Psychological safety in organisations
What is psychological safety?
Psychological safety describes a condition where people in an organization feel able to express themselves without being anxious about or fear negative consequences form leaders or colleges. This means that they feel free to:
- Speak up in all kind of settings
- Suggest new ideas and changes
- Express concerns and put forward constructive critique
- Speak about mistakes and ways of improvements
- Ask for help or express doubts and insecurity.
On the contrary, if you as a leader or employee do not feel free to speak your mind you may choose to stay silent to protect yourself. When this happens, focus shifts form what is in the best interest of the tasks in question to personal concerns about dynamics in the group and that it may be used against you.
Podcast
Welcome to a podcast series on Psychological Safety
The project has received support from Foreningen Velliv, within the focus area “Workplaces” and is in this context targeted at private residences in Region Sjælland.
It is a series of a total of 4 podcasts of between a quarter and 3 quarters duration, which is about,
- where the term originates from,
- what psychological security is,
- how it is expressed in different ways in different contexts,
- why it is important to focus on
- and especially how you as a leader can work to improve the psychological security of your own organization.
Here you can download the associated material with slides, models and concrete development tools.
Here you can download playing cards for the game “Build psychological safety and increase patient safety” – developed by Danish Regions.
In addition, I offer a counseling meeting where we can discuss the challenges you experience locally with you and lay out an action plan for how you can strengthen psychological security. It will be free for the first 10 workplaces that want such an advisory meeting.
Contact:
Anne Kongsted Krum at akk@stress-profilen.dk or tlf.6199 5040.
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
The purpose of working with psychological safety is therefore:
To make sure that all knowledge and competences in the organization is being deployed.
To strengthen creativity and product development.
To create a learning culture that supports innovation.
To avoid that people resign when discover that they cannot make use of the competences they were hired to bring into the organization.
– Amy Edmonson, Harvard Business School
Psychological safety and work relate stress are closely linked. We therefore recommend combining the two tools when screening the organization.