Why psychological safety is important for building empowering workplaces

In pre-pandemic life, most of us have been able to maintain the boundary between “work” and “life”. Subjects like parenting and family or individual health status weren’t part of working discussions.

However, in the aftermath of a global pandemic, these conversations are increasingly relevant to the structures and schedules of reimagined, hybrid workplaces.

Employees have new expectations of what work-life balance means and with fleets of workers doing anything to avoid returning full-time to offices, it’s clear that individuals feeling fulfilled, safe, and important at work is key to organisational success.

Just recall a time you felt unfulfilled, unsafe, or unimportant at work.

You know very well it impacts your ability to contribute to, and more importantly, progress in the workplace.

Here’s an example from my own life.

My first job as a psychological professional was in an entry-level, clinical role with the National Health Service (NHS) in England. As part of safety and governance practices, psychological professionals' clinical work is closely monitored by their clinical supervisor.

The aim was to give entry-level professionals, like me at the time, a safe space to talk openly, about concerns, uncertainties, and even mistakes, to be open to the exploration of our own beliefs, assumptions, and practices to continually improve our clinical practice.

I met with my supervisor, a more senior psychologist, and spoke about a client I just had a session with. The client was quite down and really demotivated. In the session, we spoke about how small behavioural changes can increase motivation and talked about some small steps she could take. However, she was quite ambivalent. She didn’t feel she could do it. So for encouragement, I said, “Why don’t you try anyway?”

When I told my supervisor this, she shot back at me: “You can’t say that. You can’t tell her what to do.”

I remember freezing and staring at her. I think I even held my breath. I wasn’t expecting that response. I had made the assumption this was a safe place; it was my clinical supervision after all, and I spoke openly and honestly.

On reflection, I now know my supervisor was also new to leading and managing, but I also know that I felt very guarded after that. I felt like I couldn’t be completely vulnerable and open and that moment will forever stick out in my mind as one of my psychologically unsafe experiences.

As professional environments shift and organisations reevaluate what it means to create a safe workplace in a post-COVID world, that idea of psychological safety has been brought to the table by business psychologists as a solution for building the teams of tomorrow.

What is psychological safety?

The term was first introduced by the organisational behavioural scientist Amy Edmondson at Harvard University in 1999 where she defined it as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”

This belief translates itself into a range of tangible and intangible results, including feeling comfortable showing up as your ‘full self’ at work. Research around the topic has well-established that psychological safety is also an essential driver of efficient decision making, balanced group dynamics, increased innovation, and higher productivity in group settings.

However, in my 16+ years as a working psychology professional, I’ve found that there’s actually a subtle difference between the popular understanding and definition of psychological safety and the actual way it plays out in individuals within workplace environments.

The truth is, psychological safety is dynamic and complex.

My own research has revealed that for employees as a part of an organisation – particularly minority ethnic employees – it’s not as simple as being ‘their full selves’.

Instead, it is about having a critical awareness of their surroundings and making choices and decisions accordingly – to keep themselves safe. It’s not about being psychologically safe, but psychologically savvy.

Consider any professional space you are familiar with: it operates with its own distinct set of rules. There are implicit and explicit rules and norms that dictate what we call “organisational culture”. Elements of this equation could include things like:

• attire

• position hierarchy

• communication

• occupational expertise

Real psychological safety is not about encouraging everyone to be their full, authentic selves in these spaces. Rather, it’s about creating a workplace where employees can find balance in the space between total self-expression and total self-censorship.

In my research on psychological safety and cultural diversity in teams, I interviewed several virtual work employees across different organisations, and with a diversity of nationalities or ethnicities, to understand how employees interpret events and behaviours at work, and the impact it has on a persons’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

One employee likened the concept of feeling psychologically safe to driving a car in different environments:

“It’s like taking a car on the racetrack. I drive a bit more aggressively and faster, but the same car if you put it on a normal highway you’d have to drive at a more calm and collected manner. Maybe on a race track, we would talk or shout louder. How I would kind of express myself with my friends. But essentially, when you’re at work it’s more like the highway, urban sort of vibe, and roads where you’ve got to be a bit more calm, collected, know your surroundings.”

Psychological safety gives you both the freedom to express yourself and the critical self-awareness to know when you don’t need to – or maybe, shouldn’t.

Why is psychological safety important in the workplace?

The message of culture is sometimes stronger than the freedom people feel to be themselves.

The organisational culture might be one of radical acceptance, but for a minority ethnic employee in a predominantly white setting, “full self” might not be – or feel like – an option.

Psychological safety is, therefore, important in the workplace as it gives employees three distinct levels of benefits: emotional, interpersonal, and cognitive.

Psychological safety serves the emotional needs of employees.

Employees feel empowered and energised when feeling psychologically safe. They feel secure, impactful, important, and recognized as individuals.

In contrast, moments of feeling unsafe evoke frustration, grief, degradation, exhaustion, embarrassment, powerlessness, inferiority, self-blame, and alienation. An employee in my research described this as “getting oil on yourself,” which is “hard to clean off”.

Interestingly, the recollection of unsafe events came effortlessly. Employees drew upon a richer and larger vocabulary to describe them. This was because unsafe events heightened their self-consciousness and registered with greater emotional intensity. 

Psychologically unsafe events are like velcro: they stick and it’s hard to shake them off. On the other hand, psychologically safe events are like teflon. It’s not as easy to recall the positive.

Creating psychologically safe workplaces involves fostering and actively recollecting positive emotional experiences so employees can feel more confident to contribute to their teams.

Psychological safety serves the interpersonal needs of employees.

On an interpersonal level, feeling psychologically safe creates a sense of belonging and universality. Employees that feel safe at work make no distinction between personal and professional relationships.

