From the course: How to Support Your Employees' Well-Being

Create psychological safety

- What if the solution to your organization's most vexing problem is locked away in the mind of someone in your organization? It's locked away because that person doesn't feel empowered, or maybe they fear there'll be rejected if it's about idea. To unlock this potential, you need a culture of psychological safety. Psychological safety is where there's a drive to minimize and manage negative emotional and cognitive states such as fear, blame, uncertainty, insecurity, distress in favor of states which facilitate respect, tolerance, collaboration, trust, satisfaction, enthusiasm, and security. This provides the context in which the value of your employees' brain potential can be maximized, what we call a high-performing neural environment. According to a study by Google, psychological safety is the number one factor for helping teams to work well together. But what are the key ingredients for creating a psychologically safe workplace culture? Here are three. According to recent research conducted in collaboration with Harvard Business Review taking data from nearly 20,000 employees from around the world, the single most powerful manager behavior that makes a difference across multiple employee performance and wellbeing outcomes is respect. Without respect, then incivility can arise. Bad behaviors that individually can seem inconsequential, but cumulatively creates a culture which just decreases productivity and staff retention. Unfortunately, we've likely experienced these disrespectful behaviors. Things like hearing a demeaning or derogatory remark directed at a coworker, seeing someone who passes the blame for a project failure, and many other negative behaviors. As a manager, it's your responsibility to keep a check on these kinds of behaviors. Otherwise you risk creating a culture which harms both you and your team. A culture rooted in respect promotes greater enjoyment and satisfaction, better health, and wellbeing, and has a clear impact on employee engagement. It's a no brainer. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. Mistakes are the lifeblood of learning, but so often, mistakes are swept under the carpet. They're associated with such negative reactions that they aren't capitalized on. Once made, a mistake usually can't be unmade. The opportunity is to learn from any and every mistake. When you learn something from mistakes rather than hiding or ignoring them, you minimize the risk of similar mistakes being made in the future. This can only happen if there's an openness about failure and mistakes. Just as a human brain is unique, so, too, are the skills, mind frames, and behaviors that it generates. When those minds come together in a team or organization, then it generates a mixture of thoughts, feelings, and actions that at times can be conflicting, which creates collectively the ideas, the solutions, and the thoughts that actually progress the organization forward. In fact, many organizations thrive off the cognitive diversity of their people. Wherever someone sits within an organization, they have something to offer. And like a machine needs all it's cogs working properly to operate, so does a good organization. Just be mindful of how people appraise and accept those who may appear different to themselves, as healthy tribe-like mentalities can take some investment. Managers can draw attention to shared goals, values, and mutual respect as ways to reduce any negative amygdala-driven threat responses that might occur when people feel like outsiders through their experiences or views. Creating a culture of psychological safety requires your team to consider both the way they act towards and the way they respond to the people that they work with. By exhibiting pro-social states which positively facilitate teamworking and minimize these exaggerated harmful responses which can negatively impact on brainpower, each person can collectively contribute to the generation of a psychologically safe workspace. Isn't it amazing? That just these small things can have such a radically positive impact on people and what they can achieve.

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