Psychological safety is not just a new fashionable term for “feeling good” at work. Creating psychological safety in your team is really the bottom line for any leader or team member wishing to create a high performing team.

Along with motivational drive and cognitive diversity, it is one of the 3 invisible forces that help a team strive. It creates bonding, enjoyment and accomplishment.

For pyschological saftey to flourish, team members need to feel that they are learning from one another

Psychological safety flourishes when individuals learn from one another.

For psychological safety to flourish, team members need to feel that they are learning from one another and can ask for help from each other. If individuals have a crazy idea that they wish to splurt out, they need to feel that they will not be laughed at. In addition, it is the knowledge and gut feeling that they can speak up and be the best version of themselves because they feel valued.

You can feel when a team has psychological safety. You walk into a meeting room and there is murmuring, laughter and ideas bouncing off the walls.

How do we create psychological safety in teams where each individual has a different mindset and different perspective of the world?  

We need to learn what the cultural values of our individual team members are and learn how to motivate them accordingly.  It’s about understanding who needs more support, who prefers to work independently, who is comfortable speaking up, who is afraid they might make you angry when they speak up, who loves and needs the limelight and show shies away from it.

Ensure psychological safety at every step of team formation

Step 1 – Forming

When the team is at its initial stages, start your meetings discussing individual values, not team objectives. Each team member should have a chance to describe their preferred communication techniques and values before judgments are formed. Judgements will be formed quickly, they are hard to avoid. Once they are formed they are hard to break. Therefore, ideally use this technique early on.

Step 2 – Storming

When the team is storming, let the storm play out. You will feel that something has changed in the team. They might be a bit quieter. Their foreheads may look sterner. They might even start sounding aggressive with one another. Storming is a natural part of team formation. During this phase individuals learn what their role is and what the individual strengths are of others.

If the storm continues, go back to step 1. Figure out which values are not given the space to flourish. This is a sign that individuals cannot really be themselves.

Step 3- Norming

During the norming phase psychological safety begins to take form. Individuals learn to appreciate the differences and strengths of the others. They will start to offer help to one another and exchange ideas. This might just be tentative initially, however eventually it will become the norm.

Step 4 – Performing

This is where the magic happens. During the performing phase, psychological safety is at its height. Individuals walk into the office smiling, singing, and ready for a day of bouncing ideas off each other. They acknowledge the occasional unsuccessful plan or an idea that truly is impossible to accomplish. However, psychological safety is also the sweet satisfaction of projects and ideas that play out and prosper exactly as foreseen and discussed.

Individuals respect one another for their strengths and for their diversity comprehending that it is real cognitive diversity that makes a team prosper.