Psychological safety in today’s workplaces has been garnering a lot of attention as leaders and organizations look for ways to boost productivity and retention in their workplace. But is our understanding of this concept too narrow? Are we missing out on real opportunities to not just fuel engagement and collaboration, but innovation and untapped growth opportunities? That’s some of the areas I’ll be exploring with my guest Dr. Timothy Clark in this episode of Leadership Biz Cafe.
Tim is the founder and CEO of LeaderFactor, a consulting firm that specializes in organizational change, strategic agility, psychological safety, and emotional intelligence. In addition to attaining his PhD in social science from Oxford University, Tim is a two-time CEO and he has written five books, including his latest, “The Four Stages Of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation”, which is what Tim and I discuss in this episode.
Over the course of our conversation, Tim and I discuss:
- What psychological safety really is and the far-reaching implications it has on an organization’s capacity to grow, innovate, and remain competitive in today’s global environment.
- What social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter reveal about the ongoing gaps and failures found in organizations and communities in terms of creating psychologically safe environments that maximize talent access and development.
- How psychological safety improves employee learning and development by reducing fear which pushes employees into “a defensive mode of performance”.
- How leaders approach delegation – and with it, the level of accountability they engender – are tied to a stage of psychological safety that is not a right, but something that needs to be earned.
- How leaders can ensure they’re creating that psychologically safe workplace where employees can be genuine change agents who fuel organizational innovation, instead of simply towing the status quo.
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Noteworthy Links:
- Buy Timothy Clark’s Book “The Four Stages of Psychological Safety” on Amazon (or Amazon.ca for Canadian listeners).
- Learn more about Timothy’s work – Leaderfactor.com
- Creating A Workplace Environment Where Employees Matter
- Building Emotional Competencies In Our Leadership
- Leaders, It’s Time To Make Work Meaningful Again
Tnx for the insight it was very helpful
Thanks Thomas; I’m glad to hear you enjoyed my conversation with Tim about psychological safety.
Hello Tanveer,
Great discussions on psychological safety and the 4 stages with Tim Clark, author of “The Four Stages of Psychological Safety”. While it is evident that challenger (fourth) stage is where innovation occurs, unfortunately, inclusion (first stage) is still a struggle for some. Very thoughtful questions and insightful responses by Tim.
Regards,
Madhavi
Thanks Madhavi. I’m glad you enjoyed our conversation. I completely agree with you that most organizations struggle with the first stage and unfortunately as I pointed out in my conversation with Tim, most conversations around psychological safety and diversity tend to be limited to notions of inclusion; of simply allowing people of different nationalities, race, ethnicities, etc feel welcome and accepted. And yet, this as I mentioned during this episode is really just the baseline and what we should really be aiming for is creating an environment where everyone feels safe to challenge the status quo because we collectively recognize this as being an attempt to help us make things better. Sadly, as we can see today, we’re no where near that, but I do believe it’s within our reach if we are willing to be genuine in our efforts to achieve it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on our conversation, Madhavi. Again, I’m glad you enjoyed it!