Psychological Safety in Action: Creating Safer, Stronger

This one runs as a masterclass: Tash Koster-Thomas takes your colleagues through the research and the thinking behind it, with live questions throughout.

Your expert

Tash Koster-Thomas

Tash Koster-Thomas (she/her) is an Inclusion and Diversity Consultant, presenter, speaker, and LGBTQ+ Activist who stands at the forefront of transformative conversations. Leveraging her identity and lived experience as a Black queer woman, Tash champions the cause of diversity and inclusion in both society and the workplace. Tash understands that embracing diversity is not only a moral imperative but also a strategic advantage. She is committed to guiding organizations through transformative journeys that go beyond compliance, fostering cultures that champion diversity, equity, and inclusion at every level.

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Session Summary

In her lecture, Tash Thomas-Koster explains that psychological safety is the bedrock of innovation and mental health. She defines it as an environment where individuals feel safe to take risks and be themselves without fear of punishment.

By exploring the neuroscience of trust, she shows how safety activates the brain for learning rather than defense. The session highlights Timothy Clark's four stages: inclusion, learner, contributor, and challenger safety.

Tash urges leaders to model vulnerability, reward curiosity, and replace judgment with 'yes and' thinking. Ultimately, she demonstrates that when teams feel safe to challenge the status quo, they achieve higher productivity and belonging.

Interaction

During the expert session, Tash Koster-Thomas engages the audience through interactive exercises using the Mentimeter app, Q&A sessions, and live demonstrations.

Key Learnings

Establishing Psychological Safety Foundations

Creating an inclusive work environment where individuals feel heard and valued is the first step in building psychological safety. Leaders can start by setting ground rules that encourage open communication, modeling vulnerability, and trusting team members.

Neuroscience and Psychological Safety

Understanding the neuroscientific principles behind psychological safety can help leaders create a more effective work environment. These principles include purpose, learner safety, contributor safety, and challenger safety.

Measuring and Improving Psychological Safety

Collecting hard data through employee surveys and anecdotal evidence is crucial in measuring psychological safety within a team or organization. Leaders should respond positively when team members share their ideas, address power dynamics, and create opportunities for collaboration to improve psychological safety.

Detailed session description

In this expert session, speaker Tash discussed the significance of psychological safety in the workplace and its impact on mental health and performance. Psychological safety is a shared understanding among team members that they can express ideas, concerns, make mistakes, and challenge each other without fear of retaliation or judgment.

This sense of security leads to reduced stress levels, improved collaboration, innovation, and better mental health.

Tash introduced the three core principles for creating psychological safety from Amy Edmonson's research: framing work as a learning problem, modeling curiosity, and building a culture of psychological safety through trust and respect. She also emphasized the importance of neuroscience in understanding how behaviors affect brain chemistry to create either a state of learning and engagement or fear and stress.

Tash then delved deeper into the role of psychological safety within teams, focusing on the responsibility of leaders in fostering a safer work environment. Tash highlighted four stages in creating psychological safety: establishing trust, setting ground rules, encouraging open communication, and practicing constructive feedback.

At the foundation of psychological safety is trust. Leaders should create an inclusive environment where team members feel valued and safe to be themselves. Learner safety follows, which requires vulnerability from both leaders and team members for open communication and growth.

Contributor safety empowers individuals to contribute effectively without fear of being undermined or ignored, while challenger safety encourages team members to challenge the status quo with new ideas. She also advocated collecting hard data through employee surveys to measure psychological safety within an organization and addressing power dynamics between team members.

The expert session concluded with Tash emphasizing that individuals leading by example, starting with small interactions like using affirmative language and genuine interest in others' opinions, can foster psychological safety and build stronger teams.

According to participants