A great deal of job and skills learning takes place in real-time through practical application and, typically, under the supervision of a manager or leader, but there’s a lot of risk associated with this kind of learning. A fear of negative consequences, for example, can create a learning environment that limits open communication among employees. It can also reduce the confidence required to experiment and innovate. In some cases, it can promote competition over collaboration between team members.
This provides a challenge for learning and development (L&D) professionals — how can you create a safe environment that encourages employees not only to learn but to fail as part of that learning process? In the words of Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmonson, how do you move the needle to achieve “psychological safety” in the workplace?
According to McKinsey research, “psychological safety is not a given and it is not the norm in most teams.” However, research shows the significant benefits of psychological safety, “The impact of psychological safety extends far beyond the soft stuff: it substantially contributes to team effectiveness, learning, employee retention, and — most critically — better decisions and better performance.”
For more organizations to achieve psychological safety and to reap the benefits, there needs to be a significant cultural shift in the way that employees can learn and train. This shift takes time, and it is not accomplished in the blink of an eye. As stated by McKinsey research, psychological safety is not the norm in most teams, and they need to look at alternative training solutions to fulfill training needs in the organization. The impactful alternative involves finding new ways of allowing employees to learn on their own time while still getting constructive feedback. Employees need to be empowered to learn from their mistakes to progress without fear of “looking bad” in front of a person who evaluates their performance or feeling embarrassed in front of their peers. People need to be able to recognize their value and trust their own potential in real-life situations.
A great example of a learning scenario that can be problematic in a team that does not have a supportive culture of psychological safety, is role-play learning. Even the best-designed role-play will be counter-productive if people are encumbered due to their fears of being exposed, fears of failing and feeling so out of their comfort zone that they get little value from the session. Many people hyper-focus on just getting their turn “over with.”
A major advantage for modern day employers and L&D professionals is that there are game-changing tech solutions that help to make employees train and fail in a safe environment. Simulations and game-based training allow you to fail in a virtual world without suffering any consequences in the real world. They are designed to help you move forward and to have fun in the process. You get something wrong, you lose a life, and you try again. You get to do this repeatedly until you improve enough to succeed. You upskill enough to reach the boss level. You might fail at the first, second, or maybe even the third attempt to beat the boss but eventually, you succeed. Game mechanics drive this repetition and desire to improve in order to succeed and this can be achieved at scale. This is highly advantageous in comparison to in-person training which involves costly travel, limited availability, and limited resources. However, technology can never be a magic bullet solution. If an organization fails to achieve psychological safety in the workplace, training solutions that offer a safe environment for training can only take you so far.
One way to address this is to ensure that psychological safety is a top-tier priority for managers and leaders in their organizational development strategy. To address the challenge of enabling employees to learn and fail in day-to-day activities, without fear of risks to their personal brand, organizations need to provide scalable leadership training that fosters this culture at every level, including the top level. This requires thoughtful peer and manager training to help employees feel safe to be vulnerable and to communicate openly.
Leadership development programs play a critical role in fostering psychological safety by equipping leaders with the skills to create open dialogue and to help everybody to sponsor the success of every individual. Leaders need to be able to be honest about their own vulnerabilities too and to demonstrate situational humility. That is a culture shift that can be difficult to achieve, but highly impactful once it happens. And it requires training and acknowledging vulnerabilities to get there.
Training solutions that encourage open conversations with managers and peers about strategies to make improvements that have been identified as beneficial goals are key. By promoting psychological safety at the individual level, over time, we can help to foster a culture of psychological safety more widely in organizations.
Conclusion
In summary, enabling employees to learn and fail without risking their personal brand requires a concerted effort to create a psychologically safe environment in the workplace. This involves leadership development programs, alternative training methods, and a cultural shift towards embracing failure as a part of the learning process. By prioritizing psychological safety, organizations can unleash their employees’ potential and foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
