Why Are Some Leaders Afraid of Psychological Safety?
Javier Llerena ????????
Workshop Facilitator | Empowering Leaders to Build Trust, Strengthen Connections, and Create High-Performing Teams | Unlock Peak Performance | Podcast Host | Advocate Against Human Trafficking | Hybrid Athlete
Psychological safety has become a buzzword in the world of organizational priorities. It determines an organization’s ability to attract, develop, and retain its people. Despite its transformative benefits, some leaders still bristle at the mention of the concept. Why is that?
@TimClark and @AlistairAitchison identify two types of leaders who tend to avoid psychological safety: Leaders who feed on title and status and leaders who try to hide their incompetence.
Psychological safety is a ‘culture of rewarded vulnerability’ that allows employees to flourish across four successive stages: inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety, and challenger safety. When leaders nurture it, teams flourish. When leaders neglect it, teams falter. It is the central mechanism in the formation of a vibrant culture.
However, psychological safety puts insecure, mediocre, or poor leaders – and certainly imposters – to the test. As a leveling device, it redistributes influence. For leaders who feed on title and status, it threatens their positional power. For those lacking competence, it threatens their exposure.
Leaders who feed on title and status view authority bias, a central liability of hierarchy, as a threat. Psychological safety neutralizes this bias, making individuals more agnostic to status and more willing to debate issues based on their merits, creating a genuine idea and skill meritocracy based on capability, not title. Leaders who are addicted to the narcotic of power or are resistant to sharing what they perceive as ‘their’ stage of aggrandizement will try to protect privilege and consolidate power.
On the other hand, leaders who try to hide their incompetence shudder at psychological safety because it threatens to expose their lack of skill or judgment. Psychological safety shifts the focus from a power hierarchy to a competence hierarchy. It broadens and redistributes participation rights, offering those with diverse perspectives the opportunity to share their opinions without fear of retribution.
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As we assess our organization’s appetite for psychological safety and leadership team’s need for it, we must reflect on our current level of psychological safety, raise awareness among our colleagues, hold our team accountable for improving their psychological safety behaviors, and measure the impact of change.
At this time, when competition to attract and retain top talent is harder than ever, embedding psychological safety behaviors into our working environments and encouraging our leaders to come out from behind their titles and status is critical to our success.
Join me and the #PositiveLeadershipAcademy in developing the skills and mindset to create a psychologically safe workplace that drives innovation, creativity, and growth.
Originally published in @PeopleManagementUK.