In our CPCT coaching groups we bring 6 people together from different organizations. They mostly don’t know each other, may have very different roles, work in very different industries and even parts of the country. Our aim is to build psychological safety quickly, so that the group can start to work together effectively.
Psychological safety is a measure of whether someone feels safe to take an interpersonal risk. If I feel psychologically safe within a group, I will speak up, share my view, share tentative ideas, and feel that I can disagree or present alternatives. Research has shown that it impacts a LOT of business outcomes, including, safety, engagement, wellbeing, innovation and productivity. Research has established that it matters, but there is still some way to go to establish how best to create it.
So what do we do? We encourage the group to share information about themselves early (including photos!), so that when we first meet, people already have a bit of an idea of who people are. We also consistently apply Thinking Environment principles in our facilitation (based on Nancy Kline’s brilliant work). These principles include designing the structure of sessions to share time equally and emphasising the importance of listening. Listening is one behaviour that has been shown to directly lead to increased psychological safety. Simple to say, but in practice, hard to do, and rare to experience!
You can find out more about Psychological Safety and the Thinking Environment
