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Your Guide to Why Psychological Safety is Necessary for the Workplace
"The minute we start discounting someone as a number, as a product of their efforts, we don't see them as human. And when you don't see someone as human, you reach a point of, I think, probably the most awful place you could be, be it personally or inside a business."
— Craig Handy, Team Lead at Shopify and Founder of Jameson Strategies Consulting
In the second episode of our podcast, Unicorn Leaders, our guest, Craig Handy, discusses why leaders need to focus on creating psychological safety in the workplace and how your business won't grow without it.
As discussed at Unicorn Labs, psychological safety is a foundational element in the six levels of high-performing teams. It's the end-all-be-all. If your team can't achieve this first level, reaching others will be nearly impossible. You have to get it right for every other piece to fall into place.
When there is no psychological safety, most feedback managers receive from team-building exercises or coaching meetings lacks essential data because people will hold back or not be fully honest about their thoughts. Low or lack of psychological safety usually scares people from doing things because they fear consequences or repercussions.
This is why psychological safety is the starting point: it’s essential to every aspect of the workplace.
When people go to work, they often feel like they can't be themselves, which is exhausting. No one wants to leave part of their personality at home!
Your job is your life. Today's workforce wants to be able to bring their whole self to work. Feeling psychologically safe allows employees to be free to share personal and vulnerable aspects of their lives, thus creating deep relationships.
As managers, we can't just focus on efficiency.
It's about collaboration, not just results.
It's about going to work in the morning, talking to the team of engineers, sending emails to the marketers, jumping on a conference call, and go from team to team.
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‘We want to work with people who see and hear us. We want to feel like our work matters.’
In 2012, Google did an entire study on creating high-performing teams.
At the heart of Silicon Valley, they had many ideas about efficiency as a data-driven technology company. The ironic part is that in the end, their research came to the same conclusions that most good managers already know: Psychological safety in the workplace is the key.
Why focus on psychological safety?
As a leader, how we respond to people's mistakes directly influences whether we're creating a psychologically safe or unsafe environment.
How you react to someone making a mistake is the foundation. Do you blame them, make them feel stupid, or use it as a learning opportunity?
If you're playing basketball when you take a shot and miss, did you fail or miss a shot?
Taking shots and missing isn't a failure, yet making mistakes at work seems to be.
Sometimes you miss enough shots that you lose the game. But are you a failure if you lose? You've got a whole season ahead of you. Even if the season falls, you've got many seasons after that if you continue to improve and grow.
Psychological safety starts with you and your ability to react effectively to other people's mistakes.
Your reaction sets the grounds for whether the mistake becomes educational or something to hide, setting the tone for everything else.
What should managers know about psychological safety?
Its importance goes back to our ancestors.
As human beings, as tribal animals, our evolutionary and biological needs as a species help us understand the importance of psychological safety today.
Neuroscience shows that when we enter a high-stress situation, such as a conflict with a colleague or a boss, our brain shifts to a fear response, and the amygdala part of our brain takes over.
It almost entirely shuts down the frontal cortex and takes over the brain.
When the amygdala’s in control, we're in a fight, flight or freeze response, and the analytical aspects of our brain can’t function.
This neurological response might seem extreme, but it’s the reality.
1. Our brain processes a challenge from our boss and considers these events life-threatening.
Remember, we instinctively pack animals.
We're afraid of being ostracized from the group because if we're no longer in a tribe, we might not survive.
2. Whenever we face any danger, harsh criticism or a dismissive challenge, our brain reacts as though we’re in a life-threatening situation.
When you’re in a conflict with someone at work, they may listen to you, but their brain is emotionally flooded.
The workplace starts to feel threatening. If you were confronted, you spend the entire rest of the day thinking about it. Your primal instincts take over.
How do we expect our colleagues to be creative or innovative in this headspace? How do we expect them to come up with good ideas? How do we expect them to work well with people if fear shuts them down?
Your team isn’t going to believe in the good of people or give people the benefit of the doubt. They will focus on themselves and protect themselves because of their survival instincts.
On the flip side, when psychological safety DOES exist in the workplace, we see creativity, productivity and innovation rise over time as the level of psychological safety increases.
It takes time to build this level of trust within the workplace.
Psychological safety is an individual's perception of the consequences of taking risks, being vulnerable in front of their teammates and opening up. Being able to deal with the problems and not just hide from them.
What happens when you’re missing psychological safety?
When leaders are replaced by people who don’t consider community belonging and psychological safety, we see innovation and productivity decline.
When looking at a psychologically dangerous team, we find team members afraid of making and admitting mistakes because they’re too scared of the negative consequences from team members.
Fixing blame starts to become a big part of the team culture. Team members quickly blame each other when things go wrong, and they don't want to admit their mistakes.
Team members hold different values or beliefs on issues like how to operate, treat customers, treat each other, and communicate. When combined, this creates the ideal environment for a psychologically dangerous team.
On the other hand, psychologically safe teams can operate at high capacity. Team members feel motivated to come to work, making them successful and productive.
The teams with high psychological safety operate in a growth mindset because they don't see mistakes as a problem. Instead, they embrace their mistakes.
As we learn from a growth mindset, those who embrace their mistakes and see them as learning opportunities can move companies forward.
Now that you have mastered how to manage conflict - what is your plan of action for making an impact with your team?
Now that you have mastered how to create an environment of empowerment via the 3-P's - what is your plan of action for making an impact with your team?
Developing Your Communication, Empathy and Emotional Intelligence skills is start. What is your plan of action for implementing your learnings within your your team?
Now that you understand the differences in these titles - what is your plan of action for what you learned?
Assessing your team's behaviors is a start - but do you have a plan of action for the results?
Now that you have mastered the art of decision making - what is your plan of action for making an impact with your team?
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A DISC Behavior Assessment is the best way to understand your team's personalities.
Each DISC Assessment includes a Self Assessment and DISC Style evaluation worksheet
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