5 Minutes on Fostering Psychological Safety

When I ask supervisors for their burning leadership questions and the hardest parts of being a supervisor, one theme that comes up is communication.

How do I give hard feedback?

How can I communicate more directly?

How do I manage conflict?

The foundation for all of these is psychological safety. Let’s start there.

Psychological safety is defined as a sense of confidence that the team or your supervisor will not embarrass, reject, or judge someone for speaking up.

This doesn’t mean that speaking up will feel easy. You might still get sweaty palms or a racing heart.

But, ultimately, you feel safe to say what you really think when it’s important.

We’re going to explore how to build and nourish psychological safety on your teams and in your work relationships.

Let’s start with what gets in the way of psychological safety.

Our own brains!

Our brains don’t distinguish between physical threats and identity/ego threats, and we are wired to protect ourselves.

As Amy C. Edmondson describes in her book, “The Fearless Organization,” and in her recorded lectures, it feels risky to speak up, and there is real risk.

We can end up looking ignorant, incompetent, intrusive, or negative. Most of us really want to avoid that.

We avoid speaking up, and we see others avoiding it – creating a feedback loop that can end up reinforcing unhelpful norms on our teams and organizations:

• Don’t ask questions

• Don’t admit your mistakes

• Don’t critique the status quo

• Don’t look bad in the eyes of management

In Edmondson’s model, “Asymmetry of Voice and Silence,” she describes why it’s easier to stay silent and riskier to speak up.

When you stay silent, you know that you will benefit from the safety of your silence. You feel the safety and relief of not speaking up immediately.

On the other hand, the benefits of using your voice are not immediate or guaranteed. They often come after some delay. And speaking up doesn’t necessarily benefit you at all, it’s more likely to benefit the organization or the people you serve.

Again, it’s easier to stay silent than to use your voice.

People in positional power can easily activate our threat response, keeping us silent. It could be as simple as an annoyed look, or a pattern of avoiding or quieting those who speak up.

Or people in positional power can intentionally work to help us overcome our tendency to protect ourselves by creating psychological safety.

Four ways to foster psychological safety:

1. Build healthy relationships.

Psychological safety depends on them. Healthy relationships, built on trust, are developed in many ways. Here are a few ideas:

• Watch your own tendency to defensiveness

• Be willing to have your mind changed

• Believe that there are multiple truths, each equally true to the person holding it.

• Own your own mistakes and practice “repair”

2. Practice inviting honesty and listening. 

Ask for honesty from your team members, again and again. When you get it, honor it. Watch your own reactions. You don’t have to agree but it’s important to deeply listen to the other person. 

3. Create shared agreements that support safety.

Share your intention to build psychological safety and invite your team to create shared agreements that support it. You can read more about creating shared agreements and Brave Spaces HERE. Examples could be:

• We take a stance of exploration.

• We cultivate curiosity when there is difference, tension, or disagreement.

• We are courageous to say what we’re really thinking in a respectful way.

• I also like this guide from AWARE-LA.

4. Listen for the dissenting voice in the team.

 In deep democracy they call this, “Listening for the No.” Dissent doesn’t necessarily mean resistance, though it can. It means dissenting from the general feeling of the whole/group.

Psychological safety is ultimately developed in our everyday exchanges. In small moments when someone tentatively wades in with the truth and finds it welcomed and appreciated.

Having psychological safety doesn’t mean our teams and relationships will be devoid of conflict. 

Things can still get messy and we shouldn’t shy away from that. It can have rich learning.

We can practice being open, curious, and gentle with ourselves and others as we navigate using our voices in a new way. 

The more we intentionally foster psychological safety, the more engagement, candor, and belonging we will find.

I’m curious:

What keeps you from speaking up?

What helps you feel safe to dissent?

When have you felt psychological safety on a team? What stands out to you from that experience?