Why is psychological safety so elusive?

I had a conversation recently about a church organisation that seemed to be experiencing power struggles. This was a casual, private conversation, not related to work, but it reminded me yet again that when human beings come together to collaborate and co-operate, odd dynamics can emerge, creating tension and friction. Even in a organisation where Christian values of tolerance, harmony, care, respect and so on are supposed to prevail.

I once did some work for a charity. Initially I was invited to work with the executive team and then to facilitate a whole-organisation away day. Purpose: to communicate more effectively with each other across all levels, to create a sense of common mission about the charity and how it went about its work.

Why is it not currently working, I asked? People across different levels don’t really talk to each other, I was told. There’s a certain amount of power play going on at senior levels which intimidates or shuts down more junior staff. People tend to take their job descriptions absolutely literally, even though it’s often clear that something outside the norm needs to be addressed, and our charitable work and effectiveness is suffering as a result.

Okay, I said. How many of you are there?

Fifteen.

Fifteen people in one small, mission-led organisation, who couldn’t hold a civil conversation with each other.

I’ve encountered similar situations in organisations of every shape, size and purpose. It’s not a function of size. It’s not a function of what you’re there to do, the sector you’re in, or your industry.

It’s about your people.

People are acutely conscious of how they fit into social groups. We have a fundamental need to belong, because it kept us safe when we were young and when we operated in small nomadic groups who were vulnerable to predators or competitors for food. Anything which makes our ongoing inclusion in a group can make us feel unsafe and produces a myriad of defensive behaviours.

Maybe we attack first, perhaps dissing an idea in a meeting or criticising someone’s contribution, to deflect attention from our own weaknesses. We might seek alliances with powerful people as a way of shoring up our status in the organisation and ensuring we have someone on our side ahead of the next redundancy round or the next performance appraisal callibration. We might protect our resources, allocating money to slightly illusory projects or making sure all our people look really busy, to avoid being put under pressure or demands we might not be able to meet, or just in case someone tries to cut our budget or our headcount.

We do everything we can to make sure we’re in the “in group”, to avoid being ostracised.

Or we ostracise ourselves, effectively, by walking away from something before anyone else has a chance to fire us, or cut our projects, or end our relationship.

Much of this behaviour can be self-sabotaging. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Unless you are highly self-aware, you are behaving like this. And so are all your people. As a leader, you are having to manage people’s defensive reactions all the time. Not because you’re their therapist but because somehow you need to get them all moving in vaguely the same direction at the same time, producing the best possible results with minimal interpersonal aggravation.

Every person comes with their own life experience which means they way they react to threats is unique. Lump them all together into teams, and the interplay of individual psychological histories creates a complex soup of emotions and defences. Your job, somehow, is to manage through it.

This is one reason why the concept of psychological safety can be so elusive for leaders in organisations. It sounds simple but it’s actually really hard to create in the real world with real people and all their idiosyncracies.

If you’d like help thinking through the dynamics in your team, including your own interactions, and working out how to operate more effectively, drop me a message and let’s have a chat.

#WomenLeaders

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Hi, I’m Kate. I help senior women leaders:

? overcome the personal and societal barriers that hold women back at work

? so they can succeed in senior roles

? with confidence, authority and impact.

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