The safer your employees or colleagues feel, the more likely they are to offer input, ask questions and address concerns and mistakes. This is psychological safety in a nutshell.

The concept was introduced by Harvard professor Amy C. Edmondson, who, for several decades, has been conducting research on how psychological safety strengthens the wellbeing and commitment of employees and the learning, innovation and growth of entire organizations.

The core of psychological safety is that everyone in your team or organization is comfortable:

• having a say and coming up with new (and rough) ideas – so that problem solving and innovation are strengthened;
• asking questions and expressing your doubts – so that processes can be improved and plans adjusted when things change;
• talking about things that are difficult – so that problems can be dealt with before they get out of hand;
• challenging each other’s and management's proposals – so more perspectives can be brought into play, helping you to make better decisions; and
• speaking up if you make or discover that someone else has made a mistake – so that you can learn from them together.

The more complex and changeable the work context, the more important psychological safety is, because different perspectives from all employees are required to navigate safely.

At the same time, psychological safety is an important part of the foundation for creating an inclusive work culture in your organization. Because even if you incorporate diversity in your recruitment, inclusion doesn’t automatically follow – it requires that people are confident enough to provide input and feel that their voices are actually heard.

In this way, psychological safety and inclusion go hand in hand.

But it’s only possible to create a high level of psychological safety in a team if every team member feels psychologically safe; if everyone dares to suggest ideas, speak up about mistakes etc. without fear of putting themselves in a bad light, being seen as incompetent, being laughed at, or even punished.

And it’s even more important to be aware of this if there is great diversity in the team. Because if there are a lot of differences within a team, it’s often necessary to provide team members with different frameworks in order to truly create a high level of psychological safety for everyone.

So, how do you go about it in practice?

Our training solution Create Psychological Safety in Diverse Settings is designed to give you inspiration and concrete tools for precisely that.

We can deliver the training solution Create Psychological Safety in Diverse Settings as a short speech or a half-day workshop.

For example, you could use the short speech (typically about 1 hour) as inspiration for your conference, leadership seminar, strategy day, train-the-trainer workshop, network meeting or other event.

And we can design an interactive half-day workshop (2-3 hours) for any group of employees or managers in your company – e.g., for a specific team, project group or department.

Create Psychological Safety in Diverse Settings is particularly relevant for you if you:

• are a manager, team leader or project manager;
• work with HR, internal training or organizational development; or
• are Head of Diversity & Inclusion, are part of a D&I team or work with D&I in other ways in your company.

In practical terms, we can deliver Create Psychological Safety in Diverse Settings on-site, virtually or in a hybrid format, and we have extensive experience in designing speeches and workshops that work across locations and national borders.

With our training solution Create Psychological Safety in Diverse Settings, you’ll learn what psychological safety is and why psychological safety is crucial in relation to inclusion, innovation and performance in your teams.

And you’ll get simple and effective tools along the way that you can use to promote psychological safety in your team or organization.

You’ll also become aware of the most common pitfalls in relation to creating a psychologically safe environment for everyone.

And you’ll gain insights into some of the brain’s basic mechanisms and how to use your knowledge about the brain to develop and maintain a psychologically safe work culture.

In the speech/workshop, we’ll address the kinds of differences that are at play in your team or organization as our starting point – for example:

• Different personality types
• Different professional backgrounds
• Different roles in the organization
• Different generations, genders and other identities
• Different national work cultures

You’ll come to reflect on whether, in your current setup, there really is a high level of psychological safety for everyone.

For example, do your introverted colleagues have just as many opportunities to suggest ideas as your more extroverted colleagues? Do some professional groups speak up more easily than others? Do your younger, and perhaps newly hired colleagues, feel comfortable telling you when they’ve made a mistake? Are there any (perhaps invisible) barriers for some colleagues – e.g., because they have a disability, a different ethnicity or a different gender identity than the rest of the group?

If you have global activities, you’ll get practical advice on how to adapt the framework for your collaboration so that your colleagues feel psychologically safe across time zones, national borders and different work cultures.

And if you collaborate in virtual teams, you’ll gain insights into why psychological safety is actually even more important when collaborating remotely, along with tips on how to create psychological safety in the virtual setting.

We can deliver Create Psychological Safety in Diverse Settings as a short speech or a half-day workshop for any group of managers or employees in your company.

In close cooperation with you, we’ll set the duration, learning objectives, specific content, as well as the time and place for the speech/workshop (on-site, virtual or hybrid format).

Examples of what we can work with:

• What psychological safety is and is not – and why psychological safety is more important today than ever before
• Why psychological safety is, in relation to the brain, also good for innovation and learning
• The connection between psychological safety, diversity and inclusion
• Why a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach doesn't work in teams and organizations with great diversity – and what power structures and biases you need to be aware of when working to ensure psychological safety for everyone
• When should you focus on differences – and when should you focus on everything that unites you in your differences?
• How do you create a culture of failure with a focus on learning and development?
• Methods for facilitating meetings and organizing brainstorming sessions in diverse teams so that all perspectives come into play and all voices are heard
• Tips and tools for creating a psychologically safe environment across borders and different national work cultures – including how to use our ‘4R Model’ to work with psychological safety in a culturally intelligent way
• Inspiration on how to create psychological safety in remote collaboration – and how to reduce ‘in-person’ and ‘in-office’ bias
• If you’re responsible for internal training: How do you create psychologically safe learning spaces where everyone has the opportunity to ask questions and offer input – no matter their cultural or personal preferences?

Contact us for a chat about how we can deliver Create Psychological Safety in Diverse Settings as a speech or a half-day workshop for your team or organization.

We can also design a longer training programme that focuses on psychological safety in diverse settings, where we, for example, combine a series of short inspirational workshops with individual executive coaching. Contact us to hear more about the options for longer tailored learning programmes.

Why should you choose C3 as a provider? Read about our approach to diversity and inclusion training here.

Do you want inspiration on how you can create psychological safety and strengthen the flow of information in your global organization in a practical way? Then read our article on ‘Low-Risk Tools’ here.