Short and Actionable Tips for People’s Managers On How to Improve/Create Psychological Safety
In my opinion, psychological safety especially for the LGBTQ+ in an organization can be created, improved, and protected in the following ways:
Create strategies that allow you to show equality among the LGBTQ+ and other members in a productive manner. This can include factors that impact psychological safety, the services each individual has access to embracing change in the organization, individual responsibility, and conflict resolution tactics.
Prioritize psychological safety and develop clear regulations on what to say or do and what not to. Model the traits you expect in the team and lead by example.
Promote trust, respect, honesty, and confidentiality.
Increase self-awareness in the team; As a manager, you should emphasize the need of how people should work, address each other and communicate. Building self-awareness can help avoid conflicts of personalities, preferences, and other individual issues. Having a behavior assessment to monitor how people treat, handle work, and respect each other can improve psychological safety in your LGBTQ+ staff as they feel safe and comfortable.
Solve any issues openly pertaining to sexuality. Make wise judgments, be open-minded, compassionate, empathetic, and open to feedback; all team members have confidence in expressing any issue.
Benefits of Psychological Safety
Psychological safety makes all team members feel safe, comfortable, and trust each other. This makes it easy for people to collaborate effectively, empower each other, engage in activities together, and create good working and organizational culture.
LGMTQ+ feel loved, appreciated, needed, and important, which can positively impact their relations, work productivity, creativity, well-being, and promote unity in the company.
Risks of Not Having Psychological Safety at Work
It can lead to low productivity, poor team performance or relations, fear of risk-taking traits, and inhibit creativity and innovation as people fear revealing their true nature. Have frequent face-to-face meetings with employees, be open in receiving feedback, address all serious topics timely, have proper communication channels, and show vulnerability in your approaches.
