Psychological safety has a huge impact on workplace collaboration and, ultimately, successful execution. But what does that mean? What does it look like?
Tactical Advice for Creating a Safe Culture
Everyone plays a part in creating workplace culture, but your own agency depends on your role.
Behavior Anyone Can Model
These fall under the category of “act with integrity and be a safe person for your colleagues.” Don’t underestimate the impact you can have by just being respectful and trustworthy, especially if you’re surrounded by people who aren’t.
Give credit consistently, generously, and as publicly as possible
Amplify your colleagues’ ideas and contributions
Be honest when you don’t know something
Approach problems and conflict with a sense of curiosity
Avoid reactive behavior, e.g. yelling, accusations, or defensiveness
Acknowledge mistakes without deflecting
Push back when you hear gossip or blaming (if this isn’t safe, politely exit the conversation)
Fulfill your commitments; if you can’t, acknowledge the impact and apologize
Manager-Specific Actions
If you’re in any kind of manager role (e.g. people managers, product managers, project managers), your influence extends beyond personal behavior to what you will and won’t tolerate on your team. If you’re responsible for organizing a group of people to deliver results, this includes their work environment.
Be transparent and objective about the goals, success metrics, progress, and roadblocks within your sphere
Co-create team rituals and collaboration principles
Correlate promotions and other awards to measurable performance
Be clear about behavior that isn’t acceptable and take action every time you see it
Proactively talk through roles and responsibilities with your team and with other leaders - this can eliminate a lot of confusion and angst
Discourage escalations that bypass direct conversation: encourage people to work things out 1:1 first, or facilitate a conversation with both parties (unless safety is a concern)
Provide training on how to receive constructive feedback and model this yourself
Trust your team to deliver, don’t get involved unless asked, and be helpful when they do ask
Company-Wide Impact
These actions are more complex, require more influence, and will take longer. However, investing in change at this scale can change the trajectory of the company and help you to retain employees. To prevent process creep, focus on minimum viable solutions for specific problems and eliminate practices that don’t help.
Be transparent and objective about company-wide goals, success metrics, progress, and roadblocks
Update strategic planning and alignment processes regularly to make sure they scale with the company
Talk about the company vision and mission at every all hands
Dedicate time to discuss collaboration problems and proposed solutions
Create working groups to address specific problems (e.g. consistent missed deadlines; unclear roles and responsibilities)
Hire a consultant to develop a recommendation and/or implement it
Provide leadership coaching that reinforces your company values
Create an anonymous survey to gather input and ideas
Create performance evaluation standards and enforce them consistently
Culture Work as Career Development
Retooling collaboration practices is an underrated form of career development. You’ll gain new skills and increase your visibility by volunteering to organize working groups, develop frameworks, or facilitate retrospectives.
Protip: Make sure you tie this work directly to performance. Not “made it a more pleasant environment,” but “improved team collaboration quality ratings by X% over Y time as measured by anonymous survey” — and have a clear path from what you did to that result.
Find allies: You can’t enact change alone. Look for like-minded colleagues who want to help. A coalition is more credible and sustainable than one person pushing for change.
Create an execution plan: some lightweight structure will help you move from vision to results. If you’re new to project management, check out this simple framework.
Reassess regularly: check in on your overall goals as you execute. If you’re not making progress, don’t be afraid to pivot and find a new path forward.
Watch for burnout: culture work can be stressful, because you’re asking people to change routines or behavior. Pay attention to your emotional reactivity, productivity, and stress levels.
Remember
If you do see progress, it won’t be overnight transformation. Look for incremental results, then calibrate future efforts based on what’s working.