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In the last episode, we explored what psychological safety is, and in this episode, we will explore why it is important in the workplace – specifically in social work.
A review of what we learned-
Psychological safety and resilience are very different concepts. The main difference is that resilience is the ability to adapt to difficult situations where colleagues or processes have made us feel shame, embarrassment or humiliation. Whereas, psychological safety is, in fact, the complete absence of shame, embarrassment and humiliation.
However, one golden thread which weaves through psychological safety and resilience is self-care.
Although they are different, we do not need to exclude one at the expense of the other. If we can create a psychologically safe work environment and support colleagues to be resilient in times of stress which are out of the leader's control, we can build social work team which truly feels safe, supported and equipped to do their best.
Dr. Timothy Clark, author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation, found that in order to achieve a feeling of belonging, we need to progress through 4 different stages in order to achieve psychological safety:
Inclusion safety - our basic need to connect and belong
Learner safety – our basic need to learn and grow as individuals and as professionals
Contributor Safety – our basic need to contribute and make a difference
Challenger Safety – our basic need to analyse and ‘make things better’.
To support high-performing, high-pressure and high-workload teams, creating psychologically safe work environments is critical. This is not only basic human decency but will improve employee wellbeing and retention. Which will benefit everyone we work with and hopefully begin to address the high turnover of social workers.
Why is psychological safety important in social work?
It supports our emotional wellbeing:
Psychological safety is important in social work, in general, as it enables us to bring our whole selves to work, to feel listened to, seen and supported. Bringing our whole selves to work without judgement, shame or humiliation significantly supports our emotional wellbeing. If a psychologically unsafe work environment leads to create exhaustion, burn out and disconnection, a psychologically safe environment can offset burnout and support our self-esteem, self-worth and identity.
Psychological safety means we can create teams which feel more connected, where colleagues can provide peer support and feel as though they belong. This will support the people we work with, as we will feel more able to talk a colleague when we are stuck with signposting to voluntary organisations, referrals for free houseware, ideas for a visit/activity, or a safe space to reflect on what we bring to our decisions and the impact this has.
Feeling psychologically unsafe inhibits our ability to challenge:
In our daily practice as social workers, we make decisions and plan support in the best interest of the people we work with. We ensure support plans are made in collaboration with people and not done ‘to’ the people we work with– these are key values and practices in our roles.
However, person-centred planning and best interest decision-making are not always achieved the first time and the decisions are not obvious. Often decisions will have to be challenged (including our own), and we will need to critically examine how decisions are made or informed to ensure they are suitable.
Therefore, if challenger safety is not achieved, we might not feel able to challenge practice which doesn't keep the people we work with safe, or at the centre of decision-making. If we don't feel psychologically safe, we also might not challenge decisions, language or actions which are oppressive or discriminatory.
Additionally, we might not feel comfortable challenging our employer for reasonable adjustments.
Feeling unable to constructively challenge, where we feel it is needed - and appropriate - will impact our self-esteem. We might feel a cognitive dissonance between our personal/professional values and our practice.
Creativity and Collaboration:
If you feel psychologically unsafe at work, you might feel as though you need to mask your personality, decisions, and voice.
You might have a friend, family member or colleague who has a ‘work persona’, ‘social persona’ and a ‘home persona’. You may have heard them pick up their work phone and adopt a whole new personality or see a colleague out with their friends and hardly recognise them. You may have observed the excitement leave a person’s body or face as they mask their thoughts and feelings. You might have observed a colleague put their hand down after initially enthusiastically raising it during a meeting.
This behaviour of adopting a different persona is a neurological response to a perceived threat - especially where that threat is a conflict with your boss, a co-worker, or a team member.
The part of the brain that controls our stress response (fight, flight, freeze, fawn etc) and responds to our perceived threats - known as the amygdala – can shut down the part of the brain which is in charge of more complex thinking and analysis – the cortex (Berrett-Koehler, March 2020). This means we are less able to analyse a situation and shuts down our perspective-taking.
As a result, if your brain perceives you to be in psychological danger, it diverts energy away from the part of the brain which enables you to be creative, collaborative, problem solve and keep your composure. Not only are you less cognitively effective, but you can also end up less emotionally effective.
Therefore, psychological safety is important to enabling all employees to perform to their best ability without being in a high-stress state and without burning out.
Knowledge and skills:
As social workers, we are encouraged to keep up to date with new research and new emerging ways to work with clients.
However, feeling psychologically unsafe can prevent us from sharing knowledge with, and supporting the learning/development of our colleagues, student social workers, newly qualified social workers and experienced social workers (yes, they do not know everything!!).
We might be less likely to share a special interest and our knowledge on this topic. For example, I might not feel able to share my knowledge of neurodiversity with colleagues. This might, for example, prevent them from changing a harmful practice, implementing a new practice or preventing them from learning new information which will support their clients.
So, as you can see, fostering a psychologically safe workplace in social work generally can have significant positive impacts on the people we work with, for us as employees and on the organisations we work within. So, what are you waiting for? Keep checking in for ways you can foster a psychologically safe work environment.
In the next episode, we will explore why psychological safety is especially important for neurodivergent social workers to be in a psychologically safe work environment.
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