Psychological flexibility has the power to transform organisational cultures, enable organisational change, and enhance managerial and leadership skillsets.
We believe it is the missing piece in work to build psychological safety in organisations.
At Becoming International, psychological flexibility is the chassis that underpins our vertical leadership development work. Over the coming months, we will publish blogs and hold events to explore the power of Psychological Flexibility and some of the many ways that it can radically shift organisational life. Click here to stay connected, be notified of new blogs and invited to upcoming events.
Psychological Safety
“Psychological safety is a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking”
Amy Edmondson argued that Psychological Safety “helps to explain why employees share information and knowledge, speak up with suggestions for organizational improvements, and take initiative to develop new products and services”.
Psychological safety has been linked to a range of positive organisational outcomes including: employee voice, information sharing, learning behaviour, team performance, proactivity, retention, engagement and more. However, the direction of effect is unclear, and some of these factors may be antecedents rather than outcomes.
Questions about Psychological Safety
Interestingly, there are still some areas of research into Psychological Safety that are unclear:
How to create it. Organisations use a lot of different interventions – simulations, video, presentations, workshops, case studies. But studies of efficacy or effectiveness give mixed, inconsistent results
How it shifts over time. We know that psychological safety is dynamic but we don’t know how it shifts as organisations grow and change.
How, or even if, team psychological safety impacts organisational outcomes. There is little evidence showing the causal link between work within teams and wider organisational impact.
How psychological safety varies by demographic, especially intersectionally. We know that psychological safety is perceived differently by different groups, but not how, and what that may mean for those trying to create it.
Our concerns about Psychological Safety
In addition to the gaps in knowledge listed above, at Becoming we have three concerns about work in organisations with psychological safety.
- It involves working with people’s feelings. The underpinning of our workv, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), works from the premise that we cannot control feelings. We use metaphors such as feelings being like weather in the sky, or currents in the sea. Feelings are things that we cannot control, either for ourselves or for others. So how do we expect managers to make their team “feel” safe?
- It involves working with beliefs. In a world where there are still some people who believe the Earth is flat, it is evident that beliefs can be hard to prove and disprove. If, as mentioned above, psychological flexibility can mean different things to different people, how can a manager prove that it exists?
- It creates an endless interdependency. Like a vicious cycle, the idea that “I” can make it safe for “you” gives permission for you to wait for me to do that. Many of our clients struggle with a culture of dependency – people saying “if only they would…” or “they just need to…”. Is there a risk that work on psychological safety makes this worse?
We know that having psychological safety is important. And in our work on leadership programmes and in coaching, we are constantly striving to build spaces where individuals are included and valued.
But we think that organisations are missing a piece.
Psychological Flexibility
Psychological flexibility is the ability to take actions that are meaningful to you, while staying in the present moment and open to what you’re feeling and experiencing.
Psychological flexibility is an ongoing capacity or process that an individual can continually loop around. At its most simple, it is about learning to:
- Notice – what are my different internal experiences? How are they keeping me stuck or off track?
- Choose – what are the broadest range of choices I could have? Which one leads toward who and how I want to be?
- Act – what habits can I build or actions can I take that align to my values?
We like to use the metaphor of a disco:
All the work that organisations do to build psychological safety is equipping the team to build the disco – lay the floor, put up the lights, book the DJ. It needs to be done.
But Psychological Flexibility is what helps each person to get up and dance. Each person can:
Notice: How do I feel about dancing? What thoughts am I having about this music, this dance floor, this DJ? Am I focusing on this dance floor or thinking about the one where I fell over? Do I have a story about myself not being someone who ‘can’ dance?
Choose: What options do I have – dance, sit and watch, go to the bathroom, go chat to people? How do I want to be here – supportive of the bride, encouraging my child to dance? Does this music mean so much to me that I want to dance?
Act: What will I do – dance or not, how long for, who with?
Psychological Flexibility is the missing piece that enables individuals to act
Psychological Safety is important work. But it is just setting up the dance floor.
Psychological Flexibility is what enables individuals to dance. And the most powerful bit is that they are equipped to dance regardless – even if there’s no music playing.
Psychological Safety in organisations is necessary. But work in organisations can only go so far. It is trying to help managers create a feeling of, and a belief in, something that is dynamic and interpreted differently by each individual.
Psychological Flexibility is the missing piece. It equips each person to make use of the psychological safety that has been created. And, perhaps more importantly, it equips each person to do what matters, even if psychological safety isn’t present.
Psychological flexibility is the chassis upon which Becoming International’s vertical leadership development work is built. Over the coming months, we will publish blogs and hold events to explore the power of Psychological Flexibility and some of the many ways that it can radically shift organisational life. Click here to stay connected, be notified of new blogs and invited to upcoming events.
