Leadership Horizons

Creating Psychological Safety in a Changing Workplace

• Lois Burton • Episode 7

Share episode

The boundaries between employees and organizations have dramatically shifted. Remote work, economic uncertainty, organizational restructuring, and evolving attitudes about work have fundamentally reshaped the psychological contract—those unwritten expectations between employers and employees. 

Yet amid this transformation, psychological safety remains essential for team performance, innovation, and well-being. My RADAR framework provides a practical approach for leaders navigating this challenging terrain. Start by Recognizing that the psychological contract has changed—acknowledge shifting loyalty equations, redefined boundaries, and evolved expectations. Then Adapt your leadership approach through explicit conversations and transparency, moving from parental leadership to co-creation.

Deepen psychological safety by normalizing vulnerability, rewarding honesty, separating performance from person, making it safe to fail, and establishing clear boundaries. Articulate expectations clearly, providing an anchor when broader contracts are in flux. 

Finally, Review progress regularly, creating feedback opportunities and measuring improvements. I share a compelling case study of a leader facing a hybrid work transition during a merger. Initially avoiding discussions about uncertainties, she witnessed growing anxiety and disengagement. After implementing the RADAR framework—acknowledging changes, adapting her leadership style, creating safety check-ins, and articulating clear expectations—engagement scores improved and innovation flourished within just three months. 

Psychological safety isn't a luxury; it's a business imperative, especially when fundamental work relationships are evolving. How are you adjusting your leadership approach as the psychological contract changes? 

Join me next week when I'll explore how creating development opportunities as a leader can enhance your effectiveness. Remember, the way we lead today won't lead us into tomorrow—keep exploring your horizons!

Leadership Horizons - Helping You Lead Beyond Boundaries

Speaker 1:

In today's episode we're tackling a critical challenge facing leaders how to create psychological safety in teams when the psychological contract with their organization has fundamentally changed. Let's say something first of all about the concept of the psychological contract, that's, those unwritten expectations between employees and employers. And the psychological contract has undergone dramatic shifts in recent years. Remote work, economic uncertainty, organizational restructuring and changing cultural attitudes about work have all contributed to a fundamental reimagining of what employees expect and what organisations can offer. Yet psychological safety the belief that one won't be punished or humiliated, speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes remains absolutely essential for team performance. It fosters innovation and well-being. So how do leaders navigate this new terrain? I'd like to revisit our radar framework from previous episodes, as it applies perfectly to this challenge. So, if you remember, the radar concept is that you first of all recognize, then you adapt, then you deepen your understanding, you articulate expectations and then review what you've created, get feedback and possibly adapt again. So we're going to look at this concept in the context of psychological safety and how leaders can create that within their teams, as we said before, recognizing that the psychological contract has indeed changed. So the first step is to acknowledge that the psychological contract has changed. So the first step is to acknowledge that the psychological contract has changed, and this means acknowledging that the loyalty equation has shifted, work-life boundaries have been redefined, career paths look very different than they once did, and expectations around flexibility and autonomy have evolved. Leaders need to openly discuss these changes rather than pretending that everything is the same. So thinking about what specific changes have your team members experienced is really important, and talking to them about what matters most to them now, because the likelihood is that that has shifted from previous years. Likelihood is that that has shifted from previous years.

Speaker 1:

With the clarity about the new reality, leaders must adapt their approach and help their teams to adapt too. This means having explicit conversations about what needs to change. A couple of the teams have been working with quite recently have been, I wouldn't say afraid, but just cautious about talking to their teams about change. I think they feel that people have experienced so much in recent years that then talking again about more change actually adds to the sense of overwhelm and isn't helpful at this stage. However, as we said in one of the previous episodes, the pace of change is not about to slow down and waiting for something to feel more settled to have these conversations risks that the psychological safety disappears and then it becomes ever more difficult to recapture. So I would really encourage you, as leaders, to start having explicit conversations with your teams about what needs to change. This also speaks to what we said in a previous episode about the relationship between leaders and teams that these days needs to be less parental, if people understand that. So it's much less about leaders being seen to look after their teams and much more about having conversations that enable co-creation. So having those explicit conversations is really important being completely transparent about what is possible and what isn't possible and what the organizational constraints are and therefore what is within the control and influence of the leader in their team and what falls outside of their control. And then focusing on what is within their control and starting to co-create new agreements about how you'll work together and ensuring that leadership practices evolve to meet the new expectations.

