Creating and Maintaining a Psychologically Safe Workplace

It can be nerve-racking for people to ask a question or offer an idea to their manager – and those nerves only multiply if they’re expressing disagreement. If the company culture discourages or even punishes employees who speak their mind, it can lead employees to distrust their leader and become apathetic about their jobs.

To have a psychologically safe workplace, employees need to feel safe to ask questions, and they need to be empowered to take calculated risks. They should be able to voice their ideas or concerns, and they shouldn’t be afraid to admit mistakes.

Company leaders are responsible for creating a psychologically safe workplace. By setting expectations early with employees (even as early as their interview), managers establish a tone that their office is one where they can feel psychologically safe. This is particularly important if they’re coming from an employer where speaking freely and openly wasn’t encouraged.

How can managers promote a psychologically safe environment?

I don’t believe that managers are 100% responsible for fostering and maintaining a psychologically safe work environment — but the onus is on the manager to help employees get to a point where they feel comfortable using their voice.

• Model the behavior. “Do as I say and not as I do” won’t work here. This mostly entails being honest with yourself and others. If your employees see you admitting a mistake and working to rectify it, they’ll see it’s ok to admit when they make one. Lead by example.
• Be vulnerable and encourage feedback. It’s easy to say you “have an open-door policy.” But your reaction when someone actually comes to you with feedback is critical. Build trust by showing your employees that you take what they have to say seriously. Don’t dismiss their ideas and show appreciation when they come forward.
• Be genuine when considering their ideas. Not every idea or risk is worth pursuing. If this is the case, don’t dismiss it out of hand. Take time to tell them why and show them you have looked at their idea from all angles. Have a dialogue with your employees if they have follow-up questions.
• Be available. It should be easy for your employees to find you if they need you. Just as an example, say your employees work on a hybrid schedule. You as their manager need to be there on the same days your employees are. If you aren’t, and the only time your employees hear from you is through email or instant chat when you’re requesting something, apathy will set in because they never see you.
• Create a learning culture. Embrace diverse perspectives because things will change. A mistake isn’t the only thing that signals that a change might be necessary. A learning culture means you’re willing to change direction based on new information.
• Encourage calculated risk-taking. The key word here is “calculated.” When employees come to you with an idea, ask questions. I tend to be more data driven than I am reliant on gut feelings, so I’m always asking for evidence. What’s the risk vs. reward? Share information to help the employee gain perspective and improve their decision making.
• Employees have to be willing participants. Managers can lay the groundwork for all of this, but employees need to carry that torch with each other. Psychological safety involves some give and take, which means employees eventually need to embody the values you’re promoting.

All of these things won’t happen right away. They might take weeks or months, even a year, for the idea of psychological safety to become ingrained. Don’t be troubled if they remain meek and soft-spoken for a while; they just need time to come out of their shell.

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Continuously improve your work environment

As your business evolves, so must you. When you learn new things about your employees, use that evidence to your advantage to adjust your strategy for maintaining a psychologically safe environment.

You also have to be comfortable with taking the good with the bad. You encourage risk-taking, but what if that risk doesn’t work out? You encourage feedback, but what if that feedback is negative? Be just as proactive about improving the things that aren’t working as you are about celebrating the positives.

Remember that providing a psychologically safe environment means you appreciate when an employee speaks up, no matter what they say.
 

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