Psychological Safety and Increasing Risk
Peter Brace PhD
Psychological Safety Consultant for APAC Leaders and DEI Experts ?? Helps leaders & DEI experts link respect and accountability through psychological safety to improve team performance ?? CEO at Human Capital Realisation
How to increase risk in your teams
Why would you want to increase the level of risk in your teams? Doesn’t risk lead to harm? Isn’t the modern workplace one where risk needs to be mitigated, managed, reduced and avoided?
Let’s be clear: We are not talking here about risks to health and safety, but interpersonal risks. The risks of being judged adversely by others, of being evaluated by others and being found (or even just feeling that you are being found) lacking.
By increasing the tolerance for interpersonal risk in our teams, we open the way of reducing the risk of mental or physical harm, enhance the possibility of innovation and improvement, and open the door to increased performance.
But how do we do this? What role does psychological safety have in enabling us to increase our tolerance for interpersonal risk?
The cost of interpersonal risk
Numerous neuroscience studies have found that of all the most stressful tasks we perform, those which raise our levels of stress the most are those with an element of interpersonal risk - where the task exposes us to the judgement of others. Think of all the surveys that have found that the greatest fear faced by most people is the fear of public speaking - higher ranked even than the fear of death!
Our biological and social evolution has ensured that acceptance by our tribe (or nowadays our team!) is closely tied to our feeling of physical safety and assured survival. Logic has a minor role in this feeling; we may know in our heads that it doesn’t make any sense to feel so anxious, but that doesn’t change the feeling!
In our team at work, our biology and social conditioning drives us to build and maintain acceptance, and where acceptance is hard to come by, we do our best to ‘fit in’. This means that we avoid anything that makes us stand out as different; we hide our true identify if this does not align with the norms of the group; and we try not to ‘rock the boat’ with any ideas or suggestions that we feel the team (and especially the most influential members - usually the leader) might disagree with.
The result? A homogeneously thinking team; a lack of new ideas and innovation; a team that finds it difficult to adapt and grow when conditions change and new demands arise.
In short: Stagnation and decay. And in, for example, a healthcare team, the need to maintain team cohesion may override the requirement to keep patients safe - and errors will not be called out, but ignored and concealed to avoid anyone having to make an assignment of blame that might cause interpersonal tensions.
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Risk analysis
When we believe we face a risky situation of any kind, we instinctively perform an analysis of the risk. Risk experts and consultants do this also, but in a more formal way. The ISO defines risk analysis as “the process to comprehend the nature of risk and to determine the level of risk”.
When we face an interpersonal risk, our brains immediately try to predict the level of risk we are facing. And they do that by comparing what has happened to us in the past.
If our team is one where any deviation from the norm is punished by humiliation, such as being ignored, laughed at, or even given a look of derision, then our brain expects that to happen again.
Our levels of so-called ’stress hormones’ will rise. We will feel anxious and even afraid, and we will not express our idea. We won’t ask the question we were thinking about. We don’t challenge the behaviour of our fellow team member or leader - even behaviour that might increase the level of physical or mental risk for ourselves or others.
Increasing tolerance?
But what are the benefits of increasing the tolerance for risk in our teams? What can we do to increase the tolerance for interpersonal risk in our team? These are topics we’ll discuss next week.
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Build highly engaged and high-performing teams by boosting psychological safety in your workplace. BOOK a 30-minute free consulting session with me to find out how I can help.
Director of Partner Relations @ Venture Bound LLC | Managing Director @ CultureRx. I specialize in creating innovative, relevant, highly attractive workplace cultures & providing strategic direction for organizations.
1 年Peter, really great perspectives. Inviting and supporting experimentation within the team that is motivated to provide superior customer service and value I feel is essential, especially now. Clarity on purpose, mission and results provides the context and "professional lab" for such effective and fruitful experimentation, right?