I recently commented on a post about psychological safety by Andrea Petrone – link below.
I was pleased to see some clear statements about what psychological safety is NOT:
⇢ It’s not just about making people feel good
⇢ It’s not about being nice all the time
⇢ It’s not about artificial harmony
⇢ It’s not avoiding conflict
I like this reminder, as I worry that the idea of psychological safety is sometimes dismissed as a ‘nice to have’ or worse labelled as ‘woke agenda’.
I think it’s really important to understand that building psychological safety as an operating principle is not an health and wellbeing add on, it’s a pre-requisite for performance. If you, your team or your organisation aim for high performance, it’s a foundation you cannot just pay lip service to.
I found this 2024 study of “Characteristics of successful performance support team members at the Olympic games” interesting (link below). The study looked at the support teams around the highest performing athletes The researchers findings look like a roadmap for psychological safety – see the image on this post!
Psychological Safety is not the avoidance of stress or challenge. To grow and progress we need things that stretch us. We need to feel uncomfortable, even psychologically nervous or unsure. High performance demands we can step outside our comfort zones and grow.
The point about psychological safety is about creating an environment and culture where we can take on those challenges from a position of strength, not weakness. The best performers have strong, trusted support networks and feel able to fail, experiment and question.
And this is not just an individual thing. It has a performance benefit for teams and organisations as a whole.
That’s more than a nice add on when you have time.
References:
https://lnkd.in/eXNnbT8w
https://lnkd.in/evWzurzP
