Psychological safety and performance
Psychological safety is the belief that one can speak up and take risks without fear of negative consequences. In the workplace, psychological safety can have a significant impact on employee performance and overall organizational success. Research has shown that creating a psychologically safe work environment can lead to higher employee engagement, increased creativity, and improved team performance. In this article, we will explore the link between creating psychological safety for your employees and the high performance that follows.
Here are a few reasons why creating that environment for your team is so important.
Increased Employee Engagement: A study by Gallup found that only 34% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, which means that most employees are not emotionally invested in their work or their company. Creating a psychologically safe work environment can increase employee engagement by providing employees with the support and resources they need to perform their best. When employees feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, and taking risks, they are more likely to feel connected to their work and their company. [1]
Increased Creativity: When employees feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to be creative and innovative. They are more likely to share ideas and collaborate with others, leading to new and innovative solutions. A study by Google found that psychological safety was the most important factor in creating high-performing teams. Teams that felt psychologically safe were more likely to take risks, share ideas, and make better decisions. [2]
Improved Team Performance: Psychological safety can also improve team performance by promoting trust, communication, and collaboration. When team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas, they are more likely to work together effectively and achieve common goals. A study by the Harvard Business Review found that teams with high psychological safety had higher levels of engagement, better communication, and improved performance. [3]
Reduced Turnover: Creating a psychologically safe work environment can also reduce employee turnover. When employees feel valued and supported, they are more likely to stay with their company long-term. This can save businesses time and money on recruiting and training new employees. A study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that companies with a positive organizational culture had lower turnover rates than those with a negative culture. [4]
Creating a psychologically safe work environment can have a significant impact on employee performance and overall organizational success. By promoting employee engagement, creativity, teamwork, and reducing turnover, businesses can improve their bottom line and create a culture of excellence.
Ok…so now we know how important it is for the team but how confident are you on how your team feels?
here is a tough question you should ask yourself:
Do you think your team feels safe in their role?
Most common answer - Of course they do!
Most honest answer - They should/I think they do
Most realistic answer - probably not
Even with some reassuring words, team members often feel insecure in their jobs. This can develop from a variety of reasons but if you want your team to excel in their performance, then you must know the answer to how they feel.
Quick litmus test
How easy it is for your team to admit failures or speak their mind without fear?
Do you have a high churn rate?
Is your team highly engaged in meetings and/or offering opinions/questions?
Hard questions to honestly answer but they will give you a good insight into how safe your team members are feeling. Having a culture where team members feel easily able to do the above points has been proven to deliver high growth.
Unfortunately, it is often the managers themselves that are standing in the way of achieving high performance. And yes, there are many different reasons as to why team members won't feel safe or secure, but one of the most common/biggest is the culture around failing.
First of all, you need to realise that failing isn't bad. Failing forward is one of the most successful growth strategies you can have in marketing. And yet, most managers struggle with creating an environment that makes their team comfortable in failing.
This is usually down to two reasons:
1) they don't know how their team feels (yikes!) or
2) they struggle with balancing an environment that is not strict on mistakes for fear of creating an anything-goes attitude.
Fortunately, we can easily address those roadblocks. Before we get there let's just quickly address the hopefully non-existent elephant in the room, encouraging failing. If you haven't read my post on failing forward, then please quickly do so. But for those who don't want to leave just yet, a quick summary.
False belief
A strict culture around failing makes sure people deliver their best work.
Actuality
Studies have shown that organizations where team members feel safe to admit failures experience high performance and creativity through learning.
Alright, and we're back. Now that we agree that you need an open culture around failing, why don't most companies have this? Well, from an early stage we associate failure with fault and unfortunately create an environment around blaming or more commonly known as the blame game. Oddly enough, the failure and the fault do not always land on the same person. To help illustrate this point, have a look at the spectrum of failures taken from the Harvard Business Review.
Take the following example: A person in your team does not upload a report by the agreed time.
Now, if they did this on purpose, (deviance) and actively decided not to create or upload the report, then yes, the blame sits firmly with them. However, what if the reason they did not do it was due to them not having enough time from having too much work on their plate? Would the fault not be on the manager for either not being aware of the team's workload or incorrectly assigning tasks? Or if we take it a step further, what if the team member did not know how to do it? or the process was unclear? The failure still occurs at the same point, but does the fault? As you can see from a few of the examples in the spectrum, the fault for many of the failures does not firmly land on the employee themselves.
This highlights one of the main reasons that companies don't have a psychologically safe environment but also one of the main skills needed to create one. Multi-order thinking. As a manager you must move beyond the first-order reason, i.e. the process wasn't followed, to understand what the second and third-order reasons could be, i.e. not enough time, not enough skill etc. Not only will this make the team more comfortable but you will also cure the disease behind some of the failures that have been occurring instead of just fixing the symptoms.
"We already have a system in place to detect failures"
That's great if you do but if it's not backed by an environment where people feel comfortable admitting and discussing these failures, then it's not worth the email it was sent on.
Back In 2006 Alan Mulhany arrived at Ford from Boeing and introduced a new system for detecting failures. He asked the managers to colour code their reports, green for good, yellow for attention and red for problems. At his first meeting, all the managers handed in green reports. Not a single one with red or yellow. This from a company that had just lost a few billion dollars in the previous year.
No matter the system or company, people need to feel comfortable. This is why creating that culture around your team feeling safe is crucial to growth and high performance. There is no magic bullet or one stop shop for something like this. To truly create this it takes many different consistent actions.
References:
"Why Employee Engagement Matters." Gallup, 2018. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238079/employee-engagement-matters.aspx
"The Five Keys to a Successful Google Team." Google, 2015. https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/
"High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here's How to Create It." Harvard Business Review, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/08/high-performing-teams-need-psychological-safety-heres-how-to-create-it
"The High Cost of a Negative Workplace Culture." Society for Human Resource Management, 2018. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/negative-workplace-culture-costs.aspx