How do you ensure psychological safety at work? In this article, we discuss 3 practical tips to promote psychological safety in the workplace.
Nobody is perfect and it is therefore possible that people make mistakes. As an organization, it is therefore important that you provide a safe working environment in which mistakes are allowed, there is no fear of reporting untoward events, and the impact of errors remains limited. This is called psychological safety at work. In a psychologically safe workplace, there is more certainty about how interactions will play out, whether they are positive or rather negative.
In 2015, Google published the results of a two-year study that came up with a list of the 5 most important factors that are important to make teams successful. In this list, psychological safety ranked first as the most important factor:
Psychological safety is a term coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson. She defines it as follows:
“Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.”
In this video, Amy Edmondson describes her work:
What Amy Edmonson and Google both found in their separate studies is that teams that made more mistakes were more successful than others. Why? It appears that creating an environment where people feel comfortable taking risks is key to driving innovation and effectiveness in the workplace. In addition, the impact of errors is often smaller because they can be discussed at an early stage.
Preventing errors is therefore a bad strategy. Also, attaching consequences on people who have ‘acted out of line’ does not lead to fewer slip-ups in the future. It is better to provide the necessary psychological safety so that the impact of any oversight (as most of the time, employees’ actions are not deliberate) is limited, people dare to speak out and learn from their actions or inactions.
But where should you start?
3 practical tips to promote psychological safety in your workplace:
1. Lead by example
Ideas for leading by example include:
- Be humble
- Ask for upward feedback and create a culture where giving feedback is normal
- Dare to be vulnerable: recognize your own mistakes and your own weaknesses
- Be curious and open to opinions that differ from your own
- Encourage questioning and be open to advice from others
- Be real. What you preach, so should you act. For example, don’t preach to stand for psychological safety when – after having had a serious conversation with an employee/colleague – you start making fun of their situation, even if behind their back. Self-reflection goes a long way, even if psychological safety isn’t impacting you directly
2. Encourage active listening
Ideas to improve listening include:
- Give everyone a platform to speak out, including the introverted silent colleagues
- Show understanding by repeating what has been said
- Encourage people to share more by asking questions
- If certain people rarely speak in meetings, actively ask them for their opinion
3. Create a safe environment
Ideas to develop a safe environment can be, for example:
- Do not interrupt each other
- All ideas are accepted equally and never condemned
- Do not blame people, but look for what can/must be done better
- We listen to “out of the box” suggestions
- Instead of passing judgment and criticizing, ask a question
- Encourage teams and individuals to express feedback and see it as a way to strengthen and further develop their ideas and processes
- Help people with how they respond constructively to input from others
- Don’t demand space or be bossy just because you are at the helm of a team or an organization. This will scare away most people who are looking for a safe space to open up
Also recommended: Tips to deal with conflict in a team.
