How to Promote Psychological Safety as an Early Adopter

What do you do if you want to bring psychological safety to your organization, but don't find yourself in a position of authority? Or if you do have some authority, how do you approach the topic of psychological safety with your teams and others who are not as familiar with the concept? In this weeks episode Tim and Junior will help you gain a better understanding of change management and cultural transformation.

(02:26) What is the current state of adoption for psychological safety? At a practitioner level it's only been in the last five years or so that the term has achieved any meaningful level of traction. We are still early in the adoption curve. "If you look at the trend lines, though, we are on hockey stick trajectory, in terms of category growth and attention and search traffic and investment, and all of these other metrics that are really good indicators as to where this is going."

(16:44) Is psychological safety a passing fad? How does it stack up against employee engagement? Where does it fit in to other DEI initiatives? It is not a passing fad. Why? Because "we now have this mounting body of empirical research that shows that psychological safety is related to a variety of critical outcomes". Psychological safety is related to key outcomes like employee engagement, retention, inclusion, innovation, and employee wellness.

(32:09) How to get buy-off from leaders using the value equation. Some leaders are "not thrilled" about the term psychological safety others need to see a stronger connection to their key outcomes. It's your job to understand the stakeholders you are working with and to present psychological safety in a way that resonates with them. See our links to previous series on "What's driving demand for psychological safety?".

(40:13) Don't muscle or smuggle change. The two classic failure patterns of organizational change management are muscling (trying to force it through) and smuggling (try to minimize it or do it covertly). "You've gotta square up to the reality of what a change initiative requires and what adoption requires."

Important Links
What Psychological Safety Is Not - Podcast
What Psychological Safety is Not - Post
What Psychological Safety is Not - Webinar

What's Driving Demand for Psychological Safety Series
Pt. 1 What's Driving the Demand for Psychological Safety?
Pt. 2 Exclusion and Social Injustice
Pt. 3 Competitiveness and Innovation
Pt. 4 The Impact of Psychological Safety on Engagement and Retention
Pt. 5 How Mental Health and Wellness is Driving Demand for Psychological Safety