Leaders - Check Your Psychological Safety Privilege

As yesterday’s article outlines - Psychological Safety only exists at a group level and any and all perceptions we may have at an individual level can’t and shouldn’t be extrapolated.

In this short video , we remind people that is the case so that they aren’t surprised when the results may not reflect their belief once they start measuring it, and we then outline why holding a personal belief as the universal truth that holds for the whole team is dangerous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMiIvxoqAhI

As those of you who read us often may have noticed, we rarely address our advice to leadership - it’s mostly addressed to each and every team member. Today is somewhat of an exception because it’s worth remembering that leaders of teams are in a position that may make it difficult for them to be objective when it comes to realising where their team stands in terms of Psychological Safety.

Any position of authority comes with a certain amount of perceived liberty so it practically amounts to having a skewed and privileged vantage point.

While the definition is much more complex than that, if we reduce Psychological Safety to its most basal component: the willingness to fearlessly speak-up, then leaders are much better off than mere team members. A leader is always expected to participate and offer their point of view so they never have a lack of opportunity to express themselves.

In addition to this -or really as a result of it-, leaders are less forced to impression manage as they have much less to fear since their team is less able to sanction them should they observe them appear incompetent, ignorant, negative or intrusive. In fact, it is perceived to be part of a leaders’ job to point out mistakes or speak up when they observe anything out of place in particular in cultures that haven’t done away with blame and don’t really encourage experimentation so they will have no hesitation doing so as opposed to most everyone else in the team who by contrast stays silent.

Irrespective of the exact specifics of the team or of the culture, leaders, in general, engage with comparably lower levels of fear as the threat to their position is much lesser than that experienced by other team members. It is this difference in shared reality that disallows them from accurately estimating the overall level of Psychological Safety of the team.

Ironically, there is also another complicating factor which is that acknowledging this inbuilt Psychological Safety privilege does make some leaders feel instantly defensive and perceive it as a shift of blame where they are accused of having failed their teams in some manner.

This is never the case - as we take great pains to remind everyone - improving the Psychological Safety of the team is the job of the entire team not that of the leader but with that said, that job can only start once the team leader understands the need and doesn’t allow their skewed perspective to be in the way to measuring and continuous improvement.

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are:?Understand,?Measure?and?Improve

Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at?www.peoplenottech.com?or reach out [email protected]?and let's help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant