Latest news with #psychologicalsafety
Forbes
21-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How To Build Belonging And Safety With Remote Teams
Bringing people who work disparately together for a multi-day gathering to ideate, produce, and/or celebrate can accelerate productivity, increase engagement, and strengthen organizational commitment. Many U.S. companies continue with hybrid work models, which, while not impacting productivity, present challenges to connection and cohesion. The solution? Productive team offsites. Some companies, notably giants such as Amazon and J.P. Morgan, are now insisting on a full-time return to the office model. However, such firms are in the minority, and this approach is generally unpopular with many whose jobs theoretically allow the flexibility of some remote working, such as in the tech sector. According to a new McKinsey study, hybrid work models seem to be the new normal, and this brings up unique complications. Specifically, challenges related to innovation and psychological safety. It's intuitive why innovation takes a hit remotely; ideation is not always synchronous, it misses that 'live action' component, people are easily distracted, and the hard-to-describe energy or 'vibe' that makes teams come together just isn't there. Psychological safety is a component of workplace belonging. When leaders can't look us in the eye to tell us that they care, when we can't see and feel the office environment we're a part of, and when we can't observe nonverbal cues in meetings, it's hard to feel safe. In fact, it's isolating. Before we discuss what might help solve for workplace belonging in a remote-first world, let's first define what it's not. Workplace belonging isn't, despite what trite HR programs may say, tolerating underperformance in the name of insincere hyper-inclusivity. In my book, I introduce the four horsemen of the workplace apocalypse, which are the lead-up to a toxic culture: A culture of belonging refers to an organizational environment where employees feel deeply connected to their company or team. In such a culture, employees can show up authentically, are recognized for their contributions, and clearly see how they fit into the larger picture. 'Establishing a psychologically safe environment guarantees that all team members can freely express themselves without worrying about criticism or negative consequences,' I write in my book, The Quest: The Definitive Guide to Finding Belonging. 'It fosters trust, encourages mutual respect, and promotes vulnerability.' Now that we've established that productivity may not suffer when we work remotely, but innovation, safety, and belonging do, let's discuss the solution. Enter offsites and retreats. Offsites are strategic meetings that take place out of the office. Their primary purpose stems from business objectives like board meetings, annual planning, or quarterly reviews. Retreats, on the other hand, may be connected to these but are centered around team-building to promote cohesion, which is correlated with higher performance. Regardless of the vessel, bringing people who work disparately together for a multi-day gathering to ideate, produce, and/or celebrate can accelerate productivity, increase engagement, and strengthen organizational commitment. This is a big reason why I founded my new company: to bring retreat venues to life so that small teams can do big things. Intimate corporate gatherings are the ideal tool for remote team leaders to leverage when they're trying to create innovation, promote safety, and foster belonging.
Forbes
18-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Psychological Safety Drives Team Performance. Here's How To Track It
Psychological safety is essential for high-performing teams and it's up to leaders to create—and ... More measure—it. Psychological safety, defined by McKinsey as the absence of interpersonal fear, is often cited as a defining trait of high-performing, innovative teams. But for many leaders, it remains abstract—easy to endorse, harder to recognize and even harder to measure or quantify. That's a problem, especially when the research is this clear. A major meta-analysis from M. Lance Frazier and colleagues identified three conditions that foster psychological safety: a positive team climate, thoughtful work design and strong leader relationships. A McKinsey Global Survey later found that the most impactful factor is a positive team climate, which team leaders have the most influence over. Separate McKinsey findings highlight the payoff: when psychological safety is present, teams adapt faster and perform better. Gallup research backs this up, pointing to engaged managers as the key to team resilience and productivity. Put simply, how people feel and perform at work is deeply shaped by their manager's leadership. That makes psychological safety more than a pie-in-the-sky ideal—it's a core leadership responsibility. The real challenge is knowing whether you're actually creating it. So how do you tell if your team feels safe to speak up, challenge ideas or take risks? And how can you monitor that over time? Here's how to make psychological safety measurable—and meaningful. One of the most reliable ways to measure psychological safety is through validated survey tools. Amy Edmondson's Psychological Safety Index is widely used and includes prompts that explore team dynamics and norms around making mistakes, taking risks and social acceptance. Some teams may prefer to use Gallup's 12-item engagement survey, paying particular attention to the questions related to trust, voice and acceptance. Before administering any team survey, explain its purpose clearly and commit to sharing insights from the data gathered. Results should be anonymized and ideally benchmarked across time. That will give you an accurate sense of whether psychological safety is improving—or if the conversation is going in circles. A team's real-time interactions often reveal more than any survey. Take note of who tends to speak first and most often. Who rarely speaks unless called on? What happens when someone pushes back—or admits a mistake? Patterns of silence, interrupting or constant agreement may signal that dissent feels risky or unwelcome. You can track this qualitatively or use AI notetakers to identify whose voices are being heard. If most discussions are dominated by a few voices, or if disagreement is rare, that may indicate low psychological safety—regardless of what survey responses say. A safe team won't just be busy (or pretend to be busy)—they'll be vocally engaged, even when stakes are high. Psychological safety is nuanced and personal. What feels comfortable