Cultivating Psychological Safety in Our Teams

Over the last couple of weeks, we have talked more in depth about psychological safety and why it’s important for our teams.  I’m guessing it sounds amazing – I can have my team be more engaged, more productive, and happier?  Let’s go!

Then you started thinking about how to create psychological safety, and it suddenly it sounded a bit more complicated. The truth is, cultivating psychological safety in your teams is hard work, and might even require you to think about yourself, your role, and your team in fundamentally different ways.  It’s a far cry from the authoritarian model of leadership in which leaders instruct their staff to do something and voila! it’s done, no questions asked.  Cultivating psychological safety in your team requires leaders to sit down and take a thoughtful look at what comes easy for them, and what can be more challenging.  For that reason, before doing anything, I’d encourage all leaders to sit down with your team and talk about team psychological safety. Share with them what it is and isn’t, why it’s helpful in promoting innovation, and share your commitment to creating a psychologically safe team environment.

From there, it can be helpful to think about the 4 Stages of Psychological Safety identified by Timothy R. Clark that we discussed last week and take specific steps to cultivate psychological safety in your teams. The following are some suggestions for each stage.

Inclusion Safety - Being accepted for who you are as a human being.  

·         Be accessible and approachable: My guess is that this is an area that might come easiest for many of you.  Most leaders actively care about the teams in which they lead and go out of their way to support their staff members not just as employees, but as human beings.  Show up to the happy hours that are scheduled after work, or the office birthday parties for your team members.  Depending on the size of your team, have individual or team meetings on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.  Check-in on them when they are home sick, not just because you are curious when they will be coming back to work.  Think about ways in which you can hold open office hours and invite staff in to ask questions about how things are going, or just have lunch in the breakroom with your team.  The key is to develop a personal connection. Personally, as a leader, I generally found this to be one of my strengths, except on those days when I just wanted to hide in my office and keep to myself. We all have those days – the key is to generally be accessible and connected to your team members as human beings.

·         Ensure that you are treating everyone equitably, regardless of their status: Generally, we all tend to believe that we treat everyone fairly, but is that true? Do you spend as much time checking in with the staff you enjoy as you do with the staff that you find more challenging?  Can you think of a few positive reasons to interact more with the staff that you don’t naturally connect as easily with? I have found that I need to consistently check myself, and my implicit and explicit biases to ensure that they aren’t creeping in and influencing my decisions. It can be helpful to have a peer or trusted friend who is willing to lovingly question your decisions and challenge you, if needed. 

·         Show true appreciation and sensitivity for the cultures that exist within your team: This builds off the knowledge you gain about each individual member of your team by being accessible and approachable. The more we know about our team members as human beings, the more we can appreciate their unique life experiences and how those enrich the team. Ask yourself - when you find yourself challenged by a team member with cultural differences, is this because they are wrong or because I’m not use to the way they’re used to doing things? Some ways this can show up in the workplace is ensuring that there is room for celebrating all holidays during the holiday season, not just a “Christmas door decorating contest.”

Learner Safety - Our innate need to learn and grow.

·         Acknowledge the limits of current knowledge: I clearly remember a time when I was a very young leader who had just started at my organization when I was struggling with an issue.  I was talking with my supervisor about a situation where I felt like I needed to know how to do everything that all my staff members were doing, otherwise I wasn’t fit to be a leader.  In response, my supervisor said, “Lisa, there’s no way you’re ever going to be able to know the most about everything that all your staff members are doing.  You hired them for a reason.  Your job is to support them in what they are doing, not do it for them.” These words stuck with me over the years.  I believed her but was also afraid that my team wouldn’t trust me if I showed any weakness. As I’ve gotten older and more experienced, I’ve come to appreciate that sage advice – there is no way I’m going to know everything about what all my staff members are doing and that’s okay!  It’s better if I acknowledge what I know and don’t know, and then hire the right people to fill the gap.  It empowers them to feel like they have a niche and helps me to focus my efforts on the things that only I can do.

