Building a psychologically safe workplace | How Leaders Can Build Psychological Safety

Every leader has their own unique mix of challenges to address, but for most a basic checklist probably looks something like this:
Does your team have a clearly articulated direction? ✅
Are they following the vision? ✅
✅
Do you have strong recruitment? ✅
Are you creating the right culture? Urm...kind of
What kind of culture do you need to create? A psychologically safe one! Here’s the way how;

Measuring Up

“What gets measured gets done.” It’s a simple point to make, but if you, as a leader, make sure the right things are being measured then it becomes process, and process becomes culture.
From time to time, it’s worth getting some distance and reflecting deeply on what you are measuring and whether it is the right metric for the stage and challenges of your business. Sometimes, the wrong things will have been measured in the past and taken as the benchmark for success, in which case changing the measurement can be tough. It requires energy and consistency, but with conviction and tenacity it can be done, and after time your new measurement will become the de facto culture.

Safety Nets

Psychological Safety, is trickier. At its most basic, it’s straightforward: build an environment of trust and openness, listen, and make sure you don’t bite people’s heads off.
Psychological Safety is essentially the trust that individual team members have in the rest of the team, and how comfortable they feel giving their opinions or pointing out an error without fear of censure. If you can build this into your organization, at each team level, then you’ll instill a high level of Psychological Safety. That brings with it better inclusion, the possibility for real diversity, stronger innovation, less errors and likely, less burnout.

Follow the Leader

The phenomenon of “what got you here, won’t get you there” certainly holds back the achievement of most leaders ambitions. Lots of leaders have been successful individual contributors, and take a lot of those perspectives into management and leadership, not realizing initially that a different set of skills and behaviors are needed to be successful in these new roles. Trying to succeed in personal goals such as striving for high team performance does not make a psychologically safe environment.
Moreover, a culture is a fragile thing. Even if you’re able to create a strong, psychologically safe culture with all its attendant benefits, a few ill-advised actions here or there and it can all start to unravel.
And how do you achieve this across all the teams in your organization? Because it’s not enough to have it in one or two teams. Psychological Safety IS team-based, so you need every team to have it in order to build an organization that will create truly great things.

It Takes Two

As it happens, the solution is deceptively simple: combine the two things that a leader needs to do to build a great culture and measure Psychological Safety. Measure it in individual teams. Track it over time. Analyze it. Reflect on what needs to be changed. Then make the necessary behavioral or structural adjustments to improve the metric.
This is what we will soon be creating and releasing at Attuned: the ability to accurately measure Psychological Safety. Managers and leaders will then be able to assess their team’s level of Psychological Safety objectively, and track it over time.
We see Attuned as a tool to give managers a superpower—the ability to understand their team members quickly and deeply by using Intrinsic Motivation.
Step-by-step we’re shaping a future in which all managers will be able to understand, at-a-glance, what makes their team tick, and be equipped to create Psychological Safety that lasts. In short, a future where building a culture won’t be the toughest task on a leaders’ checklist.

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The Intrinsic Motivation Software - Make work more meaningful
Understand what really motivates your team. Make unseen values visible.
Create Psychological Safety through Intrinsic Motivation.
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