Safety? Empathy? Comedy? To build thriving hybrid teams, leaders must create psychological safety, demonstrate empathy, and have a sense of humor. Discover what psychological safety looks like in a Hybrid Workplace.

Today we interview returning guest and author ofThe Human Edge, Greg Orme. Greg teaches us what we need to know about psychological safety in the hybrid environment so we can Team Anywhere.

What is Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety is the foundation of any high-performance team. This is known to be one of the biggest ideas in leadership and teams over the last 15 years. Psychological Safety creates a culture where team members feel safe speaking up on a team and gets equal time speaking.

Many people misinterpret “psychological safety” because a lot of people think about it as just a safe environment. But Psychological Safety is specifically the feeling that it’s safe for me to take an interpersonal risk. Additionally, Psychological Safety creates a space where it is okay for me to speak up, challenge, ask questions, and make myself vulnerable–without judgment. As a result, a Psychologically Safe environment is where people can express themselves and even have creative conflict to disagree with each other. This requires high levels of empathy and authenticity on the team.

How to Tell If there Is Psychological Safety
When there is Psychological Safety on a team a risky issue surfaces and team members freely oppose it. Team members challenge each other, disagree, move toward an outcome, and then act upon it. Teams that lack Psychological Safety will not fully consider disagreements.

As you get to know your team, you get to know their opinions pretty well. As a team member, you can see that a person’s silence can be a clear sign of discomfort. To encourage psychological safety, it is wise to encourage them to share their thoughts.

Disclaimer: This works well on teams that have already established strong Psychological Safety. If your team does not have strong Psychological Safety, the team member will likely share a “politically correct” response. Building a strong foundation of psychological safety needs to happen first to begin having strong discussions with competing opinions. This gives the team permission to be vulnerable and work through the issue.

Signs of Psychological Safety discussed inside this podcast:

1. Authenticity
2. Empathy
3. Humor
   
   

See the full summary here.

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