5 practices for cultivating psychological safety

Welcome to Just One Thing – I’m here with one practical idea you can put in place with your team to better improve your school’s team, culture and educational outcomes.

30-Second Version 

• Intentionally improving psychological safety enhances team performance.
• Leaders should be aware of the levels of psychological safety in their team.
• By leading by example, destigmatising failure and normalising asking for help, leaders can further enhance psychological safety in their teams.

 The Full Read   

When cultivated, psychological safety leads to better team learning, performance and engagement. Psychological safety provides the backbone for groups that are doing complex challenging work that requires continual learning iteration and shared diverse perspectives to get there. So what exactly is it, and how do you build it?

According to leading scholar in the field, Professor Amy Edmondson, psychological safety is: "A belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking."

In teams that are psychologically safe, team members discuss difficult issues and problems. They ask other members of the team for help. They talk about mistakes and ways to prevent them. They’re not rejected for taking an alternative position. They feel free to share their ideas and expertise and they feel safe to take intellectual risks. They value and respect each others’ contributions. So how can we cultivate this culture within our teams?

5 practices for cultivating a culture of psychological safety:

• Lead by example: Make sure your team knows you don’t think you already have all the answers – express your own uncertainties and learning gaps.
• De-stigmatise failure: Reframe mistakes and near-misses – this helps to stop people hiding failures to protect themselves. E.g., share a recent mistake that didn’t work out as planned.
• Normalise asking for help: Plan “we need next” sessions where every team member identifies one area of additional support, knowledge or capacity building that they need. Create space in weekly 1:1s to draw out where someone needs help.
• Reward innovation, not outcome: Intentionally recognise and encourage team members who take innovative approaches irrespective of the outcome.
• Run “fail forward” sessions: Host termly meetings where team members share a recent failure or mistake, and discuss what they learned from it. 

Want more? Here’s a great read from Harvard Business School on four steps to building psychological safety. It would be great to hear more about how you go about assessing and improving the level of psychological safety in your team - reply to this email, I'd love to learn more.

Until next time,

Simon.

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