Leading for Psychological Safety

13 March 2022
Errol Amerasekera

Psychological safety is a key determinant of the success organisations and teams have in creating high-performance cultures. Yet, despite experts agreeing on what psychological safety entails, agreement on a methodology by which to achieve this outcome remains elusive. This is because psychological safety occurs at the complicated yet fragile intersection of leadership competencies; the psychological aftermath of our (painful) personal histories; and ancient survival mechanisms that have been honed and fortified through the process of evolution.

The term psychological safety was coined by Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson. She defines psychological safety as a shared belief that the environment is conducive to personal risks.

Psychological safety is founded on the belief that an individual within their workplace can raise questions, share concerns and even admit to mistakes without fear of being ridiculed, shamed or belittled. It enables people to come to work and be their whole selves, without the need to compartmentalise or excessively censor particular aspects of their thinking or their personality.

There are many mechanisms by which psychological safety drives performance

Psychological safety is a key driver of optimal performance. Whether we are talking about an elite sporting team, a well-established for-profit corporation, a not-for-profit or a technology start-up, there are significant benefits in creating more psychological safety within the culture.

When there is psychological safety present, team members are able to speak freely and take moderate risks – both strategically and in terms of their relationships; innovation and creativity are championed, even though there may not always be a guarantee of success; and perhaps most importantly, having difficult conversations about cultural expectations, performance management and the challenges of diversity and inclusion are seen as acceptable, perhaps even the norm. Psychological safety means that interpersonal tensions and conflicts can be proactively addressed and resolved, rather than them going “underground” and manifesting as passive-aggressive behaviours. In addition, organisations with higher levels of psychological safety have better retention of talent. As a result teams are more stable, thereby deepening the trust and connections between team members; recruitment costs are minimised; and there is greater retention of industry specific expertise and intellectual property.

When we feel psychologically safe, we are inclined to engage more deeply with our work, our teammates and our role in general. This is a powerful driver of performance because greater levels of engagement enhances discretionary effort. Discretionary effort is the difference between what people have to do, and what they actually want to do; it is more commonly referred to as “going the extra mile”. Research shows that engaged individuals deliver an extra 30% in discretionary effort in comparison to disengaged individuals. This can be seen in elite sporting teams where they out-perform expectations based on their talent and experience; this is usually because they have created a psychologically safe culture where team members feel naturally inclined to deliver discretionary effort.

Finally, psychological safety becomes even more relevant when we consider the backdrop of business today and plethora of stressors that are often external to the organisation, and therefore largely out of its control. These stressors include the pace of business generally; globalisation; technological advancements, including advancements by a competitor that could render your product redundant; supply chain challenges; geopolitical tensions; and finally, “Black Swan” events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, just to name a few. Psychological safety moves people to be their best, and give their best by creating a “safe haven” where there are equal measures of support and buffering from these variables and stressors. In uncertain times, where there is so much complexity to contend with, both external to and within the organisation, psychological safety becomes an even more critical driver of performance and success.

It should be noted that psychological safety is not necessarily the outcome, but rather, a means to an end. And that “end” is greater performance! Psychological safety is simply a vehicle which drives greater organisational performance; it is up to leadership to decide if they want that vehicle to be a scooter or a Ferrari.

Psychological safety is a feeling

Psychological safety is a feeling that is embedded in the culture. Therefore, it cannot be systematised, mandated or delivered by standard operating procedures. Psychological safety is primarily leader-driven. Therefore it is the cultural tone that leaders firstly model, and then defend and uphold, that determines the level of psychological safety within a given culture. Psychological safety cannot, and will not, occur if leaders are not modelling the behaviours which are emblematic of psychological safety. There is no room for a “do what I say, not what I do” approach to leadership when it comes to the creation of a psychologically safe culture.

Organisational and team cultures sit somewhere along a spectrum with psychological safety at one extreme and a fear-based culture at the other. Humans have very specific psychological and physiological responses to fear and threat, be they real or perceived. There are therefore an inherent set of developmental challenges for organisations and teams which sit more towards the fear-based end of this spectrum.

And please excuse me here while I indulge my inner nerd….

When confronted with a threat and/or an environment the brain determines to be unsafe (think of walking out of the safety of your cave and being confronted with a snarling and hungry sabre tooth tiger) a part of the brain called the amygdala automatically i.e. without a conscious decision, activates a powerful combination of survival responses. This is what is commonly referred to as the fight or flight response, although we can also include two more responses, freeze and appease, to the list of possible responses.

At the same time, the amygdala “hijacks” and shuts down the part of our brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that regulates voluntary actions and executive functioning such as reasoning, planning and decision-making. The prefrontal cortex also enables us to process information and emotions, as well as gives us access to empathy and compassion. These survival responses have been honed and reinforced over time to maximise the chances of our personal survival when faced with a threat. Therefore when they are activated this becomes the foremost priority; care and consideration for the well-being of others, by demonstrating empathy and compassion quickly become de-prioritised. After all, stopping to show empathy and support for a colleague who is struggling only increases the probability of us becoming sabre tooth tiger breakfast.

