Let’s visualize a team meeting. You have a brand new idea. Do you raise your hand instantly, or do you take your time? You may be thinking of how your team member will perceive your idea. Could it be that your idea is too smart or too silly? This is one of the many dilemmas of speaking out, which many people wonder about. This is also a case of psychological safety. You may have a lot of great ideas, but without adequate psychological safety, you will stay silent. Everyone should be able to contribute, and adding new perspectives promotes innovation. This type of culture improves and enriches the workplace experience. Let’s get to know what is Psychological Safety and how it impacts us.
What is Psychological Safety? Explained in Simple Words
In simple terms, it is about feeling accepted in the team and feeling and being able to propose changes or improvements. This is important because without it, teams will struggle to perform. This is important. The first to describe it this way is Professor Amy Edmonson. The term “workplace” is where everyone feels free.
It is like having an extra support, trusting that if you make a mistake, it will be covered. People without this support work with a lot of stress and no support, and are left to work from a place of fear. This murders the optimal flow of work and innovation. People will be seen to work and will not perform, and will be scared to perform at their very best.
The Four Stages of Psychological Safety
Dr. Timothy Clark describes unique stages of psychological safety that illustrate how safety develops in a team. They are:
1. Inclusion Safety
This is the first and most essential need. Inclusion safety indicates that you are part of the team. You can be yourself and are fully accepted with all the different sides of you, including your individual attributes and character.
With inclusion safety, you can relate and interact with the rest of the team without the feeling of being an outsider. It is the most foundational layer to build on all of the other stages.
2. Learner Safety
After feeling included, the next step would be to feel safe enough to learn. Learner safety indicates that you can ask questions and try and fail without the consequence of getting in trouble.
Learning can be a very sensitive and vulnerable process, and it requires that you admit that you actually don’t know something. In an environment that is safe for learning, questioning is welcomed, and failure is viewed as a step in the journey to succeed and grow.
3. Contributor Safety
Let’s say you learned some new things and you want to contribute. Contributor safety is being able to feel you can use your skills and knowledge to make a contribution.
Your manager trusts you to do your job and gives you some freedom to work and drive results. This stage is empowering for you and for your team to participate. You feel safe to share your skills and talents with the team.
4. Challenger Safety
The peak of psychological safety is challenger safety. This means you can challenge the status quo. You can ask why something is done in a certain way and offer an alternative approach. This is crucial for creativity and innovation.
Without challenger safety, organizations and teams get stuck in the status quo. They do not change for the better. When it is safe for people to challenge any idea, even from the highest authority, everybody wins.
Why Psychological Safety Matters So Much
Creating a psychologically safe workplace is positive in a lot of aspects. From the employee’s well-being to the company’s financial success.
When teams have psychological safety, they perform better. Google tested to find the secret to effective teams with a study called Project Aristotle. They researched for years, and the most important factor for effective teams was psychological safety. It was more important than who was on the teams and where they worked. Teams with high psychological safety were more creative, more productive, and better problem solvers.
In conditions conducive to innovation, new ideas challenge existing paradigms. When ideas are self-censored, innovation stops. When there is psychological safety, there is more risk-taking and more creative thinking. It creates conditions so that even the most unorthodox ideas can emerge. This is how companies get ahead of the competition.
How to Build Psychological Safety at Work
Creating an environment for psychological safety at work does not take place once and for all. It represents a continuous commitment that requires everyone’s engagement and, most importantly, the leadership’s. Below are the most practical suggestions for this from an organizational standpoint.
Encourage Questions and Feedback
Cultivate a culture of questions and place value on learning rather than being perfect. As a model of leadership, curiosity, and framework as shared learning, appreciate the value of speaking up and the worth of contribution through feedback. Check-ins are also a great opportunity.
Final Thoughts
A successful workplace runs on psychological safety. It allows employees to speak up, be assertive, and work together without fear. They value environments that have trust, respect, and open communication. It enables organizations to realize what their teams are truly capable of.
Building psychological safety is not on leaders alone; it is the work of every single team member, and it is beneficial to all. In this blog, we get to know what is psychological safety and how to build it. I hope you found our article informative. Stay in touch to get more informative insights.
