How to Foster Psychological Safety at Work
Mikela Fenech Pace
Book a demo →from €2,250 for your whole company
Book a demo →from €2,250 for your whole company
Mikela is a visiting leqturer at the University of Malta and is passionate about people and their potential to thrive in open and safe environments. A diplomat by profession, Mikela has adapted her skill set to the transformation of HR departments and organizations. She enjoys pushing through the barriers of convention to allow for more communication, more open cultures at work and ultimately places where people enjoy going to work and thrive. She is an accredited Executive and Team coach.
All sessions by Mikela →Have you ever had to drag yourself out of bed to go to work? Have you ever felt scared to face your boss? Have you ever felt you were not free to speak your mind at work? Explore where this comes from and understand how you can identify work environments that foster psychological safety.
Learn how to connect the way you feel at work to how safe your environment is for you to thrive. Mikela will take you through an understanding of those uncomfortable feelings that prevent you from working at your best whilst exploring the aspects of what defines a psychologically safe environment.
During the expert session, Mikela encourages audience engagement using the Mentimeter app for interactive activities, Q&A sessions, and reflective exercises. She shares her personal experiences and insights on psychological safety in the workplace, emphasizing self-reflection, open communication, empathy, and understanding to create inclusive environments where everyone feels valued and supported.
Mikela also discusses the importance of addressing challenges and fostering growth through positive feedback and continuous learning.
Recognizing the significance of self-introduction in creating psychological safety and fostering trust and understanding among team members.
Understanding the importance of open communication, empathy, and respect for individual needs to create workplaces where everyone feels valued and supported.
Reflecting on personal experiences and taking responsibility for our actions in creating a psychologically safe environment that encourages learning, growth, and continuous improvement.
In this expert session, HR consultant and executive coach Mikela Fenech Pace discusses the significance of psychological safety in today's diverse and inclusive workplaces.
Mikela emphasizes the importance of building trust and understanding through self-introduction in creating psychological safety. She shares her background and expresses her dedication to fostering safe spaces where individuals can be themselves and thrive at work.
The session covers various aspects of psychological safety, starting with its definition and the reasons why it is essential. Mikela encourages participants to reflect on their personal experiences, such as their first day at school, to understand the impact of environments on feelings of safety and comfort.
Throughout the session, she uses relatable examples from her own experiences to illustrate the importance of understanding and respecting cultural differences in creating psychologically safe spaces.
Mikela also explores the challenges of psychological safety, emphasizing the need for constant learning and adaptation to meet diverse needs in complex work environments. Her goal is to help participants gain awareness of their feelings and how they contribute to creating psychologically safe spaces while deepening their understanding of trust and open communication's importance in promoting psychological safety.
Mikela incorporates interactive activities using the Mentimeter app, allowing participants to share thoughts and ideas in real-time, increasing engagement and collaboration within the group. The expert session continues with Mikela discussing self-reflection and taking responsibility for our actions. She emphasizes that everyone plays a role in creating a psychologically safe environment.
Creating psychological safety involves understanding ourselves first and being aware of individual needs and comfort levels. Mikela suggests using tools such as asking for upward feedback, acknowledging mistakes, active listening, accepting ideas without judgment, and being curious rather than jumping to conclusions. She also emphasizes the importance of fostering open communication and empathy.
Mikela uses basketball as an analogy, pointing out that everyone experiences failures and setbacks, which are essential for growth. By continuing to try and be kind to oneself and others, we can improve and create workplaces where people feel comfortable expressing their feelings and ideas.
To address difficult managers or situations, Mikela suggests seeking feedback from colleagues and going to Human Resources if necessary while keeping conversations objective and emotion-free. She emphasizes the importance of receiving positive feedback at work as it contributes to feeling safe and motivated, just as negative feedback is essential for growth.
Mikela acknowledges the challenges in creating a culture that encourages both types of feedback but urges participants to let HR know if they perceive a need for change.
From the survey every participant gets when the session ends, in their own words.
It was well presented and informative.
It was well presented and informative
Well structured and nice speaker.
Well structured and nice speaker
Better than expected. Thanks.
Very knowledgeable person at word, explains the topics in a simple and understandable way, with good practical examples.
Good examples that giving the good understanding of the idea behind
It was very interesting, also because you recognize things.
No prior knowledge is assumed. It is built for a general working audience, and people who already know the subject get the research and the practical side rather than an introduction. What the hour itself covers: Have you ever had to drag yourself out of bed to go to work? Have you ever felt scared to face your boss?
Mikela Fenech Pace is one of the experts we auditioned ourselves, and we produce every session so we see how each one lands. Participants rate this session 4.2 out of 5, across 74 responses, and rate Mikela personally 4.4 out of 5.
It is interactive, and the block higher up on this page says exactly how for this session. Nobody has to speak up who does not want to: the chat and the polls carry most of it, and the questions can come in anonymously.
It runs 45 min / 15 min: the talk, then live questions. All you do is pick a date. We brief Mikela, produce the session, host and moderate it, run the Q&A, and send you the report within an hour of the end.
A team, a department, an employee network or every single employee at once, with no cap and no per-seat price. It runs inside your own Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet, or on a branded page we build. No integration, no login, no company device or e-mail.
The session is delivered in English. You can add high accuracy live subtitles in 8, 16 or 24 languages, so everyone follows in their own. That is a paid option, priced by the number of languages you need.
No, and that is by design. There is nothing to install, nothing to integrate and no connection to your systems, so there is nothing for IT to validate: we join your own Teams, Zoom or Meet as a guest speaker, or we host a page and your people open a link. No software, no accounts, and no data of yours that we can reach. It is why hundreds of companies, among them some of the largest technology and financial firms in the world, were able to start within a day.
We never receive or hold personal data about your employees. Because the session runs in your own environment, attendance and identity stay with you, and what we report back is aggregated: numbers, ratings and survey answers, not people. That is also why IT approval usually takes minutes rather than weeks.
You keep the recording and can share it internally. You also get attendance over time, participant ratings for the content and the speaker, the survey answers, and the topics your people asked for next.
Psychological Safety is a well documented driver of high performance in teams and organisations.
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