What Is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety describes a level of respect and trust which is essential for a team to work well together. In psychologically safe teams members feel accepted, respected and safe to take interpersonal risks.
Collaboration
Research shows that teams that have high levels of psychological safety are able to achieve higher levels of engagement, communication, collaboration, learning and creativity. In teams that don’t have psychological safety people avoid speaking their minds, reserve their full potential and focus more on defending their status and reputation.
Health
Interpersonal conflict is often cited as the biggest factor for stress in the workplace, so psychological safety is absolutely essential for maintaining a healthy and fulfilling place to work. Today workplace stress and declining mental health have become big problems and we will have to address these issues.
Performance
All aspects of a team’s performance seem to depend on psychological safety.
In several recent studies including one conducted by Google called Project Aristotle, psychological safety emerged as the most important factor for high-performing teams! More and more research is mounting to indicate that psychological safety is essential for team learning, creativity and innovation, especially in complex work environments.
Retention
Insights from the Center of Creative Leadership suggest highly psychologically-safe workplace cultures, where employees believe they will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, or mistakes, are strongly correlated with retention.
If you’re not already thinking about a retention strategy, now is the time — and psychological safety is a great place to start.