Psychological Safety Training

Winning the minds and hearts of employees

Human resources managers, especially in technology organizations, are often surprised to learn that teams, expected to deliver breakthrough results, are afraid. They are afraid to take risks, make mistakes, share opinions, or be candid. Their hearts and minds are just not in it. 

The problem is usually a culture in which managers have not been trained to develop teams with the capability to solve complex problems in a psychologically safe environment.

Amy Edmondson, who developed the concept of psychological safety, described it as a team’s shared belief for interpersonal risk-taking. When individual contributors are selected to be team leaders based on their technical proficiency, they may not possess the interpersonal skills needed to foster an open dialogue and collaborative problem-solving. In turn, they establish environments, where employees are unwilling to share their ideas and expertise, as well as express their concerns regardless of power dynamics within the team.
 

With the average age of a professional promoted to a supervisory position being 27 years and the average age of an individual in a company leadership development program being 46 years, that’s an average of 19 years that a supervisor is leading without formal training. Additionally, 60% of frontline leaders say they have never received any training for their new role. For human resources professionals responsible for training and equipping supervisors, this is alarming.

When I think back to my first supervisor, well, I’d rather not. We’ll call him Rick, and he was recently promoted to the post. Rick was not provided with the training and tools he needed to lead a team. He neither possessed any interpersonal skills nor did he create an environment, where any of us were willing to share ideas. He continued to focus on solving technical problems that were presented to the team, as if he were still an individual contributor. When forced to communicate, it was always a monologue and never a dialogue.

As organizational changes continue at warp speed, the importance of leaders promoting collaboration and enabling knowledge sharing is critical. The reality is most organizations are woefully unprepared. According to a 2020 report by Deloitte Management Consulting, 75% of surveyed organizations say creating and preserving knowledge across evolving workforces is important or very important for their success over the next 12–18 months, but only nine percent say they are very ready to address this trend.

With effective training, leaders can light the fire of inspiration as they bring individual contributors together underscoring then leveraging diverse skillsets and experiences. Leaders who foster an environment of open dialogue can produce a wealth of benefits both for the organization and its employees.

Human resource managers, who aim to support leaders, need to identify and encourage positive, safe environments. In these settings, team members take calculated risks, push boundaries, and think in progressive ways. Leaders must learn to establish and communicate a clear vision and a strategy to achieve a psychologically safe environment. In this environment, team members feel safe to explore new ways of performing tasks in which interpersonal trust and mutual respect are understood and unconditional. 

In an unsafe environment, employees will never speak up with suggestions or earnestly contribute to addressing and solving problems.

This is especially true in technical organizations, where technology is essential for business growth. Naturally, information technology (IT) leaders are increasingly called on to spearhead technology-driven growth initiatives. In these engagements, IT leaders must effectively solve challenging people, process, and technology issues. To get there, they (and managers, in most industries) need critical management skills. 

According to a 2018 survey from Mindtools.com and the London Business School, the four top-ranking skills for managers were: Building good working relationships with people at all levels (79.9%), prioritizing tasks effectively for yourself and your team (79.5%), considering many factors in decision-making (77.8%) and knowing the key principles of good communication (77.7%).

My former supervisor, Rick, did not check these management skill boxes. About six months into his supervisory role, he was responsible for deploying a new capability nationwide, 5G for mobile devices. The project called for engaging multiple organizations across the country and developing new business processes with new technology to support a seamless change for all users. 

Rick was positioned to lead the effort, but unfortunately, because he hadn’t opened the lines of communications encouraging collaborative innovation, he didn’t know the team’s skillsets and abilities. Skills training could have prepared him to bring us on a challenging and exciting journey with him. What a missed opportunity!

Ideas and inspiration to tackle such large projects can spawn from teams reporting to technical first-level leaders, those responsible for day-to-day employee management. These teams are closest to the work and can generate creative solutions with automation and innovation if they are in a psychologically safe, risk-free environment. 

Addressing team psychological safety at the first level of leadership provides a tremendous opportunity for leaders to influence and inspire their employees to bring forth their best thinking in a fast-paced and competitive technology industry. 

Google’s “Aristotle Project” assessed factors common to high-performing teams and concluded it wasn’t who was on the team but, what determined a team’s success was if psychological safety was present within the team.

The magnitude of psychologically safe environments on performance cannot be overstated. To get the best results from manager training, HR should ground training in “psychologically safe” principles. According to human resources technology provider Quantum Workplace, strategies to create psychological safety at work include the following: promoting self-awareness; demonstrating concern for team members as people; actively soliciting questions; providing multiple ways for employees to share their thoughts; showing value and appreciation for ideas; promoting positive dialogue and discussion; being precise with information; expectations and commitments, explaining reasons for change; and owning up to mistakes.  

Leaders steeped in these principles, invest themselves in their employees’ well-being, and humbly guide and coach their teams will do so successfully all the way to the finish line.  

I consider myself privileged to have mentored dozens of technical leaders at various levels in several organizations. Edmondson’s work has conveyed the reality that I have seen and continue to see, namely first level technical leaders struggling with the human side of their leadership role.

Without leadership training, many supervisors never understand how to address critical issues so they either avoid the conversations completely or handle the situations poorly which leads to strained relationships and suboptimal results. Training, especially transformational leadership training, can provide managers with the essential elements to ensure employees understand the strategy and values of the organization in a way that inspires them. It is vital for employees to realize their purpose seeing a direct line of sight from their role’s contributions, including executives from the top leadership team to the frontline managers of the organization.

Very few things have changed more dramatically over the last decade than technology and the need for leadership, especially within IT positions, is dire. Global research conducted by Deloitte with executives reveal that they do not believe their organizations have the leadership it needs, with less than half stating they are ready to meet their leadership requirements. With high demand and countless opportunities to excel, this is a very exciting time to be in a technology leadership position; to be a flexible, respectful, and inspirational leader. Get to know each member of your team and what excites them. Leverage their abilities and prepare them for their next step up the career ladder.

Collaborating with consultants and expert HR managers should lead the effort to develop supervisor training based on psychological safety. The end goal is to inspire leaders, technical and non-technical, who inspire teams and inspire growth. Employees will remember and refer to carefully trained managers for the rest of their careers as being the ones who challenged their minds and won their hearts.

	Susan Nakashima is an experienced manager working in the technology industry and pursuing her Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (EDBA) at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.  Connect Susan Nakashima
	Kevin S. Groves, Ph.D., is a Professor of Organizational Theory and Management at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and assisted in writing. Visit https://bschool.pepperdine.edu  Connect Kevin S. Groves, Ph.D.