Psychological Safety: Where to start?
When I first came across the term Psychological Safety I have to say it triggered a certain restlessness, coupled with no small amount of curiosity.
It seemed to me to be saying, like a lot of behavioural catchphrases - "This is the "must" place to be", where my first thoughts were (forgive my scepticism), "You'll be lucky!" I just couldn't help thinking that, considering the complex nature of, in particular, teams and their ever-changing physical environments, Psychological Safety was a tough destination to get to.
But my curiosity led me to here, many months later and so here's the thing.
In order to achieve Psychological Safety you need an environment to put it in. So that's what you focus on first. And that's my starting point here.
The Environment
There's a really great podcast on this subject that you might like to check out.
It's called Culture by Design and its co-host is Timothy Clark, one of the main authorities on Psychological Safety, along with the likes of Amy Edmondson.
He talks about cultures and micro-cultures. And their building blocks.
According to Timothy
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In order to understand the ideal environment for psychological safety to live and breathe, you need to understand its culture, with all its habits and norms.
How to understand its culture
And in order to understand its culture fundamentally you need to look closely at the underlying personalities of everyone within that culture.
What I love most about the work I do with Facet5 personality profiling is that it's fundamental, straightforward and at the same time uncovers innumerable possibilities - not just for leaders but also their teams. If you have your own, then someone else's personality broken down (so to speak!), the insights offer powerful options for high performance and considerably improved wellbeing.
Personality is the bedrock of behaviour. So I am tempted to re-cast Timothy Clark's list -
Only by understanding personality can you understand a culture.