1. Introduction

Think about your working environment. Do you feel you can openly share your thoughts and feelings with your team and your manager? What makes you feel comfortable or uncomfortable bringing your whole self to work? Are there times when the whole room seems to understand something but you don’t? Do you ask for clarification or do you hold back through fear of looking stupid?

In this 4-week email bootcamp, you'll learn more about psychological safety. A psychologically safe working environment is one in which the workplace culture provides an open and candid communication space that is free from fear. You'll explore how to create a psychologically safe environment and empower your team and co-workers to engage in open dialogue, and proactively raise concerns, questions and feedback.

2. Psychological Safety

2.1 What is Psychological Safety?

In 2016, Google published their findings from a multi-year study focused on the question What Makes a Google Team Effective? ¹. Crucially, the results suggested that team dynamics are more important for an effective team than the individual skill sets of those in the team. The factors that contributed to excellent performance included team structure and how teams interacted and communicated. Fascinatingly, Google identified psychological safety as the single most important factor in the creation of an elite team.

In its essence, psychological safety is about workplace culture; a culture free from fear. It is a shared belief among team members that they can speak up without fear and will not face negative repercussions for voicing their thoughts.

2.2 Vulnerability, Trust and Respect**

Crucial to a psychologically safe environment is that team members feel sufficiently secure to allow themselves to be vulnerable. Mike Robbins, in his book Bring Your Whole Self to Work describes vulnerability as the birthplace of creativity². He suggests that through vulnerability we can free ourselves from the debilitating idea that we must do everything right. We can have the courage to be imperfect, to make mistakes, and above all to be human ³.

However, we can only make ourselves vulnerable in an environment in which we know this won’t be used against us. Vulnerability is about risk, this can be physical risk, but it can also be emotional risk. To have the courage to be vulnerable requires a team culture built on mutual trust and respect.

• Trust: When I trust somebody, I interpret their actions favourably. Even if I consider their actions wrong or annoying, I trust they are acting in ways they believe are authentic, honest and helpful. In other words, when I trust, I give them the benefit of the doubt. An atmosphere of trust allows us to experiment and make mistakes, knowing that our mistakes will be interpreted more as opportunities for learning, than results of our stupidity or negligence.

• Respect: When I respect someone, I include their feelings, wishes and rights into my calculations of how I treat them. This translates into how we speak and listen to each other. In an atmosphere of respect, it is easier to be open because everyone’s desires and wishes have been taken into account, and there is nothing to hide.

When cultivating a workplace culture, respect, trust and vulnerability feed into one another. For Robbins, vulnerability is fundamental to human trust. When we display vulnerability, the typical human response is empathy. When people empathise with each other, we begin to connect more deeply and develop trusting relationships ⁴. Displays of vulnerability also show others that it is ok to be vulnerable, it is ok to be imperfect, it is ok to be ourselves.

In addition to this, Amy Edmundson, the Harvard Business School professor who popularized psychological safety, says that simple acts of respect, such as asking someone for their help, informs someone that their input is valued and important ⁵ . Simply asking a question like “How would you approach this challenge?” creates a small pocket of awareness that others can contribute. Following this, choosing to truly listen to the response and even building on someone’s ideas conveys respect, which informs them that their whole self is welcome ⁶.

It is through small displays such as these that we begin to cultivate a culture of psychological safety.

3. What you get with Psychological Safety

A workplace culture that values and prioritises communication, and minimises the interpersonal risks of speaking up, can cultivate a satisfied and engaged team that learns from mistakes, shares knowledge, and innovates effectively. Cultivating a psychologically safe environment can ensure your team benefits from these learning opportunities.You’ll learn more about each of these benefits in the sections that follow.

3.1 Creativity and innovation

A workplace ruled by fear hinders innovation and learning ⁷. This is because the crucial elements of creativity and innovation, such as the free exchange of ideas, and experimentation, require the acceptance of failure. In other words, creativity requires the capacity to be vulnerable. Typically, in an environment that is not psychologically safe, team members tend to play it safe, and walk within the lines of accepted procedure. Their suggestions will be ones that fit within the accepted parameters of discussion and consideration.

Have you ever tried to creatively brainstorm ideas when someone is shutting down ideas? Ideas in their initial stages are small and underdeveloped. It is only through a nurturing environment that new and interesting ideas can begin to grow into something substantial, and maybe even revolutionary. In order to become more innovative, we must create a space in which people can take risks and be vulnerable without fear.

