What is psychological safety, and why is it vital for prospering teams?
It’s likely many of us have experienced occasions where we’ve had to tread on eggshells around a manager. The impact of this can be detrimental to yourself, your team and to your productivity levels at work. Working relationships like this can often leave us feeling despondent, undervalued and questioning our abilities to reach our full potential.
On the flip side, the opposite of this is feeling heard, understood, and able to voice your ideas, insights, and opinions.
It is these types of managers whose teams feel empowered to speak up, trusted to make decisions, and have their points of view acknowledged without fear of being judged, punished, or faced with negative energy.
Your working environment and the people around you significantly impact job satisfaction and engagement. When managing a team, creating an inclusive environment, encouraging feedback, respectful challenge and open exchange of ideas is often referred to as psychological safety. It has a profound influence on employee experience.
Knowing your impact
In today’s workplace, we are delivering leadership under substantially increased levels of complexity, pace and expectation — from all angles of our internal and external worlds. But, a manager’s job remains the same, to help get the best out of their teams, to help ensure both individuals and businesses reach their full potential.
Great managers do this by encouraging and fostering environments of mutual trust and respect. Poor managers may try to achieve the same results by creating an environment led by fear, but often, this results in a team that cannot balance where they stand and how to approach their leaders or their work.
A manager’s leadership style and guidance have an undeniable impact on the motivations and productivity of their line reports and colleagues. Research from Accenture found that workplaces with strong psychological safety see a 76% increase in employee engagement and a 50% rise in productivity—this positive impact is truly staggering.
A recent Boston Consulting Group study also found that psychological safety with a direct manager can help to boost feelings of inclusion and combat employee burnout – an important note for everyone to consider in today’s fast-paced working culture. Additionally, further research published in Harvard Business Review supports this, indicating environments with high trust amongst teams reported a 74% reduction in stress and, in turn, saw a 40% decrease in employee burnout – which are all inarguably strong and vitally important statistics to consider.
Neuroscience and the impact on the brain
As society becomes more progressive and the world more mindful of the radical shift in working structures, older command and control leadership styles don’t work anymore. These archaic-style behaviours induce fear, anxiety and stress, which activate the hormone cortisol in the brain. Cortisol closes down the effective functioning of the prefrontal cortex; our big thinking, ideas and concepts, connecting the dots part of the brain. This is essential for our creative thought process and insight.
Cortisol mobilises the body for energy (also known as the fight, flight or freeze response), putting the entire metabolism on high alert. As a result of this, we lose our ability to think rationally and to problem-solve. This human reaction is the exact opposite of what is needed in the modern day workplace.
Elevated cortisol levels are a clear indicator of stress, and studies have shown chronic stress in the workplace can be associated with health issues, including anxiety, depression, cardiovascular problems, and impaired cognitive performance.
Fear also encourages us to have negative thought processes. These can, in turn, be difficult for more junior team members, with less lived experience in these scenarios, to combat. Overcoming this requires focus, mental agility and the self-awareness to train yourself to avoid these negative emotions – which is no easy feat.
In contrast, another neurochemistry; oxytocin — brings people together, builds trust and fosters collaboration. In fact, our brains, because of our limbic region, are hardwired to connect to others, thanks to this mammalian and evolutionary part of the brain.
As leaders and managers, when we create environments where people feel connected, supported, valued, and in a place of psychological safety, it’s no surprise that inspiration, innovation, creativity, and performance flourish. Empathetic leadership, characterised by openness and authenticity, encourages learning, which in turn creates optimum conditions for innovation.
As a leader, how do I create a psychologically safe environment?
The key to creating psychologically safe environments for your reports and teams is to remain approachable and transparent while maintaining dynamic feedback loops that work both ways. Encourage individuals to feel confident in coming to you with ideas, feedback, and solutions while also feeling comfortable raising any constructive criticism or suggestions for growth in your teams.
It’s not always easy, but encouraging a two-way dialogue built on values of trust, openness, and honesty will strengthen your rapport with your teams.
Self-awareness and being aware of how you show up every day play a huge factor in this—for both your colleagues and for yourself. Inconsistent behaviours have a detrimental effect on those around you while working to balance your emotions as a manager will help you provide space for safe, nonjudgmental communication that builds trust.
We spend a lot of our lives working and spending time with colleagues so remembering your energy is often mirrored by those around you is vital. Taking accountability for the impact and influence you have on your team is a sign of good leadership. This means regularly reflecting on your behaviours and reactions, while encouraging your teams to provide 360 reviews on their employee experience too.
Your body language speaks volumes
As leaders and managers, we are tasked with delivering ongoing encouragement, feedback, praise and sometimes harder things to discuss, like constructive criticism or negative feedback. How you choose to approach those situations goes beyond just verbal cues and can result in potential conflict or amicable resolution.
Therefore, it is important to acknowledge how your tone of voice and body language can alter the way your communication is delivered and received.
Tips here to encourage psychological safety for your reports can include matching the energy and tone of those around you, taking conversations away from the office into a more relaxed environment such as a walk outside, or quite simply asking your reports and teams how they like to receive feedback.
Some individuals may prefer a more straightforward, to-the-point delivery, while others will want to understand the context behind your feedback and decisions more thoroughly. Speaking slowly can also help you maintain a level of calmness and composure between yourself and the individual you are speaking with.
Pausing for colleagues to speak and respond is also important for fostering a safe environment where your teams feel empowered to voice any concerns. Last but by no means least, actively listening to their responses, be that ambitions or needs will help demonstrate that you are a leader who cares about not only their growth, progression, and role within your business but also their overall well-being.
Safety is a basic human need
Life, both professionally and personally, is all about the relationships we build and effective leadership is demonstrated in how we relate to others.
As leaders, we must become conscious of our behaviour — especially because followers mimic a leader’s actions. And to be effective leaders, we must become more self-aware.
Psychological safety, as outlined in this blog, is a basic human need, and as a result, will make for a healthier, happier workforce whereby individuals feel their contributions are valued and their voices are heard.
Curious to find out more about how Imagine Beyond creates psychological safety in their workshops and team days? Get in touch here.
