Thursday’s Thoughts: Is it SAFE?

If you’ve been around long enough to recognize the “Marathon Man” reference, please know that all teeth are intact for those referenced herein.

As I stood amongst a large group of workplace leaders recently, I noted how cautiously eager and a little apprehensive they were about the subject matter: psychological safety. I imagined them thinking, “What does this lady have to say beyond the loaded ‘permission for candor’ and ‘safe space to speak up’ tag lines that define the term?” Everyone has heard these platitudes; they’re “feel-good”, but passive jargon. Let's face it; no one really believes that such a thing actually works in the real world of work.

My experience as a leader in corporate environments convinced me that the default behaviors creating psychologically unsafe workplaces are unchanging, traditional norms. After many years of working in or with companies that desired to improve psychological safety and employee experience but never actually did it, I began to think it was impossible. Good people with great intentions were always running the show but had real difficulty reversing the conditions that left employees feeling it was unsafe to speak up with an opposing point of view, share difficult feedback, or make a mistake, especially when trying something new. I’ve since learned that workplaces can become more psychologically safe, but it takes effort. With awareness, some knowledge, and a deliberate focus on fostering more psychologically safe workspaces, change can occur over time.

Let’s begin with a powerful lesson in workplace toxicity that I learned as a relatively junior executive while attending quarterly meetings led by C-suite leaders and board members. 

I once worked in an organization where high-level bloodletting, shaming, public reprimand, and humiliation happened regularly. The meeting leaders, typically the most senior people in the room, had no qualms about calling people out publicly, criticizing them for the sins of poor outcomes, ranging from missing revenue targets to diminishing unit counts to employee attrition. The attacks were masked as "feedback" and were followed by more bloodletting (nee "brainstorming"), leaving the leaders on the receiving end frustrated, demoralized, and mute. People would shut down, shut up, and acquiesce to those most senior, no matter what they knew was best. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the company struggled to make progress, as all that was agreed to during those awful meetings was immediately reversed by contrary side deals once the attendees spilled into the parking lot or during the post-meeting dinners where everyone got plastered to relieve the day's stress. 

I have spent the last several years collaborating with organizations to assess, measure, and enhance workplace culture and have encountered various types of psychologically unsafe workplaces. At Progressive Discoveries, we closely examine how and where individuals feel unsafe in their organizations and assist them in addressing these issues.

With a nod to several well-known indicators of psychological safety, our assessment instrument gauges how psychologically safe respondents feel in three common areas: respect, including idea sharing and appreciation, giving and/or receiving feedback, followed by comfort in being safe to ask for help, share opposing opinions, challenge the status quo, try something new, make mistakes or even fail. All without being undermined, facing a negative consequence or experiencing the fear of being embarrassed or humiliated.

So far, we have learned a lot from the organizations we recently surveyed. Here are a few findings:

Proximity matters. Feelings of psychological safety vary by workforce population. We asked respondents to rate each item according to their experience with peers, the person to whom they report, across departments, and with leaders who are senior to them besides their direct leader. The highest point distributions went to peers and the person to whom the respondents report, which, if you think about it, makes sense. The survey findings indicate that for most of us, it is easier to ask for help or try something new when interacting with a peer or a direct leader rather than with a more senior leader or across departments. While the findings are understandable, the data suggests a need to nurture and improve relationships across departments and with senior leaders.

Sharing feedback is more difficult than receiving it.  Across work populations, respondents report more comfort in asking for feedback than in giving it. With certain populations, i.e., senior leaders, the delta in comfort levels between receiving feedback and giving it is significant, frequently more than 20 percentage points. This finding has been consistent for each organization we’ve surveyed to date.

Fear, embarrassment, and failure are significant impediments to progress. Well-known experts such as Amy Edmonson, PhD, and others recognize psychological safety as the ability to speak candidly without fear of embarrassment, humiliation, or retaliation. This level of safe candor applies to being free to challenge the status quo, make mistakes, and even fail. Unsurprisingly, these survey items scored lowest across work populations and organizations.

Although our sample size is relatively small, the trends across companies and industries demonstrate the universality of the areas where psychological safety is most frequently present and absent.

Consider the time, effort, frustration, and tensions that can be alleviated when an organization understands that many employees struggle to collaborate effectively across departments for fear of what might happen if they make a mistake or ask a senior leader why a particular process exists as it does.

Imagine the missed opportunities that derive from employees who know the answers but neglect to share them.

Being armed with these essential insights has been invaluable for the organizations referenced here. The mystery around “why can’t we all just get along?” has undoubtedly been illuminated, if not solved. Now, the real work of building stronger work communities can begin.

How psychologically safe are the employees at your company? How do you know? Please contact us to learn more about our assessments and workshops.

Wishing you collaborative success!

With CARE,

Janet Williams, Founder, Progressive Discoveries, LLC.

Progressive Discoveries guides companies to design a culture that works for everyone.

We offer programs that enhance people by building relationship intelligence (RQ), operationalizing psychological safety, and fostering people appreciation practices.

We motivate people with high-impact learning and development solutions and offer presentation and facilitation services that move people to evolve, grow, change, or decide with engaging and fun keynote, break-out, or strategic planning sessions.

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