11 Nov TSLH #045: 9 Tips To Create Psychological Safety On A Team
Posted at 06:00h
in Newsletter
Read time: 4 minutes
The best teams I have seen in my career are those where psychological safety had been created and was lived by the team and the leader of the team.
The main challenge, it turns out, is that very few leaders can create psychological safety.
In my career spanning 25 years across multiple companies, industries and countries, I can safely identify 3 leaders only who have been very strong in creating true psychological safety. I struggled myself for quite some time before finally succeeding in implementing some of the steps or actions needed to create psychological safety. And to be fully transparent, I don’t think I was ever at the level these other 3 leaders were. I am still learning and implementing new actions whenever I can.
The truth is, creating the right conditions for people to feel safe within their environment (e.g., the team) is fairly straightforward. It requires 2 things from the leader:
- A lot of self-awareness
- Courage to challenge the status quo, bringing these actions forward
I’ll describe 9 actions you could start implementing NOW to create psychological safety in your team. You definitely don’t need to implement all 9 to have safety, and obviously, the more you implement, the greater the chances that your team will feel psychologically safe.
To start with, I’ll give you my interpretation of what psychological safety means:
- People are happy to work in a team and they are friendly.
- People collaborate with each other, without any hidden agenda.
- There is no gossip within the team.
- Any challenge, setback, disagreement is discussed openly – through 1-1’s with the leader or in team meetings – and there is a common drive to address the challenge collectively to find the best solution possible, without blame.
- People are ready to take on challenging assignments and projects because there is a shared understanding that everyone will make mistakes and the team will learn from them collectively.
- No-one in the team, including the leader, has a voice that counts more than another. All voices in the team are listened to, even the quieter ones.
- Everybody is supporting each other, especially when someone has a hard time or need training, mentoring. There is a common understanding that the team will succeed as a group and that letting someone fail on the team is a failure of the whole team.
With that in mind, here are 9 areas I recommend you look at in order to create psychological safety for your team.
Create trust. The best way for a leader to build trust is to show vulnerability, i.e., that you don’t know everything, that you need people’s help, and that you make mistakes yourself. Once your people see you ask for help, admit mistakes or that you don’t have the answer to a problem, they’ll be much more likely to do the same.
Take action: Be proactive in sharing a mistake or asking for help. Creating trust could also happen through telling a personal story, about something that people usually don’t know about yourself. This way, they may see that you are a human being, not only the leader of the team.
Don’t accept the blame game. Mistakes will happen in a team, including from the leader. A natural tendency is to look for a culprit, someone to blame, someone we can vent about and who caused the mistake to happen. It might make you release frustration when you do this, and you may feel happier, but let me tell you, this will only last for so long. The issue is that if you start or allow the blaming game to happen in your team, the result will quickly be that people will stop taking risks, make decisions, be collaborative and supportive and they will look for you to bring solutions to all problems. Believe me, you don’t want to end in that position.
Take action: When an error is made, focus on finding a fix and a solution, not on finding the culprit. If you meet with your team, use questions such as “How do we want to fix this?” or “What can we do to address this mistake?” or “How can we ensure we don’t repeat the same mistake in the future?” Do NOT ask questions like “Who has made the mistake?”, “Whose fault is this?”
Practice active listening. I have talked several times about that one and how active listening makes you a much better leader for your team. This is about giving someone full attention when they speak, and this is about asking powerful questions. You want to be a leader AND a coach.
Take action: Make sure you listen all the voices in the team. When someone talks, make sure everyone has understood what has been said; for instance, you could repeat what has been said to ensure you have understood properly. Also make sure you don’t bring solutions to the team; ask them questions so they work on the solution as a team.
Make failure part of the process. I have said it before, mistakes will happen. Instead of focusing on who made the mistake, focus on the opportunity offered by the mistake: Focus on learning about the mistake – How it happened (remember: No blame game), what could be made to avoid it in the future, what the team is learning and how they want to integrate the new learning in their processes.
