by Mindtools
Key Takeaways: develop three essential digital-leadership traits
- Psychological safety enables people to speak up, share ideas, challenge authority, and admit mistakes without fear of judgment.
- In fast-moving, competitive environments, organizations that encourage openness are better at surfacing ideas and solving problems quickly.
- Higher levels of psychological safety are linked to greater employee happiness and improved business performance.
- Model openness yourself, reinforce it through team norms, and balance support with firm action against inappropriate behavior.
Managers go to great lengths to ensure employees’ physical safety. But can the same be said for their psychological safety?
The desire to feel safe is a basic psychological need – in fact, you’ll find it right in the middle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. But what is psychological safety? And what are the benefits of it to your organization?
In this article and expert video, you’ll learn what the term psychological safety means and find out how to foster it in your team and organization.
What Is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety means being able to speak up, vocalize opinions, and flag problems at work, without fear of punishment or recrimination.
Harvard professor Amy Edmondson was the first to adapt the term during the 1990s, following a research project she undertook into high-performing medical teams. She found that high-performing teams were making more mistakes than low-performing teams. How could this be? The answer: they weren’t making more mistakes than low-performing teams, but they were reporting mistakes they found more often, because they worked in teams where everyone felt empowered to share problems.
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