Leading to create psychological safety
HOW TO CREATE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY AND TRUST AT THE WORKPLACE
Psychological safety is the difference between, “How could you let that project fail?” and “What can we learn from that?”
“Psychological safety” is believing you have the freedom to speak your mind, ask questions, and make mistakes without negative consequences. Teams in a psychologically safe culture often take risks, voice opinions, are creative, experiment, and embrace mistakes & missteps as learning opportunities.
As someone who develops leaders and helps workplaces cultivate cultures that support diversity, equity, and inclusion, I can tell you many stories about the importance of psychological safety and trust play in healthy work environments. It’s not just a buzzword of the modern workplace: When employees feel safe, heard, and valued, the business reaps real rewards from high performing teams with increased engagement, creativity, productivity, and retention.
Here, I’ll share a few tips for leaders looking to build psychological safety and trust in the workplace. Then we’ll wrap things up with a call to action for leaders.
If you’re a leader, YOU are in a position to build psychological safety at work. Here’s how to do it:
1. CONVERSATION
Have diligent conversations. Encourage open, honest communication by actively listening to your employees' feedback, ideas, and concerns without judgment.
Engage in dialogue that fosters mutual understanding and respect. Be willing to acknowledge your own mistakes and limitations. (I wrote a whole post on how to have diligent conversations here →)
When you’re having diligent conversations with each and every member of your team, your knowledge of what they need, want, and aspire to will begin to effortlessly inform your ability to communicate with every member of your team. The goal is to make these conversations easy to have, and I promise you they get easier as you practice.
2. CONSISTENCY
Consistency starts with your 1:1s. I believe the #1 most important factor to create psychologically safe environments is with intentional 1:1 check-ins. As humans, we naturally expect consistency in conversation – especially of our leaders. When you create strong, consistent patterns of communication, you’re on your way to building (you knew where this was going…) trust.
You can build trust by following through on your commitments, being transparent about your decision-making process, and treating all employees fairly and equitably. Your goal is to do this consistently across every team member, minimizing any risk of favoritism. Think of it this way: Your team needs to feel like everyone’s getting the same manager.
3. CONFIDENTIALITY
Commit to confidentiality. For your people to feel like they can be vulnerable in their communication, they need to know the things they share are kept between you and them. Be clear about the boundaries of confidentiality, and commit to never breaking them.
Don’t forget: Trust goes both ways. From the employee’s perspective, they need to know information isn’t being kept from them, and that you’re being transparent. Again, this gets easier with intentional practice.
4. CUES
How do you measure whether psychological safety and trust are part of your work culture? Here are some common cues that might indicate the trust level on your team needs your attention:
One employee expresses hesitancy to work with another employee
Someone hints that a teammate isn’t pulling their weight
You get feedback around a perceived unfairness (ex: “Why does that person get to work from home more than I do?”)
There are complaints that all the good projects are consistently going to specific people
Rumors are circulating about your leadership or the company’s overall leadership
This is why consistent, confidential 1:1s with open, listening communication are so crucial – these conversations give you the opportunity to pick up on any of the above cues.
Is it time to make some adjustments?
Questions you can ask yourself:
Have I been critical of people who take risks that aren’t successful?
Do my team members freely share ideas, voice concerns, and talk about their mistakes?
Do I treat everyone’s opinion as equally valid – no matter what their role or seniority?
Do I encourage people to take risks and experiment, being clear that mistakes are simply a learning opportunity, not a trigger for a negative consequence?
Am I open about sharing my own knowledge, experience, and mistakes so the team as a whole can learn from them?
Take the responsibility to advocate for an environment where your team feel psychologically safe to express challenges, make mistakes, and go out on a limb.
Keep dialogue open between you and your team – allowing and even inviting them to vent and share frustrations so these things don’t build up over time. Look at your leadership behaviors and make sure you’re taking care of their frustrations in the early stages – before they impact performance, or spread and impact the morale of the entire team. Be willing to have difficult conversations early.
upcoming workshop
If you’re feeling like you need some tools or guidance on how to make the changes you need to make for your team to benefit from psychological safety, I can help. I offer a workshop called Building Trust that covers the essentials of how to build and maintain trust-based relationships. Trust vs Psychological safety is a hard relationship to navigate.
Creating psychological safety and trust in the workplace is essential for promoting employee engagement, creativity, and productivity. By prioritizing team psychological safety, you can lead a team where trust, high-performance, and equity are part of its fabric, where team members stick around and thrive, and where you experience satisfaction, purpose, and enjoyment in coming to work.
And if you’re really committed to the idea of cultivating a culture of psychological safety, what you’ll soon discover is a wider diversity of perspectives being expressed and discussed as your team opens up. And that’s a recipe for magic.
Lead the way,