Take action: When a mistake is made, organize a team meeting to discuss the learnings and what needs to change in processes or tasks to avoid the mistake to be repeated.
Listen to all voices. It is a fact that most teams will have a mix of people who like to speak and people who are more quiet. Added to that, your team may be very diverse – people from different countries, with different backgrounds and education, etc. You need to leverage that diversity in your team to the advantage of the team. If you only let the loud people speak, you will miss a lot of good feedback and opinions. Specifically, you should make sure that people who are quiet also get an opportunity to talk or bring their perspective of a topic.
Take action: You can implement several steps here. For instance, you could rotate who is presenting what in a meeting so that everybody has a chance to talk. You can learn what the communication preference is for each of the people on your team (talking, writing, etc.) This means you can get feedback either orally or in writing and share this feedback in a meeting. You can also make it a team rule that everybody should have the same amount of time available to talk (that is actually a good “game” to play within a team).
Be an approachable leader. If you want to create psychological safety, you cannot sit in your ivory tower and hope for the best. People on your team need to see you often, share things with you (a lunch, a discussion at the coffee table, etc.) You should also be very clear with your team that anyone can approach you with ideas or concerns.
Take action: The most efficient way to build the expectation that you are approachable is to dedicate some time in your calendar where you make yourself completely free for people to come to your office and have a chat with you. It could also be taking a few people every month to lunch (2 or 3 at a time is a sufficient size to ensure everybody has an opportunity to talk and no-one steals the speaking time) and have an unformal discussion.
Plan regular checks. When you start as the leader of a team, one of your very first actions should be to set regular checks, aka 1-1’s with your direct reports. You should also have a regular team meeting for the enlarged group (if that applies to you). These meetings make it easier to discuss challenges or issues.
Take action: I recommend setting a weekly 1-1 with every of your direct report. You can vary the frequency depending on the seniority of the direct report, what they feel they need. For the larger team, I’d recommend a monthly catch-up: For instance, you can do a monthly informal catch-up where any topic or question can be addressed and a quartely meeting with more business-oriented discussions.
Reward risk-taking. If you build the culture that mistakes can happen and the team will learn from them, chances are, people will be more willing to take risks. You should therefore reward risk-takers, even if they don’t succeed. This will create emulation and more people on the team will want to take risks.
Take action: Celebrate risk-taking openly on the team, during a team meeting for instance. You can also think of small incentives to have on the team for risk-takers.
Kill the snake! This expression comes from one of the leaders I have worked with in the past. It just means, when you see a problem arising, even if it is not in your area of responsibility, you should address it immediately. You should kill the snake as soon as you see it. Once the snake is completely out, it’s too late and the problem will be much bigger and much more complex to solve.
Take action: Make it a team rule that anyone seeing a problem should tell the team, and then ensure there is a meeting organized with all the people who should participate in the solution. Make sure you allocate time to find solutions, and also to make people accountable on who will do what by when. If the meeting is just about discussing possible solutions, nothing will happen.
Creating psychological safety on a team is not a hurdle that you, as the leader of the team, cannot overcome. By implementing some of the actions I presented above, you could already create much more safety than what is currently available to people. The key is to implement these actions in a honest and uninterested way: If people see that you try to force psychological safety or that you implement a few actions just to pretend to have created it, you won’t get it. People will need to see their leader really engaged.
Remember though. With high psychological safety, you will get a team that is collaborative, engaged, accountable and productive. Who would not want that?
I wish you a great read. I’ll see you next Saturday!
TL; DR (Too Long, Did not Read)
9 tips to create psychological safety on a team
- Create trust.
- Don’t accept the blame game.
- Practice active listening.
- Make failure part of the process.
- Listen to all voices.
- Be an approachable leader.
- Plan regular checks.
- Reward risk-taking.
- Kill the snake!
Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
1️⃣ Work 1-1 with me to step up as the authentic leader you aspire to be.
2️⃣ Hire me to help you build a high-performing team.
3️⃣ Start with my affordable digital courses on Mastering Difficult Conversations for Leaders and Goal Setting