Have you ever wondered why sometimes people just don’t behave the way you expect them to?!

Here are a few examples to illustrate what I mean:

  • You’ve just delivered a rabble-rousing motivational team talk – yet nothing much happens afterwards.
  • You write a stunning proposal for a client who verbally agrees to proceed  – but for some strange reason they don’t act on your advice.
  • You skillfully put forward an idea for improvement to your boss – but the idea ends up going nowhere.

There could be many reasons behind these situations, but one could be a lack of ‘psychological safety’ that’s causing others to drag their feet.

Trust vs. Psychological Safety

A lack of trust stops things from happening on an individual level. But the absence of psychological safety extends way beyond that. It has a wider impact on project teams, boards and the wider organisational ecosystem.

Psychological safety can be considered to be a group-related component closely linked to team performance.

Each of us is most likely a member of at least one team, therefore it has far reaching implications and can hinder progress on multiple levels.

Creating a safe environment and maintaining it can be surprisingly simple. Here are a few tips:

10 ways to turbo-charge results through psychological safety

  1. Invest time in getting to know one another.
  2. Keep people inside and outside your team informed.
  3. Set parameters for how things happen, such as making decisions.
  4. Have clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
  5. Invest time in creating strong personal relationships.
  6. Be willing to be vulnerable and support one another.
  7. Have informal / formal partnership agreements with clients and customers.
  8. Embrace challenges and issues speedily.
  9. Connect regularly and over-communicate.
  10. Keep your promises, even when it hurts.

We have a range of tools to boost psychological safety. Send an email to [email protected] for further details