What does “safe” look like?
Behaviors and Psychological Safety
“Organisations can foster a virtuous cycle of self-reinforcing interactions where team members learn from one another that risks are rewarded and mistakes are expected.”
While completing my MSc in Organizational Psychology my focus was on team dynamics, particularly behaviors linked to psychological safety. Psychological safety (PS), the sense that it is possible to take social and professional risks in a workplace or team, is a topic of great interest to modern workplaces. PS allows people to ask for help, speak up with concerns, provide feedback, and innovate without fear of judgment, ridicule, or punishment. Higher PS has been strongly linked to positive outcomes like improved performance, well-being, risk-assessment and communication. It has also been associated with lower stress and risk of burnout, and to moderate the disparate outcomes associated with ethnic diversity, gender, and age. In the fast-paced, uncertain modern workforce where innovation and collaboration are essential for success, PS and the behaviors associated with it are crucial to organisations.
What I found during my dissertation research was that essentially all behaviors associated with PS fall into one of two categories: relational and task-oriented. Relational behaviors foster social connection and positive feelings toward coworkers. They include active listening, thanking teammates or acknowledging contributions, telling jokes, and celebrating successes. Task-oriented behaviors are behaviors which improve team or individual efficacy, or performance. These behaviors, such as speaking up about errors and concerns, asking questions, sharing knowledge, and making suggestions. These behaviors are essential for learning, improving, and experimenting, but require high PS in a team to overcome fear of failure or damage to one’s reputation.
“Psychological safety is linked to improved performance, creativity, and resilience.”
Teams can be strong in one or the other, or both, or they can engage in disruptive behaviors which damage trust and PS, like interrupting, dismissing, or belittling. The balance of relational and effectual behaviors, along with the frequency of disruptive behaviors, creates the work climate, which has a self-reinforcing effect. It is not true to say either that these behaviors create PS, or that they are purely outcomes of a team’s PS levels, but more to say that behaviors have a “reciprocal, reinforcing relationship” with PS, in the words of Jasper Hoenderdos. For example, in a workplace where people regularly speak up with ideas, ask questions, and give honest feedback, a new team member will feel safer to engage in those effectual behaviors, which reinforces the prevalence of those behaviors in the workplace.
Given the importance of PS, it is understandable that organisations want a clear answer to the question of what creates PS, but there are so many confounding factors, from people’s personal beliefs and biases, individual relationships, background, and group history, to the effects of an urgent deadline, a guest observer, or a stressful economic climate that it is difficult to point to a single cause. However, the findings of this research offer a starting place for improving PS: by looking at relational and effectual behaviors, and encouraging employees to prioritize them, organisations can foster a virtuous cycle of self-reinforcing interactions where team members learn from one another that risks are rewarded and mistakes are expected. These environments are more productive, more creative, and more resilient to the stressors and rapid changes of the modern working world.
For more information on my research process and findings, or to read my full dissertation, get in touch!