Hey! Is Your Organization's Culture Psychologically Safe?

14 Ways to Boost Your Organization's Psychological Safety Profile, Retain Top Talent, and Do the Right Thing!

1. Notice if Formalities, Niceties and Apologizing are commonplace. Professionalism is good. Politeness is good. Diplomacy is good. But performed positivity, dramatized humility, and oppressive formality, especially in organizations or teams that are already well-formed, should be cause for pause. Is there a restrictive or passive aggressive dynamic at play causing people to be afraid of being seen, saying or doing the wrong thing, or breaking the rules?

2. Invite and Reward Curiosity, Unknowingness, Unpredictability and Innovation. This should be more than just values on a website or words on paper. Publicly recognize cases of "failing forward" as successes; host innovation competitions; provide training on inquiry and innovation; facilitate activities that name and celebrate "what we don't know," standardize brainstorming sessions around the "worst and weirdest possible ideas" on projects. Find ways to open up minds and hearts.

3. Replace Top-Down Annual Performance Reviews with Frequent 360 Feedback. It can be more timely, agile, and effective (builds personal agency and teamwork) to incorporate frequent, broad base feedback into the day-to-day than to conduct annual appraisals. And supervisors can best improve their leadership skills if they have a holistic view of how they are received and perceived by everyone they lead. (Conversely, people need to know that their voices matter and they have a means of safely providing honest feedback on their supervisors' performance.)

4. Train Supervisors to Proactively Seek and Receive Feedback. Most supervisors would like to think of themselves as "open to feedback," but how many periodically ask direct reports "How am I doing? How can I support you better?" Initiating these conversations -- with the promise of active listening, honest inquiry and non-retaliation -- takes "open to feedback" from the philosophical realm to the practical realm.

5. Promote Constructive, Respectful Conflict. Performing "we all get along" detracts from the mission and vision by missing opportunities for productive struggle. Prioritizing cooperation over disagreement derails from the work by missing opportunities for innovation. This is a perceptual issue, baked into collective culture, that can be remedied through open discussion about conflict: When is it most likely to arise? How can it be productive and useful? What's at stake without it? How can mindset be reshaped toward the positive outcomes of conflict rather than potential discomfort of the experience? Courage required!

6. Engage staff in order to develop anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-ageism, anti-ableism, pro-LGBTQ+ plans. These issues should be ongoing conversations in safe spaces, facilitated by paid experts, that allow for staff input -- and they should most definitely result in formalized plans. "No plan" is a plan (and a bad one!) Personal identity should not be treated as something that must be left at the front door in order to be "professional." This requires formal channels and structures for discussing issues of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, mental health, and different abilities...with the end goal of an equitable, inclusive culture and practices.

7. Create formal channels for employee voice to be safely heard on issues that matter. Treat all staff like the professionals they are -- with experiences, expertise, and perspectives that are valued as key sources of input for decision-making. Identify the most important issues at critical junctures throughout the year, and leverage the skills, knowledge, and passion available across the whole organization.

8. Coach leaders to model authenticity, vulnerability, and direct feedback. No one should be asked to perform a level of sharing or openness that is not aligned to their natural style, but there is something to be said for building trust through authentic disclosure -- about failure, feelings, and fears. What a sigh of relief to know the most senior level leaders too are human! Direct, respectful, frequent feedback (both positive and constructive), paired with requests for reciprocal feedback, lets teams and staff know that communication is a two-way street with safety nets for sharing the real deal.

9. Implement Anonymous Surveys. Don't be overconfident that leadership or HR have an accurate pulse on either "word on the street" or the lived, internal reality of staff. Use anonymous surveys to ask questions that matter about culture, leadership, key business issues, and explicitly about psychological safety. Make it clear that the surveys are indeed anonymous; if there is any doubt, it's likely questions will go unanswered or be filtered. Share the data all the way up (no sugar coating) and take action.

10. Replace hierarchical organizational structures with democratic ones. Distribute responsibility and leadership. Design decision-making and communication channels around inclusivity. Train supervisors on distributive and facilitative leadership. Share information across all levels of the organization. Structure your organizational chart as a visual representation of your values on inclusivity and democracy. Find creative ways to bring a democratic, distributive ideology to life!

11. Provide opportunities for leaders, teams and staff to talk openly about what empathy looks and feels like at work. Hold high expectations for supervisors to detect, acknowledge, and honor difficult emotions, particularly during times of change -- not just organizational change, but personal change. Host roundtable discussions on empathy and humanity. Challenge traditional notions of emotional intelligence within the context of oppression and marginalization: What does empathy truly look like in action?

12. Trust your data (retention, performance, and perceptual). Face the hard truth when the data indicates there is an issue of organizational culture. If people are leaving your organization in flocks; if your most passionate, creative people become quiet or hide; if survey feedback indicates issues -- take it all seriously. Uncover root causes and be honest about the conditions and behaviors that are promoting or preventing positive experiences and psychological safety.

13. Catch negative emotional trends (fear, frustration, disengagement) early and nip them in the bud. Track the palpable "energy" of the organization from a place of feelings, gut, and intuition. Understand that waves of collective emotion may be a natural reaction to a recent change, or a rumble under the surface for long periods of time. Identify safe and productive ways for staff to provide feedback to help understand "the why behind the wave." Seek to remedy root causes, and don't ignore issues or sweep them under the rug. Turn the tide with compassion and care!

14. Hire an external consultant to assess your organizational culture and psychological safety profile. Sometimes things are more clear from the outside looking in, and it can help to have an impartial third party provide objective observations. Combine this data set with data from other sources to triangulate the factors that may be preventing a truly psychologically safe environment.