4 Steps to Boost Psychological Safety at Your Workplace

Summary.   

Especially in tumultuous times, managers and their teams increasingly depend on candor, speed, and creativity to make progress. Creating psychological safety — the confidence that candor and vulnerability are welcome — in a workplace is truly challenging and takes an unusual degree of commitment and skill. But it can be done. The authors present four essential elements for creating psychological safety based on successful implementation at a Swedish financial group. First, focus on performance. Second, train both individuals and teams. Third, incorporate visualization. Finally, normalize work-related vulnerability. These steps comprise a powerful approach to altering the climate and capabilities of any team.close

These days, mentions of psychological safety in the business press are extraordinarily common, and its importance seems to be recognized across industries ranging from healthcare to tech to financial services. A popular topic before the pandemic, psychological safety has become that much more so due to its relevance to agility, diversity and inclusion, and remote working. But with this ubiquity comes misunderstanding. One crucial misconception among business leaders is that psychological safety will be present in any reasonably healthy work environment, like freedom from harassment or a commitment to keeping workers injury-free are. In fact, psychologically safe work environments are rare.

Creating psychological safety — the confidence that candor and vulnerability are welcome — in a workplace is truly challenging and takes an unusual degree of commitment and skill. The reason for this is simple: It’s natural for people to hold back ideas, be reluctant to ask questions, and shy away from disagreeing with the boss. Given this tendency, the free exchange of ideas, concerns, and questions is routinely hindered — far more often than most managers realize. To reverse it takes focus and effort; it’s a process of helping people develop new beliefs and behaviors, and none of it is easy or natural.

We’re not saying that it can’t be done. Quite the contrary — we have plenty of evidence that it can, and we view psychological safety as immensely valuable in any business that faces uncertainty or has a need for innovation. But it must be approached with the level of commitment and ambition it requires. Fortunately, we’ve seen that the effort pays off. At SEB, where Per was head of leadership and organizational development, an executive who worked with him on a four-month program to improve strategic progress by building psychological safety and dialogue skills told us, “The results came quicker than we expected, and they came in the shape of quicker decisions, better decisions. You slow down to speed up. Strategic problems that had been around for a while, we were able to solve them relatively quickly. Internally and with external stakeholders.”

What explains this success? We identified four essential elements based on Amy’s academic study of Per’s work at SEB, where he put into practice his decade of experimentation with different techniques that help management teams practice perspective taking and strategic focus while building a capacity for candor and vulnerability. Our approach to working with management teams applies equally to any team in which candid dialogue could play a role in its success. The substance of the decisions may differ, but the approach to skill development in the context of real work remains the same.

Focus on performance

First, emphasize what most executives want: performance. Building a psychologically safe work environment starts with shifting the narrative of the intervention from culture change or interpersonal skills in order to make the case that the quality and candor of conversation matters for results. This is not an abstract claim: Achieving performance in knowledge-intensive work relies on integrating the ideas and expertise of multiple people, which requires a willingness to speak candidly in a timely manner.

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