“Psychological safety” is a shared belief held by members of a team that others on the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish you for speaking up.

“Psychological safety” is a shared belief held by members of a team that others on the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish you for speaking up.

Here are 5 ways you can create psychological safety at work:

1. Make psychological safety an explicit priority.
Talk about the importance of creating psychological safety at work, connecting it to a higher purpose of promoting greater organizational innovation, team engagement, and a sense of inclusion. Model the behaviors you want to see and set the stage by showing empathy in the workplace.

2. Facilitate everyone speaking up.
Show genuine curiosity, and honor candor and truth-telling. Be open-minded, compassionate, and empathetic when someone is brave enough to say something challenging the status quo. Organizations with a coaching culture will more likely have team members with the courage to speak the truth.

3. Establish norms for how failure is handled.
Don’t punish experimentation and (reasonable) risk-taking. Encourage learning from failure and disappointment, and openly share your hard-won lessons learned from mistakes. Doing so will help encourage innovation, instead of sabotaging it.

4. Create space for new ideas (even wild ones).
When challenging an idea, provide the challenge in the larger context of support. Consider whether you only want ideas that have been thoroughly tested, or whether you’re willing to accept highly creative, out-of-the-box ideas that are not yet well-formulated. Learn how to embrace new ideas to foster more innovative mindsets on your team.

5. Embrace productive conflict.
Promote dialogue and productive debate, and work to resolve conflicts productively. Leaders can set the stage for incremental change by establishing team expectations for factors that contribute to psychological safety.