Following are the ways you, as a leader, can create a psychologically safe environment at your workplace.
1. Mold the “Golden rule”
You must have heard “treat others as you’d like to be treated”. In building psychological safety, break this rule and treat your team members as they like to be treated. Ask them openly about how they would like to change the frequency of meetings, communication styles, decorum, types of feedback, etc.
Before you get the most out of them, first know them. This will give you an idea about the future dealings and possible outcomes your team can produce. By doing this your team members will also trust you more. A great manager should work with his team by keeping in mind what they want. Communication and interpersonal risk-taking become far safer if you are aware of what they want and how they like to be treated.
2. Be the last to speak
Don’t barge in the conference room and start elaborating what you think the problem is and what your solution would be. Hold your opinions to yourself until everyone else has taken part in the discussion. Let them think through the challenges and draw out their conclusions. Speak at the end; It will have three benefits.
- One, everyone would give their opinion without any biases which you could invoke by providing your thoughts on the subject at the start.
- Two, every team member would think that they have contributed.
- Three, you will know what everybody thinks about the matter and what are their conclusions.
Be an active listener. Ask for opinions and then ask questions to try to understand why they have the opinion they have.
3. Be Empathetic
Lead them with empathy. Leave ego behind. Empathy is one of the key factors in making your team feel comfortable and safe. Support them genuinely and in return, they will support your organization a hundred-fold.
4. Be expressive and encourage it in others
You make connections with people by letting them know you. So express yourself in front of your team members. Make them see that it’s ok for them to do the same. Keep it as simple as possible, like share a personal story in a meeting, update your profile on social platforms of the company. Take interest when they express themselves. When they do so, that is an indication that their workplace environment is psychologically safe.
5. Promote a risk-taking attitude
Creativity and innovation start by taking (reasonable) risks. Ed Catmull and the team at Pixar used this risk-taking approach and encouraged all ideas good or bad, beneficial or not. This approach makes everyone feel comfortable sharing their half-thoughts or ideas which can be further be perfected by the whole team. This is about being vulnerable without the fear of penalty-that is where creativity begins.
6. Take active feedback
Ask for feeddback. Paul Santagata, head of industry at Google suggested that you should end difficult conversations by asking the following questions:
- “What worked and what didn’t work in my delivery?”
- “How did it feel to hear this message?”
- “How could I have presented it more effectively?”
While some employees are comfortable in giving direct feedback in a meeting, others would like to have more time to think about it. Let them give their feedback through emails and other collaboration tools, besides in-person discussions.
7. Choose curiosity over blame
If you make your team members feel that you are blaming them when something doesn’t go to plan, it build defensive behaviours. Instead of blaming, use curiosity. Curiosity and asking questions assists leaders to hear thoughts and facts you may not have been aware of. So be curious.
