Once I had an opportunity to partake in a brief discussion about risk-taking for speaking your mind and comfort among employees. Because the entire meeting was structured to assign each topic (psychological safety was one of them) a 10-minute timeframe, each participant had around a minute to express their viewpoint. This important topic was not given enough room for in-depth conversation, and no follow-up was planned, leaving, at least for some of us, a feeling of unfulfillment.
My guts were saying to me that this concept never crossed the mind of most participants about its essential role in our daily work.
To my surprise, many, if not the majority of participants, have seen psychological safety as a harmful practice that allows for criticism that can damage the work environment. The suggestion was made (or at least, that’s how I perceived it) that its implementation should be limited.
The argument of an employee undermining the workplace is usually the consequence of a lack of psychological safety.
Psychological safety is one of the most vital elements of a well-functioning working environment. Its purpose is to prevent alienation that leads to a lack of satisfaction among employees and, as a result, may undermine the workplace. New employees are like a tabula rasa — they don’t have an opinion about work, and it is essential to shape them with good practices and principles. Not giving them the freedom to express their views without feeling the repercussion creates personal discomfort that, once accumulated, can strike out in the form of a negative attitude that can be viewed (rightly so) as undermining the working environment. It is often (but not always) silly to blame the employee for that. Unhappiness is a natural reaction to accumulated stress, and it is clear that such an outcome results from a lack of skillful leadership.
