Emotional safety is a prerequisite for unlocking and optimizing human contribution, connection, and collaboration in the workplace. Without it you get individual compliance, nothing more, and it comes at a high price. People will give as much as they need to, to survive, while looking for other opportunities, you guessed it, to survive.
Emotional safety, also known as psychological safety, is a precondition for highly productive relationships. In fact, it is the initial building block.
A lack of it silences People’s voice, robbing an organization of its collective benefit as a consequence. Mistakes are hidden, opportunities to improve are withheld. A sense of fear permeates the environment.
Have you experienced this? How did it make you feel? Perhaps you are in such an environment now.
Being bullied, ostracized, marginalized, excluded, maligned, and so on (feel free to add to the list!). These are toxic, corrosive behaviors, yet all too often they are allowed in the workplace.
A lack of emotional safety creates an environment of fear which severely constrains, or even shuts down, cognitive systems as humans go into survival mode. Perhaps we have just resigned ourselves to its presence and have grown to accept it as a condition in the workplace. Obviously, it doesn't have to be so. We can ban and route out these corrosive behaviors.
Who allows fear to permeate the workplace? Leadership does, whether knowingly or not. Leadership has to ban these corrosive behaviors and hold all accountable, including themselves that these behaviors are outlawed. Period. End of story.
You want Trust based collaboration and innovation? Create an emotionally safe work environment that taps into the best that People have to offer, individually and collectively. It is the first step in the journey to high levels of human engagement and collaboration.
Here are some videos on the topic; Emotional Safety with Dr. Izzy Justice, CEO, EQMentor, Building a psychologically safe workplace with Amy Edmondson, and Lessons in Emotional Safety with Jenn Turner. They address emotional safety in the workplace from slightly different angles. Each are informative. Do yourself a favor and spend some time really understanding and contemplating the merits of emotional safety in the workplace.
You'll be glad you did!
Frank Wander
Frank Wander, a former CIO, is the founder and CEO of PeopleProductive (peopleproductive.com), and the author of Transforming IT Culture, How to Use Social Intelligence, Human Factors and Collaboration to Create an IT Department That Outperforms (Wiley, 2013). This unique book is the first operator’s manual for human infrastructure and will help you successfully transform your leadership style and organization.
PeopleProductive has taken that concept to the human side of the enterprise. We similarly help you find, measure and fix a broad spectrum of behavioral, emotional and enablement issues. For the first time, you can eliminate the inefficiency that holds highly productive people back and measurably increase productivity.
