Are You Destroying Motivation and Creativity at the Workplace?

Here is a quick checklist to see if you are consciously or unconsciously fostering psychological safety at the workplace. If you find yourself ticking the boxes, you may need time to reflect on how your behaviour affects the lives of your coworkers and their performance.

1. Listening and problem-solving at once

If you listen to someone, wait for the other person to finish their story. Asking further questions is good, it means you are curious but never stop anyone in the middle of a sentence to offer a solution to their problem. Sometimes there is no problem to solve, just a story to tell. Try not to think about how you would respond while the other is still talking. Give yourself and others time to process new information and come up with a solution if needed.

2. Never shared a failure

Failure seems like useless data, you think you will waste your time by telling bad stories, and you will make yourself look stupid. Do you think that only your successful stories will motivate people if they feeling down? Please, try to think again. People love to hear that others screw up sometimes. It is such a human thing to do. Try to create a ‘My bad’ event where you bond on your failures. It will be fun, I promise. You will cultivate an honest conversation within your team.

3. Remind people about their mistakes

Some people say that “Success is the absence of mistakes.” Those people are wrong, in fact, it’s on the contrary. Failure is a necessary by-product of innovation. How are you reacting when someone in your team is making a mistake? You might respond with a joke so that people are not feeling embarrassed. A joke is not a great reaction, instead of making fun of anyone, try to be as open-minded as possible and start a conversation. Ask questions like “What does this experience tell us?”, “What can we learn from it?”, “What will we do differently next time?”. Make sure your language nurtures the feeling of belonging. You are a team, and you all make mistakes and grow together.
You can use yesterday’s mistake as tomorrow’s good example.

4. Reacting too fast

The flight-fight-freeze response serves us greatly in dangerous situations, but we have to learn how to manage this response when we are at the workplace, and there is no psychical danger around. Learn to read your own body language. Notice what is happening with your body when you get defensive. Catch the early signs and learn how not to damage others just because you experience a strong feeling. Try to pause your reaction. Sit down and think without going into a spiral. Try to label your feelings and take back control. If these tips aren’t working, try to experiment with what would help you calm down.

5. Select a few people to rely on innovation

There are people who like to be heard. Some people might assume that there is a correlation between being a talker and having the greatest ideas, but in reality, it isn’t. Try to monitor speaking time and interruptions. Everyone has ideas, but not everyone is comfortable sharing ideas in front of a crowd. Try to check in with your team members after every meeting. You will get more feedback.

6. Is your mantra like “I’m the only one competent in here.”

Do you have to reassure yourself with a mantra oftentimes? Do you feel like people are asking stupid questions all the time? Basically, are any questions from your colleagues bothering you? You probably spent a lot of time writing down all the rules you can think of and uploaded in a place that is easy to find. And yet, no one knows where to look for? Was your hard work and effort useless? Probably not, try to find out what causes these thoughts.

This checklist includes a few steps on how to create a psychologically safe workplace. If you are curious and want to know more, check out the book review on The Psychological Safety Playbook by Karolin Helbig and Minette Norman here.

Thank you for reading me!

Feel free to add more to this list in the comment section.