Satisfied, healthy employees are the foundation of any thriving business, so it’s essential for companies to build a culture where people can express themselves and create deeper connections and understanding among team members. It is the responsibility of company leaders to ensure every employee feels safe to be their true selves in the workplace.
In a psychologically safe workplace, people feel free to share their ideas, concerns, questions and even failures without worrying about being belittled, ignored or punished. Below, 16 members of Forbes Coaches Council discuss how leaders can provide opportunities for people to express and highlight what makes them different (and special) at work.
Forbes Coaches Council members share ways for leaders to create a psychologically safe workplace.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.1. Play Team-Building Games
Sharing stories can be a safe way to inspire vulnerability and connection. Consider a fun team-building game of thumball, where you take an inflatable ball and write words on it that inspire vulnerability, such as “happy,” “scared,” “grateful,” “embarrassed” and so on. Team members throw the ball to one another and each shares a story of a time when they felt emotions related to the word that their thumb lands on. - Vered Kogan, Momentum Institute
2. Create A Weekly Video Series To Highlight Each Employee
Create a weekly video series that portrays each employee’s uniqueness by having each interviewee pick from an array of questions they can answer—for example, “What is the one thing that makes you, you?” What is your secret power? What is your true purpose? How can others make you feel valued? A weekly video series is a very effective tool to build company culture. - Mariana Ferrari, Dooit
3. Host Informal ‘Get To Know You’ Gatherings
The proverbial water cooler is great for employee chats. Leaders can form something similar by hosting informal “Get to Know You” gatherings to encourage workers to share their backgrounds, cultures and interests. By sharing cultural foods, explaining traditions or delving into sports, workers can learn something new and form common ground. These bonds keep teams connected when challenges arise. - Michael Timmes, Insperity
4. Set A Human Tone With Storytelling
Leaders must set a human tone. Beyond one’s remit, leading means connecting and fostering trust, disclosing information about ourselves, and taking off the mask to show who we are, what we value and why. Modeling this transparency is scary for leaders accustomed to looking “perfect.” By using the art of storytelling as a tool in meetings and conversations, they can make real space for the whole of the team. - Tevis Trower, Balance Integration Corporation
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
5. Take Turns Facilitating Weekly Group Talks
Have weekly group discussions on a variety of topics, and take turns facilitating the meeting. The facilitator chooses the topic for the week, along with a few discussion questions for the team to contemplate beforehand. During the discussion, the facilitator ensures that everyone has an opportunity to express their perspectives. Anyone can ask additional questions to check for understanding. - Chris Herndon, lucidly™️
6. Practice Acceptance Without Judgment
Psychological safety requires leaders who are accepting. Acceptance implies an ability to perceive things “as they are” without judgment or preconceived ideas about what is “good” or “bad,” “positive” or “negative.” When leaders role model acceptance and demonstrate supporting behaviors, there is a better appreciation of diversity and differences within their teams. - Rittu Sinha, The Balanced Bandwagon
7. Elevate Servant Leadership As A Core Value
Servant leadership helps team members practice thinking of others and working to find ways to hear other people’s ideas and opinions. People will only feel valued when team members have the heart to value each other. The idea of considering others before you consider yourself is essential to building a diverse team and organization. - Ken Gosnell, CEO Experience
8. Share Unique Aspects Of Your Own Background
Role modeling is one of the most powerful ways to create and enforce a safe space. When the leader dares to share or appropriately self-disclose aspects of their background that have set them apart, made them different from others or even subjected them to exclusion or ridicule at times, they demonstrate that this is a place where it is safe to be them and, likewise, safe to be you. - April Armstrong, AHA Insight
9. Simply Ask All Team Members About Themselves
I believe all leaders should sit with every single one of their team members and take the time to understand who they truly are on a deep level. Every person in the world wants a voice and wants to feel as if they are being heard. By doing this, you will make team members feel appreciated, and they will stay longer with the company. - Wasim Hajjiri, Wasim The Dream LLC
10. Develop And Promote Diverse Leaders
In order to have psychological safety, we must have trust. In order to build trust, we must have authenticity. Being authentic is far easier when you are among the majority in the room, and it can feel risky when you are a minority. Organizations can do two things. First, develop and promote people from underrepresented groups into leadership. Two, openly talk about why authenticity can feel scary. - Cheryl Czach, Cheryl Czach Coaching and Consulting, LLC
11. Focus On Employee Resource Groups
Start by focusing on employee resource groups. When stood up correctly with established norms and protocols, ERGs can provide an outlet, a platform and a safe space for people of specific backgrounds to connect. - Joshua Miller, Joshua Miller Executive Coaching
12. Form Deeper Connections With Your Core Team
The best opportunity that leaders have to form a deeper understanding and connection among team members begins in their core team. Doing intentional work to build team trust and vulnerability can begin at an off-site team gathering and then become a standing item to revisit monthly or quarterly. Teams who do this work produce better results while encouraging people to be fully themselves. - Jill Helmer, Jill Helmer Consulting
13. Embrace Eccentricities And Quirkiness
I see a new breed of professional service firms being birthed today. They are forming teams and performance goals based on diverse team members’ unique attributes and contributions. They are not only tolerant of but also embrace foibles, eccentricities and quirkiness. These fun and interesting cultures are led by people who grew up seeing themselves as outside of mainstream culture. - Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
14. Promote Personal Connections Outside Of Work
Provide opportunities for team building and promote situations outside of the workplace where employees can get comfortable and open up. This can be done at holiday parties or team outings or simply by going out to lunch together. - Luke Feldmeier, Online Leadership Training - Career and Leadership Accelerator for Engineers
15. Host Regular ‘I Am Me’ Campaigns
Host regular “I Am Me” campaigns that allow people to be authentic and give them a platform to share their uniqueness in an open-mic type of format. Sharing stories and backgrounds creates greater awareness about who people are and what they have been through to get where they are now. This leads to better team development, tolerance, diversity, connection and support. - Arthi Rabikrisson, Prerna Advisory
16. Share Each Other’s Backgrounds Through Food
One of the best ideas a friend of mine from the Army used with his diverse teams—and it still works today—was to share your background through food. In his case, he had one person a month share a favorite food, describe a meal that mattered to them and tell “the story behind the food” to the team. Why not do something unique and personal like this that can, directly and indirectly, lead to understanding? - John M. O’Connor, Career Pro Inc.
