When chatting to friends or family about work, I doubt any of you have ever been asked how safe is it out there, unless perhaps you have a career in firefighting or another relatively risky role.
Yet safety is becoming an increasingly important concept for the workplace, with managers being encouraged to think about not only the levels of psychological safety across their teams, but also to consider where the health, safety and wellbeing of their teams sit.
Amy Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor claims that the highest performing teams are those that have both psychological safety and accountability, and therefore a ‘climate of openness where people can bring their full selves to work.’ You can watch her Tedx talk here.
What this results in is that teams are not afraid of each other but are a genuine cohesive group, working together, learning together, questioning each other and speaking up and out.
The definition of psychological safety is ‘a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.’ It takes conscious effort and collective accountability to achieve this within a team, with essential buy in from the top. Once it’s achieved however, it becomes an incredibly close environment where as one of my recently training managers told me, people are doing high fives and even exchanging a few bear hugs after the sessions.
If you manage a team it’s worth asking yourself about the perceived level of safety. If gossip, judgement or secrets exist, then safety won’t. If people aren’t bringing their real selves to work, or if they are holding back and not speaking up or out, then safety doesn’t exist. What could you do to create or maintain a high level of safety ownership?