Why Psychological Safety Isn't Just A Leadership Problem

The plane is about to take off, but something doesn’t quite look right. 🛫

As a co-pilot, you know this is potentially critical. Do you a) tell the captain, or b) hold your tongue?

The answer seems obvious. Yet fear of speaking up is scarily common — and the cause of numerous aviation disasters throughout history.

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What was missing in these situations was psychological safety. ‍

Psychological safety is feeling comfortable to speak up, even if that means challenging authority. And it’s a predictor of high-performing teams. ‍

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Obviously, psychological safety isn’t always a matter of life or death. But it is always a factor in team performance, regardless of the industry you work in. 

In fact, research by Google’s operations team found it to be the #1 most important factor in successful teams.

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Let’s look at how things can go wrong when an environment isn’t psychologically safe — and what you can do about it. 

❓ The Problem: 

In many workplaces, people hold back on admitting mistakes, asking questions, or offering ideas.

Why? According to researchers James Detert and Amy Edmondson, it all comes down to self-preservation. Team members:

• Fear they’ll be reprimanded for challenging the status quo.
• Aren’t comfortable sharing their ideas because they might be belittled.
• Don’t want to embarrass their bosses by showing them up in front of other subordinates.
• Feel vulnerable publicly engaging in the learning process (asking questions, making mistakes, etc).
  

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🌊 The Consequences: 

When team members hold back on opinions and suggestions, the team misses out on valuable opportunities to innovate and improve. 

And that’s the best-case scenario (😳).

Worst case: team members stay silent on crucial issues, and you keep barreling towards a disaster that could have otherwise been prevented. 

Take, for example, the Volkswagen “Dieselgate” scandal. As Amy Edmonson notes, VW’s fear-based leadership style created a “culture of silence” that permeated the entire division (and we all know how that turned out). 

✅ The Solution:

A psychologically safe environment is mostly seen as the responsibility of management. However, at Skoach, we approach it from both the leadership and team member side.

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Here are some ways to foster psychological safety:

For leaders:

• Be curious: make a conscious effort to ask questions and draw out ideas from your team — that might mean pre-planning some questions before you go into a meeting.‍
• Encourage participation: let your team know their input is valuable and that the team is stronger when they share it. ‍
• Show humility: asking for input is not a weakness — research shows that humble leaders are stronger and more successful.

For team members:

• Speak candidly: sometimes, it’s easy to assume your opinion is not welcome, when it is not the case. Give a chance to sharing an honest opinion in a constructive way. 
• Be open to feedback: learning how to receive and respond to feedback and looking at it as a growth opportunity makes team members more willing to take risks.

It goes deeper than that, of course. But creating psychological safety – and avoiding plane crashes – starts here.

💬 Quote

“It was amazing to see how connected the team is and the trust we have with each other to talk out loud about our concerns, anxieties, failures and worries." — a Skoach user after completing a team challenge to foster Psychological Safety.

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🤔 Something To Think About: