It was shortly after the second public flogging when she knew it was time to walk away from her job. Especially as she was on the receiving end this time. She had been working regular 12 hour days and completing outstanding tasks during her weekends but it still wasn’t enough. To then be criticised in a public forum – she was done with the place. Adios!

Nothing kills psychological safety in teams like public critcism. It is shaming, humiliating and sends people into fight or flight. Jade Garratt writes “[psychological safety] can be destroyed in an instant through a negative response to a moment of vulnerability”.

There’s a common misconception that psychological safety is about being nice to each other and avoiding uncomfortable conversations. Perhaps you’re picturing a team that functions like a modern-day primary school sports event – everyone gets an award just for showing up. I don’t have anything against primary school sports days, but this is not what psychological safety is. According to the organisation Psychsafety, it can be defined as follows

Psychological safety is defined as the belief, in a group, that we are safe to take interpersonal risks. It’s the belief that we are able to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns and mistakes, and that we won’t suffer negative social or professional consequences as a result.

How Google found the winning formula to team success

Google, as a cutting edge company wanted to find out what made teams highly successful. They embarked on an in house experiment over several years and were surprised at what they discovered. The secret sauce to high-performing teams lay not in star players or teams with numerous prestigious credentials, but something less obvious – that of psychological safety. This was the number one ranking factor that determined a team’s success. This is counterintuitive to what most leaders think. Asked to imagine a stellar team, we are prone to conjure images of a mecurial genius like Steve Jobs or a star player like Michael Jordan. But these individuals are just that – individuals.

As a leader, I’ve always approached psychological safety from the perspective of inclusion. I want my team members to feel that their work matters, that they have autonomy over how their work is carried out and that their views and perspectives are respected by me and other members of the team. This has been an approach I have sought to adopt whether as a Key Stage leader managing a small team or a senior leader with a broader influence across entire organisations.

Over the years of leading teams at Middle and Senior level, I have found the following strategies effective in creating psychological safety. These are strategies that you can work on from tomorrow.

5 strategies to foster psychological safety

1. Create a set of team norms and values. This can be a democratic approach where the whole team establishes how they will engage with other. As the leader, listen carefully for people’s responses. Who is the person who highly values respect? Which team member insists on trust as a primar team value? These insights give you a strong indication of what people stand for and where you might need to do more work in building the team culture. Write the agreed set of values and norms down. They can serve as a guide to come back to when things go wrong and psychological safety is damaged.
2. Encourage the introverts in your team to speak up. This calls for a leader who is able to sense the room and use their perception and intuitive judgement to identify when a quiter team member wishes to contribute. For this to happen, you need to do less talking as a leader, and more observing and listening.
3. Set clear goals and then invite the team to share strategies and tactics on how to achieve the goal. By inviting others to contribute to the discussion, you are signalling that you trust and respect their ideas. My earliest observation of this being done was when I was invited to an SLT meeting as a young middle leader. Expecting the Head to dominate the conversation, I was surprised when she stepped back and instead played the role of ‘instigator’ by posing the right questions and inviting her team to share responses. This was an approach I wanted to emulate.
4. Take a coaching approach. Traditional management tends to be top-down. The manager assigns tasks which the direct report is then responsible for completing. Whilst there is still a place for this style, it does not do much to build psychological safety. A coaching approach, which is more horizontal, empowers the direct report with a sense of agency, autonomy and trust.
5. Model humility and fallibility. Instead of hiding your own mistakes, be open with them. There is a tendency for leaders to adopt an air of omniscience. This stems from the belief that the leader is meant to have all the answers, because if they don’t, who on earth knows where things are heading. This is a heavy expectation. But when leaders say things like ‘I’m not quite sure how to solve this’, or ‘I would love someone else to point out my blindspots to this idea that I have’, they demonstrate vulnerability.

With leaders feeling time-pressured, it can seem that achieving psychological safety is a luxury. But I think the time it takes to move towards greater psychological safety is asymmetrical to its rewards. You just need to start!

A small step you might take is creating space in your next team meeting to allow colleagues to contribute suggestions to a project. Or you could choose one person whom you can coach. Just pick one of the five strategies outlined above and get started.

The idea is to build this in gradually and develop culture over time. But the key thing to remember is that it drives team performance. It is with this in mind that I would like to close with a quote from Julia Rozovsky, the Google employee who led the project.

Psychological safety actually drives performance…when team members feel safe, they’re much more likely to ask for help. They’re much more likely to admit a mistake. They’re much more likely to try new roles and responsibilities, knowing that their team has their back—and, by doing this, they learn. And by learning, they become more effective.

— Julia Rozovsky

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