Emotional intelligence: How to create psychological safety for your IT team

A sense of psychological security is essential to a healthy, productive team. When teams lack psychological security, you can see several adverse effects including lack of innovation, inability to collaborate, and more.

A McKinsey survey on Psychological Safety and the Critical Role of Leaders suggests leaders can develop skills that foster a safe, high-performing work environment. Understanding and prioritizing these skills is critical for you as an IT leader.

3 Obstacles to Psychological Safety and the Leadership Skills to Overcome Them

Let’s take a closer look at common barriers to psychological safety in the workplace and how to address them.

Barrier: Doubt

Doubt is one of the most common obstacles to psychological safety. The uncertainty of today’s world can easily pave the way for doubt, and the moment doubt begins to consume the mind, impostor syndrome soon follows.

Leadership Skills: Ask reflective questions

One of the most important things a leader can do to combat doubt that reflects limited thinking is to ask reflective questions. Reflective questions can help you as a leader gain more perspective, clarity, and insight. Remember, you can’t ensure your team’s psychological safety unless you feel it yourself. Here are some questions to ask yourself first:

• What is most alive in you – what drives and motivates you?
• What in you resists new possibilities?
• What advice would you give today to your self five years ago?
• What advice would your self give to your present self five years from now?

And here are some questions to ask your team to promote psychological safety:

• What lives most in your team – what drives and motivates it?
• What are the emerging opportunities in your team?
• What is the team fighting against?
• What advice would your current team give to your team a year ago?
• What advice would your team today give to your team today?

[ Also read Why IT leaders should prioritize empathy. ]

Barrier: Inability or fear of putting the whole self to work

When leaders or team members cannot or do not want to fully bring themselves to work, they often feel that they are limiting their full potential or even pretending to be someone they are not. Faking costs enormous amounts of energy, suppresses creativity and reduces team success.

Leadership Qualities: Cultivating Compassion

The best leaders understand the complexities and imperfections of being human and are not afraid to showcase their true selves in the workplace. These leaders exude compassion and encourage their team members to embrace and express their unique gifts and talents.

Compassion cuts through mental constructs and perceptions. It begins with leaders examining and undoing traditional rules, roles, and narratives that limit their thinking, decision-making, and worldview. Freedom from outdated narratives allows for liberation, self-acceptance, and permission to bring your whole self into the workplace.

Barrier: Self-Righteousness

Leaders driven by ego needs struggle to let go of outdated competencies, values, and skills. Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s leading thought leaders in executive coaching, explains this perfectly in the title of his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. The obsessive need to be right becomes more important than discovering new horizons, untapped potential and opportunities. Self-righteousness creates a disconnect between the self and the team and undermines trust.

Leadership Qualities: Practice humility

Leaders who practice humility understand the value of lifelong learning and recognize that lessons come from many areas of work and life.

Leaders who practice humility understand the value of lifelong learning and recognize that lessons come from many areas of work and life.

Humility begins with examining the need to be right and the fear of being wrong. When leaders normalize failure, the team climate shifts from power and control to creativity and open communication. Humble leaders create an environment in which people are free to constructively express themselves, accept one another, respect disagreements, celebrate differences, collaborate, and innovate for organizational growth.

Leadership development through self-awareness

Exploring inner wisdom, cultivating compassion, and practicing humility all require self-awareness. While learning from books and thought leaders provides information, learning from direct experience and reflection provides insights for real change.

Psychological security is key to unlocking the optimal performance of a team. When teams feel secure, they are motivated and ready to take on new challenges. As psychological safety becomes a strategic driver, the workplace increasingly becomes a fertile ground for exceptional results.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of celebrating both individual work and teamwork. Make sure all your team members are seen, heard and celebrated. The most important thing to celebrate is learning, especially when things don’t work out – a learner-centred mindset invites deep discussion, uncovers potential blind spots and generates new thinking, insights and perspectives.

When leaders consider their teams’ journey as important as their outcomes, creating psychological security becomes second nature.

[ Communication is a two-way street. Download our Ebook for essential lessons to get you started. ]