Psychological Safety Isn’t Just the Leaders Job

To develop psychological safety the research shows many key factors, but, organizational context, leadership behavior and team relationships are the three most crucial. There are others, like resource scarcity, past experiences etc., but the big three have a big impact. Leadership behavior is the biggest factor because it has a direct impact while it also has influence over how organization context is perceived and team relationships might look team to team.

That said - psychological safety is not just about how the leader shows up. When it comes to psychological safety, taking ownership of what you can influence is key to successful growth - leaders and team members need to be in it together. This got me thinking about a team I worked with a couple years back that showed how significant this can be.

It was an 11 person Senior Leadership Team (SLT) who had worked together for many years. Context that is perhaps more important is that the team had remained stable while there had been 3 different Presidents hired and removed over a 5 year span. The latest had volunteered to step down from a global role within the company to lead this regional SLT.

Because of the seniority of the team, an interview was conducted with the new President and each member of the team to build understanding of the challenges in the team, relationships and create clarity in the process. Next, the team was asked to complete The Fearless Organization Scan with the results to be presented during a 2.5 hour development session scheduled the following week.

As the results came in, it showed that levels of psychological safety were indeed lower than average and well below the levels expected as a predictor of a high performing team.

We started the session by helping the group create agreements around how they would interact with each other during the session. While it sounds simple, this was a critical step to build the foundation for a productive session. Once completed we continued with the results - I shared them and simply asked “now that you understand how the numbers compare and what they represent, what do they mean to you?”

Some of the answers came quickly - “embarrassed”, “Not Surprised”, “Something to work on.” “Opportunity”

Through the session we discussed how this impacted their daily work, their long term effort and how they lead their own teams. The siloed nature of the organization was a reflection of their own siloed team. The president had been replaced twice because they were ineffective, but the team started to take ownership for the idea that if they had been willing to work together each of the preceding presidents would have been more successful.? This was highlighted with the comment:?

“Maybe if we had been more willing to work together we wouldn’t be in this situation or have yet another leader stepping in to try to fix what's clearly not working.”

The team committed to shifting their approach. Developing “players only meetings” where the new president would not attend so the team could start sorting through their issues on their own. They also committed to new strategies of accountability and setting the stage for more productive interactions.?

After some follow-up sessions to help refine their approach, we felt the team had stabilized and was well on its path to high performance.?

In a market that had the greatest potential the region had been one of the least profitable. Within a year they had finally hit their first financial target in 5 years and were starting to capture the market potential which had been missing.

Perhaps more importantly - team members unanimously stated they had a completely new experience of the workplace.

It was a win for the business and a win for their people.

You can find the original blog here: https://www.aristotleperformance.com/post/psychological-safety-isn-t-just-the-leaders-job