·         Be willing to display fallibility: Like we discussed last week, you must be willing to display when you’re wrong or you have made a mistake. I know that this is a tough one for me at times, and my guess is that it is tough for many of you as well. The truth is, we all make mistakes all of the time.  Sometimes, my mistake might be not following a prescribed process or notifying the right person about something.  That’s an easy one to get over.  Sometimes, my mistake might cause someone to feel left out or unheard.  That’s more challenging.  And, sometimes in our work, the mistakes can involve life or death situations.  No matter how big or small the mistake is or is perceived to be, it is critical that we are willing to admit to our own fallibility.  When we are willing to own up to our own mistakes, we give our staff members an opportunity to do the same.  I know that some leaders might fear that staff will use those mistakes against them. If that’s the case, there’s something far more at play than simply making mistakes. We’ll discuss this topic more in the coming weeks when we do a deep dive into the “Trust” pillar. In truth, if you want less mistakes and a team that is willing to admit that they have made mistakes, you need to be able to own up to your own mistakes first. For me, that’s meant sitting down with the person one-on-one and owning up to my transgression.  I’ve also gone to team meetings, or even sent a large department-wide message. Most of the time, people are just relieved that they aren’t the only one who is fallible.

·         Highlight failures as learning opportunities: Instead of punishing people for well-intentioned risks that backfire, leaders encourage team members to embrace error and deal with failure in a productive manner. Whenever there is an instance in which a staff member makes an error, how do you deal with it?  Do you immediately proceed to progressive discipline?  Or do you sit down with them to understand what happened and why? I’ve seen leaders do it both ways.  We all learn far more from mistakes than successes, so use this as a time to acknowledge the mistake and then create an opportunity for growth and learning. I know that this can be tricky when we have staff members who are consistently making mistakes which are adversely impacting the team. This doesn’t mean that we don’t hold people accountable for mistakes, but we do create a culture more broadly where we understand how mistakes help us learn and grow.

Contributor Safety - Feeling comfortable contributing your views or expertise to the common good.

·         Invite participation: When people believe their leaders value their input, they’re more engaged and responsive.  This might mean participation in strategic planning processes, party planning, or anything in between.  The more people feel involved in decision-making, the stronger the team. This can be tough when we’re afraid of what input might look like! I know that when I read employee engagement survey results each year, I usually quietly cringe at the unreasonable suggestions that come up, such as giving everyone a raise and more time off. However, after I review the feedback and let it sink in, I usually learn something important and am able to support the team in making improvements.

·         Use direct language: Using direct, actionable language instigates the type of straightforward, blunt discussion that enables learning.  As a leader with a background as a psychologist, I have become very good at the “sandwich” technique where you give someone a compliment, then give them negative feedback, then end with the compliment.  While there are many situations in which this is a helpful strategy, sometimes the message can get lost.  At the end of the day, having a direct conversation is clearer, and more respectful with the person and is often more appreciated by the team member.

Challenger Safety - Comfort with expressing dissenting or questioning viewpoints with others in the room.

·         Create structured opportunities for staff to challenge the status quo. As we discussed last week, one of the best ways to dismantle groupthink is to introduce a different perspective into the conversation. In your team, be willing to be the person that introduces the opposing thought. One of my favorite questions to ask the group is, “What would someone who disagrees with this idea say?” I know that this can be hard when we’re trying to get consensus on a specific point to move forward, but quiet consensus is not consensus at all – it just means that the team will disagree with you behind your back. Outside of group settings, invite your team members to talk with you individually if they have concerns, or to express them anonymously in writing. Not everyone feels comfortable verbally expressing a counter viewpoint, even when there’s safety, so creating multiple avenues for them to share their feedback is critical.

·         Embrace productive conflict. If you’re as conflict adverse as I can be sometimes, this can be a tricky one! It turns out, not all types of conflict are the same. In his book Think Again, Adam Grant differentiates between two types of conflict: relationship conflict and task conflict. Relationship conflict is when we have personal feelings of tension or animosity with another person. When we experience relationship conflict, we are more likely to attribute negative intent about the other person’s actions. This type of conflict is NOT good to have in the workplace. On the other hand, there is task conflict, which is “clashes about ideas and opinions.” This is when we disagree with HOW something should be done. This type of conflict helps us be more innovative by creating a culture where we introduce several different ways of doing things and then identifying the best one. If we avoid ALL conflict and not allow for task conflict, then we shut down helpful and innovative conversations that can then become relationship conflict. If we are already experiencing relationship conflict on our team, it can be helpful to work on building some foundational trust, which we’ll discuss in the coming weeks.

