What are the common barriers to trust and psychological safety in organizations?

Picture this: The Office Zoo, where trust and psychological safety face some hilarious obstacles: The Mistrust Minotaur: This mythical creature thrives on rumors and hearsay, spreading doubts faster than a wildfire. Avoiding clear communication, the Mistrust Minotaur makes sure everyone is always on edge, wondering if that project update is true or just a product of its mischievous imagination. The Tightrope Tattletale: This sneaky acrobat navigates the delicate tightrope of office politics, always ready to spill the beans on colleagues. Walking on eggshells, employees fear that one wrong step might lead to a high-flying report to the higher-ups. Trust becomes a balancing act, and psychological safety feels like tiptoeing through a circus

Where a fear of failure culture exists, employees do not dare to risk and try new things, so innovation is very difficult to happen.

-Perfectionism Paralysis:** Encourage a growth mindset 🌱 - Leadership Vulnerability:Leaders share challenges, build trust 💪 - Communication Breakdowns: Foster clear and transparent communication 🗣️ - Lack of Feedback Culture:Embrace feedback for growth 🔄 - Risk-Averse Culture: Promote calculated risks for innovation 🚀 - Inclusive Decision-Making: Involve diverse perspectives in decisions 🌐

This was a breakout session led by Denise (Van Eck) McClennen at SHRM-Atlanta’s SOAHR2024. Dr. Amy Edmondson highlights several barriers to trust and psychological safety in organizations: fear of retaliation, interpersonal risk, strict hierarchical structures, unclear roles, cultural norms that undervalue openness, inconsistent leadership behaviors, poor communication, and high-pressure environments. These obstacles can prevent employees from speaking up, sharing ideas, and admitting mistakes, which impedes innovation and effective collaboration. Leaders play a crucial role in mitigating these barriers by actively nurturing an inclusive, transparent, and learning-focused culture, ensuring that all team members feel safe to contribute.

lack of trust within the team, fear of judgment, ineffective communication channels, organizational cultures that prioritize hierarchy over collaboration and inclusion and micromanagement

-Communication Breakdowns:Ambiguity fosters mistrust. Prioritize clear communication channels 🗣️. - Leadership Silence: Regular updates build trust. Leaders, be open and communicative 🤝. - Feedback Vacuum: Cultivate a culture of open feedback loops 🔄. - Unclear Expectations: Define roles and goals clearly for security and purpose 🎯. - Isolation Culture: Foster collaboration for mutual support and trust 🤗. - Exclusionary Practices: Embrace inclusivity in decision-making for a trusting atmosphere 🌐.

Sometimes, the problem isn't just lack of communication but lack of understanding. We can send endless emails and memos, but if we’re not truly connecting, we get nowhere. It's like the optical illusion where some see a vase and others see faces. Leaders might communicate their 'vase' perspective, missing the 'faces' their team sees. To build trust, it's essential to listen and embrace different viewpoints. This approach ensures everyone feels heard, turning communication from a one-way memo into a two-way dialogue, fostering a more unified and trusting team environment.

A lack of communication is representative of a lack of Psychological Safety. If no one is speaking, then they must have a reason for this. - Are their ideas welcomes and received? - Are their ideas implemented or adopted? - Are they afraid to provide the truth due to the behavior and ramifications of their boss? - Are they seeing others contributions appreciated and valued? - Are they feeling comfortable to speak on the topic? The tone, style, and pulse of the team can be a significant influence in how 2 way feedback is flowing.

There are only 2 main key points which creates barrier to trust and psychological safety of employees: - First and most important point is organisation culture. If it is wrong lack of communication, fear, procrastination has accure which is open the way for . -Lack of Leadership which doesn't develop proper organisation culture.

Imagine an organization without communication is like a secret society where everyone forgot the secret. It leads to chaos, like playing charades where nobody can guess the word. To fix this, it's essential to create an environment where sharing information is as natural as posting a cat video online. Regular team catch-ups can be more than status updates – think of them as storytime where everyone gets to share their chapter. And remember, in the game of telephone, the message always gets scrambled, so let's keep the lines direct and open. In short, clear and open communication is the secret sauce to a well-functioning team. 📢😺🔍

Reducing power distance in organizations is pivotal for innovation. By involving employees in decision-making and valuing their input, we create an atmosphere of mutual respect, bolstering trust and psychological safety. It’s not just about flattening hierarchies, but about fostering a culture where everyone feels empowered and valued, leading to a more dynamic, innovative, and engaged workforce.

Power distance in the workplace? It's like the boss is on a high mountain peak while the team is in the valley below. 🏔️ Shouting instructions from up high doesn’t quite work, does it? We need to flatten those mountains into a nice, communal park where everyone can picnic together. 🌳🍔 Leadership needs to swap the megaphone for a walkie-talkie – it’s a two-way conversation. Encourage leaders to join the team huddle, not just hover over it like a curious drone. Smaller power distances mean bigger ideas can take flight. It's all about making the boardroom feel like a living room, comfy and open for everyone.

Power distance is a tool to build strong execution skills where there is no time and room to explain in depth the reason for a specific request. However, when the power distance is low, the same result can be achieved if there is sufficient trust between leaders and employees. But there is a point upon which employees might feel equally positioned than their leader and reject requests as if they are just recommendations. Then, power distance has to be established a bit more again.

Leadership has nothing to do with hierarchy. Leaders come in all forms. No individual can be skilled at all things and it is important to know when to lead and when to follow. It is dynamic and situation dependant. Realizing this can augment team performance.

When there's a significant gap between leaders and employees, a hierarchical structure can hinder open communication and the free exchange of ideas. A company with a high power distance can create a culture where subordinates are hesitant to voice concerns or provide feedback, fearing repercussions. To overcome this barrier, organizations should encourage flattened hierarchies, promote open dialogue, and foster an environment where all team members feel valued and heard, irrespective of their position. This approach can potentially help build trust, psychological safety, and a collaborative atmosphere within the organization.

