Five ways we can create psychological safety that we must never take for granted

In a recent workshop with Quality Spirits International, a division of the premium spirits business William Grant & Sons, the team’s top score across various statements was “my leader values my opinion.” On a 1 to 5 scale, with 23 respondents, the score was 4.7 indicating that the majority strongly agreed with the statement. Tony Roberts, the Managing Director and leader of this team has kindly given me permission to share these results and insights with you.

It is not unusual to see a high score in a workshop met with the response from the team – ‘this is in good shape, let’s move on’. I disagree. Why? Because it’s important to get under the skin of what’s driving high scores, so leaders know explicitly what actions are contributing to creating psychological safety. The easiest way to do this is split colleagues into breakout groups to dig deeper into the number by reflecting and outlining the reasons for this strong result. This presents the opportunity for the leader to double down on this strength, leaving no room for complacency.

Seeing a strong score is quick and simple using an instant diagnostic tool in the session. But that’s just base camp. It is a mistake to move from seeing a number and springing to an automatic assumption. Real insight comes from colleagues employing the benefits of deep inquiry and reflection to understand the score from the respondents’ lived experience of the leader’s behaviour.

When the team shared their deliberations there were five behaviours taken by their leader which fed into the high score;

1. My leader never cancels my one-to-one
2. While we may not always agree, my leader rarely/never discounts my views
3. My leader is open to hearing opinions, showing real engagement and interest in what I have to say – how do I know this, he often summarises my perspective back to me
4. High levels of trust are driven by my leader’s full engagement, and I do not feel I am being judged when I express a different opinion
5. I feel my leader is always available

These insights highlight the importance of realising that we are constantly exhibiting behaviours that contribute to colleagues speaking up, or not. The benefit of explicitly knowing what’s working well is to then never take this for granted. When your behaviours give others a voice, you are cultivating greater inclusion and diversity of thought which in turn generates more creativity and innovation and drives stronger engagement and performance.