Psychological safety refers to a climate where team members feel safe to express their thoughts, ideas, concerns, and take risks without fear of retribution or humiliation. Teams with high psychological safety tend to perform better.
When team members feel safe to voice their opinions and ideas, they are more likely to collaborate effectively, share valuable insights, and contribute their best efforts.
Increasing psychological safety within a team
Here are six (6) key questions for a leader and team members to consider and discuss:
Question #1
What’s the thing you see me doing that is helping me best contribute to the team?
Question #2
What’s the thing I do that is detracting from our success?
Question #3
What’s one thing I need to know about you that will improve our relationship?
Question #4
What’s one thing you need from me that will enable you to be successful?
Question #5
What’s one gift, skill or talent you have that I have overlooked under-valued or under-utilized?
Question #6
What motivates you and how can we bring more of that to your work?
To remind, speakers of the recent SAFETY4SEA Athens forum highlighted the importance of embracing psychological safety within the maritime sector, highlighting the importance of training and continuous development of soft skills. In a safety-critical industry like maritime, building psychological safety onboard is a vital step to overall safety performance.
