Does Your Team Feel Psychologically Safe at Work?

Does your team feel psychologically safe at work or do people stay quiet, hold back, and tell you what feels safest to say?

In this episode, we explore one of the most important ingredients in healthy leadership and high-functioning teams: psychological safety. What is it, why does it matter so much, and what does it actually look like in real workplaces?

You’ll hear how psychological safety shapes communication, trust, honesty, team culture and performance, and why leaders cannot create safe spaces for others if they have not done the inner work required to regulate themselves first. Because this is not just about saying the right things in a meeting. It is about the energy, steadiness and self-awareness you bring into the room.

If you are a leader, business owner or manager who wants more honest conversations, stronger culture, better teamwork and a workplace where people feel safe to speak up, this episode will give you plenty to think about.

Listen in to explore the hidden dynamics that affect whether people contribute, stay silent, challenge ideas, admit mistakes or protect themselves at work.

Here are the links Janelle mentions:

The Soft Strength Salon is the next step for women who want to practise this work more deeply, in real time, and create a more grounded relationship with their truth, their voice, their desires, and the way they live and lead. CLICK HERE to learn more and apply.

Prefer Private 1:1 Coaching?  CLICK HERE to learn how to work with Janelle. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Hello, welcome or welcome back. I'm Janelle Ryan. Let's dive in. So over the years, I've found myself in multiple conversations with leaders who are craving teams that are more innovative, communicative, respectfully outspoken, dynamic, and cohesive. They've grown really frustrated with team meetings that are filled with automatic agreement, usually to their ideas, or even worse, silence. They dream of meetings filled with robust conversation, constructive feedback, new ideas, collaboration. Oh, and will someone please disagree with them or suggest a better way just once? They come to me and they ask me if I can please coach members of their team to use their voices more. I can. In fact, it's one of my specialities, but let's put that to the side for a moment. Here's the thing: I don't work with executive leaders only. I also work with the members of their team, the very people these leaders speak of. And when I'm working with someone and they confide in me that they don't speak up in meetings, and I ask them why, here are the things they tell me. I'm not comfortable putting forth my ideas. I'm not comfortable sharing my concerns or fears. I'm not comfortable offering feedback. I'm not comfortable admitting I don't understand something, and there is no way in the world I am ever going to confess that I made a mistake. They fear saying the wrong thing. They're scared of the either perceived or very real consequence of failure or speaking up. So let's talk about fear of failure for a moment. Fear of failure prevents risk taking. And without risk, there's no innovation. And innovation is one of the very things leaders and organizations are craving, particularly today. Without mistakes, learning is limited. And if you don't allow people in your team or organization to make mistakes, that can actually be really detrimental to the growth of the employee, the growth of the team, and the growth of the leader. So a lot of the work I do involves helping clients remove those blocks of fear so they can initiate and navigate courageous, authentic, and honest conversations. But how did they obtain this fear in the first place? Often it's by working with leaders who haven't learned how to create a psychologically safe environment for them. So I want to move into a personal story now. Everyone remembers their first job and their first boss. My first full-time role was a newly created position within a family business. It had experienced exponential growth. There was only one person doing admin, and they called him the office manager. It was a man, and they decided that the workload was too great for him and it was time to bring someone else in. So they brought me in. They hired moi. I was probably 10 years younger, 15 years younger than this man. And unfortunately, this office manager was not happy with my appointment. He didn't agree that they needed someone else in the office. He felt that he could handle it all. And because he was not happy with my appointment, he handled it. He handled working with me, supervising me in a really disappointing way. There was no training, there was no coaching. And I was so scared and so nervous. It didn't take long for me to learn that my ideas were not valid, I was not to speak unless necessary, to second guess everything I did, which just meant I made more mistakes, to cover up the mistakes I made, to never stand up for myself and to just do what I'm told. So it became important in my mind to never show vulnerability, to never put myself in a position where I could be criticized, scolded, laughed at, and let's be honest, yelled at. I learned that being at work required applying a suit of armor, which I put on every morning, and I carried that suit of armor from one role to the next. It was heavy, it was uncomfortable, it affected how I showed up every day, how I navigated hallways, what I did in meetings, even how I turned up to social events. But here's the thing, it protected me really well. Now, I wasn't aware of it at the time, of course, but I now know that I didn't feel psychologically safe at work. And it wasn't until about 10 years later I was working with an amazing leader, and he showed me that I could remove my armor. I'm so grateful to him. He showed me that I was safe. I was safe to make mistakes, to put forth my ideas, to speak my truth, to debate points of view. I was actually allowed to do that. I was safe to show vulnerability. I am so grateful that I worked for that man. So let's talk about what psychological safety is. Professor Amy Edmondson from Harvard, excuse me, Harvard Business School. Look, I made a mistake. Harvard Business School, she coined the term psychological safety, and she defines it as a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. And Harvard Business School's more recent research keeps strengthening the case. Psychological safety is still connected to strong team performance, but it's also being linked to lower burnout and better attention. And this tells us that it's not only a leadership performance issue, it's a sustainable leadership issue too. So, how can you, as a leader or even a colleague, create a psychologically safe environment for your team? You may know of or heard of Renee Brown. She is my absolute queen of vulnerability, and she teaches us to embrace the suck and choose courage over comfort. Oh, I'm getting a little tongue-tied today. Now, Brene Brown tells us these are the biggest killers of psychological safety. Judgment. Number one, there's four. Number one, judgment. Judgment shuts people down really quickly. The moment someone senses they are being assessed, dismissed, or subtly criticized, honesty usually disappears. Number two, giving unsolicited advice. Giving advice too quickly can send the message that fixing matters more than understanding. People often need to feel heard before they're ready