My guess is that some of these steps are easy for you while some can be particularly difficult.  I encourage you to take a moment and do some self-reflection – what is one area you’d like to work on?  How will you build that skill set?

How about your team?  In what ways have you cultivated psychological safety in your teams? What are some opportunities for improvement? Comment below.

Creating our Own Sense of Psychological Safety

Last week, I did a deep dive into the first pillar of Trauma-Informed Leadership, Safety.  As leaders, before we can truly create safety on our teams, we need to integrate this knowledge personally by looking at ourselves. This week, we’re going to talk more specifically about how you as a leader can look at your own sense of safety in a situation and create safety for yourself.

In our current landscape, we are constantly facing threats to both physical and psychological safety. As I’m writing this blog, it is a week before election day 2024 in the United States (and when I share this, it will be in the couple weeks after the election). No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you have undoubtedly experienced some stress regarding the potential outcome of the election and how it will impact your own sense of safety in the world.

As individuals, we each have our own set of rules about what keeps us safe that might vastly differ from those around us. For some, the idea of bungee jumping sounds exhilarating. For others (such as myself), the idea sounds terrifying! Similarly, for some of us, the idea of having an honest conversation with a team member feels empowering. For others, it makes them want to jump off the cliff without a bungee cord.

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in March 2020, concerns regarding safety took center stage. Suddenly, we were having conversations about whether to wear masks or whether we should work in the office.  Some felt masking was essential to their safety while others felt stifled by them.  Some were scared to come into the office while others were afraid of the disconnection and isolation that working from home entailed. What started as concerns regarding physical safety and illness protection soon became concerns regarding psychological safety. If I was someone who felt physically safest wearing a mask, and my co-worker dismissed it, did I feel safe with that person in other ways? Collectively, we found that the lines between physical and psychological safety began to blur, and our own personal definitions of safety began to change.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, these types of concerns continue to infiltrate our environments and ways of interacting in the world. The collective trauma has activated our sensitivities, and these widespread experiences of traumatic events feel more prevalent now. Now, more than ever, we have seen that when someone disagrees with us on something – whether it’s how to handle a specific situation, or with our political beliefs, we take it as a threat to our personal psychological safety. As a result, I have seen conversations shut down and leaders more hesitant than ever before to bring up issues of contention, feeling personally vulnerable and potentially threatened if they try to set a directive. Instead of having the courageous conversations that need to happen, we back off, fearing that we will create an “unsafe” environment for both us and our teams.

Unfortunately, avoiding this type of situation tends to have the reverse effect. The less we have conversations that need to happen, the MORE unsafe individuals tend to feel. How do we cross that divide? We must first start with ourselves.

In his book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation, Timothy R. Clark identifies the following four stages of psychological safety: Inclusion Safety, Learner Safety, Contributor Safety, and Challenger Safety. We’re going to take some time today talking about each of these and how they impact us personally as leaders to enable us to feel psychologically safe in our own environment.

Inclusion Safety

According to Clark, the first step of psychological safety is inclusion safety. In its purest sense, inclusion safety is being accepted for who you are as a human being. It includes respect for everyone’s humanity; that they have earned the right to exist in various spaces simply by being a person. When we experience inclusion safety, we are free from harm and do not feel judged or threatened by being who we are at our core. We might feel a lack of inclusion safety for many reasons – due to our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, education level, etc..  With the recent racial reckoning, several organizations have prioritized conversations related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. If these conversations are facilitated with care that addresses both implicit and explicit bias, they provide an extraordinary opportunity to address what has long been an elephant in the room. However, when they surface and are viewed as a display of organizational “tokenism”, they can significantly decrease an individual’s sense of safety.

As leaders, we play a critical role in supporting inclusion safety: it starts with us. Ask yourself the following questions:

·         Do I feel accepted and respected in my role?

·         Do I feel like all elements of my identity are accepted in the workplace? If not, what is accepted and what do I keep hidden?