Speaker 1:

When leaders fail to adapt, trust erodes quickly. Being flexible and responsive becomes even more important when the fundamental contract is changing. Equally, trust can erode if the leader tries to go too quickly. So if the leader tries to force adaptation on their teams, then they will often meet high resistance. So this goes back to having those really explicit conversations and being prepared to give the time to debate. This Time to debate what really does need to change, what does need to stay the same, because we don't want to get rid of good practice if it still needs to exist, but every leader and every team needs to be moving forward at the moment. So again, it comes back to being flexible and responsive, and that becomes even more important when the fundamental contract is changing.

Speaker 1:

The third stage is deepen, and this is focusing specifically on deepening the psychological safety in this new context. So, firstly, normalize vulnerability as a leader model, appropriate vulnerability by acknowledging uncertainties and admitting when you don't have all the answers. This is particularly powerful when the organization itself is navigating change. There can often be a perception that somebody, somewhere, has a blueprint, that they already know what's going to happen and what all the answers are. They're just not choosing to share that with everyone. And part of normalizing vulnerability is to admit that at the moment it's very unlikely that there's a blueprint. Lots of things are evolving and therefore everybody needs to be involved in that evolution and there isn't one single answer about how this is going to come out. So normalizing that vulnerability becomes, as I said, very important, reward honesty.

Speaker 1:

When team members speak uncomfortable, uncomfortable truth, thank them and do that explicitly. Make it really clear that you value candor, even when the message is difficult, and and this goes an awful long way towards um creating that psychological safety. So, even if you have to bite your tongue and think, oh, oh, either don't agree or that was hard to hear Be prepared to thank people for speaking their mind and telling the uncomfortable truths. Separate the performance from the person. Ensure that any feedback that you give in your team addresses behaviors and not character. People need to know that their worth isn't tied to perfect performance, especially during transitions. However, they do need to know which behaviors are valued and how their performance will be supported and developed and how they will be encouraged to evolve. So there's the honesty and then there's the feedback, but making sure that people still feel that they're valued, that their personal worth is really important, that their contribution is really important, and then you will gradually get people feeling safer to say what they think, and then it becomes safer to have really candid debates, because then you can disagree, but without it becoming personal and without resentment building.

Speaker 1:

The fourth point is make it safe to fail, make it safe to fail. Now, nobody likes to fail and there are some failures that would be very high risk, that you would need to mitigate. But sometimes failure is just a setback and if you can reframe failures as learning opportunities and create low stakes ways for team members to experiment and innovate without fear, then again you start to encourage. You get the psychological safety, but you start to encourage the innovation that you want. Um I.

Speaker 1:

I heard a speaker, um from a very prestigious organization, um a bank, who was speaking to leadership leadership development workshop a couple of weeks ago and he talked about this a lot. He said that he wanted to give members of his team the safety to be able to make decisions on their own and that if that decision turned out to be the wrong decision, that it was framed as a learning opportunity and not a failure for which they would be punished. He did make it clear that there was a difference between making a decision that didn't quite work out when the person had done all the thinking, really put the work into understanding what the right decision was and could explain that thinking, as opposed to someone who'd been reckless and just made a decision on the spur of the moment and couldn't explain their thinking and hadn't put the work in. So I think this is part of making it safe to fail Help people to understand what type of thinking and how much time they need to put into that before they make decisions. But, as I say, if you can create lower stakes, ways for the team to experiment and innovate, then they'll start to believe that that is okay and that they're not going to get punished if something doesn't go quite right.

Speaker 1:

The fifth point in this deepening of psychological safety is establishing clear boundaries. In changing environments, boundaries become even more important. Be explicit about what's acceptable, what is in within that frame of innovation, experimentation, and what's not. And this is particularly important when it comes to behaviours towards one another. So be clear that a changing environment does not legitimise disrespect, miscommunication and people failing to take account of others' perspectives and people failing to take account of others' perspectives. So you establish your clear boundaries around acceptability, behavior and team interactions to support that innovation and to support operating in an environment where you have low fear.

Speaker 1:

The next stage in the radar formula is to articulate so clearly articulate the expectations, the values and the purpose this is. This is, this is crucial, particularly when you've had some of those debates and those discussions and that um that, that opportunity to do some experimentation. Because? Because when the broader psychological contracts influx, your ability to communicate with clarity becomes an anchor for your team. Be clear that you can't give certainty where no certainty exists. This is about clarity. So express your commitment to the team explicitly, clearly state what matters most in this new context. Communicate the why behind decisions. Articulate what psychological safety looks like in practice and regularly reinforce these messages in different ways.

