men and women discussion around a table

Building Psychological Safety Starts with You

You’ll rarely have the perfect mix of people on your team. But keep in mind that the very best teams are based on how they interact with each other and with stakeholders. So keep recruiting the best people you can for your team, and if you really want to build a better team, create the conditions for greater psychological safety and start with showing up for your team a little differently.

The Importance of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is a team member’s belief that they won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with questions, concerns, ideas, or mistakes – by you or by other colleagues. In short, it means that team members believe other team mates will give them grace when they take the risk to look silly, uninformed, or just plain wrong.

Psychological Safety is critical to have, especially with work that is complex, uncertain, cutting-edge or creative, and requires interdependence with other parties or groups. Research shows that it is the “gateway” condition for creating a high-performing team. So, without adequate psychological safety in place, your team members won’t give you their best.

Without psychological safety, your team or organization will fall behind when trying to create high-quality products or services that meet or exceed your stakeholders’ expectations. You’ll know you have work to do when you see low or even mediocre employee engagement, innovation, growth, customer satisfaction, and by extension, profitability.

There is no one thing that will magically make your team perceive more psychological safety. So, stop waiting for a magic bullet or for something or someone else to change it for you. You must take responsibility to do something different to improve the psychological safety on your team.

How to Show Up for Your Team to Build Psychological Safety and Move Toward Better Performance

Whether you’re a team leader, middle manager over a department, or executive, work on these aspects of your own self-development to create the conditions conducive to better psychological safety and a high-performing team.

Be Authentic

 Being authentic is about being your genuine self with others. To become more authentic, embrace your uniqueness or “weirdness”  instead of trying to fit a cookie cutter idea of who you need to be at work. The concept of being “weird”, a word that comes from a Norse word (wyrd), refers to one’s individual experience and expression. So, express your own “wyrd-ness”. (Watch a video I made on this topic.)

Also, to show up more authentically, you it takes the self-awareness and self-development work to get a handle on “your stuff” and increase your EQ. A good place to start is to look at the things or people that “set you off” and how you react when you are triggered. You might not realize that your reactivity impacts those around you, and your status as a leader magnifies that impact. These triggers indicate beliefs and behaviors that aren’t working for you anymore and that you might want to let go of.

Adopt a Learner Mentality

 When work on showing up more authentically, you’ll become more secure and centered, which means you can admit mistakes and be open to ideas from others, which is key to learner mentality. The qualities to tap into for a learner mentality to include:

humility – knowing that you aren’t better than others, which allows you to admit when you don’t know something;

fallibility – knowing you’re not perfect or all-knowing and will readily admit when you’re wrong and will share your mistakes and what you learned from them;

curiosity – having a desire to learn, which you can harness by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions of your team that are both broad and deep; and

putting focus on learning as they execute – helping team members discover what they need to learn to be successful as they pursue the tasks required to reach a team objective or goal

Respond Effectively

You can encourage more team member participation, thoughtful discussion, and better questions from your team when you:

Assume good intentions – suspending judgment of something a team member does or says until you more fully understand where they are coming from. (Watch a video I made on this topic.)

Express appreciation for sharing bad news or failures – thanking team members for their contributions, questions, and broaching difficult to hear topics by. That means you’ll listen thoughtfully, indicate that what they shared matters, and acknowledge or thank them for bringing up the topic, idea, mistake, or question.

Put mistakes or failure in perspective – based on the nature of the work…

Celebrate failures that helped the team learn something new – avoid “shooting the messenger” when a team member delivers bad news to you and offer help or support when team members experience failure or mistakes

Address clear violations of policy and procedure – Clarify boundaries from the start, so team members know what is blameworthy and respond appropriately to clear breaches of policy or procedure in a timely and appropriately serious manner to influence future behavior

Building more psychological safety starts with you. No matter how good or discombobulated your team is currently, realize that you personally have some work to do.  After all, you are a powerful role model for the rest of your team. So, become more authentic, adopt a learner mentality, and work on responding more effectively to encourage team members to take the risk of disappointing you to create psychological safety. When you become the type of person who routinely creates the conditions for psychological safety, team performance and relationships will improve.

See more videos on psychological safety on my YouTube channel here

unique, weird

If You’re Not Weird, You’re Not Doing It Right

In today’s world, few people embrace being known for being “weird”. Originally, however, being weird simply meant you were uniquely yourself.

Our modern word, “weird”, has its roots in Norse language and mythology and evolved into the Old English word, “wyrd”, referring to what one would grow into or become. In the ancient world, the Norse told the story of the mythological Norns (akin to the 3 Fates from Ancient Greece). The Norns determined each human’s fate and destiny at birth, so each person had their own  fate or wyrd – the qualities, characteristics, perspective, and conditions of life that made them unique. (See my previous posts on “fate” and “destiny”.)

A related idea to your wyrd is your “genius”. Originally, the Latin word “genius”, referred to your guardian spirit. The Greeks and Romans believed each person had such a “spirit” or energy inside that provided an inner guidance that would encourage you to express your unique genius  — with a fate or wyrd like no other.

This timeless perspective teaches that you are meant to be uniquely yourself and only you really know who that is. However, in  modern times, it’s tough to listen to and give credence to your inner wyrd and genius. With well-meaning friends and families and a modern culture that continually telegraphs all the ways you should be or ought to be, it can be a lonely job connecting and listening to your inner wyrd and genius. But to feel that sense of fulfillment that most people seek, make it your main job to connect with what’s inside you — that inner wyrd-ness — that makes you more of who you really are. For, there is also the idea, that if you don’t express the uniqueness that only you can add to the world, you will never become  truly yourself. And ultimately, the world will be deprived of your wyrd genius.

So, as you set out to be the best and most authentic leader you can be, it’s a good thing to improve your basic leadership skills. But at the center of it all, you can only become the leader you’re meant to be, when you bring your unique genius and your wyrd-ness to the forefront. I say, “Go forth and be weird!”

WANT TO USE THIS IN YOUR NEWSLETTER, BLOG OR WEBSITE? You can, as long as you include this information with it: Beth Strathman works with executives and senior leaders to create team environments that optimize ownership, accountability, learning, and results. Learn more: bethstrathman.com.