3.2 Identifying and learning from mistakes

A psychologically safe workplace can ensure that information, concerns and corrections are passed between departments quickly. As you learned in the previous section, teams need to accept that mistakes will be made while innovating. Team members should feel psychologically safe enough to trial new ideas. There are three ways in which psychological safety supports the innovation process: in accepting mistakes are normal, in learning from them, and in learning together as a team. This approach has two benefits:

1. Admitting to mistakes: By minimising the shame that typically surrounds mistakes, people will be more likely to admit when they have made them. This makes it less likely that issues will be deliberately hidden and ignored, only to negatively impact the team at a later date.
2. Learning together: Once out in the open, you can hear solutions from as many perspectives as possible. The reasons behind these issues can be explored openly and considerately so that the individual and the team can learn from them.

3.3 Employee satisfaction, engagement and retention**

It may not be surprising that a psychologically safe workspace is also one that increases happiness and retains its best team members. As mentioned above, when you ask someone for their input, you validate them and let them know they are a respected and valued team member. Cultivating spaces in which all members, regardless of social status, expertise, or experience can contribute enables all members of the team to feel heard and validated. It also provides every member of the team with opportunities to learn from each other. In a climate of psychological safety, members can bring their whole selves to work.

3.4 Confidence and Psychological Safety

It is interesting to note that there is a correlation between how confident someone feels and how psychologically safe they feel. This makes intuitive sense because when we feel confident about an idea or objection, we are not carrying the fears that prevent us from speaking; namely looking stupid. However, if we have a half-baked idea or objection, we are more likely to keep it quiet. This means that the more confident members of our team are, the more likely we are to feel psychologically safe, and therefore more likely to speak up. However, as confidence and accuracy are not always tightly-linked, this is not a great state of affairs. This can mean that the perspectives of more outwardly confident members of the team may be the ones that are heard the most. Therefore, achieving psychological safety in the team can encourage more team members to speak up. This increases the range of ideas and opinions informing the team’s work.

4. Why does silence win?

Without psychological safety, employees are encouraged to stay silent, unconsciously avoid bringing difficult topics up, and find solutions that minimise the damage to their reputation or even their position. When a team does not feel that they can be open and speak up, the whole team is deprived of a learning opportunity.

The idea behind psychological safety is that silence benefits no one. Understanding how silence wins when we are making unconscious micro-assessments of a situation can help us to see the types of changes that need to be made so that people feel psychologically safe to speak out. The main reason silence may win is due to ‘impression management’ which you will learn about in the next section.

4.1 Impression management

Have you ever sat in meetings and felt completely lost, but chosen to nod along? Or perhaps you've chosen not to ask a question at school or when talking to a colleague because it seems like everyone else understands and you don’t.

When you think back to these moments, what has prevented you from speaking out?

When interacting with peers, we often perform ‘impression management’. We tailor our conduct and speech in ways that hide how we really feel or think. We do this because we want to appear professional, intelligent or impenetrable. The fear is that if we show ourselves to be unsure of an answer, or highlight the mistakes that we made, then others may think less of us. We may miss out on future opportunities for advancement.

Equally, we may hold back because we do not want to offend our project leader by challenging or disagreeing with their ideas, even when we think our input will ultimately help. Amy Edmundon puts this well when she says “no one wakes up in the morning excited to go to work and look ignorant, incompetent, or disruptive” ⁸.

By being vulnerable, we take an interpersonal risk. We take risks that others will see us in a negative light. However, the other option is to take no risk. By staying silent we incur no obvious cost.

There are two problems with image management. The first is that when we are performing, we are not being ourselves. We are using cognitive energy to be someone else, rather than bringing our whole selves to work. Secondly, by holding back clarificatory questions, we deprive ourselves and our team of opportunities for learning.

Both of these are important in order to establish an effective and creative team. In a psychologically safe environment, these fears are minimised. The team reaps the benefits of people speaking up.

5. Conclusion

When working in uncertain and complex conditions, we need to increase the availability of information and the prevalence of skill-sharing. Crucially, cultivating the right culture to foster effective and fluid team dynamics can be more important than the skill sets of the team members. Cultivating a psychologically safe space in which individuals can trust and respect each other is an effective way to get the most out of the cognitive and creative abilities on your team. It will allow open discussions about identifying and rectifying mistakes and allow for free and open communication about innovation and new thinking. Finally, it will allow for a satisfied, validated, and engaged team.

6. Sources