Recent times have highlighted the importance of workplace wellness and the current geopolitical and economic instabilities have kept it high on the agenda. In this article, we explain why psychological safety is necessary for the highest expression of integrity, innovation, and inclusion; explore the obstacles to creating psychological safety; and show how leaders can overcome these obstacles to boost resilience.

The resilience of organisations is key to their ability to respond and adapt to change, and the psychological safety of employees has a lot to contribute to this. How best can leaders create a culture where employees are free to express themselves, raise concerns and share their unique perspectives – all fundamental principles of psychological safety? The answer, in short, is to encourage and model integrity, innovation and inclusive practices.

Integrity

Planning for future success means embracing both trial and error and learning from any mistakes made along the way. Leaders that empower their employees to challenge short-sighted or flawed objectives are positioning themselves for long-term success over short-term profit.

When leaders are committed to hearing the voices and concerns of their employees, they are freeing them to speak their truth and operate with integrity. Fear of repercussions or lack of leadership action after raising concerns, are the two main barriers to the psychological safety surrounding integrity.

If leaders model fallibility, invite input and promote a safe forum where their employees can verbalise their legitimate concerns over projects, plans or behaviours without fear of negative action, they gain the opportunity to address problems sooner, limit damages and adjust their course towards a more successful outcome.

Innovation

Continual product and process innovation is renowned to be crucial to organisational performance and even more so in today’s rapidly changing world. However, the psychological safety around innovating, fundamentally our individual creativity, is often diminished in times of stress and uncertainty and as a result innovation tends to decline when external risk is elevated.

Leaders who embrace, model and enable a discourse around ‘what if…’ scenarios when innovating, are providing their employees with the headspace to challenge existing paradigms and engage in passionate discourse. They are fostering psychological safety and encouraging employees to be curious and generate possible solutions – all of which can only help drive long-term success. An important related behaviour is for leaders to embrace and show gratitude towards those employees that contribute, thereby enforcing positive experiences.

Inclusion

That diversity contributes significantly to corporate success is old news; diversity also helps organisations anticipate, cope with and adapt to turbulence and risk. That said, many people who leave their jobs do so because they do not feel included, valued or respected and no more so than those in minority groups.

Leaders who embrace the tenets of an inclusive culture can build strong diverse teams with a broader knowledge base. Experiential diversity also leads to better decision making and risk analysis particularly in complex or threatening business climates. Culturally literate leaders will challenge the status quo, practise accountability and be aware of bias. They will articulate an authentic commitment to diversity and work hard to operate within a meritocracy. They empower others, pay attention to diversity of thought, psychological safety and focus on team cohesion to build long-term success.

Leaders who create psychological safety...
• Are empathetic, curious and willing
• Manage their own vulnerability
• Create strong connections with their team
• Foster diversity through inclusion
• Ensure everyone can speak and be heard
• Share information and knowledge
• Are willing to try new approaches
• Learn from their mistakes and those of others

A strong foundation to build from

“Having the right competence in the right place at the right time is one thing, it’s another to successfully work collaboratively for maximum effectiveness. The key lies in building trust within your organisation – that is the foundation for anyone to move in any direction, from adopting new ways of working to transforming business processes”

— Fredrik, Emilson, Group President and CEO Höganäs

Working to instil a higher level of psychological safety into their organisation is something company Höganäs has concentrated on for the past few years. Höganäs has global presence and is a world leader in metal powder solutions. Their business outlook in recent years has been heavily impacted by temporary settings in the automotive market, ongoing disruptions in supply chains, an energy crisis and the covid pandemic. To navigate these multiple and serious disruptors Höganäs has had to work to create an environment where all employees feel a responsibility to contribute to finding solutions and where they feel safe to speak up. It is their strong belief that everyone within the company, regardless of role, has something to contribute with and Höganäs wants to maximise this input from across all of their organisation.

External factors, black swan events and crisis management are part of the new normal. Whilst the ‘what’ in business will inevitably have to adapt to stay in tune with times, the ‘how’ in terms of behaviours practiced could possibly be a more fixed way to help steer and guide a path through turbulent times. If everybody has the headspace to feel safe and ‘in it together’, solutions that build on integrity, innovation and inclusion will follow.

Clovis Rondineli Silva

Director Leadership Consulting
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- *Clovis partners with our clients in assignments to support in leadership and organisational development and has helped facilitate cultural transformation work in many organisations.*

Alumni

Developing leadership skills that foster integrity, innovation and inclusiveness in the wider team is key to creating psychological safety and resilience in the wider organisation. We have over 30 years’ experience of advising, developing and training leaders as both individuals and within teams. From recruiting the best-fit leaders to developing them to be the best they can be, Alumni offers an approach that finds and builds on the leadership traits that foster psychological safety.