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Let's get right to it, shall we? This month we will cover how leaders should tackle creating a culture of psychological safety.🦺

Psychological Safety

Arguably one of the more important responsibilities of a leader is to create an environment of psychological safety.

What is psychological safety? When a leader has created an environment of psychological safety, their team feels comfortable admitting mistakes, a process is in place to dissect and learn from those mistakes, and everyone is encouraged to participate in idea generation and innovation to create a better outcome the next time.

How to foster psychological safety: Let's say you are sold and you want to make sure your team has psychological safety. How do you go about doing this?

We are going to cover three key ways that can help you do just that:

1. Recognize and celebrate the right things: sometimes the "right" thing to celebrate is the "wrong thing." Most strong leaders find it easy to recognize the instances where things went well and success was achieved. The best leaders understand how to celebrate and recognize smart risks even when they did not have the desired outcome. This supports psychological safety and it also encourages individuals to continue to push boundaries, to innovate, and to think creatively about how to achieve goals. Bonus: during this type of thinking and acting, the individuals and the team gain new insights, learn from doing, and become stronger overall.

2. Allow and support productive disagreement: this is a hard one - disagreement makes people uncomfortable and some people are down right avoidant. But my avoidant friends, do not avert your eyes when you see the potential for disagreement. Resist the urge to run and lean in instead. By modeling that it is ok to disagree, that disagreements won't result in bad feelings or retaliation, you give permission for divergent thinking. This creates a sense of freedom on your team. Make it safe to disagree and you will see more creative output.

3. Ask clarifying and challenging questions: One common misconception is that in order to create psychological safety and the resultant benefits that leaders must always be gentle. The reality is that the most psychologically safe environments are built on asking clarifying and challenging questions. Do not let group think creep in: challenge your team with questions that provoke new perspectives, model disagreement (see above 👆), and never. let a conversation pass without gaining the clarity you all need to be successful.

Hear it from someone way smarter than me:

While this is a recent short clip of Harvard Professor, Amy Edmondson talking about psychological safety in the context of healthcare providers, the points hold across all industries and roles.

Want a tip sheet? 👀

As promised each month, there will be some graphic, summary, or tip sheet for the topic covered that, hopefully, distills the ideas into the most concise and actionable manner.

Want to learn more about psychological safety?

Psychological safety has been in the business headlines quite a bit as of late and you can find a fair amount of content on it with a simple Google search. Here are a few resources worth checking out:

High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It — hbr.org

Five ways to build trust.

What Is Psychological Safety at Work? | CCL — www.ccl.org

What is psychological safety at work? Learn how to assess and enhance pscyhological safety in your organization to drive collaboration and innovation.

Lastly, we go a bit broader to understand what Google learned about psychological safety as the fundamental difference in the effectiveness of teams with an initiative code-named, Project Aristotle. Check out this NYT piece:

What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - The New York Times — www.nytimes.com

New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter.

Share Up and to the Right with your friends:

Up and to the Right - A Monthly Essay on Applied Leadership | Revue — www.getrevue.co

Up and to the Right - A Monthly Essay on Applied Leadership - A single leadership skill is addressed each month with relevant ideas, a curated reading list,

Bonus Content: Supercharge 1:1 Meetings

Check out this tweet to learn more about a framework I built for better 1:1 meetings. It actually dovetails nicely with creating a culture of psychological safety!

Well that's it for me...until next month. I hope each of you close out 2021 in good spirits and good health. See you in late January!

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