Therefore, in the moment these survival responses get activated, we lose many of the executive functions and capacities that are so essential for effective leadership, not to mention vital in the creation of a high-performance and psychologically safe culture.

But here is the rub…..

Painful and unresolved experiences diminish our capacity to lead for psychological safety

Part of the human condition is that most of us will go through life and at some point encounter experiences that are painful, emotionally injurious, perhaps even traumatic. At the point these experiences happen a splitting occurs; part of our psyche moves forward and is able to function adequately with the demands of everyday life, but part of our psyche, in an attempt to resolve and heal the experience, remains back at this moment in time. As a way of protecting itself from further injury and trauma, the part of our psyche that stays with this experience, creates a neurological imprint (or emotional memory) of this experience and also an accompanying set of survival responses which it can activate should something similar recur in the future. These survival responses are a combination of fight, flight, freeze and appease and are stored subconsciously as latent survival mechanisms (LSMs).

These LSMs lie dormant, hence why they are “latent”, until something happens that reminds us, even subconsciously, of that original event. In that split second the amygdala goes into action, it activates an LSM and simultaneously hijacks the prefrontal cortex. And before we know it, we literally lose our minds and therefore our ability to access those executive functions such as reasoning, decision-making, compassion and empathy that are so essential for effective leadership.

So in those moments when it appears as though our leader, perhaps even ourselves, have “lost the plot” or are “having a meltdown”, this is most likely what is happening on a physiological and psychological level. Hopefully these are only “moments” as opposed to a continuous state of affairs. While as leaders we need to take responsibility for these moments, blaming and shaming, either ourselves or others, is misplaced and not justified. This is because of the powerful, yet unconscious nature of these survival responses and the fact that they have been hardwired into our systems because at some point in time they served an essential function. In addition, apart from undermining psychological safety, shame and belittling are rarely effective tools for individual or cultural change.

Leaders need support to understand and resolve their LSMs so that they can better model and uphold a psychologically safe culture

It is virtually impossible for leaders to lead in a way which consistently models a psychologically safe culture when their LSMs are getting activated on a consistent basis. Leaders might notice their moodiness; their tendency to be easily overwhelmed; an inability or unwillingness to make a decision; a resistance to proactively manage poor performance by appeasing a team member; an inclination to be “quick to temper”; or a reduced capacity for compassion and empathy. From one perspective, all of these can be viewed as external behavioural manifestations due to LSMs subconsciously attempting to reconcile a threat and/or a lack of safety. But without a deeper understanding of how the activation of these LSMs are creating these behaviours, leaders are left to simply observe their own behaviours, much like watching a movie with a predictably bad ending and without any ability to influence the final outcome. Many leaders I coach talk about an “out of body” experience where they are watching themselves behave in ways they know are not conducive to the outcomes they want to achieve, but without the agency to curtail the detrimental sequence of events.

The whole objective of these LSMs is to maximise the survival of the individual when faced with a sabre tooth tiger or 21st century equivalent. As a result, at this point the survival and safety of that leader becomes of paramount importance, usually at the expense of those that they lead as well as the culture and the outcomes of the organisation itself. This is the antithesis of leadership because it goes against every fundamental tenet and ethical consideration of leadership, which is about looking after the people that we lead and prioritising their well-being and goals of the organisation – sometimes at the expense of our own needs. As Simon Sinek, one of my favourite thinkers on leadership says: The cost of leadership is self-interest. Therefore, before leaders can truly create psychological safety in their organisations and teams, they need to be able to create internal psychological safety by regulating and resolving how they respond to fear and threat, even if these are more perception than reality.

Therefore, a critical component in creating more psychological safety within an organisation’s culture is developing leaders by building their awareness and understanding of their LSMs, and then supporting them in the transformation and resolution of those experiences that gave rise to these LSMs. This aspect of leadership development, particularly when it comes to creating more psychological safety, is frequently overlooked. When leadership development programs focus primarily on competencies and skills, but neglect to address the underlying psychological drivers that enable leaders to effectively access and execute these essential competencies and skills, they are not doing justice to the demands of leadership and the complexity of human psychology.

Of course, working at this level of development, in itself requires greater levels of psychological safety. However, the beauty of this kind of work is that as leaders “lean in” to the challenge of self-reflection and taking personal inventory of their LSMs, the gaps in psychological safety within the culture quickly become evident. This enables leaders to simultaneously address those aspects of the culture that require more psychological safety as well as our own LSMs that get activated as a direct consequence of those gaps.

If the creation of a high-performance and psychologically safe culture is considered to be a worthwhile pursuit, and nothing in life that is worth achieving is ever easy, this aspect of leadership and leadership development should be viewed as one of the fundamental requirements and challenges of organisational life.

Bluestone Edge’s Leading for Psychological Safety program focuses specifically on supporting leaders to reflect on and resolve their LSMs so that they are more able to consistently model and uphold those behaviours that create psychological safety within the culture.