Psychological Safety
Part 2: What leaders can do to cultivate it
Now that we have introduced Psychological Safety, we can begin to explore the idea further.
In this week’s 3 Points, we’ll explore psychological safety a little further and discuss how as leaders, we can cultivate more of it.
1. Elite sport is inherently unsafe.
There is no getting around this. At the elite levels (NOT YOUTH!) there are real consequences for underperformance. So while taking risks, particularly during the competition will never be completely safe, we can strive to manage this and make elite sporting environments safer.
The first step according to Dr. Sarkar is to manage the power dynamic between coach and athlete. Coaches hold power over athletes, and athletes know this. Whether it is status on the team, playing time, etc. Dr. Sarkar poses the question, “how can coaches, who are always going to be in a position of power, potentially manage that power imbalance when they’re interacting with their athletes and, in some cases, reduce the perception of that power so that athletes will feel freer in terms of expressing their views and opinions?” And ultimately take risks.
2. Model vulnerability and humility
If a coach or leader is unwilling to accept feedback or unwilling to admit mistakes, why would they expect their athletes to? And what lessons are we teaching athletes about being coachable by doing this?
“The key is to go beyond telling people it’s OK to express their opinions to leaders by actually showing a previous example of them being vulnerable and showing a degree of humility around their weaknesses and then what they did to act upon those in order to improve. That conveys a lot more to athletes that it’s OK to give feedback in a constructive way and that leaders are receptive to that and receptive to change as a consequence of that.” - Dr. David Fletcher
Here’s a NSFW (and funny) example of what this could look like in the heat of the moment:
3. Considerations for creating Psychological Safety in Elite Sport from the Leaders Performance Institute:
The value of conversational turn-taking
Purposefully creating space and systems to allow people to have a voice in the process and give feedback. Maybe it is post-game having players share what they noticed, or splitting into small groups to discuss what needs improvement, being intentional to provide real opportunities for feedback will help.
Remember that "safe" doesn't mean "comfortable"
Promote calculated risks
Encourage risk-taking with appropriate parameters and then use feedback to learn from them.
Take collective responsibility for mistakes
Don’t point fingers. Very rarely is a mistake solely on one person’s shoulders anyway. Taking collective responsibility is about analyzing the mistake, and learning what the group can do better the next time.
Let people be themselves
Not being able to be yourself inhibits psychological safety. To paraphrase Dr. Kate Hall, Head of Mental Health and Wellbeing at the AFL, “absolutely, being on a team requires players to conform at times and there are certain ways things need to be done, AND there’s also just as many aspects of being on a team where athletes can bring who they are to the environment.”