Nice Work: How's your psychological safety right now?

How safe do you feel speaking up at work? If you’re like many of the people who answered my survey last month, the answer might be...not very. 

If these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Our organizations have a lot of work to do on psychological safety (in fact, it’s one of the core topics I’m working on for 2021).

On psychologically safe teams, people feel like they can share ideas, take risks, and speak up about issues—without being punished or perceived negatively. But on psychologically unsafe teams, fear takes center stage. Second-guessing and silence are the norms. And the result? Unsaid ideas, unresolved problems, and unhappy people.

If you’re in a leadership role, increasing psychological safety is one of the most impactful things you can do. It’ll improve morale, retain diverse talent, and generate creativity. It can even ward against burnout—because when people feel like their needs are met at work, they have more energy and feel less exhausted. And while a lot goes into creating psychological safety, know that small steps matter.

The first small step I encourage you to focus on: your own vulnerability. When you’re willing to acknowledge that you’re struggling, or that you’ve screwed up, it’s humanizing. It shows that you’re willing to remove your armor—and helps others feel like they can do the same. This is hard: we live in a culture that's taught us that leaders are “strong”—and that strength means bucking it up, staying stoic. Work to unlearn that. 

But...what if you’re not in leadership, and you feel unsafe speaking up? First off, know that it’s not all in your head. You probably have good reason to feel that way, and you absolutely deserve better.

There’s also some good news: psychological safety isn’t all or nothing. By identifying places where you can test the waters and take small risks, you can actually build your sense of safety over time—even if you don’t feel safe in every scenario. The key is looking more closely at your fears, and interrogating them: What specifically am I afraid will happen? What evidence do I have of that risk? How likely is that outcome, really?

Sometimes, we start imagining worst-case scenarios without realizing it, and it shuts us down entirely. But by evaluating risks more closely, we can start to see where our fears are most valid, and where we’ve magnified them in our heads. From there, it helps to map out what some more realistic outcomes might be—like, instead of “I’ll definitely get fired and never work again,” maybe you realize speaking up could result in an uncomfortable conversation. Now it’s a lot easier to decide whether it’s worth it or not—and prepare yourself in advance for the discomfort.

You might also want to ask yourself, which specific people, topics, or situations feel safer than others? How can I practice speaking up in those moments? Identifying even one person or situation where you can be honest and authentic can make a huge difference in your stress levels and sense of belonging—and, by taking small risks over time, you might find that you start to feel less scared, and more powerful.

It’s not perfect: most workplaces have a long way to go to become truly humane and healthy, and none of us can fix them alone. But I know that fear left unchecked tends to grow—taking up more and more space, while we take up less and less. When we start to look at those fears, we make them smaller—and create a little more breathing room for ourselves and our peers.

And with that, know that I'm wishing you a healthy, hopeful, and restful holiday season. Just a few more days till the sun starts setting later again here in the Northern Hemisphere!

💜 Sara 

PS: If you like this theme, here are a few related reads I've been sitting with this week. Enjoy!

• “Time is not the root of our fatigue.” Working fewer hours alone won’t fix burnout. Removing energy-drains from our days and connecting our work to our values will.

• “Hope is an action-filled process.” Did you know you can “consciously and systematically” increase your hope? Yep.

• “Leaders at all levels need to put mental health ‘on the table.’” This article has some good advice for talking about it—without crossing boundaries. (Hint: start by being vulnerable yourself.)

📚 Read with me

Realtalk: I avoid most books about leadership and work culture. Even though I spend all my time focused on…leadership and work culture. Way too many of them feel shallow, boring, or—worst of all—narrowly focused on outdated (white, cis, male) ideas about leadership. So I'm thankful these two books popped into my feed recently. Grab a copy and read with me this month!  

The Ethical Sellout
How do you maintain integrity in a messy world? I ask myself this question all the time, and I bet you do, too. I can’t wait to hear what authors Lily Zheng and Inge Hansen have to say.  

Work Like a Boss
“You are the secret to making work better” says Nancy Lyons, whom I met at a conference a thousand years ago. She was smart and funny then, so I can’t wait to read her “kick-in-the-pants guide to finding (and using) your power at work.” 

🎤 New Collective Strength Event

Mindful Marketing with Sarah DeGeorge

December 16 @ 5:30pm ET 

Join us for our final Collective Strength event of the year—an evening with digital marketing specialist Sarah DeGeorge, who's here to tell us how to use mindfulness to stop feeling like we're faking it when marketing our businesses, our freelance services, or ourselves.

Free with RSVP!