Psychologically Safe Teams

[pwiseman]

Creating psychological safety for teams

Many human service organizations are under enormous stress and in continual crisis, much like the clients they serve. The impact of this chronic tension results in high rates of staff burnout and turnover, severely hampering an organization’s ability to meet external challenges and grow.

Staff exposure to trauma causes an activation of the brain’s threat response and results in feelings of powerlessness, isolation, mistrust, apathy, lack of focus and more. The nature of the work cannot be changed-staff will always experience vicarious trauma-but an emphasis on creating and sustaining psychologically safe cultures can be mitigating. While psychological safety is important for every team, it is doubly important for organizations that work with a traumatized clientele.

A critical step involves becoming system aware and exploring organizational perspectives that move beyond the blaming of individuals for the organization’s difficulties. The adage that non-profits often come to recreate, internally, the causes they seek to address in society is a place for initial reflection. Equally important is to clearly make the distinction between what is wrong with the organization and what is happening to it, as a consequence of unrelenting trauma.

In a book titled Psychological Safety: The key to happy, high-performing people and teams, organizations are encouraged to think about how to reflect on and promote psychological safety both at the individual level and at the level of culture. The authors identify 5 safety domains: Security, autonomy, fairness, trust and esteem.

People who work in environments where trauma is ubiquitous, may be triggered by what might otherwise appear as an innocuous action. When individuals and teams are unaware of that possibility, problems are unaddressed and compounded.

The book suggests a series of reflective questions, within each of the five domains ,that might be a useful exercise to bring the issues to awareness safely.

Becoming aware of how one reacts to perceived threats in each of these domains and developing a whole team approach to dealing with those triggers, may provide the psychological safety necessary to help team members be successful within a challenging environment.

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