Generally I enjoyed the work, and I liked and got on well with pretty much everyone in my team, including socialising with a number of them outside of work.

However there was one part of the job that I really disliked – and it was the fortnightly departmental meeting that took place over webex, with team members dialling in from across our wide brown land.

Inevitably those meetings left me feeling a myriad of things, one of which was feeling like I just didn’t fit in.

There were some super smart cookies in the ‘room’, well known experts in their field – and not only did I feel like I didn’t belong in their ‘club’, but in turn I felt so intimidated by their expertise that I hardly, if ever, spoke up.

Even if I believed I had a useful contribution to make to a particular discussion, I stayed silent. Which, for anyone that knows me, probably seems impossible to believe. I’m generally known as being loud, and passionate. Growing up as the youngest in a family of 7 will do that.

Now when I look back on those meetings, I realise that one of things that was lacking was a sense of psychological safety. Without it, I did not feel safe to speak up. Which is a shame – because I probably had some really great ideas that I could have offered up for discussion.

Having the confidence to speak up, particularly when offering an alternative or different opinion, is one of the cornerstones of what a psychologically safe environment looks like. In turn, being able to speak up with new ideas, and/or challenge existing ones, is crucial when it comes to innovation.

So what is this thing known as psychological safety?

“A shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”

The phrase ‘psychological safety’ was first coined from research that Professor Amy Edmonson undertook in 1999.

In essence, psychological safety means:

• Feeling safe enough to speak up
• Ask ‘dumb’ questions
• Generally being prepared to make mistakes
• Give candid feedback
• Bring up tough issues
• Ask others for help
• Learn from other team members
• Take risks
• Encourage the continuous flow of new ideas, new solutions, and critical thought necessary for companies to stay innovative.

Professor Edmonson measures how psychologically safe a team / organisation is  according to how strongly individuals agreed or disagreed with these statements:

1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you.
2. Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.
4. It is safe to take a risk on this team.
5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.
6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

A positive response to the first five statements, along with a negative response to the final two statements, indicates strong psychological safety. The opposite results indicate, well, the opposite.

In 2012, Google upped the ante on psychological safety, after they dedicated two years to researching the question ‘what makes teams successful?’ via their ‘Project Aristotle’.

They discovered that over and above nearly every other ingredient (including IQ, skills, experience, time working together) psychological safety is one of the two most important elements of highly successful teams.

If you want to learn a little more about Project Aristotle, here’s a YouTube clip to get you started.

Why is psychological safety crucial for high performing teams?

Gallup’s 2017 study of the state of the American workplace found that only 3 in 10 employees felt their opinion was valued at work.

Yet if that was doubled to 6 in 10 the benefits would be:

In other words, if I feel that my opinion is valued within the team I am a member of, then not only am I going to be more productive, but I’m less likely to leave the organisation and take all my knowledge with me.

And if I’m more productive – and so is everyone else in my team – then clearly this will lead to successful outcomes.

How do we build psychological safety in our teams?

Great question! And honestly, you’ve got to start by first building trust amongst team members.

How do you do that?

Here’s a small infographic I prepared earlier in anticipation of this very question. (#mindreader)

Any more tips?

But of course there are!

Firstly, let’s revisit those survey results, in answer to Edmondson’s quiz to measure current levels of psychological safety.  

Perhaps you noticed that the responses to the statement ‘Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues’ scored poorly.

How can you therefore encourage team members to feel safe enough to raise issues?

A) Lead by example

You can start by sharing examples of challenges that you are facing. Perhaps your manager asked you to deliver a service by a particular deadline, when you already had three competing priorities AND were trying to juggle several issues on the home front.

How did you feel? What did you do? What did you learn from this process?

Remember that building trust and psychological safety takes time, and you and the team need to understand you will have to take baby steps before you get to where you want to be.

B) Be present and engaged

Don’t be that team leader who is always more interested in what is happening on their laptop or phone during team meetings, rather than looking team members in the eye and actively participating in the meeting.

Ask questions, then reframe them to demonstrate you have truly heard what your team members said.

For example, “What I heard you say is XXX’. Is this correct?”

Be aware of your body language.

Remember communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal (including body language (55 percent) and tone of voice (38 percent).

For example, using the reframing question above, if I say those exact same words with my arms crossed, a frown on my face, and use an abrupt or dismissive tone when I ask ‘Is this Correct?’, then I am sending a negative and potentially confrontational message.

The opposite of what we are aiming for!

C) Listen.

Ok, yes, if you are a regular Workology Co follower you will know that when it comes to advising leaders to listen to their employees, I am a bit like an old vinyl record stuck on repeat.

However it really is at the heart of so many ingredients to high performance culture – and especially so when it comes to increasing the levels of psychological safety in your organisation or team.

Start by practising active listening and make sure you hold 1:1 catchup meetings with each and every member of your team.

D) Focus on solutions not blame

At the end of each project, or whenever a mistake has been made by team members, don’t fall back on old habits of playing the blame game.

First, because it’s often just a waste of time trying to work out exactly who was at fault.

Secondly,  because if you want to increase levels of psychological safety, then it is vital to instead focus on asking questions like ‘What can we learn from this? What do we need to do differently next time?’

The Stop Start Change Continue framework is one of my favourite ways to do this.

The team asks themselves and each other – what do we need to stop or start doing? Are there things we should change – and things we should continue to do?

Workology Co has a pretty template for this easy activity, you can download it here. You’re so welcome.

E) Be on jerk alert

Again, this is something I have said more than once before.

Why it is so important in this context is:

If you actively or inadvertently condone inappropriate behaviour, such as one team member speaking negatively, dismissively or otherwise rudely to colleagues, then of course those colleagues will not speak up. Or ask questions. But will instead deliberately find excuses to avoid team meetings / get togethers.

In other words – there will definitely be no trust let alone psychological safety when jerks are allowed to run free.

Anything else we can do to promote psychological safety?

Honestly, the answer is wholeheartedly YES.

This topic is one of THE hottest topics when it comes to organisational development / high performance culture – which means there are in-numerous additional resources you can consult.

Here is one of my favourites, focusing on Edmonson & Co’s research: How managers can promote psychological safety.

As a massive fan of cultural health checks to identify areas for improvement in organisational culture; then I admit that I’m a big fan of starting your journey towards psychological safety by conducting Edmonson’s survey (above).

However the most important piece of advice I have to give, is to NIKE it.

Pick one thing, and do it. Let’s chat.

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