A culture of reinvention: safety warning
The world is on fire and adaptation and reinvention is on most leader’s minds.
It’s on mine at least.
I think about how more people can be creative in their work, because after all, reinvention is an act of creativity.
It’s something we can all do if given the right tools, and one of those tools is some kind of psychological safety.
It may be a bit of a cliche term these days, and possibly a tad ironic in a world feeling less safe, but what does that term mean, and what about safety is useful?
Psychological safety is defined as a shared sense of permission for candor. It is about the absence of interpersonal harm and that it is acceptable to take risks associated with asking questions, admitting mistakes, and disagreeing with colleagues. (Wikipedia link)
It is not about feeling comfortable or free from anxiety.
Safety is about being free from harm and danger.
That’s a clear distinction, and it comes with an acceptance of the group that personal discomfort is okay as part of the process of change and development.
There’s obviously a range here, and each organisation will need to anchor themselves in their correct zone, but generally, discomfort won’t hurt anyone. But conversely, coddling will harm your organisation.
I will also say that I don’t think intense psychological safety works as an “always on” approach to work life.
There should be a foundation of trust, of course. But the workplace is a messy environment because people are wonderfully messy.
We have short attention spans, we revert to habit, we forget because there are bigger, more pressing issues to deal with. Or there are smaller, easier to do tasks that have less risk attached to them.
As colleagues we’re also on different wavelengths, managing a variety of situations as individuals, we can seem to be mean, and not constantly aware of group dynamics and rules of engagement. It’s natural to make unwitting mistakes.
On top of that, expressing creativity is a high risk behaviour in organisations that have low trust.
Because a creative idea is so personal, it is almost a piece of you, its rejection can feel very uncomfortable. Who wants that feeling? I’ve earned my living pitching creative ideas for 25 years and I still secretly dread rejection.
It’s also important to acknowledge that people at every level of an organisation feel like this; mid-level doesn’t feel safe and C-suite doesn’t feel safe, so how is anyone supposed to be a creative problem solver when there is no space to imagine and fail?
Iteration and optimisation are still dependable processes, but the world is demanding significant leaps to adapt to change.
More and more often, it’s time to reinvent, but organisational cultures aren’t ready for this constant pressure.
If you’re a leader who needs to challenge the status quo, improve quality radically, gather some crazy ideas, plan for the unthinkable, or innovate in any way, you need to give yourself the best chance of success and harness the ideas in your team.
Here is a practical suggestion based on my experience as a creative leader in advertising and technology, and as a creative coach for organisations of all kinds.
When it comes to setting up psychological safety it’s better to facilitate a time-boxed process that focuses on a goal.
This way the team understands the feedback rules, how long they can play, and that something will change after they have participated.
Stay in question space. When it comes to divergent thinking, making long distance connections, or exploring an area, a good question gives you strategic direction and a room to play in.
It’s also easier to try ideas out when you don’t need to have the right answer in the room.
In my practice we always follow four steps: Understand the question, Explore the space, make it Relevant, and Equip ourselves to succeed.
When the goal is to harness the unique creativity of everyone in the room to make change quickly, it’s important that everyone feels included and their contributions valued. That’s just good manners.
On the flip side, the team gets to learn from the different perspectives around them, and the gift of a challenge that is engaging and useful to solve. It feels good to invent.
Every person is creative, it’s our special human power, and it’s expressed differently in all of us, so co-creation is a great way to quickly come up with novel solutions that have depth and breadth.
We just need a way to participate wholeheartedly and a pragmatic approach to psychological safety is a key ingredient.
I believe the sanest reaction to a world that feels unsafe is for leaders to help their communities, colleagues and teams make the headspace to create a better one together.
More reading from this article
Core Articles and Reports on Psychological Safety
"Psychological safety and the critical role of leadership development" (McKinsey)
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Organization/Our%20Insights/Psychological%20safety%20and%20the%20critical%20role%20of%20leadership%20development/Psychological-safety-and-the-critical-role-of-leadership-development-final.pdf
"Can Workplaces Have Too Much Psychological Safety?" (PsychSafety.com)
https://psychsafety.com/can-workplaces-have-too-much-psychological-safety/
Related research paper cited in the text: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2023.104255
Related HBR article cited in the text: https://hbr.org/2024/01/can-workplaces-have-too-much-psychological-safety
"What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety" (AAPL / Harvard Business Review)
https://www.physicianleaders.org/articles/what-people-get-wrong-about-psychological-safety
"Psychological safety: Creating a workplace where all thrive" (Journal of Accountancy)
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2024/mar/psychological-safety-creating-a-workplace-where-all-thrive/
"The Dark Side of Psychological Safety" (Medium)
https://medium.com/@ss-tech/the-dark-side-of-psychological-safety-9abc464e21bc
Academic Research Papers
"How Psychological Safety Affects Team Performance: Mediating Role of Efficacy and Learning Behavior" (PubMed Central)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7393970/
"The Role Of Psychological Safety In Enhancing Radical Candor And Effective Team Dynamics" (IOSR Journal)
https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/Vol26-issue11/Ser-13/H2611135357.pdf
