Psychological safety is the notion that you will not be penalised or humiliated if you express your thoughts, questions, worries, or errors. Now the question is, what exactly is psychological safety at work?
It is a common understanding among team members that others will not shame, reject, or criticise you for speaking up. People feel more at ease in their own skin when there is psychological safety in the job. They bring their whole self to work and are comfortable putting everything on the table.
As a manager, you must hold employees accountable for performance measures, but your work does not end there. You must also sustain employee engagement by making individuals feel at ease and creating a common idea that the team is risk-free. You could consider applying these approaches to establish psychological safety at the workplace if you want to improve your team atmosphere and impact on quality well-being of employees.
Discussions are an excellent opportunity to demonstrate desirable conduct for your entire team. Leave your phone in another room and make eye contact with your coworkers to indicate that you are paying attention. Find strategies to include team members who don't often speak out in the discourse. Make it more about wanting to know what people think rather than criticising their silence. Meaningful cooperation is facilitated by creating an environment in which employees feel free to communicate their thoughts and ideas.
If you genuinely want your employees to openly share their ideas, you must create an environment in which they feel comfortable doing so. Avoid judgement while you brainstorm. Remember that you don't have to act on every suggestion; nonetheless, thanking others for their contributions and expressing gratitude for their suggestions can go a long way toward fostering psychological safety.
When anything goes wrong, it's simple to search for someone to blame. Focus on strategies to develop and sustain psychological safety in the workplace.
Ask "How can we make sure this happens better next time?" instead of "What occurred and why?" Take note of the emphasis on collaborative language: How can we ensure that this happens easily the next time? Instead of blaming a person for a mistake, we could convert accountability into a collective effort.
It is your obligation as a leader to make the final choice on a plethora of problems. Your staff needs to know that you're confident in your role, but also that you're adaptable and responsive to their input. Employees feel empowered to provide feedback when they are psychologically secure. Invite your team to disagree with you and push back. While this may be unsettling at first, remember that healthy disagreement leads to better judgments and greater responsibility, so it's a win-win situation.
Failure may be terrifying, but as a leader, you can help your colleagues cope by owning up to your mistakes and recognising setbacks as lessons learned. Ask employees on a regular basis what they've done that hasn't gone as planned and what they've learnt from those experiences. This will assist team members to understand that they will not be penalised if they make a mistake, and they will feel more comfortable taking chances and speaking out as a result.
The attitude you establish for your team as a leader has the potential to make or break their success and engagement. You will empower your employees to share their ideas, learnings, and concerns when you use these strategies to promote psychological safety, which will boost your team's performance.
