How to create and promote Psychological Safety at work

Or how to destroy the invisible silence

My previous article introduces the concept of psychological safety and its benefits. Less than a week after that article was published, Adam Grant, organizational psychologist, and professor at Wharton Business School writes:

adamgrant

A post shared by Adam Grant (@adamgrant)

Seeing such a world-class leadership expert (and one of my favorite authors) talk about psychological safety validates the timeliness of this conversation and reaffirms that psychological safety is paramount in any healthy organization!

“Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes”. - Amy Edmonson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School

In the first article of the mini-series, I share the story of how I learned about psychological safety. I also talk about how, sadly, I took it for granted until I found myself in an environment where it was not a priority. I experienced firsthand the benefits of a psychologically safe environment, feeling at my best and like my career was thriving and I want everybody to experience that. To get familiarized with the concept of psychological safety, I recommend starting here.

What is Psychological Safety and why you should care

My experience made me wonder: If psychological safety is so important, how do we create it? Are leaders solely responsible? And is it a one-and-done process?

Creating psychological safety can’t be a bottoms-up process. Employees cannot implement this type of change on their own, especially in an already unsafe environment. But they can support their leaders in doing so.

In this article, we will focus on what each of us can do to help create a psychologically safe work environment. We will start by discussing how leaders (perhaps you are a leader reading this now) can implement psychological safety in their organizations. Then, we will explore how everyone from individual contributors to executives can champion psychological safety and impact their workplace culture.