Psychological safety is important to those willing to recognize the comfort of employees. If you haven’t come across this term before, you’re far from alone. Up until a few years ago, few companies cared about the well-being of their employees.

Even fewer of them made the connection between employee well-being and their work. Times are changing so it’s important you realize the correlation between these factors. You can’t expect your employees to deliver great results if they don’t feel psychologically safe at work.

This brings us to the essence of what psychological safety is all about. It’s about your employees feeling safe enough in the workplace to take collective risks. An employee who knows their inputs are valued is more likely to share them. This in turn allows the teams in your organization to perform better than they ever did before.

If your employees feel psychologically safe, you’ll experience a low employee turnover. But, if you haven’t even considered it before, it can be hard to know where to begin with psychological safety.

So, we’re here to give you a few tips on how you can create psychological safety for high-performing teams.

Listen to Your Employees

The first step to ensuring employees have psychological safetyis to listen to them. Sure, this isn’t always easy for every kind of organization. You may have a leadership style that relies on managers dictating to employees. Think about how effective this approach has been for you in the past.

You may have achieved considerably great results following this leadership style. Maybe your employees are good at carrying out the instructions given to them. But, has it occurred to you that they may want more? It’s not a good idea to underestimate the creativity of your employees.

These are some of the reasons why listening to your employees can boost their psychological safety:

• They may well have ideas and suggestions to help take your projects forward. Some would argue that they’re better equipped to voice their opinions than managers.
• They would feel more involved in the work you put before them. This is one of the foundations of psychological safety for your employees.
• Listening to your employees can give their esteem a boost.
• Listening well would encourage them to speak up more often and present their best ideas at work.

If your managers aren’t closely involved with their teams, they don’t know what’s happening on the ground level. Employees working on the ground level know the needs of every project.

So, their opinions and suggestions may be more useful than you may have believed. But, it’s not about simply listening to what your employees have to say. It would be wise to follow their suggestions at least every once in a while.

Cooperate With Them

Often, managers agree the trick to getting results is working closely with teams. You could encourage such a culture at work where your managers don’t dominate the teams they lead. Sure, they need to assert themselves once in a while so employees follow instructions.

But, it would help if your employees feel managers are engaged in working with them. They should know that their superiors value their thoughts and opinions. A good way to show them the same is by working with them on the ground level.

This isn’t always practical as managers have to supervise large projects. They can’t pay attention to small details every day at work. But, they could take out time often to check in with their teams.

Your managers could present themselves for team meetings at regular intervals. This would give them a chance to lend an ear to employee input. This would be especially useful if you work in a fast-paced industry. Your managers would need to ensure your employees stay on top of their deadlines.

These are some of how managers can work closely with their teams:

• They can stay in touch with them online and ask for regular updates on their work.
• They can ask them if they need suggestions and assistance regarding their work.
• They can ask employees if they have any complaints or grievances they’d like to share.

If they know their managers care about their work, employees will meet deadlines. Making them feel ignored won’t be doing any favors for them when it comes to psychological safety.

Encourage Self Awareness

Another great tip for psychological safety is to encourage self-awareness. Remember that each of your employees is unique and has unique preferences. Some of them might prefer to work in a fast-paced environment. But, others might prefer to take things slow in a relaxed workspace.

Indeed, you can’t accommodate everyone’s preferences when they’re at work. After all, you need to focus on what helps you produce long-term results. Taking everyone’s preferences into account is unlikely to help you get there.

But, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and keep your employees happy while they’re at work. One way to do this is to encourage your employees to be self-aware. Encouraging them to be self-aware will allow them to check their own needs and preferences.

Self awareness in the workplace is about knowing your work habits and more. it also involves understanding your responses to different situations that may arise while you’re at work. Self-aware employees will know how to find unique solutions to problems. They’ll also know how they prefer to approach different situations while they’re working.

In time, they’ll learn to voice these preferences in the workplace. It can be difficult to encourage them to be self-aware if you haven’t done it before. You can start by asking senior managers to practice self-awareness first. Only then can they encourage the teams they lead to follow in their footsteps.

You can help employees build psychological safety once they know what they want. You can ask them to make their expectations from their work quite clear. This will allow them to realize when these expectations are fulfilled. Once they realize you’re meeting their expectations, their performance will improve.

Conclusion

You can now see why psychological safety is important for your high-performing teams. The tips we’ve given you above will help you foster psychological safety in your workplace. These tips will help your employees be at their creative best when they show up to work.

Also, they’ll help you make the most out of the untapped potential of your employees. All said and done, your employees can always perform a lot better with the right push. You can give them this push gently, by prioritizing their psychological safety. Lend a keen ear to them and you’ll know how they feel about your efforts.

The entire point of psychological safety is making employees feel comfortable at work. It’s important your managers are well-versed in the benefits of psychological safety. Encourage them to understand why it’s essential for employees to feel connected to work.

This is sure to help them provide a healthy boost to the efforts of their high-performing teams.