Do you welcome failure and celebrate discovery rather than rewarding reached goals? I am inspired by Amy Edmondson, who, for most of her career, researched and taught in an area where she laid the foundation for the concept of “psychological safety.” 

You may wonder what psychological safety is and why I have been reading books, taking Amy’s Master Class (on the web), and starting book circles at work. And it is because of how easy it is to understand, almost self-evident, yet oh-so fundamental prerequisite for a good work environment where teams achieve greater success and feel better. It is a mindset that is the key to creating a long-term growing and profitable company where employees thrive, develop and have fun together. It is particularly important in the consulting industry, where I have worked for 20 years and where the motivation of the employees means everything for joint success. And all leaders, managers, and CEOs need to understand that with the role comes an extra big responsibility to lay the foundation for a workplace with the greatest possible psychological security.

Psychological security can be described as a feeling of permission

Psychological safety is the belief and the expectation that you can speak up. At work, this can take the form of disagreeing with the boss, admitting a mistake, or pointing out a failure you saw or did. Simply put, psychological safety is a feeling of permission.

However, it is worth pointing out that psychological security does not mean being nice or guaranteeing that any idea will be cheered, permission to whine, freedom from conflict, or permission to relax.

Amy Edmondson is convinced that leaders have two jobs: to maintain high standards themselves and to create a learning environment or an environment of safety. But psychological security is not the goal. Leaders have company goals to focus on, but those goals are more likely to be achieved in a workplace shaped by psychological safety.

It matters a lot how the management reacts to their colleagues. The status of someone’s role is usually closely linked to how much that person’s voice is heard, but the research that Amy Edmondson refers to has shown that in companies where management pays attention to and responds to employees who speak up, results increase. I think it’s based on the same foundation as the great Aristotle study at Google that found that it wasn’t the composition of different personalities of the teams that were the key to the best collaboration or success of the team, but how evenly the team distributed the floor and space in meetings and in work between each other.

Are you curious to test whether your team seems to experience psychological safety?

Then ask yourself how often in your team you hear:

• Good news -or- Bad news
• Progress -or- Problems
• Statements -or- Questions
• Agree with -or- Disagree
• “Everything is fine” -or- asking for help

As a leader, it may feel good if the answers to the questions you ask yourself lean to the left, but in real life, it can translate to that there is a risk that you simply need access to the actual picture and that your employees are holding back. And if they do not speak up, the team and the organization are at risk.

What can we then do to create psychological security?

You can dive deep into this in Amy Edmondson’s “Psychological safety at work” book. But if not, here is my short summary of it:

1. Frame the work to be done by building a shared understanding of the new, complex, and uncertain that lies ahead and what it requires.
2. As a leader, invite participation, for example, by asking good and honest questions. E.g., “What are we missing?” or “Who has a different perspective?.”
3. And to gratefully respond productively, thoughtfully, and with warmth when colleagues speak up regardless of whether it’s bad news, admitting a mistake, asking for help, or something else that requires courage to lift.

It is possible to connect the three steps to three decisive leadership qualities; framing = humility, invitation = curiosity, and giving a response = empathy.

Another thing is that you can see yourself as a researcher rather than a manager. A researcher asks questions instead of providing answers, gives their teams guidance, helps understand the data instead of evaluating/monitoring, welcomes failure, and celebrates discoveries instead of rewarding when goals are reached. And perhaps most of all: a manager is not dependent on psychological security, while a researcher is!

And perhaps, our treatment and response to employees are the keys to creating a fearless environment that guarantees greater creativity, problem-solving, innovation, and success. It will help us work together, aim high, fail and learn faster.

 

More about the subject:

https://www.motivation.se/innehall/amy-edmonson-om-det-enklaste-sattet-att-skapa-psykologisk-trygghet/

https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/the-fearless-organization-psykologisk-trygghet-pa-jobbet-9789152358399

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6451

 

/Ola Persson