In search of psychological safety, or when leadership green flags aren't enough

I was recently triggered by a post I saw re-shared by the Center for Creative Leadership (who you should be following, by the way) about Leadership Green Flags. I've seen several variations of this list and it really irks me, every time. The reason why I am so bothered is that I've worked for leaders who checked many of these boxes but were still terrible leaders. Leadership is a verb - it's not enough to say the right things, you have to do the right things, too.

Credit: Center for Creative Leadership on LinkedIn

This is very personal to me and has nothing to do with the great folks at CCL, and comes from the experience of working for someone who said the right things, and in fact very consistently demonstrated numbers 3, 4, and 5 on this list. At the same time, this person hyper-monitored my time, asked me to do things that other employees at my level were not asked to do, and engaged in online stalking and harassment. At one point, I was told that there didn't need to be trust in our relationship for me to do what I was told. How many green flags are enough? When are the red flags too much?

I'm here to tell you that trust is the cornerstone of successful organizations and a critical element of psychologically safe workplaces, or workplaces where an employer takes steps to reduce the risk of psychological harm and promotes mental and emotional wellbeing. In fact, research shows that trust leads to joy in the workplace and higher engagement, but nearly 1 in 4 workers globally don't trust their employer.

From: The Neuroscience of Trust in the Harvard Business Review Magazine, 2017

Think of psychological safety as being akin to physical safety. Your employer has a responsibility to do things like make sure your building is accessible, provide you ergonomic equipment, establish safety protocols for high-risk jobs, and having appropriate ventilation systems, as just a few examples. Your employer also has a responsibility to ensure your psychological safety by protecting you from discrimination or addressing it appropriately when discrimination occurs, by preventing bullying and other forms of harassment, by providing mental health days and employee assistance programs, and by making sure leaders have more green flags than red.

Psychological safety is also critical to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace. I would argue that you know psychological safety exists when employees feel that they belong. Belonging is shaped by:

• Being included in projects, on hiring panels, in work events, or in meetings

• Having diversity among your team

• Paying people equitably

• Providing fair and accessible opportunities for professional development and advancement

• Taking meaningful action on employee input

• Ensuring that there is appropriate accountability for bad actors

• Providing support for people who have negative workplace experiences

• Giving public recognition and showing people they are valued

Unfortunately, psychological safety is higher in more senior roles, according to one survey, and while that can be a chicken-egg argument, it may be that leaders are not creating the same conditions for their employees to feel valued and safe that they may benefit from.

From: Everything DiSC, 2023

What boundaries are at play

All of the boundaries!

• Mental: having your own thoughts and opinions, feeling free to express them, and feeling like they are valued.

• Emotional: how emotionally available you are to connect with your colleagues, invest in your work, and feel a sense of accomplishment and purpose and yes, even joy.

• Physical: research shows that employees who feel psychologically safe are less likely to be injured at work. This partly stems from being able to report unsafe working conditions and trusting that they will be remedied.

• Material: in a psychologically safe workplace, you can feel safe asking for a raise, or for better equipment, or for some other benefit without fear of retribution or punishment and without feeling devalued.

• Conversational: it's important to note that a psychologically safe workplace isn't a place where you can just freely say whatever is on your mind. In fact, it's one where you know what you can and can't talk about and respect people enough (and are humble enough) to ask them if you're not sure.

• Time: sometimes an unsafe workplace looks like managers hyper-monitoring your time or failing to provide flexibility in scheduling. In a psychologically safe workplace, you have some control over your schedule and enough autonomy to ensure that you can be your best self and do your best work.

As stated by Paul Zak in the HBR article linked above, "Ultimately, you cultivate trust by setting a clear direction, giving people what they need to see it through, and getting out of their way." And as I've already noted, trust is the foundation of a psychologically safe workplace.

What policies are at play

Law plays a large part in creating psychological safety. The Americans with Disabilities Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,  and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act all establish requirements to prevent discrimination or harassment in the workplace while also giving employees a path for us to ask for what we need to perform our jobs.

