Say Yes To Your Team Through a Safe Environment
3 Ways to Create a Meaningful Sense of Safety for Your Team
Are you welcoming that upcoming meeting with the team today? What are your first thoughts?
We are all in this together; that we will be in the right place at the right time.
You’ve got positive vibes, knowing people in your tribe “get you”, and you can be yourself.
You’re confident that your creative contributions will be honored and in fact asked for.
If so, then you have a sense of safety and trust within your team. This includes: 1 Physical Safety, 2 Relational Safety, and 3 Creative Safety.
If not, know that over time, this is possible to achieve. By creating an environment of physical, relational, and creative safety, you find ways to say yes to each other.
Physical Safety
In today’s culture, threats to our physical safety are minimal, but we are still hard-wired to satisfy this primal need; hence a warm tone in someone’s voice as they welcome us into the call tells our brain that we’re “OK”. And particularly now that we’re physically apart, it’s even more important to acknowledge each other through a sincere “hello, how are you?”. Standard procedures, such as a debrief at the end of the meeting, help build a sense of connection and “presence” for individuals.
Relational Safety
Building on the fundamental need for physical safety, we need to feel that we can be ourselves; that we are relating to each other authentically. This means that we need to find ways to “let down our guard” with each other. It’s been said that you never tease anyone you don’t really like. Stories about our funny mishaps, memories that are part of the team “story”, and laughter in general, help create strong relations. A cat jumping on a keyboard, or a child wandering into the room, become instant equalizers across the team hierarchy and create connection.
Creative Safety
As a team, the expectation is that we can collectively and efficiently resolve issues and come up with innovative ideas. We need to feel secure in the knowledge that our ideas will be respected; that our status in the team is intact, whether that be within a community, team or family.
Building and Maintaining Trust
Over time, team trust is established once these three areas of safety are “turned on”. But, as we have all experienced, trust is something that is constantly being tested. Once trust is broken, it takes hard work to be re-established. The good news is that you can re-establish team safety and trust by first “calling out” the root cause. Identify which area of safety was violated, and agree on how you want to be with each other moving forward.