Culture is the source of all problems. I had the opportunity to be in institutions that generally carry out management through fear, timidity and various punishments, and I had the chance to closely examine the consequences of this. Unfortunately, although it is thought that an almost military discipline will be established in such structures that easily exploit the most basic anxiety in the institution (the anxiety of losing a job), at the end of the day, a tremendous chaos greets us.

Addressing diversity and inclusion is critical to fostering trust and psychological safety. A lack of inclusion leads to feelings of marginalization and conflict. Leaders must create a culture celebrating diversity, emphasizing respect, empathy, and equity. This involves recognizing each individual's unique contribution and facilitating cross-cultural understanding and collaboration. Such initiatives transform the workplace into an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives are valued, fostering trust and driving innovation.

Diversity and inclusion are key elements to drive better outcomes when used carefully and consciously. Artificially driving inclusion by being overly democratic may be rather a burden than an enabler though. But knowing about diversities and including those personalities subject to their specific strengths is the foundation of a broader success.

The biggest tragedy in diversity and inclusion is the thinking that inclusion is about not bringing up topic that is not comfortable. While it sounds 'right', over time, employees are going to feel like they have to walk on egg shell. True inclusion requires people to have spaces for curious conversation. To achieve this, it is important to equip people with facilitation skill to create safe spaces for conversation. Encourage people to ask questions and when there is misunderstanding, deal with it. Make it clear that accepting a person does not mean accepting their practices and their ideology.

Diversity and inclusion in the workplace? It's like a box of assorted chocolates 🍫 – each piece adds a unique flavor. It's about ensuring everyone not only gets a chocolate but also gets to pick their favorite. We need to move beyond just inviting diverse talents to the party, we've got to let them spin the music too! 🎵🎉 It's all about turning the office into a melting pot of ideas, where every voice adds spice to the recipe. The more variety, the richer the culture. 🌈🤝

Three ways leaders lose trust (research by Mayer et al.). Perceived lack of integrity Perceived lack of demonstrated care (benevolence) Perceived lack of ability/competence in their role

Trust is about building relationships (1:1) whereas Psych Safety is about creating a shared space/environment that's conducive to sharing diverse perspectives. Misalignment between spoken and enacted values, especially at the leadership level, worse, condoning behavior that goes against stated values, makes this shared space feel unstable and less conducive to sharing diverse perspectives. Not only does this demolish psychological safety, it inhibits innovation.

Addressing and building a particular organizational culture is one of the hardest activities there exist, because an organizational culture is at least partly hidden. The first step is to identify the existing organizational culture(s) and then starting a process to develop the aimed one. Simon Sinek's way of starting with why? followed by how? and what? (=results) seems helpful to me.

Culture is, perhaps, the greatest issue. If if's all for one, and one for all, you don't get much of this behavior. People working in those cultures hear each other out and don't hold things against a person as long as their giving their best ideas. However, in a "dog eat dog" culture, where everyone is out for themselves, all bets are off! Top leaders get to decide which culture they want to tolerate based on how they behave.

To overcome barriers to trust and safety rooted in a toxic organizational climate, a 1st step can be to initiate an anonymous feedback mechanism. This allows employees to share concerns without fear, highlighting issues for leadership to address. Acting on this feedback is crucial for demonstrating a commitment to change, paving the way for a more transparent, inclusive environment where mistakes are learning opportunities, and every voice is valued. This first step is key to transforming the organizational climate.

In teams, the sense of psychological safety feeling lies in two prominent personal qualities of leaders: authenticity and respectfulness. According to my observations and experiences, leaders who cannot be themselves for some reasons (perfectionism, fear of not being loved) are opposed to people who are able to act authentically, somehow (probably unconsciously). Likewise, it is the same for respectfulness. These two personal attributes are increasingly gaining significance, thanks to the conscious expectations of the new gen employees.

from an Industrial Organizational Psychologies - Unclear expectations and authoritarian leadership contribute to an environment of uncertainty. Fear of retaliation stifles open dialogue, while unhealthy competition and lack of inclusivity erode collaboration and a sense of belonging. Micromanagement diminishes autonomy, inconsistent policies undermine fairness, and inadequate recognition impacts morale. Lingering effects from past traumas high workload levels and burnout further exacerbate these challenges.

As a leadership coaching professional, I can offer from experience that many “would-be” leaders suffer from some form of fear of failure. Much of it stems from deep-rooted perfectionism fueled by exceedingly negative self-talk. As a consequence, safe spaces" are hard to come by for these people. They feel the potential to be exposed to criticism wherever they are! Getting after their fear of failure is often the most effective place to begin in helping these kinds of individuals to get over the hump and on to developing a bias for action, which can position them for continued career progression.

Personal factors in the workplace? It's like each employee is a smartphone with unique apps and settings. 📱 Some might have high battery life (energy), while others might need frequent recharging (breaks). It's about understanding these personal quirks. Maybe Joe is a morning person, bright as a new penny at 8 AM, while Sarah hits her stride post-lunch. 🌞🌜 Leaders should tune in like a good DJ, adjusting the workplace playlist to suit these rhythms. It's about creating a 'customize your workspace' vibe, where everyone can tweak their environment to suit their style. When personal factors are acknowledged, it's not just about work fitting into life, it's about life fitting snuggly into work. ❤️🔥🎧

Above the temple of the Oracle at delphi is the inscription "Know Thyself". Taking stock of who you are and your purpose will allow individuals to maintain integrity during tough times. It also allows others to know exactly what to expect when they engage with you. What is built from a base of integrity is simple. Trust.