Building a Foundation for Psychological Safety at Work
What is Psychological Safety & Why is it Important?
Psychological safety is a feeling of security and trust that you have in your relationships. It allows you to feel safe taking risks, sharing ideas, expressing yourself, and making mistakes. A common misconception about psychological safety is that it means people being nice to each other all the time - this is not the case.
Psychologically safe teams still have difficult conversations and they can still experience tension or conflict. The difference lies in the fact that they can communicate in a way that allows everyone to feel heard and come up with a resolution to the conflict effectively. Safety also comes in the security of knowing that whatever you speak about won’t be gossiped about, used against you, or used to humiliate you. There is no fear of judgment.
A study by CCL found that teams with higher psychological safety were more productive and experienced less interpersonal conflict. Less interpersonal conflict means people are more willing to collaborate and are more productive when doing so. Less team drama means more time spent doing effective work. Not to mention, if team members feel safe sharing ideas then you have more space for innovation and evolution of your business practices and products.
Criteria for Psychological Safety: 7 Questions
Or order to understand the foundation we are building, we must look at the 7 key questions for determining psychological safety:
If you make a mistake on your team, is it held against you?
Are you able to bring up problems and tough issues?
Do people on the team sometimes reject others for being different?
Is it safe to take a risk?
Is it difficult to ask other team members for help?
Do people on the team deliberately act to undermine your efforts?
Are your unique skills and talents valued and utilized?
4 Ways to Build a Foundation for Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is not something that forms overnight. It is a complex concept that is fulfilled by a deep, meaningful, and intentional team culture. Here are 4 ways you can start to build psychological safety in your team:
Your whole team must be invested
We’ve said it before: if you want a positive company culture, you need to start by hiring for a cultural fit. You need to make sure that every person on your team is willing to put in the energy and effort to communicate and behave in a way that will create a psychologically safe workspace. The style of communication and interaction is intentional and works best when there are no gaps created by uncommunicative or even toxic team members. You are looking for empathetic, emotionally intelligent team members who are not driven by ego or personal gain.
Focus on your feedback process
You and your team learning how to give and receive feedback effectively and have feedback conversations in a way that is not a negative experience will be incredibly important. For the longest time the word ‘feedback’ was so loaded with negative feelings until I joined Warmspace and saw what feedback should be. If done right, team members can come out with a better relationship and a deeper understanding of each other as well as a commitment to supporting what the other needs from them. A good feedback process makes difficult conversations feel lighter and encourages complete honesty without holding back - whilst still making sure to own your language and not project blame. This includes using phrases such as “I feel…” and “The story I tell myself is…”.
Encourage curiosity
A lot of the time, judgment comes because we make assumptions. If instead of jumping to assumptions we become curious then we create a conversation that is more likely to end in understanding. By curiosity, I mean asking questions. So if someone did something you don’t approve of, try asking “I’m curious why you did that?”. I would like to emphasize the importance of tone when asking these questions: be curious and not judgemental. This curiosity works in all aspects of team relationships: encourage your team to be curious about each other’s lives, their work, their beliefs, their culture, or anything else that comes up at work. Ask questions with the aim of gaining a better understanding of each other and clearing up any stories you may have created in your head.
Have a space to share ideas
Creating a safe space for people to brainstorm or share ideas with the rest of the team is an important building block. It aims to create a space where people do not feel judged for speaking their minds and always feel heard. This space could be a meeting that’s held every month or so, or it could be something like a Slack channel for ideas or inspiration. At Warmspace, we have an ideas and inspiration channel where anyone can share. It’s important to note that ideas should never be rejected and should always be acknowledged - they aren’t always acted on, but they should be acknowledged.
Conclusion: Start Small
Psychological safety is a complicated concept and takes a lot of cultural transformation to create and sustain. It will take a lot of iteration, feedback, time, and intentionality to get it right. By starting small and building a solid foundation with these 4 things, you can start your team on a path to a psychologically safe workspace. A long journey but entirely worth it.
