Psychological safety has never been more crucial in an increasingly volatile work environment. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson provides strategies for creating it within your organization.
Psychological safety can be difficult to achieve, requiring both leadership and team member collaboration to develop. Building this is no small task but is absolutely essential for long-term business success.
1. Create a safe space
For teams to feel safe, they need to trust one another and recognize it’s okay for individuals to be vulnerable, make mistakes, or take risks. Furthermore, open communication must take place among members regardless of background or expertise – they also require supportive leadership.
Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and author of “The Right Kind of Wrong,” has conducted decades of research on team dynamics. From her findings comes her book entitled, “The Right Kind of Wrong.” According to Amy’s findings, successful teams consist of members who feel free to voice their ideas, concerns, questions and admit mistakes when necessary – an environment with this culture can help navigate change more successfully and increase productivity at work.
Edmondson’s work in psychological safety has received increased interest since the pandemic, yet companies should make this an ongoing priority. She presented at an AHRI webinar about her framework for creating psychological safety. This includes:
Framing Work: Establishing expectations and soliciting input are integral to creating psychological safety in any work setting. For example, this could involve outlining what needs to be achieved and why it matters rather than simply listing specific results. It’s also important to set clear boundaries around communication – don’t disparage anyone when sharing their opinions – this may affect their feeling of psychological safety greatly! Your tone has an incredible effect – be careful what words you choose when speaking!
Recognise and show vulnerability are also invaluable traits in leaders. Doing this helps humanise you and creates an environment in which asking for assistance or admitting when something is beyond your expertise is accepted as being okay.
2. Build trust
Psychological safety is vital to healthy team dynamics, work-life balance and collaboration, and innovation in any workplace environment. Unfortunately, building psychological safety can often be challenging; people may hesitate to speak up if they’re uncertain their thoughts will be welcomed or heard and may delay speaking up altogether due to fear of judgement or embarrassment and end up wasting valuable time.
Amy Edmondson’s research revealed that high performing teams cultivate an interpersonal environment where all members, including supervisors and executives, feel safe speaking up and being vulnerable – a phenomenon known as a “safety climate.” These environments enable teams to share knowledge and ideas freely without restrictions from hierarchies or bureaucratic systems – something only achieved through trust-based environments that foster psychological safety.
Managers can foster an environment of psychological safety by setting forth clear policies and guidelines on how team members should communicate. Furthermore, managers should regularly seek to recognize positive experiences within their team to enhance feelings of psychological safety.
Managers need to be open to challenging old norms that may be hindering productivity in order to foster psychological safety in their organizations, through courageous conversations or the support of peers going through similar processes as their managers. Finally, making psychological safety a top priority across your entire company by including it in its mission statement and values or regularly communicating on this topic will allow employees to feel safe speaking up when necessary while improving its long-term success.
3. Encourage open communication
Team effectiveness relies upon members being comfortable expressing questions, making mistakes, and owning up to them – elements that together comprise psychological safety – an integral component of high-performing teams and resilient organizations that encourages individuals to share ideas freely while challenging existing norms; psychological safety gives team members a feeling that sharing or admitting mistakes won’t result in punishment or judgment from colleagues or superiors.
Amy Edmondson, a professor of organisational behavior at Harvard Business School, pioneered team psychological safety as an issue in the 1990s. While researching clinical teams, Amy observed that those with better outcomes admitted more mistakes – prompting Amy to conclude that those teams must have fostered an environment in which all members felt safe enough to disclose failures openly and candidly.
Start building open communication by scheduling regular meetings between managers and their direct reports or between all team members. Use these meetings as an opportunity to address assignments, work challenges, career goals, training needs and performance feedback – or set aside some time at the end for an open Q&A session where everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts, concerns and ideas freely.
Establishing an environment of open communication may take time and effort, but it is essential to creating a Fearless Organization. Leaders should demonstrate they are open to receiving all types of feedback – even when difficult – without dismissing or dismissing what is presented as feedback; without making accusations against teammates or attempting to close down opinions that differ from their own; without playing favorites among members and without dismissing opinions that do not reflect their own.
4. Encourage feedback
To encourage people to speak up, ask questions, and be vulnerable, they need to feel that their contributions will be valued. Edmondson refers to this concept as psychological safety – an integral component of high-performing teams. You can build it by acknowledging your fallibilities while modeling appropriate behaviors and being curious and empathic with one another.
Edmondson has demonstrated through her research that employees who feel secure sharing ideas and being honest with one another are better able to take risks and innovate. Furthermore, companies which cultivate such an atmosphere experience fewer mistakes and can better weather disruptions.
Establishing a culture of psychological safety is no simple task. Employees need to feel safe voicing their opinions even if it means disagreeing with their direct supervisor or challenging ideas of those in power; HRM reported last year that many employees lack the courage to express themselves directly to managers for fear that doing so will jeopardise their careers.
Fear can wreak havoc with productivity, morale and performance – studies of frontline hospitality workers revealed that teams with higher psychological safety demonstrated improved performance when willing to openly discuss mistakes and their causes.
Edmondson’s work has become increasingly sought after following the pandemic’s impact, which caused workplace-related health concerns to spike significantly. At AHRI Convention TRANSFORM 2021, she told attendees there had been an upsurge in requests from businesses trying to create environments in which employees can thrive; Edmondson provides employers with a clear roadmap they can follow to accomplish this task successfully.
5. Encourage curiosity
An environment infused with curiosity can help teams stay on track with projects while encouraging employees to discover new opportunities and expand their knowledge base. But creating such an atmosphere requires hard work and commitment from team leaders.
To foster curiosity at work, it’s essential to create a safe environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and opinions. Furthermore, creating a positive feedback system where employees are recognized for their hard work can also encourage curiosity in the workplace.
Leaders should demonstrate curiosity within the workplace by asking probing questions and challenging norms, while providing resources that foster professional development such as training or workshops for employees to continue growing in their careers, ultimately leading to greater job satisfaction and productivity.
Finally, it is crucial to recognize and reward employees who display curiosity at work. Doing so will encourage other employees to exhibit these behaviors and foster a culture of learning within your workplace.
Amy Edmondson has studied workplace safety for decades and discovered that successful teams possess a culture of psychological safety. At AHRI’s Convention TRANSFORM 2021 next month, she will further discuss this concept and show how high performing teams create an interpersonal climate where everyone from lower ranking employees up to senior leadership feels safe taking risks and speaking up when something goes wrong – leading them to respond productively when faced with challenges or failures and thus leading them on to greater overall success within an organization.
