The Role of Psychological Safety

Stephan Wiedner is a psychological safety expert whose career has focused on developing sustainable high performance leaders, teams, and organisations.

Stephen’s interest in psychological safety spans twenty years and is based around his interest in psychology, technology and how to bring them together to help people live fulfilling lives and make teams and organisations more sustainable and effective over time.

Psychological safety is also important in schools as well. They are workplaces and places where its important for people to speak up because you want different opinions to be shared and debate and discussion to expand learning and knowledge. Reportedly there is currently an agenda to close down free speech and remove the ability to debate and disagree to protect us from ourselves. People often don’t realise that psychological safety isn’t about not talking about things - it’s about being safe to talk in a way that is acceptable to everybody.

The definition of psychological safety used by Stephen is from Amy Edmondson – ‘that psychological safety is a belief that you can share ideas concerns, mistakes etc within the work environment without the fear of reprimand’. That gives a subtle distinction that is critical and informed because its happening all the time. We’re constantly trying to manage our reputations and will refrain from speaking up because we don't want to look as if we’re going against the grain or by asking a question that we fear will make us look ‘stupid’. We are constantly protecting ourselves by withholding information.

There is a difference between explicit criticism and an inferred or implied reprimand. This is one of the challenges because we need resilient people and organisations who are able to have adult conversations where conflict creates the diversity you need to get innovation and energy flowing. Sometimes the organisation takes the rap for having people who aren’t resilient enough to have these types of conversations.

When we think about these challenging conversations our desire is to move towards politeness. Where there is a rupture within a team or where people don't necessarily agree, there is often a tension to get to a place where it is a little less uncomfortable, where it’s ‘nice’. We need to move not to ‘nice’ but to a place where we can generate fresh and new ideas, where we can have discussions that move the organisation, the team or a group of individuals to a new place, a new solution or a new way of doing things. This is what psychological safety is facilitating. It’s learning within a group environment - that is how we overcome any change in the world

The research Stephen is involved in shows that psychological safety is built on respect. The area he is focusing on is that of interpersonal skills - what are the specific interpersonal that lead to psychological safety within a team. Respect is very high on the list as is empathy and the desire or willingness to put yourself in someone else's shoes.  To start to consider how other people are looking at the world needs a certain level of curiosity and from a leader or manager and is also a demonstration of respect.

Respect is perhaps something we have forgotten how to do. There is a focus on self-care, self-respect, self-organisation and self-awareness and the Mecentric culture means we have forgotten how to collaborate well. The constant push for connection online is a completely different form of communication to that in the past and the immediate and long-term impact isn’t really known. A lot virtual relationships seem to be rather tenuous and seemingly not built on a sold foundation of respect or care but on transaction through the sharing a mutual dopamine hit so are they that meaningful?

Psychological safety is a very powerful thing but people can mistake it. It isn’t about agreeing. There is a need to foster psychological safety by getting peoples opinions and sharing what’s going on but leaders and managers some leaders seem to think that by asking you need to agree. What psychological safety is about is having the courage to speak up and the confidence that you know you’ll be heard. It's the job of the leader to give the confidence that they will be heard and listen to their input but it's the leader that still needs to make the decisions.

In high performance teams there is pressure and it doesn't always feel rosy and can be uncomfortable especially when people provide competing ideas. It’s fast moving, rigorous and challenging, an environment for growth, development and expansion on what exists. It’s all about an adult culture - treating people as adults and expecting to be treated as an adult. People can say what needs to be said because no-one is treating you like a child, patronising or over-parenting you. It’s about establishing an adult contract between people.

Stephen feels that in order to really be able to speak up you need to have the courage to have that conversation – to be disagreeable or to give critical feedback and have what it takes to get the words out. It might feel challenging but if you flip the script it’s not about being disagreeable, its about being respectful. You provide the opportunity to improve, to hear the feedback and action it.  Some leaders feel they are babysitting people at work, they feel it’s their job but don't realise the correlation between the way their team performs and their actions.

Stephen’s research project is looking at the interpersonal skills of leaders and psychological safety - that leaders who naturally possess these interpersonal skills will foster psychological safety and an environment where people can be more adult-like and contribute and communicate in a way that moves the organisation forward. He calls this Management Faciliative Interpersonal Skills. The starting point is to assess leaders and managers interpersonal skills then, through training and development, these skills can be improved.  Because these skills can be identified they can be made more tangible. Interpersonal skills are often described as soft skills but because they can be identified they can be assessed and then improved and measured through deliberate practice.

You can find out more about Stephen at zarango  A free psychological safety assessment for a team at zarango/freepsi

Stephens research study is about measuring the psychological safety of a team and the interpersonal skills of the leader of that team. If you are interested in volunteering to participate in the study please go to the Zarango contact page.

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