How Psychological Safety Boosts Creative Performance

While everyone knows that company culture has a major impact on performance, how companies can use culture to boost creativity and innovation is less clear. For example, Silicon Valley is famous for its work-life balance policies, its lavish offices, and other “work hard, play hard” perks, so we assume these things must be tied to their status as innovators.

But is this actually the case? Probably not, as even many of these companies will admit.

Think about it – companies like IBM, Bell Labs, and other giants built the foundations of our digital infrastructure many years ago, during more repressive times. Clearly, having to wear a suit and tie is not a dealbreaker when it comes to inventing transistors or developing signal theory.

Also, most of the “true innovation” that happened at Apple, Facebook, and Google was years in the past. Apple released the iPod and iPhone in the 2000s and has been iterating on the same ideas since. Google’s technology is also decades old, and is also now a product of iteration. Many tech giants also “innovate” by acquiring small startups that have developed something truly new.

So what’s the secret? How can companies unlock “zero-to-one” innovation through their culture?

The key to true innovation lies in a concept known as “psychological safety”. This is a bit of a technical term found in the coaching world, the HR world, and also in fields like therapy. 

Psychological safety is about feeling safe in a relationship. Although there are certainly boundaries in professional situations, people should feel generally free to express themselves, speak their minds on task-relevant issues, and propose new ideas or solutions.

The number-one creativity killer is judgement. Even a negative comment, a joke at someone’s expense, or disapproving body language can not only shut down a potentially good idea, but discourage sharing of future ideas. 

People won’t want to stick their necks out by proposing new ideas if they are punished for it. It’s a total dealbreaker for brainstorming, innovation, and continuous improvement.

So how can you make sure this doesn’t happen in your company, or in teams that you manage? Here are three principles to keep in mind.

Although creativity does happen with individuals, creativity in business is a group activity. You have coworkers that need to be bought in, executives that need to sign off on budget, and even customer stakeholders that, more than ever, want to be involved in brands.

Think of marketing, for example. Unless you are taking every marketing campaign from ideation to execution personally, you’ll need to work with creatives like writers, videographers, and artists. They might have ideas about how to improve existing ideas, and they’ll need to feel secure enough in the economic relationship to push back for the sake of the product.

In historical business contexts, like Bell Labs, engineers were secure enough in the economic relationship to have these kinds of conversations. But, in a business culture moving to temporary contracts, outsourced talent, and freelance arrangements, these conversations may not be as spontaneous or forthcoming.

Put simply, ideas need to be able to flow. Since business involves teamwork, a culture that responds to “out of the box thinking” with economic or social punishment will not be innovative. One simple way to do this is with a conversational trick – trying to replace “but” with “yes, and” unlocks new kinds of conversations while creating psychological safety.

Researchers who study creativity have found that creative people iterate on ideas until they get to something that is really good. Whether you’re in fashion, theatre, music, or writing, getting to a golden idea will be a process of trial-and-error.

This means that not only do people need to feel safe proposing ideas, they also need to feel safe in their employment and in their reputation if an idea doesn’t work. As long as someone isn’t being wasteful or negligent, there should be no problem with a marketing campaign missing the mark, a new design flopping in focus groups, or other “costly mistakes”.

In most cases, this kind of safety comes from leaders. Even a company that tries to create psychological safety can be sabotaged by a manager who stifles their team.

Remember – learning from your mistakes is part of your ROI.

Very often, we can get into arguments or debates when discussing ideas, which can quickly lead to people feeling psychologically unsafe. But, when we allow ourselves to relax and lead with questions, we can identify new territory, new opportunities, and new things to discover.

Because we are naturally anxious around the unknown, getting into question-asking is a habit that takes time for all employees to practice. But, if you are a leader in a creative firm or team, you can model this and encourage this in 1:1 feedback sessions to make it part of your culture. Having employees that inquire before debating is one of the easiest ways to improve psychological safety in your workplace.

Boxed Community offers you a safe haven in the challenging world of creative leadership. We’re not just another coaching service; we’re your ally in navigating isolation, doubt, and uncertainty in your creative career.

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