he idea of “safety” in the workplace has come a long way from practicing routine fire drills, securing your belongings at your desk during the workday, or changing your password every 90 days. Throughout the last few years, the term “psychological safety” has gained ground as a concept and best practice as leaders strive to connect to their teams and peers on a deeper level.
Psychological safety is the ability to show up and be yourself without the negative consequence of judgment from those around you. It can be defined as a shared belief that the team environment or culture fosters safety to take intrapersonal risks in the workplace. As I have grown throughout my own management career, I have often felt like psychological safety was a critical component to developing an environment for high performing teams to move fast, be thoughtful, and fail (upwards) without fear.
I think we can all tap into a memory of a work meeting or Zoom call where we held back sharing an insight, an idea, or a question because we feared the response from those around us. Most likely, someone else in the room who was a little bolder or a little louder said exactly what we were thinking. This is a circumstance I have found myself in many, many times. That sense of hesitation was present as I moved into a management career as a young female professional. I had (and still have) many employees who are older than myself, and I’ve had to fight against habits I created in environments that lacked safety in order to coach my team in the right direction. But I first needed to establish safety for myself and others.
Lack of psychological safety can be detrimental to individuals, teams, productivity, and innovation. It can contribute to high turnover, loss of motivation, and a loss of fresh ideas. As an employee, I’ve seen firsthand how debilitating it can be to work on a team with low psychological safety. The rest of my team often showed up to work uninspired and fearful, and produced low-quality work. I didn’t stay long with that company, and it caused me to make a concerted effort to create an environment where safety was a top priority.
As a leader who may not have created safety on your team, you may feel disconnected, or you may not feel like you have visibility into the direction your team is moving. The overall financial cost of low psychological safety can also be detrimental to a business. Low safety is felt by employees and often leads to low participation, high use of sick days, and high turnover. According to Emerald Insight Publishing, the cost of attrition for a large corporation of around 100,000 employees can cost upward of $15 million per year. The risk of keeping a competitive, unsafe work environment can be costly to leaders and drastically impact the long-term effectiveness of a business and its revenue.
The good news is that it is never too late as a leader to start creating a culture of psychological safety for your team. In a rapidly changing environment that is now more hybrid and global than ever, it can be difficult to identify if you have created a culture of safety. As a manager, I audit my team’s best practices and charter on a quarterly basis to ensure we continue on the right path. I encourage all leaders to “embrace the suck” and address head-on the status of your team’s culture.
The easiest way to identify areas of improvement is to take a mental audit of the current status of your team dynamics. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you established team norms that address how to conduct respectful meetings and discussions? Is there accountability?
- How does your team handle conflict? Is it met with hostility or openness to resolve as a group?
- As a leader, do you ensure that everyone in the room has a chance to provide input?
- Is your team diverse in its perspectives? Have you hired a team that brings different experiences to the table?
- Have you identified the way your team values praise or acknowledgement?
- Are you creating a space for failure? Failure is an important part of learning, and if you or your team actively avoids failure, you’re not taking enough risks.
While creating psychological safety can seem daunting with an ever-growing to-do list, as a leader, embracing the difficult conversations that it will bring is essential. Starting a shift in your team’s culture should be approached with honesty, encouragement, and an aligned effort toward resolution.
With an objective as large as revamping your team’s culture, I often encourage leaders to start small. Identify what needs improvement for your team, and what you as a leader need to work on to enforce a safe environment.
As you work through your mental audit, think of the mechanisms available to you and your team to start addressing improvements. I often start by calling a team meeting where the agenda directly addresses team culture. We run a health check together and see how the team is feeling. During team meetings, I make sure everyone in the room has the opportunity to share. As a leader, this is where I take mental notes to follow up in one-on-one meetings with individuals to make sure I coach and mentor them to a place where they feel comfortable contributing.
One effective practice I enact as a leader is to get everyone together and create a safe environment for the team to think big and shoot for the moon with creative ideas. Often a brainstorming session can break tensions, and as a leader I make an effort to throw out (sometimes whacky) ideas and make myself vulnerable. These mechanisms are within our toolbox to leverage as leaders to help drive a sense of connectedness and community within our team.
No two teams’ approaches to psychological safety are the same. Each is unique to the skills, levels, diversity, demographics, and even size of their team. There is a component of readiness that has to be established; everyone must be committed to improving and adapting. What we do know is that a psychologically safe team has the opportunity to deliver results at the highest level. Employees are consistently happier and feel valued when they see their opinions and thoughts considered and treated with empathy.
