INTERPERSONAL CHANGE RESOURCES
BUILDING TRUST/PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
Building Trust/Psychological Safety
Amy Edmondson’s research
Amy Edmondson is a Harvard Business School professor and leading expert on the concept of Psychological Safety. She defines it as "a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking".
Edmondson's research highlights the important role that psychological safety plays in effective teamwork and organizational performance. Some key findings from her research include:
Teams with higher levels of psychological safety are more likely to have:
better collaboration and innovation
higher-quality decision making
higher levels of job satisfaction
Leaders play a crucial role in creating and maintaining psychological safety in the workplace. But so do fellow team members!
Psychological safety can be improved through proactive interventions such as creating opportunities for learning and experimentation, promoting open communication, and avoiding blame-oriented responses to mistakes.
Edmondson's work has helped to shed light on the importance of psychological safety in the workplace and has provided practical guidance for organizations looking to build a culture of trust and collaboration.
Patrick Lencioni’s research
Patrick Lencioni created a framework called "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team".
It outlines five key elements that can hinder the effectiveness of a team:
Absence of Trust (or Psychological Safety)
Fear of Conflict
Lack of Commitment
Avoidance of Accountability
Inattention to Results
Lencioni's framework emphasizes the importance of building trust as the foundation for a high-performing team, as it enables open communication, healthy conflict, and effective problem-solving. Teams that lack trust struggle with the other dysfunctions and are unable to reach their full potential.
How to go about building psychological safety
Overall, encourage deeper communication and improved listening.This often requires quite a mindset shift, as many people in organizational settings are used to bestowing, at best, conditional trust. We want to protect our ego, our vulnerability and we have seen or heard enough stories of selfishness or dysfunction that it takes quite a great deal of courage to set those concerns aside and engage in building psychological safety with team members. That is one of the reasons why the role of the leader of the team is so important in setting the tone. How she starts up the team meetings, shares her vulnerabilities and questions as well as her opinions and preferences, how she encourages small failures as learning moments, all these things will make a large difference as a team embarks on this journey of becoming more highly effective.
Promote inclusivity and diversity.
Set clear expectations and guidelines.
Foster a culture of trust and respect.
Allow room for failure and learning.
Provide support and resources for mental health.
Give constructive feedback and handle conflicts effectively.
Lead by example with supportive behaviors and attitudes