How Does Leadership Impact Psychological Safety?
The workplace isn't what it used to be 20 years ago when people would merely come to do their jobs and leave. Today, it has become an environment that influences employees' mental well-being and productivity. People expect more than just a job they want to be valued, respected, and heard.
That's why it's crucial for leaders to create a workplace culture that focuses on psychological safety - a sense of trust, respect, and comfort among team members.
Though it's not just about being fluffy and nice - there are tangible benefits to having a psychologically safe workplace. In 2012, Google embarked on an initiative with the code-named Project Aristotle to study hundreds of teams and discover the derivatives of what made the team successful. One of the key findings was that psychological safety overwhelmingly emerged as the biggest predictor of success. Essentially, they found that teams where members felt safe to take risks and be vulnerable with one another were more likely to succeed.
In fact, there is an abundance of research that shows the benefits of creating safe work cultures, including enhanced innovation, problem-solving, and employee engagement.
But when psychological safety is neglected in the workplace, it can also have damaging consequences. A hostile environment with a lack of trust can cause stress, anxiety, and depression among employees. It can also lead to poor decision-making, lower productivity, and high turnover rates.
That's why it is so important for leaders to prioritise psychological safety and create an environment that fosters trust, communication, feedback, and vulnerability among team members.
Yet, despite the evidence of its importance, a McKinsey Global Survey conducted during the pandemic showed that many organisations are still failing to prioritise a positive workplace culture.
The Concept of Psychological Safety
What better way to introduce the concept of psychological safety than with a quote from a leading researcher in psychological safety and team effectiveness, Amy Edmondson:
"It is a shared belief that the environment is conducive to interpersonal risks. Like asking for help, admitting a mistake or criticising a project - that can be challenging to do, so this is the sort of sense that this is a special place where that kind of activity is okay."
According to Timothy Clark, PhD, author of "The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation," there are four distinct stages that an organisation must go through to achieve psychological safety in the workplace.
These stages are based on a universal pattern of human needs present in social situations, and they must be implemented sequentially. Below are the paraphrased stages:
Stage 1: Establishing a sense of belonging and acceptance.
Stage 2: Creating an environment that is safe enough for employees to make mistakes and learn from them.
Stage 3: Encouraging employees to feel safe enough to offer ideas and contribute, even if those ideas may seem unconventional.
Stage 4: Creating an environment safe enough for employees to challenge the status quo when it is no longer effective.
The Leadership Role in Creating Psychological Safety
As McKinsey & Co's research cited above suggests, a positive workplace culture begins at the top. It is the leaders' job to set the tone for their team and create an environment conducive to psychological safety.
To add to this, separate research also suggests that authoritative leadership behaviours are detrimental to psychological safety, while consultative and supportive leadership behaviours facilitate it.
Leaders should set an example of trustworthiness, protect team members from external threats, and be mindful of their behaviours. This entails:
Being Vulnerable
In the past, vulnerability was often seen as a weakness of a leader. However, thanks to the pandemic and the isolation that ensued, leaders have started to understand the importance of being vulnerable and transparent with their teams.
When team members see their leader sharing their challenges and vulnerabilities, it encourages them to do the same. This allows for honest dialogue, which ultimately creates a sense of trust and acceptance.
Therefore, leaders should be bold and, show their humanity and talk openly about their challenges. Instead, they should use these moments to show their team that it is safe to be vulnerable and make mistakes. This will help bolster trust and a more psychologically safe environment.
Providing Effective Feedback
Giving effective feedback is a key ingredient of psychological safety. This often means providing constructive criticism and praise in equal measure, while being respectful and mindful of employees' feelings.
When providing feedback, as a coach - teach, don't preach. Respect each team member's individual learning curve and provide support when needed. You want your employees to learn from experience, not to be scared of potential failure. As such, a consultative approach to feedback is key to this.
As Rasmus Hougaard, Founder and CEO of global research, leadership development, and consulting firm Potential Project, highlights on the Digital HR Leaders podcast:
"You need to be really present when you give tough feedback because if you're not present like if you pay attention to your phone or look out the window, or not really present with the person, the person will know that you don't care."
Fostering a Culture of Open Communication
When we talk about open communication, we don't just mean listening to your team; we also mean actively inviting input from them. However, this can often be much harder than it sounds, as research has found that employees find it very risky to speak up against the status quo in certain environments - especially when there is a power distance between them and their manager.
Therefore, leaders should make it easy for employees to share their ideas and opinions, even if they may seem unconventional. They should ensure that everyone has a voice and that all opinions are considered with an open mind, no matter how different they are.
Creating an Environment of Trust
And this is where creating an environment of trust comes in. Trust is the bedrock of psychological safety, and the leader's job is to build, nurture and maintain it.
The most important thing to remember when building trust is that it starts with you. Do the small things right- be consistent in your words and actions, and create an environment where people can be honest without fear of repercussions.
When mistakes happen, try and avoid the 'blame and shame' game, as this will only discourage risk-taking. Instead, focus on solutions and have everyone work together to find ways to prevent similar issues from happening again in the future.
You also want to be completely transparent with your team. As Rasmus shares, this means "treating people like adults by telling them as much as you can, telling the whole story, so they can make choices about their own life."
Overall, as Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Chief Talent Scientist at ManpowerGroup and Professor of Business Psychology at both University College London and Columbia University put it perfectly, in order to truly create a workplace of psychological safety we need to:
"...revise our flawed and outdated leadership archetypes and models so that we select leaders on the basis of their competence and confidence and on the basis of their humility, curiosity, empathy, and coachability."
Measuring the Impact of Your Efforts
Training leaders in emotional intelligence and consultative and supportive leadership styles is one way to create a psychologically safe environment - but it's also essential to measure the impact of these efforts.
One approach is to measure employee engagement levels or even send out surveys asking questions such as:
"How safe do you feel to share your thoughts and ideas at work?"
"Do you feel that your opinions are heard and valued by your manager?"
"Do you trust your team and management to make the best decisions for the company?"
These questions can help identify areas of improvement, as well as highlight the impact that creating a psychologically safe environment has had on employees in terms of their confidence, creativity, and overall well-being.
Another way is tracking well-being and performance metrics such as absenteeism and presenteeism data. For instance, if you find there is high presenteeism in your team, it could be a sign that employees don't feel safe to take time off when they need it.
Ultimately, having a psychologically safe workplace is about creating experiences for people so that when they come to work, they are fully supported and have the trust and motivation to be their most productive selves.
With the right leadership and support, companies can create a work environment that puts
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