Speaker 1:

Poor communication creates anxiety and undermines psychological safety when team members understand what matters and why they feel safer to take appropriate risks and a vacuum also creates anxiety and undermines psychological safety. Sometimes I've heard leaders say well, I haven't told them anything this week because there was nothing new to tell them. Even if you're just saying there's nothing new to tell you this week, it's still important to communicate that, because if people um have, if there's a vacuum in communication, people start to make up and imagine what's happening rather than understanding what's happening. The final stage in the radar framework applied here is to review. So create regular opportunities to reflect on how the cycle, the psychological safety, is developing.

Speaker 1:

Ask for feedback about team dynamics. This can be anonymous if you want. If you, it depends how far you are along the um spectrum. If you get to the point where but people don't feel that they have to be anonymous, then you know you're getting something right. But do ask for feedback and use team retrospectives to discuss how safe people feel sharing ideas. So refer back to previous meetings and talk about the ideas that were shared and ask people how they felt about sharing those ideas. Again, this links into the normalizing of the vulnerability Monitor. Who speaks in meetings. We talked about meetings last week and some of the techniques to make sure everybody speaks. But if somebody is being particularly quiet and even when they do speak they're not contributing much, it's important to recognize that and then perhaps solicit some feedback from those people.

Speaker 1:

Track improvements in idea generation and problem solving. So when good ideas are put forward and when problems are solved in different ways, make sure that you track it and capture it, not in a kind of a minuted way, but in terms of being able to say you know, two months ago we wouldn't have had that conversation and therefore that idea would probably not have come forward. So make sure that you do capture, and measuring success is so important. Sometimes we measure failure and we forget to measure success. So make sure you measure success as well as any challenges and anything that goes wrong, and also track changes in engagement and discretionary effort. So if you notice people are becoming more engaged and that they are actually offering discretionary effort more than they did before, then again that that tells you that the psychological safety is developing. A lot of this is about having conversations and making sure that you have those conversations consistently. So it's not enough just to have one conversation. These conversations need to be ongoing and psychological safety, remember, isn't built once and for all. It requires ongoing attention, especially during times of organizational change.

Speaker 1:

Let me just share a brief case study from my coaching practice. I'm working with a leader at the moment who leads a team that's transitioning to a hybrid work model while simultaneously undergoing a merger. So the psychological contract was being rewritten on multiple fronts. So the psychological contract was being rewritten on multiple fronts. The initial the leader initially was trying to maintain business as usual, avoiding discussions about the uncertainties and changes that the team was experiencing, and she actually believed that, that that was better for people. Um, but actually the result was growing anxiety, decreased participation in meetings and several key team members were beginning to look elsewhere. So in our coaching sessions we talked about the radar framework, starting with recognition, creating a space for team members to articulate what had changed for them and how it was affecting their experience. This simple act of acknowledgement immediately improved the atmosphere.

Speaker 1:

Next, she adapted her approach, shifting from a directive style to a more collaborative one that suited the hybrid environment better. She adjusted meeting structures and communication channels and decision-making processes to fit the new reality, and these were all co-created with her team. But it started by her shifting her approach. First of all, together with her team, she worked on deepening psychological safety by establishing a new practice of beginning meetings with a quick check-in a safety check-in and they used a simple color system to indicate how each person was feeling Green, amber and red, a colour system we're all fairly familiar with. And the leader articulated clear expectations about respectful communication and repeatedly emphasised that mistakes were part of a learning process and not something that would be punished. Within three months, after regular reviews and adjustments, engagement scores had improved, innovation was starting to flourish and the team was better equipped to navigate the ongoing changes. So this is an ongoing story, but in the first three months she's seen some real results and some real changes in how people feel in terms of their psychological safety. She told me a couple of weeks ago that 80% of the team were now putting up green in the safety check-ins and the others were amber, and the reasons that they were amber they were explaining. So they were feeling much more psychologically safe because they felt okay to explain their vulnerabilities.

Speaker 1:

So as we wrap up today's episode, remember that psychological safety isn't a nice to have, it's a business imperative, especially when the psychological contract is changing. By applying our radar framework recognize, adapt, adapt, deepen, articulate and review you can create an environment where team, where team members feel secure and then can bring their full capabilities to work, even amidst uncertainty. Next week, I'm going to be looking at creating development. Opportunities as a leader and how the lack of these can sabotage your effectiveness. Opportunities as a leader and how the lack of these can sabotage your effectiveness. Until then, I'm Lois Burton and this has been Leadership Horizons. Remember the way we digest today isn't going to lead us into tomorrow. Keep exploring your horizons.