Psychological Safety: We all have a story, what's yours?

I was recently asked why I am so passionate about psychological safety and why I believe it is so vital for organizations. My answer is pretty simple. The experience of not feeling psychologically safe was the driving factor that led me to get my doctorate in Organizational and Leadership Psychology and ultimately, to where I am today as a coach and consultant.?

My experience of not feeling safe at work is something a lot of people can relate to. Despite decades of research that supports the importance of psychological safety for teams and organizations it’s still missing from many work cultures. When psychological safety is present, it’s the lynchpin for high performance on teams.??PS increases innovation, learning, ROI, effectiveness, and goal achievement. Why it matters for organizational goals is quite well known, but for me it goes deeper than that.?

We don’t have a ‘work life’ and a ‘home life’ – we have one life. We are whole people and our experiences at work go home with us, to the store with us, and permeates every interaction we have. The experience of psychological safety or lack of it, is far reaching into all areas of our lives.??The impacts matrix out so far and holds the potential to either positively or negatively touch so many people. This is why it’s so important to me, because it touched all the people in my life when it was missing for me at work.

I started my career in early childhood education, teaching preschool and kindergarten children. I adored the kids, the work with them, and the way their eyes lit up each day as they learned new things. Though I loved the work, I burnt out after a few years due to the leadership I was serving under. When I resigned from my position, I was dead set on figuring out ‘what just happened and how do I make sure other people don’t have to experience that too’. I had gone from passionate, motivated, and joyful about my work to dreading each day, losing sleep at night, and feeling intense anxiety that impacted other aspects of my life. It wasn’t the work with the children that caused the shift. It was the work culture and way I was made to feel by supervisors and leaders that made work a place where I couldn’t speak up, take interpersonal risks, offer and try new ideas, or openly bring up problems or concerns. When I and other teachers raised our hands we’d have it slapped back down. After one or two times, everyone learned to keep their hands and heads down. I stopped bringing my full self and all my passion to work. All my pent-up stress from work, I took home.?

Following my resignation, I completed a Masters in Organizational Leadership in search of my answer to ‘what happened and how do I make sure other people don’t have to experience that’, but I didn’t find it there. I went on for my doctoral degree in Leadership Psychology.??There I was able to use my doctoral research to explore this exact question with the help of psychology and neuroscience.??

My research broke new ground as it showed the differences in neural responses of followers to leaders demonstrating behaviors that created psychologically safe conditions versus those that did not. The neurological data is clear and supports the reality that psychological safety is good for organizations, teams, and our brains.??I was able to see at a neurological level why I had the experience I did as a teacher, despite my love of the work with children. Further, it made me wonder how many people lose their passion for a career due to a lack of psychological safety? How many other people change fields, don’t go into a vocation, don’t offer up the next lifesaving innovation because of fear created by toxic cultures? How many homes are stressed by bad working conditions? How many lives could be changed if we could create healthy and psychologically safe workplace cultures everywhere? Because I know what is at stake, I completely shifted gears to now focusing my life as a coach and consultant helping leaders and organizations to build healthy and psychologically safe workplace cultures.?

It is abundantly clear that psychological safety is not nice to have, it’s a business imperative. It’s a human imperative. The current focus on it comes at a time when more than ever we need to have all brains on deck to solve the world’s toughest problems. It is time for every organization to ensure that they are focusing on building inclusive, healthy, and psychologically safe workplaces and Holonix is here to help.