to one person may feel risky to another. That's why qualitative check-ins are essential. In one-on-one conversations with team members, go beyond the surface-level 'How's it going?' Instead, try: 'Are there moments when you hesitate to speak up here?' or 'What would make you feel safer to take risks in your work on this team?' In team check-ins or debriefs, try opening with:'What helped you feel seen, heard or valued this week?' or 'What would help us be more collaborative and supportive as a team?' The goal isn't to force emotional vulnerability, especially if baseline trust hasn't already been established. That kind of approach can easily backfire. Instead, these questions are meant to normalize and build a team practice of open reflection and candid communication. Over time, this kind of consistency will build a culture where psychological safety becomes a shared value, not just the leader's responsibility. When psychological safety is present, you'll usually see it in the team's output—what's being created, tested and improved. Teams that feel safe tend to float more new ideas and run more experiments. Feedback loops feel functional instead of fear-based. Problems are raised early and dissected without assigning blame. This doesn't mean everything is perfect. But you'll likely notice more learning behavior: postmortems that lead to insightful questions and important adjustments instead of finger-pointing, or candid conversations that spark process changes. On the flip side, if people stay quiet in the face of obvious issues—or stop taking initiative altogether—it may be a sign that psychological safety has eroded. While engagement, retention or performance scores can reinforce these patterns, they shouldn't be your only data points. When you rely too heavily on surface-level metrics, you miss what's happening underneath. If you're serious about measuring psychological safety, start with your impact as a leader. Encourage feedback that speaks to how your behavior affects the team climate. This can be done through upward feedback, peer reviews or 360 assessments. In reviewing and analyzing the data from upward or peer feedback, look for consistent themes over isolated opinions. Do people describe feeling dismissed or micromanaged? Are there patterns in how mistakes are handled or how conflict is managed? It's not always easy to hear, but this kind of feedback is one of the most direct indicators of whether your leadership is fostering—or flattening—psychological safety. Collecting feedback is only useful if it leads to change. Without follow-through, even the best-intentioned efforts can create frustration, cynicism or break hard-won trust. Once you gather insights, don't keep them to yourself or let them collect dust on the shelf. Start by sharing high-level takeaways with your team—transparently and without spin. Engage with your team as you co-create the path forward. Let them know what you plan to change or test and see how they respond. Invite input on next steps to build investment and buy-in by asking them: What should we try differently? How will we know it's working? Commit to revisiting these questions regularly. Effective communication in the age of a broken social contract at work is tricky, but focus on deep and empathetic listening, consistent and aligned action and practical transparency. Psychological safety is dynamic—and it directly impacts business outcomes. When it's present, team members speak up earlier, collaborate more effectively and recover faster when things go wrong. They don't just get more done—they get better at how they do it. But psychological safety can erode just as quickly as it's built. That's why measuring it can't be a one-time exercise. It has to become a leadership habit. Leaders who understand this don't treat psychological safety as a 'nice-to-have' afterthought. They monitor it as closely as they do output and engagement. And when they notice something slipping, they intervene—not with platitudes and empty promises, but with clear, visible changes in how they lead. That's what transforms psychological safety from a buzzword into a competitive edge.
Fast Company
08-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
This is how leaders can turn employee activism into opportunities
Many leaders view employee activism as a disruption or threat. They see it as something to contain, avoid, or manage behind closed doors. This perception isn't surprising because activism challenges established hierarchies, questions the status quo, and introduces unpredictability into organizational life. Yet a 2007 study has shown that employees who feel heard are more engaged, innovative, and committed to their organization's success. In contrast, when employees feel ignored or dismissed, trust and morale decline, and disengagement is likely to set in. Activism is one form of voice, and is often the last resort when other channels have failed. The business case for listening The rise of social media has heightened concerns. Employees can bypass internal channels and take their concerns public, often in real-time. This new visibility amplifies reputational risk and fuels executive fears of losing control over the narrative. Leaders worry about backlash from customers, investors, and regulators or the derailment of strategic priorities. What executives need to consider is that activism can actually be an early warning of cultural misalignment or emerging ethical tension. When leaders reframe activism as a potential strategic insight rather than a threat, they can uncover the opportunities it offers. For example, McKinsey's research notes that organizations with high psychological safety, where people feel safe speaking up, are more likely to innovate, adapt to change, and outperform peers. How to avoid common pitfalls Leaders often make the mistake of trying to silence or sideline dissent. This can take the form of tightening communication protocols, minimizing concerns, or casting vocal employees as disloyal or disruptive. These tactics might quiet the noise temporarily, but they rarely address the underlying issues. More often, they damage credibility, erode psychological safety, and drive dissent underground—only for it to reemerge later (likely louder and more polarized). Another common misstep is failing to address the gap between stated values and lived experience. Activism often arises when employees perceive an inconsistency. This is when what the organization claims to stand for doesn't match what it does in practice. To maintain credibility, leaders need to assess how policies, behaviors, and decisions align with the organization's purpose on a regular basis.
