Diversity and Inclusion
Trust is the essential starting point for true inclusion in your team.
By trust, we mean more than just the essential faith in a person’s abilities or a familiarity that comes from knowing someone for many years.
We really mean a vulnerability trust sometimes called psychological safety where people feel comfortable to take interpersonal risks, like speaking up against a popular idea or giving feedback they know will be tough to hear.
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.
Chances are you’re thoroughly sold on the idea of working somewhere where everyone A) brings their entire selves to work and B) wants to and can speak up.
But the realist in each of you knows, of course, that it isn’t as simple as telling your teammates to just do A and B. If you’ve ever received the inconsequential advice, “just be yourself”, you’ll know first-hand why that isn’t practical.
Instead, read on for the three biggest elements of psychologically safe environments, named and gamed.
Be honest. Is there a sense that failure is an embarrassment or an ending in your team?
For psychological safety, failure needs to be reframed as an inevitable bump in the road towards success. Better yet, transform this “bump” into a learning opportunity. Here’s how.
Feedback is feared, weaponized or not given at all in psychologically unsafe workplaces.
The tiny actions below will set in motion a — pardon the sleight of phrase — a positive feedback loop.
If there’s one thing that is necessary for someone to speak up it is a belief that they will be heard.
Show you are actively listening with cues in your body language and facial expressions. Point your body towards the speaker, maintain as much eye contact as is comfortable, respond with sincere expressions that fit what they are saying and nod.
Publicly praise others for being candid or going against the grain. Endorse discussion techniques that hear from everyone and always give credit to someone if their idea gets picked up by the group.
Still, the very best way to make speaking up worth it is to act on suggestions.
Research from people-success platform Glint shows that following up on employee suggestions is the number one way to keep them engaged.
Maybe that stat doesn’t rock your world. But get this: the most common mistake that leaders and managers make is not connecting the action to more communication and further avenues for speaking up.
The answer? Close the loop.
Try one of the two practices to build on your team’s level of safety.
Difficulty level: 😀 Easy (5-10 mins)
Spark a conversation about our childhoods at the beginning of your next team meeting. Don’t worry, this isn’t about asking anyone to reveal their soul. These three questions are unobtrusive but show that everyone is human. Crucially, they offer up some vulnerability.
To debrief, ask each team member to share what they learned about one another that they didn’t already know.
Difficulty level: 😐 Medium (20-30 mins)
Take a personality profile tool or psychometrics test as a team, such as Myers Briggs, Big Five or DISC (👈 we’ve linked free versions).
It’s the conversations your team has about what they have learned from a personality profile that is significant. Host a dedicated session or carve out at least 15 minutes to cover in your next team meeting. Some questions to ask:
Difficulty level: 😬Hard (A few days – a few weeks, but so worth it!)
If you want to get real data on how safe your team is, measure it using Amy Edmondson’s own assessment. Build a quick survey with the questions below, and ask people to rate the extent to which they agree with the following statements, on a four-point scale (i.e. strongly agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree, strongly disagree).
We recommend making this survey anonymous to allow for candid responses.
The raw building blocks for a psychologically safe environment are framing failure, feedback, and encouraging speaking. A common theme? Close a virtuous, feed-forward cycle for each so that, next time, everyone can feel a little bit more psychologically safe and performance results can be a little bit better.
We’ve provided three suggestions with varying degrees of difficulty to put psychological safety into practice in your team. Why not try discussing your childhoods, taking a personality test, or even measuring psychological safety?
Session guide: Build psychological safety in your team
Do you know of any other effective ways to cultivate strong relationships and build up psychological safety on your team? Let us know here.
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.
