Building a Resilient and Creative Workforce with Psychological Safety
Have you ever kept your concerns about a work project to yourself because you were worried about being criticized or punished? Does your organization view mistakes as something to minimize or hide, or are mistakes seen as an opportunity for your team to learn?
Last month, Alicia D. Justice, DrPH, MPH, senior director of programmatic health equity initiatives and strategy for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), explored these issues and other all-too-common work dilemmas during an interactive discussion on psychological safety in the workplace. The term refers to creating an environment where people feel empowered to speak up and share opinions, questions and mistakes without fear of negative consequences.
“For some people, psychological safety can sound incredibly fluffy, but in reality, it's really not,” Dr. Justice said. “It relates to a culture of respectful disagreement and raising important issues.”
Dr. Justice was the featured speaker at the Strategies to Repair Equity and Transform Community Health (STRETCH) initiative’s third national convening, Grounding Leadership and Engagement in Psychological Safety to Promote a Culture of Equity. With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the virtual event was hosted by STRETCH initiative partners ASTHO, the Michigan Public Health Institute (MPHI) and the CDC Foundation.
Dr. Justice described four stages of psychological safety based on author Timothy R. Clark’s book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation: 1) inclusion safety—people feel comfortable and appreciated on their team; 2) learner safety—team members are encouraged to experiment, admit mistakes and ask for help; 3) contributor safety—people feel safe contributing their ideas without fear of ridicule; and, 4) challenger safety—a stage in which team members can challenge and suggest changes to the status quo.
“By the time people reach the challenger safety stage, all of the characteristics from the other stages are brought here so that members feel even more comfortable with asking those questions, pushing back and challenging norms,” Dr. Justice said.
Throughout the event, Dr. Justice focused the discussion on how psychological safety can strengthen public health work and make it more equitable and effective. She posed hypothetical scenarios and challenges and invited participants to offer their ideas about how public health leaders could establish psychological safety to support innovation among staff, partners and communities while finding new ways to overcome these issues.
Dr. Justice also discussed trauma-informed approaches to leadership that prioritize compassion and an understanding that all people, including leaders themselves, struggle with current and past traumatic experiences. These stressors can lead to absenteeism, burnout and exhaustion—negatively affecting workers across all professions, including public health.
“I don't know if any of you all relate to this, whatever part you played in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we saw this a lot,” Dr. Justice said. “It can even deteriorate behavioral and physical health; all of this has a direct impact on the things that we want in terms of the organizational outcomes.”
When leaders create a professional environment of trust and support, Dr. Justice explained, people can be more creative and productive. She also shared her own research about the types of leaders that are likely to exercise trauma-informed approaches, examined the real-world benefits of psychological safety and encouraged public health professionals to apply these principles in the communities they serve.
“When we're engaging in the community and working with our community partners, that is an environment where we should also be focused on practicing compassion and securing a psychologically safe space,” Dr. Justice said. “Maybe it's not us leading and dictating when the meeting's going to start, what the agenda is going to be … let them drive and let them guide us.”
To learn more about psychological safety, we invite you to watch the full STRETCH national convening: Grounding Leadership and Engagement in Psychological Safety to Promote a Culture of Equity.
For more about the STRETCH initiative, visit our page. If you would like information on how to sign up for the next STRETCH national convening, sign up for our STRETCH newsletter.
Support for STRETCH was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
