In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied favorable condition in group dynamics and team learning.
Definition of a concept
Psychological safety has been an important area of discussion in psychology, healthcare and behavior management. The results of a number of empirical studies conducted in different regions and countries show that it plays an important role in work efficiency. It consistently plays an important role, contributing to the free expression of ideas and productive activities in a joint venture. The psychological security of the environment also allows teams and organizations to learn and work, and in recent years it has become a more significant organizational phenomenon due to the increased need for training and innovation. It is simply impossible to ignore this phenomenon and its effectiveness.
Group level
Psychological safety is a group-level phenomenon. At the group level, it exists as a model of team effectiveness and, in a sense, uses some form of I / O model. Psychological safety leads to team performance through team training.
Conditions and Results
An important condition for this phenomenon is trust, which plays a large role in the exchange of knowledge between team members. A series of studies show that psychological safety creates intermediation between colleagues, setting the organizational context, team characteristics and leadership in the team, as well as the results (similar to the “output variables” in the IPO model) of innovation, productivity, training and improvement in the team or in the team. Although she plays a significant role as an intermediary in explaining the results of the team, she is also a kind of moderator.
Practical value
When team members are motivated at work and want to share the idea of improving productivity, they often don’t speak because they fear that they will be severely judged. When the company has established psychological safety, team members think less about the potential negative consequences of expressing a new idea. As a result, they talk more when they feel safe and motivated to improve their team or company. Thus, both the team and the management benefit.
Problems of psychological safety and methods for solving them
There are a number of problems in providing this undoubtedly important condition. Here are three main ones:
- Unnecessarily conflicting or psychologically incompatible personnel.
- Excessive conservatism or tactlessness of the authorities.
- Bad management.
In the first case, we are dealing with whole staff or some employees who are in conflict with everyone else and, thus, lowering overall socio-psychological security. This problem is solved by honest and direct conversation with conflicting staff representatives, and if the conversation does not help, such people should leave the company, because they cause direct harm to it.
The second paragraph describes the inertia of managers who underestimate the need for psychological security of the environment in which people work, and therefore do not want to take measures to ensure it.
And in the latter case, we are dealing with poor managers who do not know how to organize a team properly, as a result of which conflicts and mutual misunderstanding arise in it.
Effects
Psychological security benefits organizations and teams in many ways. Below are the most widely empirically confirmed consequences of its proper provision:
- Increases the likelihood of a successful attempt at innovation in the process.
- Increases the number of members, learning from mistakes.
- Increases employee engagement.
- Improves team innovation.
The psychological safety of children
Apart from marketing, this phenomenon can be regarded as something without which modern pedagogy cannot exist. Indeed, in children's groups, our children are often subjected to bullying and pressure, both from peers and from elders (educators, teachers, etc.). The task of the latter is to ensure psychological safety so that our children feel comfortable and safe in all conditions.
Group dynamics
Group dynamics is a system of behavior and psychological processes occurring within a social group (intra-group) or between social groups (inter-group). Ask, where does the topic of the article? The fact is that psychological safety is studied precisely in the framework of group dynamics, and these phenomena are inextricably linked with each other.
Studying the dynamics of groups can be useful for understanding behavior and making decisions, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective methods of therapy and increasing the popularity of new ideas and technologies. Group dynamics are at the heart of understanding racism, sexism and other forms of social prejudice and discrimination, as well as at the basis of psychological safety.
The essence of group dynamics
The history of group dynamics (or group processes) has a consistent basic premise: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." A social group is an entity that has qualities that cannot be understood simply by studying the people in the group. In the same way, psychological security cannot be achieved by relying solely on the qualities of an individual.
As a field of study, group dynamics has roots both in psychology and in sociology. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who went down in the history of science as the founder of experimental psychology, showed a special interest in the psychology of communities, which, in his opinion, possessed phenomena (human language, customs and religion) that could not be described through study individuals. On the sociological side, Emil Durkheim (1858-1917), who was influenced by Wundt, also recognized collective phenomena, such as public (collective) consciousness. Other key theorists, including Gustav Lebon (1841-1931), believed that crowds had a "racial unconscious" with primitive, aggressive and antisocial instincts, and William McDougall (psychologist) believed in a "group mind" as a special form of existence generated by the interaction of individuals.
All these concepts are directly related to psychological safety, which can be ensured either by transforming the society (collective) or by competent management of it.