Psychological Safety

“So, tell me your thoughts on the new initiative.” “How do you feel about leading the new project?” “How do you like working here?” As a manager, these questions can seem innocuous on the surface but depending on your departmental culture they can also be rife with tension and anxiety for your staff. For an employee to be open and honest there needs to be psychological safety in the workplace. Psychological safety is the organizational structure of teams with open and honest communication that allows employees to have a sense of comfort about their ideas and identities at work.
While a psychologically safe workplace is ideal, and what every manager would strive for, there can be barriers that make it difficult, but not impossible, to achieve. 

• Structural. Steep hierarchy and power distance, siloed decision-making, performance systems that punish error, no forum or time for candid conversation, and physical or remote distance from the people with authority.
• Leader behavior. Micromanagement, defensiveness when challenged, advocating a position before inviting input, perfectionism at the top, and reserving participation rights for seniority.
• Interpersonal norms. Ridicule and put-downs, cliques, dominance by the loudest voices, and the tacit rule that newcomers listen for a year before the organization listens to them.
• Belief. The private conclusions people draw — it’s not my place to say, I’ll look like I should already know this, I’ll be labeled a troublemaker, it won’t make a difference anyway. Futility is one of the most common reasons people stay quiet, and it is entirely learned.

Managers should be aware of these barriers and the impact they can have on their department. Staff members that do not feel safe being honest with their feedback and ideas will be reluctant to voice new concepts. That can lead to a stagnation of ideas and a continuation of “this is how we’ve always done it”. If staff isn’t incentivized to be creative, the team can suffer from groupthink. The group just goes along with the idea that is presented first.
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Creating a psychologically safe department doesn’t take much to implement, but it takes work to maintain.  

1. Make it an explicit priority
Wanting a safe environment doesn’t make it so.  Your staff have to be reassured that this is more than just talk and a nice to have.
 
2. Facilitate everyone speaking up
​Give space to people so they can step up or speak up.  If someone does speak up, be open minded and compassionate. Especially if it’s someone that doesn’t normally do that.
 
3. Establish norms for how failure is handled
How is failure handled? Is it looked at as a learning experience, or is it used to push people back into their box. 
 
4. Create space for new ideas. (Even the wild ones)
Knowing you wouldn’t be punished for failing allows staff to be creative and come up with novel ideas.  Will all of them be winners? Not at all but allowing space gives birth to brainstorms that can come up with original ideas.  No more “this is how we’ve always done it”.
 
5. Embrace productive conflict
​Everyone won’t agree but conflict can be productive if handled in a productive manner.  Are you shutting down one person instead of hearing both sides? How are the staff speaking to each other, is it in a respectful manner
 
There is no time like the present to start working on your psychologically safe department.