Interested in more careers-related content? Check out our new weekly Work Life newsletter. Sent every Monday afternoon.
When Gina Battye was teaching ex-offenders English and Math, she was followed one evening by a stalker after leaving work to walk home. The next day a meeting was held to step up security for her. The stalker’s probation officer was alerted to the issue and began dealing with the problem from that perspective, while her contract to teach him was ended.
She already had a big, red panic button under her desk. At the end of each day her manager would now call to check in on how she was feeling and to talk about any concerns. They discussed work, her students, her home life and everything in between. She is gay, and was comfortable being open in that workplace. Nothing was off limits to discuss with her manager or team.
In a situation where her safety had been threatened, her manager and the organizational leaders in general were doing their best to keep her safe.
It’s a wonderful approach for managers to measure their own efforts. It’s what people crave from their leaders.
But there’s another dimension that comes out as Ms. Battye, now the founder and chief executive officer of the Psychological Safety Institute, describes the four pillars to psychological safety in her book The Authentic Organization. Each individual in an organization has a role to play in developing an atmosphere of psychological safety. It is not handed down from on high. “Creating a safe environment is the responsibility of everyone,” she writes. It is co-created.
Indeed, her first pillar is “the self.” People should be comfortable bringing their authentic self to work, which requires interpersonal awareness and exploration. Instead of rushing to put new policies and benchmarks in place, the first steps organizations dedicated to improving psychological safety usually take, she believes they must help employees explore this basic foundation of the self. What is affecting people’s performance in the organization, how much of that is within their control to change, and what steps can they take?
This involves facilitated exercises to understand beliefs and emotions they have – many from childhood – that limit them and create tensions in the workplace. They need to release those beliefs and emotions, and reprogram themselves. One of many exercises she leads asks you to think of a negative story you have built about a specific workplace situation. What triggered you in the situation and how did you feel? “Reflect on how your perspective might have been different if you had been in a different mindset, had greater insight or gained more experience. Is it possible that your interpretation of the situation or experience could have been different?” she asks.
Her second pillar focuses on the social dimension, building more effective communication skills. It’s nice for an organization to declare itself in favour of psychological safety, but has the organization taught the team to communicate their messages clearly and in a way they intend it to be received? As well, have they taught employees to receive messages in the way they were intended? Are questions being asked to clarify vague stuff? Are staff members dealing with miscommunication and misunderstanding promptly?
That leads, naturally, in her third pillar to collaboration. Teams must be empowered to design their work environment to facilitate collaboration, providing a safe space for everyone.
She stresses that the sense of safety is an individual experience. While you may perceive your team meetings as a safe space where everyone can bring their ideas and authentic being to the table, others may not share such security. “Creating a safe space for your team requires consideration and clear guidelines. It doesn’t just happen,” she writes.
Ground rules are required to establish expectations for behaviour and create a sense of accountability. It should be clear that discrimination, harassment and bullying will not be tolerated and consequences will occur for violations. Training must be offered in conflict resolution strategies. People must be educated to recognize and address inappropriate behaviour. A culture must be developed where individuals feel empowered to speak up if they witness or experience inappropriate behaviour.
She also highlights team dynamics, clearly defining what team members can expect from one another, recognizing individual work preferences and gaining insight into diverse personality styles. Time must be taken to clarify personal boundaries – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual – as well as how people can separate their professional and personal lives, for balance, and follow their preferred work styles.
Her final pillar is curiosity. For all of this to lead anywhere, people must be open to new ideas, reflective and eager for learning and development. Leaders can’t just hope such behaviours exist. They must be cultivated and enhanced, through structured opportunities for reflective practices and transformation.
It would be easier to wave a magic wand and pronounce as a leader you want psychological safety. But that doesn’t work. Ms. Battye’s approach suggests you must build psychological safety from the ground up, enhancing the skills we often assume are present in the workplace but aren’t necessarily, leading to a more collaborative and productive organization. It’s a back-to-the-basics approach.
Cannonballs
- Leadership consultants have defined an important stage for newly named CEOs: The “fuzzy front-end,” the period from first contact with the new organization to the first day actually on the job. Donald Trump’s front-end since he was elected in November has been anything but fuzzy and stands out from those in recent memory, political or corporate, as the most impactful – as well as unnerving for many of those he will lead and onlookers.
- A survey by the LiveCareer website found more than three quarters of women (76 per cent) support a shift to a four-day, 10-hours per day workweek, compared to 57 per cent of men.
- Leadership coach Scott Cochrane warns that saying “I’m so busy” undermines your leadership credibility. What people hear might be “I’m so disorganized,” or “I don’t have clear goals,” or “I’ve mismanaged this project,” or, or course, “I’m trying to impress people.”
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.