·         How do I respond when my staff or colleagues make remarks about these aspects of my identity? Does it trigger a response in me? Do I shut down or find an excuse to leave the room? Or do I pretend it’s not a problem?

·         In what ways do I create a culture that accepts the identities of my team members?

·         In what ways am I not as inclusive or accepting with my staff as I’d like to be?

To create safety for ourselves and others on our team, we must first create a baseline of inclusion safety – a belief that we belong and are accepted just as we are. For many teams, this might be the most challenging step that takes intentional efforts that might ebb and flow over time.

Learner Safety

The second step of psychological safety is learner safety. Learner safety is our innate need to learn and grow, which comes with feeling comfortable making mistakes. To achieve learner safety, we must feel like there’s the freedom to explore our environment and try new things, even if we fail at them. As leaders, it’s important for us to think about both our own sense of learner safety and the environment we are creating in our team to encourage learning. I have met so many leaders (me included) who loved learning but were terrified of making mistakes. Here’s the thing, though - mistakes are inevitable at work. 

I often joke that I make several mistakes a day as a leader.  Some of these mistakes are quite small and will never be brought to anyone’s attention.  Other mistakes require a level of accountability, and an apology as the situation demands.  We are hard-wired to make mistakes.  Just think about it – none of learned to walk effectively when we took our first steps.  We fail tests in school, we say something hurtful to a friend – all of these are mistakes that help us learn.  When we make a mistake, it can set off all the trauma reminders in our brain, alerting us to past mistakes that may have felt threatening to our entire existence.  I want you to ask yourself – what happens for you when you make a mistake? Do you feel a sense of shame and guilt? Do you try to hide it? Do you try to confess to it to pre-empt any consequences? Do you minimize it, telling others that it’s not a problem?

As you become conscious of your own responses to making mistakes and remedying them, you can then begin to create a culture for your team that is more tolerant of those who make mistakes. As leaders, our staff are watching us and when we berate ourselves or deny our mistakes. Our team members are likely to do the same.

Contributor Safety

The third step of psychological safety is contributor safety or feeling comfortable contributing your views or expertise to the common good. We may have brilliant ideas, but if we’re not comfortable sharing those with our team, they ultimately mean nothing. We’ve all been in meetings where one or two people feel completely comfortable contributing their thoughts on every topic (and may dominate the whole conversation) while others may sit there quietly and rarely, if ever share. Contributor safety includes having a balance where everyone in the room or on the team feels comfortable contributing their expertise or perspective in one way or another. An introvert may not be comfortable sharing their view in a room of 20 people but may feel comfortable sharing it in a small group of 2-3 or in writing before or after a meeting.

As a leader, how do you create space where everyone feels safe to contribute? Do you allow multiple ways for individuals to share ideas? Do you emphasize the importance of everyone’s voice and follow your words with affirming actions? For yourself, how comfortable do feel contributing to the group? How do you balance your contributions with those of your team members?

Challenger Safety

The fourth and final step of psychological safety is challenger safety. Challenger safety is exactly what it sounds like – our comfort with expressing dissenting or questioning viewpoints with others in the room. Too often, teams can become victim to “groupthink” or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or responsibility. In teams characterized by groupthink, there’s a lack of innovation or excitement, with team members likely following the opinion or perspective of one or two individuals with a stronger voice. One of the best ways to counter groupthink is to introduce a counterargument or dissenting view in the room.

As a leader, how comfortable are you with presenting a challenge to an established norm or when one of your team members does so? Do you feel uncomfortable, worried that there will be conflict? Or do you welcome this external perspective into the room? During your individual interactions with your team members, how comfortable do you feel challenging your staff assumptions or beliefs when it’s important to the given situation? How comfortable are they in coming to talk to you about changes they think you, or the team, need to make?

Conclusion

As leaders, we play an important role in establishing a culture of psychological safety in our teams, but it begins with us and our own individual sense of safety. Looking at each of these domains and asking ourselves how comfortable we feel is the first step in creating safe cultures. Next week, we’ll dive a bit deeper and talk about how we can apply these concepts to creating psychologically safe teams.

In what areas described above do you feel psychologically safe? Where are areas in which you’d like to increase your sense of safety? Comment below.