Psychological safety - the ‘fertile soil’ for business success

19 Sept

Did you know that businesses worldwide drop billions of pounds every year on training and development? In the UK alone, companies shell out over £45 billion annually, according to the Employer Skills Survey [1&2]. And across the pond in the US? They spent a whopping $101.8 billion just last year alone! [3]

When it comes to the cost of training, getting a good return on investment is crucial. But, despite all the effort put into creating top-notch training programmes, hiring passionate trainers, and having eager participants, the research shows that just attending training doesn’t magically lead to learning transfer, real change and business impact.

The truth is, individuals alone can’t create change from training because they have less influence over the system around them compared to the system’s influence on them. It’s like trying to swim upstream without much support from the current – the system needs to be in sync for real change to happen.

And here’s another twist: top performers don’t necessarily bring their magic with them when they switch jobs. Boris Groysberg’s research back in 2007 found that companies often overlook this. They might hire a star player thinking they’ll easily replicate their success in a new setting, but that’s not always the case. Context is everything – it’s the culture and strategy of the new organisation that dictates whether the magic continues.

So, why isn’t training sticking? We really need to crack this if we’re going to save millions, or even billions, from being wasted in what’s been dubbed ‘The Great Training Robbery.’ Remember, organisations aren’t just made up of individuals; they’re complex systems with their own life. If the system doesn’t change, it won’t support the changes we want from individuals.

If nothing changes, nothing changes

Why didn’t you tell us sooner?

The truth is, we know this already: the research has been around for a long time. We know that the culture in which people operate directly informs their ability to create change and make improvements. Let’s not pretend that’s news.

So why is it so easy to ignore? I’ll tell you - because it’s inconvenient truth: that change must occur for change to occur.

Change is incredibly hard, especially for organisations and institutions, which thrive on a regular rhythm and routine that favours consistency and predictability over change and innovation. What’s more, change takes intention, effort, diligence and determination; it’s doesn’t just happen.

So where do we start?

We start with psychological safety. Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, and Anita Woolley, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, showed in 2003 (over 20 years ago) that businesses had to have the “fertile soil” of psychological safety in place before any “seeds” of training can grow [6].

This is because psychological safety motivates people to learn and imagine new ways of being; to feel safe to share ideas, to be critical thinkers, to solve problems, to give and receive feedback, to be creative enough to conceptualise, buy-into and become change-makers themselves.

But in order for this is be truly effective, culture and strategy must first align. A culture of psychological safety and an transformation-forward attitude must prevail. Best will in the world, that is incredibly challenging - but not impossible - to accomplish. And when you start talking about large companies of 100+ let alone 1000+ employees, you can almost forget it. Without, that is, an effective culture and change management strategy.

But enough about that for a moment. Back to psychological safety.

What is psychological safety?

Psychological safety is a culture concept designed to make it safe for people to speak up without fear of being humiliated or reprimanded. It’s a cornerstone of a modern, ethical practice, and sits in stark contrast to historical, traditional perspectives on leadership that encouraged control by fear, and ‘keeping people’s feet close to the fire’.

In relation to training, psychological safety is essential for enabling employees to become critical thinkers and change-makers - exactly what training seeks to elicit when new skills and approaches are being explored.

Psychological safety empowers improvements from training to be more deeply embedded because people have "the belief that [they] will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or [making] mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking" [1].

Fortunately, we know enough now from neuroscience at work and how the human brain operates under stress, fear and pressure to know that in order to get the best from our people we need to support them to be well, to feel safe and to be as emotionally regulated as possible. And culture plays a big part in that.

A psychologically-safe culture creates the conditions for this to happen and for people to apply what they’ve studied and learned in training and foster improvements.

What’s more, Edmondson and Woolley found that businesses with a culture of psychological safety in place also benefited from:

improved inter-personal trust
stronger job satisfaction
greater employee engagement
improved employee wellbeing
stronger performance, productivity and business success.

Key take-aways

Improving the manager does not improve the management.
Individual employees have less power to effect change than the business system has to exert resistance to that change over them.
If the system doesn’t change, nothing will change: it will not support and sustain the individual behaviour change of separate managers/employees — what it will do is set people up to fail and waste a lot of money.
Context is key.
Culture and strategy must be aligned.
Psychological safety means that staff have "the belief that [they] will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or [making] mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”
A psychologically-safe culture creates the conditions for them to apply what they’ve studied in training and foster improvements.

What action can we take?

Contact us at Attuned Leadership - our work centres around creating strategic and organisational culture where individuals and businesses can flourish. We provide the necessary skills and approaches to achieve this, using: