Cultivating Psychological Safety as a Manager

How to create a psychologically safe work environment

 

1. Take responsibility

 

As a leader, your role in fostering psychological safety at work is pivotal. Recognising your impact on creating this environment and taking responsibility for your presence and communication style is crucial.

Embracing this responsibility demands courage, as it means critically examining your actions and behaviours. A helpful strategy for self-improvement is dedicating time to self-reflection. Consider journaling at the day’s end or engaging with a coach to identify and address your blind spots.

 

“It’s up to the leaders of an organisation to create a safe culture.”

 

2. Take time for self-reflection 

 

As a manager, you might believe your door is always open for your team to share anything. Yet, the critical question is, do they genuinely feel at ease approaching you? Are they confident in sharing their ideas, questions, and concerns without fear of jeopardising their career or self-image? For instance, are team members able to openly express uncertainties about their role without worrying about contract renewal?

This scenario underscores the importance of temporarily setting aside your assumptions. You may assume a welcoming posture, but understanding how your team feels requires direct conversations with them. As psychologist Paul highlights, “Safety is subjective. What feels safe to you might be perceived differently by someone else.” This perspective urges a proactive approach to validating and fostering a truly open and psychologically safe environment.

 

3. Speak to your team

 

To truly understand your work culture from your team’s perspective, engage with them directly. Discover areas that need improvement and collaboratively explore alternative approaches.

Embrace openness to their insights. Teams are frequently well aware of existing issues and possess valuable suggestions for change.

Remember, not all may feel at ease sharing feedback in a psychologically unsafe environment. For such instances, consider conducting an anonymous survey as a secure means to gather honest input.

 

4. Listen to other people’s perspectives

 

When engaging with your team members, prioritise active listening. Often, we listen more to respond than to understand, our minds preoccupied with crafting our next reaction. This approach can foster misunderstandings, as we might miss the essence of what’s being communicated. By focusing on truly hearing what your team members express and encouraging questions for clarity, you’ll deepen mutual understanding. Such attentive listening make your team members feel genuinely recognised and valued.

 

5. Be open and clear about your boundaries

 

Creating psychological safety requires openness and vulnerability, balanced with maintaining personal boundaries. Over-sharing as a leader can lead to discomfort and undermine safety. Dr Brené Brown advises reflecting on the purpose behind sharing: Is it to foster trust and connection, enhance relationships, or merely to offload worries or vent frustrations? The latter can detract from a constructive environment. Prioritise sharing to build a supportive and understanding team dynamic.

 

6. Raise awareness

 

Creating a cultural change is something you ultimately do together. That’s why it’s important to raise awareness amongst your team so that they also know what psychological safety looks like. (For example, you might want to share this article with them).

 

By raising awareness within your organisation and talking about it openly, your team members will also find it easier to speak up when things go wrong.

 

In addition, make sure that team members know who they can speak to. 

 

7. Encourage your team members

 

As well as raising awareness about psychological safety, you can also actively encourage your team to communicate openly. For example, ask them how they prefer to work and how they prefer to communicate and encourage them to be open about this. 

 

Ensure there’s room for everyone’s voice, promoting a culture of open dialogue and attentive listening. This may involve encouraging quieter individuals to contribute their thoughts and urging more vocal members to practice active listening. The paramount goal is to ensure everyone feels acknowledged and valued.

 

8. Set an example for other people

 

As a leader, your job is to set an example and you can inspire other people to make the changes that are needed. Don’t underestimate the impact that you can make.

 

By now, you’ve probably gathered that developing psychological safety isn’t easy and it requires a lot of commitment. There’s a simple reason for this, explains Amy Edmondson. It’s normal for people to keep their ideas to themselves, be hesitant to ask questions and prefer not to speak up if they disagree with their manager. That’s why it’s so important for you as a manager to consciously create an environment where this is encouraged.

 

 

Remember, building psychological safety does not happen overnight. It’s a process that requires patience, understanding, and ongoing effort, not just from managers, but from the organisation as a whole. Be patient with yourself, and don’t hesitate to reach out for support and guidance when you need it.