This is a Safe Space
Bringing a group together to work on a shared project is a delicate thing. When fuseco. brings a team together for a group workshop or coaching session, we could be dealing with a fully formed unit; a collection of smiling peers whose competition may be more or less cut-throat; perhaps a group at outright war. Almost always, the apparent simplicity of the org chart belies the messy reality of team, sub-team, alliances and divisions.
Something we avoid in these situations is the hubristic announcement: “this is a safe space.”
We very much hope it might be. We make our own ethical commitments, and take care to create an environment that supports safety. But we can’t guarantee it. And you, our participants, know better than we do how your colleagues will respond to certain kinds of questions, disclosures, concerns. Or at least, you’ll have a strong belief about it.
This is why psychological safety is hard won. It requires an invitation to disclose from the one side, and a belief in that invitation’s sincerity on the other. No one can simply wake up one day and decide to make their organisation psychologically safe from now on. If you’re not yet a culture in which people can take interpersonal risks (give critical feedback, question their leaders, admit their struggles and difficulties, own failures) it takes time, and consistent effort, to build.
Trust, after all, is asymmetric: it’s slow to build, quick to erode. It is a leap of faith; a prediction. And one bad exemplar changes the calculation.
So if you want that culture, I have three questions.
How badly? It'll take a while, and you'll need to stick with it until the invitation is accepted.
How ready are you to re-examine what you reward, and punish, in your culture? If you tend to shoot the messenger, or label someone who raises concerns as a naysayer, it's a non-starter.
What would it do for your business, that would make the effort worthwhile? For many it’s around unlocking innovations and experimentation (which require us to take on risks) or, surfacing issues to allow us to better manage business risks.
The most psychologically safe culture I've yet encountered was a surprise to me, but in retrospect, makes perfect sense. It’s the nuclear industry. It seemed that absolutely everyone, from the intern to the engineering lead, felt able to stop a member of the exec board in the corridor and share a concern, and also: to be heard.
Because, as it turns out, if you have the enormous responsibility of managing a reactor, you really do have time to hear what’s bothering the person who cleans the corridors, or makes the tea.
