Psychological safety is the elephant in the (virtual) room

In the hybrid model, the onus is on business leaders to cultivate a climate of candour to maximise the potential of their teams

Fri, 17 Sep, 2021 - 18:30

David Larkin, IMI

Psychological safety is a simple idea on paper for businesses, but a difficult one to embed and execute in practice. It is the concept that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.

Over the past 18 months, the nature of how we interact with our colleagues and peers has radically changed, with remote working depriving us of valuable face-to-face connections that build rapport, foster understanding, and drive innovation.

A McKinsey article dubbed psychological safety the “precursor to adaptive, innovative performance — at the individual, team and organisation level”.

However, with team members working remotely, the lines between work and life have been blurred, and the decreased visibility has led to some employees feeling isolated and stressed. These emotions are tied to reduced performance and negatively impact psychological safety.

Psychological safety and high-performing teams go hand in hand, and there is a recognition that an absence of psychological safety in workplaces can have major repercussions across the business. As many of us start to experience the reality of hybrid working, how leaders frame their approach to this will be crucial.

Alan Lyons, an IMI associate faculty and business psychologist, believes that managers must be inventive with their strategy.

“Many people are feeling disconnected and the thought of returning to the office — even in a hybrid form — can exacerbate those feelings,” he said.

“We must take advantage of the opportunity the disruption of the pandemic has afforded us and deliberately create a sense of psychological safety as a standard.

“Do not simply copy and paste old ways of working. Rather, use this as a chance to reimagine things so that people will feel empowered, productive, and purposeful.”

With psychological safety recognised as one of the strongest proven predictors of team effectiveness, as well as a driver of healthy group dynamics and high-quality decision making, finding the right balance is critical for managers.

Bruce Daisley, former Twitter EMEA vice president and a featured speaker at the IMI’s membership events this year, insists that psychological safety can have a transformative impact on how teams function.

“A large technology company did research on psychological safety, and they discovered that the best performers across the business were those who worked within psychologically safe teams,” he said.

“That was the common denominator. These teams had what we call ‘productive disagreement’, and it is an excellent way to go about team dynamics.”

Traditional team structures and dynamics are not what they used to be, however. Laura Delizonna, an executive coach and thought leader on psychological safety, believes the onus is on leaders to promote accessibility to knowledge to mitigate the downsides of teams being physically apart.

In the hybrid environment there is naturally going to be a feeling of being left out, of having a lack of access to information.

“Being able to create that social capital and social currency is important, so leaders and teams will have to make an intentional effort to bring those who are far away in close. Team check-ins give leaders a chance to do a temperature check. Take a few minutes to ask people about their emotional, physical, and intellectual state. That breeds familiarity, which leads to trust.”

While familiarity and trust are seen as key building blocks of successful, high-performing teams, the reality of the past 18 months is that, for many organisations, innovation has taken a hit. The pandemic forced many businesses to throw out their playbooks, redesigning their business models to cope with the volatile climate around them.

Growth through innovation

Dr Ian Kierans, an expert on growth through innovation, points to psychological safety as a key driver in making innovation an integral part of a business in the recovery phase.

“In the absence of some psychological safety, innovation does not happen,” he said. “This does not mean accepting high risks, repeated mistakes, or endless ideation. Rather, it means prioritising the next biggest assumptions and designing simple experiments to test them in fast and cheap ways, and then pivot your innovation or abandon it and move on to a more feasible opportunity.”

For leaders, the call to action is loud and clear: a redefined working world requires a forward-thinking mindset that is underpinned by psychological safety to ensure teams can thrive in a positive, empowering climate. Research shows that its successful implementation in an organisation starts at the top, with the behaviour of senior leaders acting as a model for others to follow.

Planting the seed of psychological safety in your organisation can deliver transformative results and act as a catalyst for business growth and prosperity. By making the first move as leaders and asking the right questions, psychological safety can go from a simple idea on paper to a business imperative that will push your organisation forward in practice.