Making Your Workplace Psychologically Safe. Why it’s Important.

Are you excited and safe enough at work to speak up and take risks? If so, you might feel psychologically safe. Psychological safety is the belief that you won't be punished, rejected, or looked down upon if you share your ideas and concerns, make mistakes, or bring your authentic self to work.

If the idea of psychological safety sounds like something you need to work on yourself, that's not quite right.

Psychological safety is not about being sure of yourself or being assertive. Instead, making people feel safe at work is a group effort that everyone, especially leaders, must support and model.

Signs that you don't feel safe at work

Suppose you often keep quiet in meetings even though you have something to say. In that case, this could signify that you don't feel psychologically safe at work.

Psychological safety makes you feel safe enough to bring up problems or tough issues, to share a new idea, to ask for help, and to celebrate diversity.

In this case, silence at work has nothing to do with who you are or how talkative or quiet you tend to be in general.

When employees worry that they won't be liked or that their thoughts and ideas won't be valued, they won't say anything.

You may feel this way because of the way your team works, but here are some possible signs of low psychological safety:

·         You never know if people will like your words.

·         During meaningful conversations, most team members are more likely to stay quiet than speak up.

·         As time passes, team members become less talkative and share fewer ideas.

·         Morale is low & staff turnover is high

·         Individual feedback differs from confidential polling.

·         Competition is more important than working together in a team.

·         Leaders do most of the talking in meetings and feedback sessions.

·         You feel like you have too much to do, but you don't feel comfortable asking for help or changes.

·         Feedback isn't shared or asked for regularly.

·         People's worries, requests for help, ideas, and feelings of sadness are heard, but nothing is done.

·         People mostly talk about the good things and rarely talk about opportunities for growth or lessons learned.

·         Not everyone feels like they are being heard by the top leaders.

What is not psychological safety?

To create a psychologically safe environment at work, you have to let people be themselves and participate in conversations and decisions. This doesn't mean, though, that psychological safety is when:

·         Everything people say at work gets a round of applause.

·         People say what they think the other person wants to hear.

·         No one is held accountable.

·         Tolerating lousy behaviour

·         Praising for no reason

·         Lowering performance standards

·         Promoting the "comfort zone"

·         Making friends with your direct reports or co-workers.

Why psychological safety at work is important

There are personal and organisational benefits to having a psychologically safe workplace.

2020 research shows that when employees feel psychologically safe at work, they are more likely to:

·         Speak up more often and openly.

·         Share their thoughts and ideas with their managers.

·         Feed their opinions to their teams to help them make decisions.

In turn, feeling and acting this way makes people more interested in their work.

Work engagement is a mental state that makes you feel more energised, dedicated, and interested in your work.

Psychological safety can indirectly lead to engagement at work. And work engagement often means fewer people leaving their jobs and more work getting done.

No one wants to work in a place where they don't feel safe taking risks or being different.

Psychological safety also helps people learn.

People are more likely to learn when they ask questions, share mistakes, and get to hear different points of view. This leads to new ideas, growth, and personal growth within the company.

Other benefits of psychological safety include:

·         Better problem-solving

·         Inclusive practises

·         Higher productivity

·         Better collective well-being

·         Less chance of making risky mistakes

·         A stronger sense of belonging

·         More diverse and open-minded cultures.

Advice for managers and for those in charge

Leadership is an essential part of making a workplace feel psychologically safe.

Support from the organisation directly affects how happy and productive employees are.

It is essential for leaders to do what they say and show others how to act and think. Encourage your employees to do the following:

·         Make clear rules.

·         To question the way things are now

·         To take responsibility and think about mistakes

·         Amplify diverse voices

·         Talk about themselves and take credit for their work and how it helps their team.

Giving everyone on the team space and a chance to talk can also help improve psychological safety. In particular, think about thanking people openly for what they've done for the team.

Be clear about who did what and how it affected things. Thank the person for whatever talent or skill they used to make the good thing happen.

Think about these other ways to make your teams feel more psychologically safe:

·         Ask for feedback as often as possible, especially if you are in a position of power.

·         Get your team involved in the decision-making process.

·         Don't get angry or defensive when people tell you something.

·         Really listen to everyone's ideas and concerns, and treat everyone equally.

·         Be honest about your mistakes and encourage others to learn from them.

·         Don't take over the conversation

·         Ask other people to push you.

·         Ask others to help you work on your development and growth opportunities.

·         Check on everyone on your team, even those on other teams.

·         Ask people how you can help them grow and do their best at work.

·         Be a mentor or sponsor for underrepresented employees, even if they work for a different team.

·         Whenever possible, include your entire team in meaningful conversations.

·         Don't talk about other employees or share "secrets" with just one or two team members.

·         Check your team's workloads often to ensure that your best workers aren't "rewarded" with more work. In contrast, others are given more manageable tasks.

Social recognition, or getting everyone on the team to say nice things to each other, has a positive effect.

Social recognition is essential for feeling safe and doing well in business. It lets everyone know they are seen and appreciated, increases productivity, and strengthens work relationships.

Tips for everyone on the team

Everyone has to work on making people feel safe. Think about these things to help make your culture psychologically safe and welcoming:

·         Honor differences, especially in the way people think: "If someone comes up with a new, crazy idea that seems impossible, don't just say "no" to it."

·         Encourage people to ask for and accept help

·         Build up each other as much as possible

Also, try to avoid doing these things that might make your team feel less safe:

·        Talking wrong about other people. If you need to tell someone about something, you should. Do not give your co-workers or direct reports a place to complain about people repeatedly without giving everyone a chance to talk. It's also important to know when people on a team might do things on purpose to hurt the work of others.

·         Making agreements. Some people with low psychological safety may informally ask one or two or three colleagues for help during team conversations so they don't feel "alone." But this could backfire, making other team members feel left out and unsupported. Psychological safety is a culture of the team, so everyone must be a part of it.

·         Leaving people alone. It's normal to find that some people are easier to get along with or understand, but try not to put those people ahead of the rest of the team.

Psychological safety means feeling safe and like you belong on your team. What can you do regularly to help your team feel this way?

We all need a helping hand from time to time. Please share this post with as many people as possible. You never know who might need it.

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