Making Room for Psychological Safety

With our February theme being, “I am more than my CV”, it is important to look at factors within the workplace that allow for fruitfulness and progression. Psychological safety is a key player in this notion and an ever-emerging topic in ED&I discussions and practices

All, if not, many of us have been in difficult situations at work. Perhaps a meeting or during a presentation, where we have had the desire to share an idea but have been reluctant to due to fear of how it will be received. We have anxiety over whether our idea is too “out there” and will be mocked or we worry about being criticised for asking a “silly” question or needing assistance with a task. However, a work environment in which these scenarios do not occur creates a healthy and motivated workforce, with innovative ideas and empowered bureaucracy. 

What is psychological safety and what does it mean?

Psychological safety is the ‘‘shared belief held by team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ - Amy Edmonson, Harvard Professor of Leadership and Management. Carmeli, Brueller and Dutton claim that studies on psychological safety indicate that this is an important relational catalyst to learning behaviours in work settings. This means that employees can optimally learn as they have the confidence to ask for help, despite the interpersonal risk such as peer judgement. Asking for help or assistance without judgement or being penalised not only enables but promotes a risk-taking environment. In other words, people in the workplace can trial new ideas, projects, and concepts without fearing that they will be belittled, mocked or perceived as incompetent by their peers and seniors. 

This type of working environment generates innovative ideas, and high-performing staff by allowing them to feel comfortable and therefore, producing a higher propensity to question the status quo. 

Fostering Psychological Safety 

As highlighted, there are many benefits deriving from fostering psychological safety, therefore, it is within leaders, managers, and senior members’ interest to build psychological safety within their teams and the wider work environment. Creating a climate that allows the right behaviours, mindsets, and activities is essential to building a psychologically safe environment. What will be reaped is; empowered employees, robust interpersonal work relationships and higher job satisfaction.

Welcoming diversity of thought

The whole notion that “no idea is a bad idea” is the basis and bedrock of psychological safety. Giving the team the freedom to express ideas, ask questions, or reframe scenarios without penance manifests a relaxed climate. Ideas and practices can be trialled and tested and better results are therefore generated. If employees are fearful of the repercussions of asking a question or needing help, it prohibits them from achieving goals because they cannot obtain the necessary information or resources they need. It is also paramount that employees feel free to make genuine mistakes and not be chastised for them. A good leader should acknowledge that mistakes will undoubtedly happen due to human error and thus create a process for learning from the errors, rather than a process for disciplinary action. This attitude encourages calculated risk-taking behaviours among employees by adopting an environment that promotes learning and professional development.

Furthermore, in a relaxed working environment, employees can think freely and in ways that are outside the traditional rule of thoughts and behaviours. Consequently, new innovative ideas are formulated due to the fact that someone has the mental comfortability and capacity to allow for unconventional thought and to think freely without pressure or direction. 

Positive Team Interactions

Encouraging your team members to build their relationships amongst each other is vital to fostering psychological safety. As a leader, it is important to give your team time to socialise and get to know each other well in work settings. For example, setting up team lunches. This allows social barriers to be broken and creates an opportunity for common ground to be found between colleagues. Ultimately, the team then feels more comfortable around each other to discuss, challenge and peer-review one another. A beneficial outcome and key driver of psychological safety to this is that team members can use each other on a consultative basis and help excel growth and confidence due to having a strong basis of familiarity. Moreover, having a trusted peer or colleague as a sounding board encourages higher levels of contribution and team participation.

If you would like to find out more about how you or your organisation can adopt psychological safety, we’ve created short modules that you can access to increase your knowledge. Access our modules here.