Do not pass off responsibility for teamwork and learning solely onto leaders; every member should feel empowered to voice any concerns that arise within their teams, which allows teams to be candid about new ideas while learning from failures as a collective experience.
Edmondson has identified this principle as the cornerstone of her research on workplace psychological safety, providing an extensive framework that will assist any organization in creating these conditions.
1. Create a safe space.
As a leader, you can help your team foster psychological safety through various means. For instance, surveys or one-on-one interviews can give an accurate depiction of how your team feels about sharing ideas and risk-taking – this will give an indication of where your team stands within the spectrum of psychological safety, helping prioritize changes needed for maximum performance.
Your team can be motivated to speak out by creating an environment in which they feel safe making mistakes and showing support when errors do happen. In addition, setting clear expectations regarding each member’s opinion matters and fair treatment should also help.
People often don’t speak out because of fear that their ideas will be disregarded or belittled, creating a negative feedback loop and leading to burnout and lack of engagement with work, as well as impacts to morale and productivity. Consider an employee with a great idea for solving an issue at their company but are afraid to share it out of fear of criticism or rejection.
Edmondson defines a healthy work culture as one in which employees can make mistakes without fear of punishment or judgement, however don’t mistake psychological safety for being too soft; Edmondson cautions that you can damage morale within your team without proper caution.
If your employee isn’t contributing as much, it might seem tempting to let them go; however, doing so could actually harm your business in the long run. Instead, to increase team performance you should encourage each member’s development of necessary skills.
Psychological safety doesn’t exist on an organizational scale; rather, it’s created within individual teams. To build high-performing teams, you need to ensure your employees feel safe enough to express themselves freely and share their opinions – something which can be achieved by cultivating inclusive environments and developing open communication cultures.
2. Encourage open communication.
Even highly intelligent, high-powered employees require a safe space in which they can freely express their ideas and reach their full potential. Unfortunately, many find it challenging to share their thoughts and concerns in work due to fear of judgment or disruption – this can inhibit innovation and prevent teams from reaching their true potential.
Leaders need to promote open communication by setting an exemplary example and encouraging open discussion among their team members, while actively listening and showing that their input matters. Furthermore, decentralized decision-making will bolster psychological safety among employees.
Encourage risk-taking: this step involves getting past any fear of ridicule or rejection for mistakes made, in order to create an environment of psychological safety for their team. Leaders can facilitate this by asking “What are your concerns?” or “How can we improve?” in order to show they welcome feedback and criticism from employees.
Amy Edmondson’s research has demonstrated that psychological safety predicts increased boundary-spanning behavior, such as tapping resources from outside one’s own team to reach goals. Such work is integral for organizations looking to innovate quickly while meeting customer demands – but requires high psychological safety levels in order to be successful.
Building psychological safety can be challenging, but not impossible. There are various strategies you can employ to foster a more secure space for your team – and the results will make the effort well worthwhile. To get started, here are a few simple strategies you could try:
3. Build trust.
As a leader, you can help foster psychological safety within your teams by creating conditions where everyone feels free to voice their ideas and feelings without fear of reprisal or criticism. Furthermore, setting an exemplary example by actively listening to feedback, applauding thoughtful risk taking and encouraging individuals to express their opinions when necessary can all play an integral part. Finally, building trust through eliminating hierarchies or chains of command which prevent team members from communicating directly with upper management can contribute significantly.
Employees in many teams find it challenging to share their ideas and express themselves fully if they feel judged for speaking up or asking question without judgment from others. Without trust between team members, employees may feel intimidated from sharing ideas freely or discussing failures and mistakes freely – fear that can stifle innovation while potentially creating toxic workplaces where one person’s decisions overshadow others’ inputs. Building it can prevent this issue altogether.
Psychological safety can be challenging to create and can take time and skill for leaders to manage effectively. Leaders may become stuck in their ways of only thinking about performance when managing teams – which limits growth and adaptability as new challenges emerge.
Edmondson asserts that her research on psychological safety saw an upsurge during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, there remains much work to be done. Thankfully, her framework helps break down this complex task into manageable steps for teams and managers to take.
In your organization, if gender inequality is an issue, use this framework to foster more open discussions around bias in the workplace and address it directly. Furthermore, use it if diversity issues exist within your team as this framework will help identify obstacles and help employees overcome them.
4. Celebrate progress.
Work teams that feel safe to exchange ideas, discuss risks, admit errors and experiment with new processes are better equipped to collaborate and share knowledge, learning from each other as they seek ways to improve processes and their own environments. Such dialogue helps organizations detect changes to their surroundings, understand customer requirements and understand unintended outcomes of previous actions, among other valuable functions. However, creating psychological safety is no simple task and takes the dedication and collaboration of all team members involved.
Edmondson told meeting attendees that creating an effective working climate was crucial to the success of most work teams today, noting that leadership had an inherent responsibility to set direction, engage employees with good questions and respond productively by not simply appreciating employee input but acting upon it. Furthermore, leaders need to frame work by ensuring everyone involved understands risks ahead.
Edmondson made her breakthrough while studying clinical teams and noticed that those with better outcomes admitted more mistakes while those with poorer results tended to hide them. As a result, she conducted numerous studies that demonstrate teams with high psychological safety are more innovative, productive, and successful over time than those that lack this quality.
Work teams that wish to increase psychological safety must ensure all members understand what their job involves and that all opinions count (Lagace, 2018). They should also recognize that each member has different views, anxieties, and vulnerabilities which should all be respected. Lastly, “challenger safety” needs to be created, creating an atmosphere in which it’s safe for individuals or teams to challenge status quos or present alternative viewpoints without fear of reprisal from fellow team members (Lagace 2018).
To foster challenger safety, teams should encourage individuals to voice their perspectives by clearly outlining what’s being discussed, permitting free speech, acknowledging all ideas are valid and supporting calculated risks taken. Furthermore, they must be capable of taking criticism constructive feedback in a healthy manner as well as be open to learning from each other’s failures (Hutchison 2020). Furthermore, to facilitate this process they should avoid placing blame or pulling rank as well as actively listen to any concerns voiced.
