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When I first started out managing projects, I had never heard of psychological safety. It’s a concept I’ve only come across in recent years, and it’s fascinating.
Psychological safety is part of what I would have called a blame-free team culture in the past: the idea that you can talk about hard things without worrying that there would be career consequences for raising challenges.
A report came out from the UK Ministry of Defence at the end of last year on psychological safety in projects, and the report defines it like this:
Psychological safety is the idea that we can be candid and raise issues without fear of reprisal.
The MOD manages plenty of high profile, high stakes projects, so they know a thing or two about how to create empowered teams – and also the consequences of what happens when projects don’t go to plan.
Here are 5 tips from the report that resonated the most with me.
1. Be present
Unsurprisingly, leadership behaviours were found to significantly psychological safety in teams, and if you’ve ever worked with a leader who made you feel like you never wanted to open your mouth to say anything in a meeting, you’ll know why.
The role we have as project leaders is key to shaping the environment and creating a safe space. From the 240+ surveys carried out to inform the report, a key takeaway was to be present in the project environment.
Being visible means there is a route for people to get in touch with points to escalate, progress updates or issues.
2. Reaffirm the direction and goals
The research found that clarity of direction was the second most important factor in creating psychological safety, after the behaviour of leaders, and it’s not hard to understand why.
We feel more comfortable raising concerns if we understand the mission and have a clear direction to follow. Plus, it’s easier to challenge behaviours and tasks that don’t support the mission, because everyone knows that’s what should be pulling focus.
The report concludes that project leaders should continually have conversations about the direction, especially when the context changes, for example economic or political changes.
3. Ask for (and give) help
Over 80% of people who responded to the MOD survey disagreed that it was difficult to ask others for help. However, it also identified that it was harder to ask for help outside of an individual’s specific team.
The lesson for us is that we should build working relationships across silos and up and down the hierarchy to be able to establish trust and respect across the organisation.
4. Create a learning culture
A culture of learning “mediate[s] the relationship between psychological safety and team performance”.
Project professionals can create a learning culture by being open to finding out more from their peers and colleagues, and also through sharing information and lessons learned freely.
5. Recognise individual excellence
I’ve written a lot in the past about how to celebrate team success and making sure to mark project-related milestones. But recognising individual contributions is just as important. Ideally, we should be rewarding contributions as well, so if your company has a staff recognition scheme, it’s time to dust off the submission guidance and think about who you could put forward for an award.
The report says that project leaders should ‘unlock purpose and empowerment to drive value’ which I interpret to mean helping the team see that their work is making a difference.
The research report has lots of other interesting takeaways, but those were the key headlines for me. I’d be interested to hear your tips for maintaining psychological safety on projects – let me know in the comments!
Posted on: June 06, 2023 08:00 AM |
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