What is Psychological Safety Training?

Psychological Safety Training

Psychological safety means feeling comfortable and secure around others, without being afraid of how they might react. When people feel psychologically safe, they can do their best whether they’re at home, school, or work. TEAM.AS.ONE helps individuals with the psychological safety training.

Think about when you felt really proud of yourself for being super productive, creative, or innovative. You had a challenging job, but your great coworkers supported you. Or perhaps it was back in school when you had a helpful adviser and ate in the dining hall. You should be take care of you and made healthy by your parents even earlier.

Perhaps your connection with productivity and creativity would have been different. If you had experienced growing up in a chaotic household, worked to pay for education, or isolated for remote work.

Humans must satisfy a minimal set of requirements to exist, support a community, and reach self-actualization. Acc. to American psychologist Abraham Maslow he proposed an idea in psychology in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” published in the journal Psychological Review.

The theory classifies universal needs of society as its base, then progresses to more acquired emotions. It splits the hierarchy of needs into deficiency needs and growth needs, with two key themes involved: individualism and prioritization of needs.

Which Leadership Skills are Important for Psychological Safety Training?

While some individuals possess innate leadership qualities, the majority of us benefit from psychological safety training, and so do our organizations. Research from Team as One indicates that investing in leadership development across all organizational levels fosters leadership behaviors that improve psychological safety. Employees who indicate substantial investment in leadership development by their organizations are 64 percent more likely to rate senior leaders as more inclusive.

However, it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. There are a few specific skills that leaders can develop to nurture psychological safety in their teams. These include:

• Open-dialogue skills, enabling leaders to explore disagreements and navigate tensions within a team through constructive conversation.
• Sponsorship, which involves promoting and facilitating the success of others even at the expense of one’s own advancement.
• Situational humility, instructing leaders on cultivating curiosity and adopting a mindset focused on personal growth.

Fostering Psychological Safety Through Leadership Development Programs

It’s evident that psychological safety empowers individuals and organizations to perform optimally. However, our research suggests that knowing where to begin can be challenging. Here are three approaches to achieving this goal:

Move beyond one-off training programs and implement a scaled system of leadership development. Typically, human behavior doesn’t transform after just one training session. Successful behavior change requires a clear goal and a well-rounded strategy for accomplishing it. Skill enhancement should focus on capabilities that not only align with the overarching goal but also directly apply to individuals’ daily tasks.

Allocate resources towards leadership development experiences that evoke emotions, engage the senses, and trigger moments of insight. Immersive and captivating leadership development experiences leave a lasting impression compared to conventional training sessions conducted in conference rooms with slide decks. The emphasis shouldn’t solely be on the content; instead, it should prioritize the experiential aspect of learning, fostering vulnerability, and encouraging personal introspection.

Establish mechanisms to integrate development into leaders’ daily routines. While training and skill development provide the theoretical foundation, it’s the practical application in day-to-day work that truly matters. Senior leaders should lead by example by being the first to adopt new skills and publicly showcasing their learning journey.

How Can Leaders Foster a Psychologically Secure Environment?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, leaders wield a significant influence on the psychological safety training of their teams. Through their own actions, leaders establish the atmosphere that either enables or inhibits team members from feeling psychologically secure. According to our research, three leadership styles, in particular, can cultivate a supportive team environment.

First, consultative leadership plays a pivotal role in psychological safety training, both directly and indirectly. Leaders employing this style actively seek input from their team members, genuinely considering their perspectives. Supportive leadership, on the other hand, indirectly influences psychological safety by fostering a positive team atmosphere. Supportive leaders demonstrate care and backing for their team members, valuing them not just as employees but also as individuals. These actions also promote mutual support among team members.

Once a safe and supportive team climate has been established, a challenging leadership style can further enhance psychological safety. A challenging leader prompts team members to reassess their assumptions about their work and explore ways to surpass expectations and maximize their potential. Research has linked challenging leadership styles with heightened employee creativity and motivation to enhance performance.

In Times of Disaster, How can Leaders Unite their Communities?

Fostering awareness, vulnerability, empathy, and compassion within themselves enables leaders to enhance their capacity to listen, provide solace, and encourage progress. As a crisis unfolds, directing attention outward can assist leaders in uniting a community, enabling it to emerge from the crisis with greater resilience. Compassionate leadership can propel a community forward in the following ways:

• Developing perspective on the situation and deriving meaning from it is essential for leaders. They can facilitate healing by demonstrating authentic vulnerability and sharing their own fears and uncertainties.
• Fostering belonging and inclusion is paramount for leaders. They play a crucial role in facilitating open expression, ensuring individuals feel heard, and promoting a unified response to crisis. This can be achieved by welcoming individuals with unconditional positive regard, refraining from judgment, and embracing diverse forms of self-expression. Such actions can alleviate anxiety and enhance worker commitment.
• Take care of people through compassionate acts. Leaders possess a unique opportunity to exemplify compassion and care, which can be instrumental in crisis recovery.
• Reimagine a future beyond the crisis. When individuals feel safe to express their grief, anxieties, and fears during times of crisis, they may forge stronger connections to their community. Consequently, their organization may emerge even stronger once the crisis subsides.