INsight/ Forgetting Psychological Safety

Photo by Joe Beck on Unsplash.

Manila, 8 February 2024 — Forgetting to provide psychological safety is easy and costly. 

Story

It happened this week. I was listening to leaders share stories about psychological safety. Rather than mentioning that word, the stories were about what goes wrong in workplaces when there is a lack of ethical and inclusive leadership. Where the careers of some are seen as more important than others. Where unacceptable behaviors are condoned—and thereby normalized—by executives saying it’s a part of workplace pressures that staff have to learn to deal with if they want to ‘perform at the highest level.’ The severe impact of tolerating toxic cultures on team performance and personal well-being is well understood. And yet it still happens.

Psychological safety is not just about protection from bullying and harassing bosses and colleagues. It goes well beyond protecting yourself and your colleagues from diminishing behaviors and communications. In the words of Amy Edmondson, a professor of leadership at Harvard University and the author of The Fearless Organization, psychological safety is “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.” Going a step further, I would add that it is about experiencing a palpable sense of belonging and fulfillment to be part of a team and organization. 

In my experience, psychological safety is not only jeopardized by tolerating the unacceptable behaviors of bullies. It is also put at risk inadvertently every time a well-intentioned change is made that fails to adopt a people-centered approach. For example, reorganizations often focus on redrawing boxes, redefining responsibilities, and realigning systems and resources. They often overlook investing in effective messaging to engage the people involved, both inside and outside the organization. On many occasions, I have heard stories about how reorganizations can leave staff feeling unrecognized, uncertain, and unhappy. How can we do a better job of providing psychological safety in the workplace?

Challenge

The good news is that, as humans, each of us will know some ways to provide psychological safety. That’s because all of us need it. Active listening is a great way to show inclusive leadership, as is asking open questions. And think of asking your team members for quick status updates, inquiring how they’re feeling. You can do that also when you start your meetings. Asking your colleagues to celebrate each other’s progress and achievements is a great way to allow everyone to be recognized for their work. So is asking feedback, especially when you do it regularly, and start with a positive open-ended question. When it comes to who speaks next in an online meeting, have you already spun a wheel to allow everyone a chance?

Creating psychological safety is about encouraging open and effective communication, setting clear expectations, celebrating the diversity of backgrounds and styles in your team, and recognizing the unique perspectives and experiences that each individual brings to the workplace. Creating opportunities for collaboration will foster trust and build stronger relationships among team members. Inclusive leaders will recognize that their colleagues need flexibility in work arrangements to help them balance work and life. And when it comes to dealing with unacceptable behaviors that undermine psychological safety, action must be taken promptly. 

In our corporate online workshop series on The Seven Ways of Inclusive Leadership, teams of leaders learn and practice how to take acts of inclusive leadership in seven different ways. The practice is essential. Marked by colors, the leaders discover a menu of options for what may be most appropriate in different situations and practice how it will sound and feel. What I often see is that talks and training courses on inclusion will focus almost exclusively on psychological safety. In my experience, that is a mistake. Inclusive leadership has many more aspects that need to be mastered. I fully and warmly agree, however, that providing psychological safety is the starting point and a sine qua non. One that can be easily forgotten.

Question

This week, I have two questions for you and they both deal with providing psychological safety at work, as a part of showing up as an inclusive leader. You can see them as two sides of a coin. First, who have you been excluding inadvertently at work during the past week? And second, who have you been deliberately including during the past week?

As a leader, you want to become acutely aware of your behaviors that can exclude and thereby diminish others in your workplace. And you want to invest in mastering inclusive leadership behaviors, which involves more than you think.

If you want to invest in growing your or your team’s inclusive leadership abilities, set up a Free Strategy Call so we can discuss your plan and what you need to move forward.