Psychological Safety at Workplace to Create High Performing Team | Lopamudra Pattanaik| Head HR| TRB Group

Psychological safety is a foundation of creating a highly performing team. It’s a belief that your team member will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns of mistakes. If your team member is feeling Ignorant, incompetent, Disruptive; Such employment stops innovate, share ideas, developing capabilities, talent, skills and active learning. Psychological safety enables business growth, adoption of market trends and technologies, quality of work, early problem detections. It Helps bonding & quality team work. Endeavor shows respect in other’s struggle and help them to find a solution. When an employee feels psychologically safe, he develops trust, respect in team. Easily can express feelings of vulnerability, accept different opinions. Feel included, Feel safe to learn & grow, Feel safe to contribute & Challenge the status quo.

Psychological safety does not mean that everyone working on the floor are nice and friendly. It means when your team member face any conflict and disagreement, he can embrace the conflict and can speak up with a firm belief that the team has their backs. Today’s work force, whom we called millennials are more into innovation, experimentation & attracted towards creativity. They believe in transparency. Other than handsome salary, they would love to work in a vibrant environment with a purpose. As a leader, one of your top priorities is to help your team members succeed and feel engaged with their work. But if you don’t create psychological safety at work, those ambitions will not be possible.

As per google study, high-performing teams have five specific traits:

1. Psychological safety: The willingness to take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed.
2. Dependability:Delivering high-quality work on time.
3. Structure & clarity: Clarity of goals, roles, and execution plans.
4. Meaning of work: The purpose of their work is important to team members.
5. Impact of work:Making a positive difference on the lives of others.

Of these, psychological safety was the most important: employee feels more secure and look for long run association. Individuals on teams that score highly in psychological safety are less likely to leave their job and more likely to embrace diverse ideas and contribute more to bring in revenue. Psychological safety brings trust factor among team – “Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.” To create a team of top performers, organization need to promote above 5 traits through out the organization.

A feedback culture always benefits a business. Even many company can see financial improvements when they listen to employee feedback. To get a honest feedback take a look at employee perceptions of psychological safety as a starting point. Psychological safety is a key component of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Diverse opinions, experiences, and knowledge can be better leveraged if team members feel comfortable speaking up and are accustomed to considering alternate viewpoints. Team members from different culture, values, socio- political back ground contribute different opinion and ideas. Highly inclusive teams are empowered to share their unique perspectives with each other and are better positioned to reap the benefits of having a diverse team. But organization need to take care and value these ideas fairly.