When we are conducting trainings, it’s key that all participants feel included, safe to learn, safe to contribute, and safe to challenge, without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized or punished in any way. This is how Timothy Clark describes the four steps of Psychological Safety. Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, defines Psychological Safety as a climate in which speaking up is enabled and expected, so that no one will be punished or humiliated for sharing their ideas, concerns, questions or mistakes. To sum it up, we could say it’s about increasing the level of intellectual friction, without generating interpersonal friction.
You might wonder why this kind of climate doesn’t happen spontaneously in trainings (or in any kind of teamwork, for that matter). The thing is we want to look good in front of others and we do what it takes to save face. We are wired with a strong need to belong, since our ancient survival depended on not getting excluded from tribes or groups that guaranteed our safety. So we put a lot of energy into “impression management” and make sure we don’t look incompetent, ignorant, intrusive or negative in our work or learning settings. And this competes with learning. Sure we want to learn, but not in front of other people who’ll witness our vulnerability through the process. Have you ever been in a situation where you hesitated to ask a question, for fear of being judged as dumb? Every time we withhold from asking those questions, Edmondson states, we rob ourselves and our colleagues of learning moments. Only when participants feel true Psychological Safety, they can feel it’s safe to engage in all aspects of the learning process – asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, experimenting, making mistakes and daring to apply what they’ve learned.
If this rings a bell to the trainer you want to be, but still you feel this is easier said than done, please keep reading.
5 Tips for Building Psychological Safety in Your Trainings
1) Create opportunities for social engagement.
A four-year study by Google found that getting to know each other personally made a big difference in how safe and comfortable people felt collaborating. So make space to share personal stories, which help build rapport and help connection through empathy.
2) Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem.
This is only possible in a training scenario if we structure it in a way that we can focus more on the process than the result, more on the intrinsic motivation than on the extrinsic one, more on a growth mindset than on a fixed one. Also, we have to be careful about handling the group dynamics in a way that we can address power imbalances (is a participant’s boss in the training as well, how are we including participants from minority groups, what about introverts, how do we position ourselves as trainers, etc.). We want to make a case for everyone’s voice to be essential for success in addressing these learning problems, particularly the more uncertain, complex or interdependent the work is.
3) Celebrate and even encourage failures.
Destigmatize it. A dear friend started working a couple of years ago in a key role at a very successful multinational company. On his first day on the job, his boss told him: “If you don’t fail the first two months, we’ll fire you, because it means you’re not trying new things”. Frame mistakes as learning opportunities. Share your own past mistakes and provide insights learned.
4) Start with yourself.
As the leader of the training situation, model the attitudes and behaviours you want others to adopt, they’ll learn more from what you do than from what you say. Acknowledge your own fallibility. Show your intellectual humility. Model curiosity. Invite engagement. Ask for feedback. Respond productively. Acknowledge that you also need to learn from participants. It’s about ideas, not about egos.
5) Encourage asking for help.
Individuals and groups benefit from replacing the unreal belief that we’re independent, with the more fruitful acknowledgement of our interdependency. Make learning about collaboration, not about competition. Create the expectation that everyone has a responsibility to help his or her colleagues learn.
If you feel your trainings can benefit from Psychological Safety and want to learn more, we invite you to sign up for our upcoming course at the Academy of Diversity and Innovation. We’ll be honored to walk this road with you!
More information about the course here.