How to increase psychological safety in a company or team

One of our main themes over the last year is psychological safety and we also measure it. Either at ATAIRU LEADERSHIP TV or in individual companies in the Czech Republic that realize its importance for survival and growth. The results of our measurements have yielded interesting findings that we would like to share with you.

What is psychological safety and why companies and teams strive for it

Psychological safety is the most important prerequisite for higher performance of companies and teams because it brings:

• higher people engagement, which leads to lower turnover

• greater courage to take risks and experiment, leading to greater innovation

• a greater willingness to learn from mistakes, leading to higher quality

It is characterised by common features, which we have divided into 7 areas:

The biggest problem of companies is psychological (in)safety among teams

From measured data across companies in the Czech Republic, we found that the problem with psychological safety does not arise within teams, but between them. In fact, psychological safety within teams is higher than within the company as a whole. This can be a barrier to creating high-performing firms, as lack of collaboration between teams slows their growth.

The low level of psychological safety in a company is often caused by problems, sometimes even fights, that take place between individual teams. It is also due to the fact that no one is directly responsible for fine-tuning cooperation between teams. But how do you know where teams stand with each other? We have simple advice for that: measure it. The result might look something like this:

3 steps to increase psychological safety

This is the ATAIRU 3-step plan, which we use to identify and then help improve psychological safety in companies and teams:

1. Step 1: We start with a measurement to determine your level of psychological safety:

   1. Within teams,

   2. within the company,
   3. teams towards each other,
   4. your company compared to the market (by collecting data, we have benchmarks against which we can compare and put your results in context).
2. Step: identifying areas of weakness:
   1. From the measured data, we select the areas with the lowest scores and focus on those.
3. Step: plan how to strengthen psychological safety:
   1. We will create a plan with specific steps and tailored content,
   2. and we will work with you to increase your level of psychological safety.

We'll be happy to help you measure psychological safety and its level in your company or team, and create a plan to move you toward higher performance.

Take the first step, fill out the form in the link, and let's work together to strengthen psychological safety in your company or team.