to hear solutions. Number three, interrupting. Interrupting tells people, even unintentionally, and I think we can all say we've been guilty of this from time to time. Interrupting tells people that their words are less important than yours. And if you keep doing this over time, it teaches people to edit themselves or stop speaking altogether. Number four, sharing outside the team meeting. Sharing what was said outside the meeting, not even a team, like not just a team meeting, but individual meetings, one-on-one, where people will honor often be more honest and more vulnerable. So let's just call it sharing out time the meeting. Sharing what was said outside the meeting breaks trust at the very moment trust is trying to grow. You would too. Maybe you've been in the situation. You know what it feels like. So Brune also gives us the top four tips to create psychological safety. And you can begin implementing these today if you wish, with your team, if you're in a leadership role, or with your colleagues or with your clients. Number one, active listening. Giving someone your full attention so they feel genuinely heard, not managed or half listened to. Number two, staying curious, being open instead of defensive, and being willing to ask rather than assume. Number three, being honest, telling the truth with care. So trust is built on what is real, not what is easy to say. And this can be a balancing act for leaders because sometimes there are things that we cannot share. We do not have the authority or the permission to do so. But we can be honest and tell them we have some information we're unable to share right now, but as soon as we are able to, we will. Treating what is shared with respect so people know their openness is safe with you. Now, if you're a leader, I urge you or encourage you to take a moment and consider. Do I listen without actually hearing my team? Do I just nod, biding my time until I can get back to my long to-do list? These are questions I'm often asking, by the way, these are questions I'm often asking leaders I work with. I'll say it again because I interrupted myself. Do I listen without actually hearing my team? Or do I just nod, biding my time until I can get back to my long to-do list? Do I seek to understand? Am I curious? Do I ask questions? Dive in to learn more? Do I walk my talk? Am I open to feedback on how my actions affect my team? Am I honest with my communication and feedback even if it makes me uncomfortable? Am I clear? Brene teaches us clear is kind. Am I clear? If someone confides in me, are they certain I will keep their confidence? Do we have an agreement? No one speaks of anyone else outside a team meeting. I just had a bit of a long pause there because uh an example came to mind. I know a leader who is very successful with every organization she goes into. And these are, she's a CEO, um, and these are large organizations. She is very successful at creating a culture she calls honoring the absent, where no one speaks about anyone negatively unless they are present. And if someone tries to, the other person stops them and says, This person isn't in this room. We either go and get them, bring them into the room, or this conversation ends now. And she, I'm in awe of how successfully she has implemented honoring the absent throughout very large organizations. Really good example. Continuing on with the things I encourage you to ask yourself. Do I acknowledge risk taking? Do I see failures as learning opportunities? There are large global organizations, very, very innovative organizations that I have worked with in my um with Sky High Coaching. I work with members of their teams who the they're global, they're innovative, their household names, they are always inventing. And they one of them in particular, I know, um, not sure about the others, but one I do know has a 25% failure rate. So they know that 25% of new products they create or new services they offer will fail. So everyone in that organization feels very comfortable putting forth new ideas because they, this organization has placed a buffer, a process, a strategy around we know 25%'s going to fail, so let's bring it, bring it on, and we'll go and see. We'll try it, we'll see, and then we'll make a call after that. Um, so yes, do I acknowledge risk taking? Do I see failures as learning opportunities? When clients come to work with me, we fail big, we fail fast, we get it behind us. Because there is something there for us to learn. And that that that growth or that pivotal moment or that learning moment or that expansion moment was in my client's future. So we want to get it behind us as quickly as we can. We fail big, we fail fast, we learn from it, we get it behind us. Um, the biggest failures we experience in our lives, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, you'll have your own examples, they're the things that we will never do again, aren't they? Oh my gosh, that was so huge. I messed up so badly, I will never do that again. And uh, final question. Do I consider every idea and acknowledge the input? Even if that idea is never brought to life? Do you acknowledge that someone brought you an idea? You're not going to roll it out, but do you acknowledge, consider, and thank? So these are the questions worth asking yourself and your team. If you have the courage to receive the feedback, ask them Do you do these things? Have you or are you creating a psychologically safe environment for them? If you do ask yourself these questions and your team, the young woman who learned from her earliest experience that I was required to don an armor to go to work, thanks you for creating more psychological safety for your team. And you never know, you might have one of me on your team right now. Because here's the thing: I I worked for leaders who didn't create the armor. I brought the armor with me. So that might be something worth getting curious about if you've recognized a colleague or a team member while you've been listening to this episode. If this conversation landed somewhere deeply for you today, maybe it's because you know this already, that before we can create safe spaces for other people, we have to be willing to sort out what's happening inside ourselves. Because leadership isn't just what we say, it's what we carry, it's our energy, our regulation, our reactions, our ability to stay present when something feels uncomfortable, our ability to speak clearly when it feels uncomfortable. And this is one of the reasons I created the soft strength salon. Brand new. And it's a space for women who are ready to do that inner work, to understand themselves more deeply, to shift the patterns that are shaping how they lead and communicate. Maybe it's not even shift the patterns, maybe it's elevate the patterns that are shaping how they lead and communicate, and to become safer, steadier, stronger women from the inside out. So if today's episode spoke to you, you'd and you're ready to go further, I would love you to explore the soft strengths salon. I'll put a link in the show notes or come and work with me privately because the salon is a group environment, or come and work with me privately. I've got one space available at the moment. I'll put that link in the show notes as well. Thank you for being here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And until we talk again next time, continue expanding, creating, and leading. Enjoy the rest of your day.