Diversity and Inclusion
Psychological safety is about not being afraid to make a mistake and is predicated on the principles of learning from your errors, recognizing no one is perfect, and being solution-oriented. To start living these principles, you need to first admit as a leader that you’re not infallible.
In short, it is how comfortable individuals are with taking risks and being vulnerable with their team. It’s both a climate and a shared belief which lays the foundation for every member of your team to bring their whole selves to work and be truly inclusive and innovative.
🤔 How does psychological safety actually feel?
Here are some real-world anecdotes:
“I don’t feel like I always have to have all the answers in meetings… it’s OK to admit I don’t know.”
“It’s never easy, but I give feedback to my boss and my peers when I spot something important they could improve.”
“When I make a mistake, I’m not berated or blamed for it. I know my boss will always give me the benefit of the doubt and work through how to fix it together.”
So how can you increase psychological safety in your own team? Try incorporating the below 4 top tips into your organization’s behavior from today.
🙌 Be vulnerable, be human (it starts with you!)
🏗️ Actively build a safe environment
🛑 Reframe failure
🗣️ Destigmatise feedback
Psychological safety matters because it leads to healthier, more productive, and more inclusive teams. Where there’s psychological safety, there’s a sense of dependability in one another, role clarity, and intrinsic motivation to work hard.
If you create a sense of psychological safety in your own team starting now, you can expect to see higher levels of engagement, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning and development opportunities, and better performance.
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Watch to learn how to build a psychologically safe workplace in the words of Amy Edmondson.
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Want to learn how you can build a more inclusive workplace? Learn more about our Inclusion Works Inclusion Works program, designed for large-scale inclusive change.
Inclusion Works by Hive Learning
Inclusion Works from Hive Learning is a group-based peer learning program designed to create large-scale inclusive and impactful change across your organization. We give people the tools to make small changes to their daily behaviors and help them rapidly learn, relearn, and respond to the changing world around them.
Fiona Young (she/her)
Having previously led Learning and Development for 3,000 people at Europe’s leading venture builder, Blenheim Chalcot, Fiona knows a thing or two about how to build high performance culture. As Content Director at Hive Learning, Fiona pioneered the organisation's leading guided content programmes which are designed to turn learning into action. Most recently, Fiona led the inception, development and delivery of Inclusion Works by Hive Learning - the world’s first diversity and inclusion programme focused on turning unconscious bias into conscious action - created from over 1,000 leading sources.