There are no federal laws preventing bullying, but it's common for workplaces now to have anti-bullying policies, and 32 states have introduced (though none have yet enacted) a Healthy Workplace Bill to prevent and correct abuse at work. There is also a movement to introduce the Workplace Psychological Safety Act in at least 20 states by 2025. Massachusetts and Rhode Island have already considered versions of this bill.

While law plays an important role, psychological safety really turns on the things that create organizational culture: values, strategic plans, leadership training, hiring and onboarding, job descriptions and performance management. We have to be intentional in the design, implementation, and monitoring of all of these pieces of the puzzle.

From: Statista Research Group, Most common reasons for leaving a job among workers in the United States 2022

Who is most impacted

According to Statista Research Group, one of the top reasons for leaving a job in 2022 was feeling disrespected at work. Notably, not enough flexibility to choose hours was also in the mix.

We are all impacted by a lack of psychological safety, and the effects are worse for people from marginalized population groups. According to the American Psychological Association (APA) 2023 Work in America Survey:

• More women than men and more people living with a disability than living without reported a toxic workplace.

• Black and Hispanic people are more likely to feel a lack of belonging and more likely to report a lack of support in the workplace.

• One third of employees surveyed said they feel their workplace does not support them because some aspect of their identity, like race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, or age.

Honestly, this survey is one of the more fascinating reads I've found lately and you should really dive in if you have the time.

And that same study linking physical and psychological safety also confirmed findings that fully remote workers report higher levels of psychological safety, in part because they experience fewer microaggressions. The benefits of remote work were also confirmed in the APA survey.

What can you do with this information

Put Relationships first. You cannot have a psychologically safe workplace without empathetic and trusting relationships. We all have to invest the time in connecting with our colleagues, and that means being curious and asking questions while also being willing to share a little bit of ourselves.

Leaders

• Get our of your employees' way. Give people the resources they need to do the work and then trust them to do what you hired them to do. When you have trust, you can deal with challenges and failures.

• Don't just talk like a leader, act like a leader. For example, if you make a mistake, publicly own it. Or if you ask for your employees' ideas, give them credit for how those ideas are used and, if possible, involve them in the implementation.

• Be curious and empathetic. Ask your employees about their preferred supervision style and then try to meet that, while also communicating your own preferences.

Everyone

• Speak up and ask for what you need to do your job in the best way you can. This means sharing whether you prefer emails or phone calls, how often you like to check in and at what time of day, and how you prefer to manage your calendar.

• Seek out or create support groups. If you feel a lack of support, create or join an affinity group in your workplace, or seek groups that provide a physical, mental, or emotional outlet. For me, that has looked like a BIPOC employee group and a women in leadership book club.

• Celebrate wins for your colleagues and take charge on creating ways to build community on your team, whether you lead the team or not. I had an employee who organized a virtual walking challenge where we shared updates on our virtual destinations as we made progress. It was a fun way for us to stay healthy together, learn about new places, and strengthen our connections with each other.

• Know your policies. Your employee handbook or personnel policies will define bullying and harassment and establish a code of conduct. Know these so that you can know the signs when something isn't working.

It's important to note that psychological safety can exist in pockets within an unsafe workplace - there are healthy teams. The reverse is also true, that an organization that is generally psychologically safe can have teams that struggle. Identify and lift up what works. Also know that one newsletter is not enough for this topic, and it's one we'll be coming back to in future editions.

I'll end on this: having leadership green flags is not enough. You may be wondering what my response was to the situation I found myself in. While I reported the behavior to HR and they took some disciplinary action against my manager, it wasn't enough for me to feel safe, so I left. That's not an easy decision to make for anybody, but my advice is that when you are faced with a choice between a job and your mental health, choose you.

Resources:

• MIT Sloan Management Review, How to Build a High-Trust Workplace

• Center for Creative Leadership, How Leaders can Build Psychological Safety at Work

• Harvard Business Review, The Neuroscience of Trust: Management behaviors that foster employee engagement

• Everything DiSC: A Wiley Brand, Psychological Safety at Work: The Key to Success and How to Get It