (and startups) are psychologically safer than larger teams (and enterprise organizations). This is because the smaller size and lower level of execution maturity naturally supports their ability to embrace change and new ideas. But having worked for teams and organizations of all sizes and maturities, I’ve learned that psychological safety depends primarily on the people involved — as opposed to organization size or maturity.
Psychological safety can break down quite easily in any environment where a fragile human mind, better known as the ego, perceives another individual’s related or unrelated free actions as a threat or attack on its own importance and influence. When this happens to the ego of an individual with power over others, the controlling environment is inevitably smeared with a culture of fear. Given that this behavior can be expressed by anyone at any level and more consequentially by leaders, very few organizations have endured in their attempt to create a culture where employees can enjoy true psychological safety in a work environment.
Perhaps, this is simply a utopian idea that will never find consistent expression in reality. Maybe one must start out on their own if they truly want to enjoy freedom of work. After-all, organizations and thereby customers are not paying employees to experience psychological safety — we are simply here to achieve business objectives and create customer value. However, such organizations fail to see the potential of innovation and new business value creation that comes from a psychologically safe culture. As such, if left unchecked, failure is an inevitable reality for these organizations in the long run.
How can you measure Psychological Safety?
Here is a simple 10-point scale representing a spectrum of safety experience levels which measure your organization’s responses to individual actions to exercise opportunity at work.
Level 1: Wonderland
You enjoy all workplace opportunities. You can fully actualize your skills, goals and dreams in perfect unison with key business objectives. It’s a fantastic place to be — celebrate!
Level 2: Disagreements
You want to try something new. Instead of supporting you and allowing you to try it out quickly, stakeholders spend 30 minutes in your meeting telling you why you shouldn’t do it!
Level 3: Power Projection
Your manager and selected leaders project their power, exercise authority in conversations (meetings, messages and 1:1s), hint at unwritten rules, and signal with their actions that they are the boss.
Level 4: Embarrassment
If you are still showing signs of a brave independent soul, you’ll be apprised of your inadvertent oversights and unintended small mistakes to trim you down to size. There has been an irreparable breach of trust at this point. You will now be nitpicked for your use of ‘my’ in any random context (for example: “my team”) with insinuations of how your use of ‘my’ indicates an unhealthy obsession to assert your personal brilliance instead of quietly merging with the team identity. Your love for the work and relentless efforts to create value for the business will be simply viewed as shameless perverse attempts at self-aggrandizement. Shhh now!
Level 5: Exclusion
Since you are assertive enough to believe and continue doing what’s right for the business, you will now be simply excluded from meetings and important conversations. It’s almost as if you just don’t exist at this time! You-who?
Level 6: Restriction
You still haven’t learned to respect power — oh my goodness, you can still find strength to exercise the opportunity to question the status quo! Your sphere of influence will now be restricted in all ways possible. Your key projects will be taken from you and reassigned to others. You will not be allowed to share your ideas and success stories. You realize that whatever you learned in first grade about being your best bright self is out of touch with your current reality — where value creation is of no consequence and recognition of power is simply the only way to grow at work.
Level 7: Opposition
If your flame is still growing despite all of this, something is definitely wrong with you! Get ready to meet stiff opposition which is masquerading as simple observations in all types of conversations. You are probably checking jobs on LinkedIn at this stage and your family is worried for your mental health.
Level 8: Accusations
It is no longer just feedback anymore. It has escalated to straight accusations of not being a team player, collaborator, or co-creator because your individual brilliance makes everyone else look bad. They will even openly tell you this. You will be stopped now. The gloves are off. No one is pretending anymore!
Level 9: Harassment
Haha! No surprise here — your promotion and pay increases are not going to happen! Your performance review comes significantly below par with unfettered feedback on your inability to meet even the low end of the job expectations. Just how did you get this job again? You are now watching your colleagues progress far ahead of you. You might even be reporting to the intern you helped hire.
Level 10: Retaliation
Things have gone too far at this point. Any deviant free action is met with swift retaliation, retribution, and eventual separation.
What is the Safety Level of your organization today?
Each employee is probably experiencing a different safety level somewhere across this spectrum depending on their personal situation. For your organization, where do you see a clustering of employee safety experiences across this spectrum? What could you do to make your organization a psychologically safer place? Share your thoughts and comment with your levels below!
I hope I’ve been of service to you. My best wishes to all for a warm and fulfilling future.
