PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY A key difference between trust and psychological safety is that psychological safety is experienced at a group level. Psychological safety refers to the belief that you will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. People working together tend to have similar perceptions of whether or not the organisational climate is psychologically safe. Positive benefits from creating a culture of
psychological safety include putting conflict to good use, leveraging diversity, and helping to overcome geographic dispersion. Psychological safety is about being candid. While this
may well result in conflict, this should be productive, not destructive, and so it will enable inclusion of diverse viewpoints. Psychological safety enables different and new ideas to be heard; this can encourage minority groups to speak up. When employees are geographically spread, there is an
absence of perceptive cues that are usually gained from direct communication. This means that employees are not directly able to see or hear how their ideas and suggestions are being received. Developing a culture of psychological safety means that people will have confidence that they will not be embarrassed or humiliated if they make a mistake or present something that is not well received.
HIGH VERSUS LOW PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY The impact of a climate of psychological safety on organisational performance and agility depends upon the organisational standards applied to employees. When psychological safety is high and high standards are expected, a culture of learning and high performance can result. If high standards are not necessarily expected, high psychological safety generates a comfortable zone for employees – although this does not necessarily result in them stretching themselves to help contribute to greater organisational agility. If organisations have low psychological safety but
demand high standards, this will create anxiety for employees. A combination of low psychological safety and low standards is likely to generate apathy.
BENEFITS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY Where there is a climate of high psychological safety individuals will feel comfortable even when making mistakes and can learn from these. People will openly share ideas and this can result in better innovation, decision-making, organisational performance and agility. By contrast, where there is a climate of psychological
danger, people will fear making mistakes. A blame culture will result and so people are less likely to share views and ideas. This can result in a “common knowledge effect” whereby there is a tendency to defer to information or decisions held by the majority of the group. The CIPD has defined organisational agility as the
“ability to stay open to new directions and be continually proactive, helping to assess the limits or indeed risks of existing approaches and ensuring that leaders and
followers have an agile and change-ready mind-set to enable them, and ultimately the organisation, to keep moving, changing, adapting”. It is clear that if organisations are to be change-ready
and adaptable, a climate of psychological safety, alongside high trust relationships, is valuable.
HOW TO CREATE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY The behaviours required for a climate of psychological safety include: co-operation; knowledge sharing; inclusivity; helpfulness; mutual respect; and experimentation and creativity. To encourage these behaviours, organisations’ leaders
and managers must foster empathy, a fair and inclusive environment, a learning culture, a growth mind-set, and empowerment. Workplace practices must embrace delegated decision-making, participation, autonomy, and supportive leadership. Underpinning these is an appropriate organisational structure.
THE ROLE OF LINE MANAGERS At the recent Westminster Employment Forum policy conference: Next Steps for Women in the Workplace, Dr Meenakshi Krishnan, principal research fellow at the Institute of Employment Studies, highlighted the role of line managers in creating a culture of psychological safety, particularly in respect of widening the participation of minorities. Dr Krishnan noted that line managers are often the
gatekeepers to the kind of support that minorities often feel they do not get. To create psychological safety, line managers may need to be flexible in their demands. If they have very rigid ideas about what the ideal worker, productivity and cost efficiency look like, then creating an inclusive workplace will be problematic. Leaders and managers need the skills to have difficult
conversations in the workplace, engage with diversity dilemmas and be flexible around what kind of workplace adjustments might be needed by different people. Dr Krishnan pointed out that this is not just a question of HR policy; organisations must move beyond policy to ensuring that there are everyday practices of inclusion that really matter. Line managers lie at the heart of this.
SUPPORTING ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE To support an organisation’s capacity to change, leadership and management must review their attitudes to conflict, criticism, sharing information, and experimentation. They must also consider their degree of willingness to give people autonomy and support for their actions, their openness to new ideas (especially from below), their willingness to discuss sensitive issues openly, and the degree to which the organisational structure and culture facilities change. All of these issues must be underpinned by a
positive climate of high trust and psychological safety if organisations are to increase their agility in today’s dynamic global world.
59
GLOBAL LEADERSHIP
PS YCHOLOGIC AL SAFETY
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116
