Psychological Safety At Work Training
So many organisations invest vast amounts of money to amass the best talent and wonder why the team is not performing to its potential. It appears these leaders and managers forget, dismiss or never even consider the fundamental requirement for success. Talent is required, yes, but the environment is key to talent flourishing. Monty Don might say, ‘it’s about the soil, not the seed’. ‘Psychological safety’ is the vehicle for achieving this culture of candour and innovation within teams.
It’s important to note that working in a psychologically safe environment does not mean that people always agree with one another for the sake of being nice. Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School defines psychological safety as "a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes."
All good leaders and managers understand the need for continuous learning, innovation, creativity, spark and critical thought from their team members. This can only be accomplished within a climate of openness and trust; individuals must feel safe to speak up about their ideas, ask questions and highlight potential risks. Without these conditions, ideas that could have led to enhanced performance will be lost. Research has proven that the number one factor for team high-performance is operating in an environment of high psychological safety.
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How psychologically safe is your team?
To improve team performance, it is important to realise the current psychological safety levels within your team(s). We can map your team members’ perceptions of how ‘safe’ they feel within your current team climate and then compare the result with thousands of other teams.
Working in conjunction with Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School we can understand which quartile you are currently operating in, how close to optimum effectiveness the team is and explore the possibilities and potentials for improvement.
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We measure across four dimensions:
Attitudes to risk and failure: the degree to which it is permissible to make mistakes
Open conversations: the degree to which difficult and sensitive topics can be discussed openly
Willingness to help: the degree to which people are willing to help one another
Inclusivity and diversity: the degree to which people can be themselves, and be welcomed for this.
The pathway to success
To improve your team's psychological safety levels we lead you through four simple steps:
LEADER 1:1
1
We initially work with the team leader and agree the programme of work; setting context, goals, roles and responsibilities.
INTRODUCE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY TO THE TEAM
2
During this interactive session we build personal contracting, co-create shared goals and clarify the process steps.
ONLINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY QUESTIONNAIRE
3
E-mailed to each team member, taking only 3-5 minutes to complete. The individual scores will be kept confidential and we'll only use the team findings in the de-brief.
TEAM DE-BRIEF
4
We share and understand current team safety and facilitate a deeper conversation. This session enables genuine dialogue and discusses tasks with a future focus.
Research undertaken by Harvard Business School clearly shows that organisations with a higher level of psychological safety perform better on almost every metric or KPI in comparison to those who have a lower psychological safety score.
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The research
Professor Amy C. Edmondson has spent nearly 30 years researching Psychological Safety. She started by studying two teams in a hospital. Her thesis led her to conclude that the most cohesive team reported making the most mistakes, not because they were making more mistakes, but they were reporting more than the other team. In other words, they were more willing to admit and talk about what happened so they, and their team could learn and learn quickly in order to improve.
To understand how psychologically safe your team feels just contact us and we can have a chat about how we can help. It’s a simple process and enables you to compare your team to thousands of others.
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