Unlock innovation with psychological safety - Why it's time to face up to the challenges of a polarised world
For organisations, psychological safety is more than just a checkbox exercise. Establishing and maintaining an environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, questions, concerns, and mistakes takes effort. According to our research, psychological safety is a crucial pillar in enabling an organisation to be innovative. The organisations most likely to engage in innovative discourse are those that provide the psychological safety necessary to conduct edgier conversations.
We’ve conducted interviews with 20 senior leaders in a range of global organisations, exploring deeply how they are creating psychological safety at a time when individuals hold strong and differentiated views, and how these affect workplace performance.
We discovered a correlation between organisational levels of psychological safety and how they can embrace the “edgier” conversations and achieve higher levels of innovation.
Our research identified three opportunities for leaders to deepen psychological safety and led us to create our HEAR model to provide a practical tool to unlock innovation potential within organisations and teams.