Psychological Safety: Misconceptions (Part 2)

Welcome to the 10th edition of our LinkedIn Newsletter, "Inclusion and Diversity Learning Circle"! Created by Diversity Inclusion, the I&D Learning Circle provides you and your organisation with best-practice tools, resources, and information, which can be directly applied to your workplace’s I&D program, affecting real and transformational change.?

What is Psychological Safety??

In this edition of our newsletter, we are excited to share Diversity Inclusion’s next Learning Lab video with you, “Psychological Safety: Misconceptions (Part 2)”. Back in February we shared Part 1 of this series, which explored some of the misconceptions associated with the term psychological safety. In our Learning Lab video this month, CEO, Lucinda Hewitson, recaps the definition of Psychological Safety and shares two further common misconceptions.?

At Diversity Inclusion, the definition we like to use, to define Psychological Safety, is…??

??“a culture in which interpersonal risks feel doable, and valued - speaking up with questions and concerns, sharing half-developed ideas and speaking up about mistakes.”?

This definition is based on that put forward by Amy Edmondson, a Professor at Harvard Business School, who is credited with introducing the construct of Psychological Safety. We have based our definition on research conducted by Amy.??

In our work with clients, supporting them to foster psychological safety in their teams and organisations, we have become aware of the many misconceptions regarding what psychological safety is. More recently, the term psychological safety has also become more widely used, and we have noticed that it is sometimes misunderstood.?

What Psychological Safety is Not...?

In our previous Learning Lab video, Lucinda, shared some of the common misconceptions about psychological safety including;?

·??????Niceness – the idea that psychological safety is simply being agreeable and nice to everyone at work.?

·??????A Personality Trait – the idea that those with particular personality traits are more likely to feel psychologically safe.??

·??????Absence of Risk Factors – the idea that simply the absence of psychosocial risk factors (e.g., bullying, harassment, discrimination, too much work, lack of autonomy etc) creates psychological safety.?

The above do not describe psychological safety. In fact, simply agreeing and supporting others at work for the sake of being nice, might be considered the opposite of psychological safety. In a psychologically safe workplace, people can have productive disagreements and speak up, not just when they agree but also when they disagree with others. There is also research that demonstrates that personality traits and psychological safety are independent of one another. So, people are more likely to speak up in an organisation with psychological safety, irrespective of their personality type.?While an absence of psychosocial risk factors provides a positive foundation, this, alone, does not mean a workplace is psychologically safe.??

In our latest video, shared here, Lucinda explores two further misconceptions;

·??????Consensus Decision Making – the idea that psychological safety means that everyone needs to agree, before a decision is made.

·??????Low Accountability – the idea that in a psychologically safe workplace, no one is accountable for performance or achieving standards.

In this video, Lucinda refers to Amy Edmondson's grid as a way to illustrate the way in which accountability interacts with psychological safety. While these concepts do interact, they are actually independent constructs.

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Diversity Inclusion in Tasmania?

In May, the Diversity Inclusion Team were, once again, lucky enough to travel to Tasmania, partnering with @TasNetworks and sharing our Call It Out Train-the-Trainer Program with their people from across the state. Call It Out is about creating respectful workplaces where everyone is empowered to be a positive bystander, should they witness inappropriate behaviours such as bullying, sexual harassment or discrimination.?

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This time @Georgia Brown and @Josie Miller delivered our Call It Out Train-the-Trainer Workshop with 20 TasNetworks facilitators, along with providing coaching session for the new facilitators. Sharing our valuable Call It Out approach and tools is always rewarding, as we get to grow the community across Australia who are creating safer workplaces for all.

All our Learning Lab content – blog articles, videos and other resources – is available on our website (diversityinclusion.com.au), with new content released via our I&D Learning Circle Newsletter. While blog articles and other resources are freely available, Learning Lab videos are available exclusively for our I&D Learning Circle Newsletter subscribers. The following password will allow you to access our video content.??

?Password: LearningCircle??

As we continue to develop future Learning Lab content, we would love to hear from you, our D&I community, as to what D&I topics and issues interest you most. You can share your thoughts, questions, and ideas in the comments section here.?

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