Some employees in my research, however, saw no relation between psychological safety and feeling connected. They either lacked a desire to connect or prioritised organisational needs over personal ones. A few participants even viewed their colleagues as a means to learning and progressing. Yet others conflated “being alone” with feeling safe, ultimately indicating a spectrum of emotional needs and desires for belonging and connection.

Interpersonal relationships are built and maintained differently based on the varying needs of individuals. Accordingly, a psychologically safe workplace will see varying degrees of interpersonal interactions, though the consistency is in fostering productive relationships, whether personal or professional.

Psychological safety serves the cognitive needs of employees.

How individuals feel they are perceived by others strongly affects how safe they feel at work.

In my research, employees that admitted to struggling also feared others perceiving them as “unwilling” or “complaining”. Some felt they were not seen as a “human being”, and simply as a body to get the job done. When making “unpopular decisions”, some participants resigned to being seen as “unlikeable.”

On the other hand, when they perceived others as “helpful” and “good”, they felt safe enough to be vulnerable.

What does psychological safety look like in real life?

In practice, individuals often secure their own psychological safety by code-switching or masking.

Think of the way you speak with your friends and family. You likely use a much more conversational tone of voice. Everything from your body language to the words you use may differ from your work persona.

Employees from my research suggested they were aware of this type of censorship in behaviour. They reportedly assumed a “work-oriented self” or a “corporate personality,” which they described as being “polished”, “diplomatic”, “competent”, “non-confrontational” and “reserved”.

Specific examples of this type of behaviour included:

• Minimizing or eliminating slang from vocabulary

• Refraining from making jokes about self or cultural differences

• Avoiding references to personal interests, such as rap music

This type of communication was seen to put them at risk of being cast in a poor professional light, and even potentially damaging their career prospects, so they avoided it altogether.

Organisational psychological safety can ensure more transparent communication and individual growth, like with my Clinical Supervision example. If my supervisor had indeed created a safe space, I might have learned in a more productive way.

However, as we saw with the car metaphor, many people feel the need to secure their own psychological safety with methods like code-switching. Although this has a negative impact on minority employees, it does allow individuals to embrace or hide parts of themselves at their own discretion.

How can individuals address psychological safety in the workplace?

Now that you’ve understood what psychological safety is and why it is important to individuals in professional spaces, the next question is about how you can achieve or address psychological safety in your workplace. 

Here are three tips for individuals to address psychological safety in the workplace:

1. Practice self-reflection.

Think about why you feel unsafe. You can do this by developing your skill in formulating your experience and emotions. Formulation is a technique that therapists use with clients to make sense of a person’s experiences in the context of their relationships, social circumstances, and life events. 

It is a bit like a personal story or narrative that a therapist or psychologist draws up with an individual.

Exploring the interactions between a situation, thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and behaviours can help you deeply understand your experiences. You can do this by asking yourself a series of questions about a time you felt psychologically unsafe:

• What went through your mind when that happened?

• How did you feel emotionally?

• What feelings did you notice in your body?

• How did you respond?

• What were the consequences of acting in that way? How did you feel right away? And later on?

• These different elements are interlinked. What small change in your thoughts or behaviours could you make to improve how you feel? 

2. Learn to navigate ‘the self’.

We all have many identities or personas that we assume for all the different social roles we take on: partner, parent, child, employee, manager, and so on. As multifaceted individuals, we have to align ourselves with the expectations of any given role. Navigating ‘the self’ is, therefore, about meditating or avoiding conflicting social expectations. 

This is important as noted in research on navigating the self in diverse work contexts published in 2013, “for reducing or preventing the internal identity conflicts that may arise when multiple identities are not mutually reinforcing.” In other words, when your multiple identities, responsibilities, and expectations align more naturally, you can create a more positive sense of self.

There are two ways people do this: compartmentalisation and integration. 

Compartmentalisation is the concept of putting parts of yourself away in a box, or ‘compartment’. Think of how you present yourself at work. You most likely filter out the version of you that comes out on the weekends with your friends and family, and instead, only present your ‘professional self’. Sometimes, we do this for comfort. Other times, it may even be necessary depending on your role, tenure, or position.

Integration is about mingling your different identities. For example, bringing parts of your personal self into your professional identity. Another way in which integration can help is by developing “protean” careers, a concept described in research by Brad Harrington and Douglas T. Hall in 2007.

A “protean” career is one where you define success on your own terms, and not based on what success looks like within your organisation or industry. This places value on freedom and personal growth as opposed to climbing the career ladder. It also positions your mental health and professional commitment over a version of success that is based on position, salary, organisational structure, and more.

3. Play to your strengths

You need to know yourself well to manage your career effectively. The more you step into leadership roles, the more critical it is to deeply understand yourself and your impact on those around you.

When you identify your strengths, you can better understand how you can contribute more meaningfully and effectively to your team, organisation, and even future career path. You will also be able to articulate the unique strengths that set you apart from your peers.

Embracing that unique advantage gives you the opportunity to make an impact that no one else is capable of. In doing so, you will often find yourself with increased confidence and willingness to speak up and continue to contribute to your workplace.

You can start by actively monitoring your day-to-day activities and reflecting on your responsibilities. Below is a list of questions taken from the Harvard Business Review’s Guide to Your Professional Growth.

Ask yourself:

• What do you enjoy doing?

• What comes naturally and effortlessly to you?

• What activities do you lose track of time doing?

• What do people come to you for or ask advice from you about?

• What are you looking forward to?

Final thoughts

Overall, psychological safety in workplaces has gotten increasingly more complex and important as we head into a post-COVID world. Individuals have more power than ever before to define everything about their careers.

Securing your own psychological safety in your professional environment can be in your hands. If you feel you are unable to navigate your workplace and want to take more control of your career, contact me to learn more about my one-on-one coaching services.