How to nurture Psychological Safety in coaching
I’m an eager student. In fact, it would be a huge understatement to say that, at the start of my coaching training, I was excited to learn new tools and techniques as I knew they would be crucial to becoming a coach.
But I quickly realized that I had it all wrong.
Coaching is a partnership that helps you achieve your goals, and when it’s working, the conversations should challenge you. For that growth to happen, the coachee must feel safe enough to be vulnerable—even uncomfortable—at times.
So you can have the best tools or acronyms for goal-setting in the world, but it won’t mean a thing if the relationship lacks trust.
Trust vs Psychological Safety
“The Fearless Organization“ by Amy Edmondson
In her 2019 book The Fearless Organization, Amy Edmondson distinguishes between Psychological Safety and trust, emphasizing that people experience Psychological Safety at a group level.
When Psychological Safety exists, people believe that others will give them the benefit of the doubt if they make mistakes, ask for help, share ideas, ask questions, or disagree. It is a “climate where people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks.”
Trust, on the other hand, is defined as “whether another person or organization can be counted on to do what it promises.” They are closely related but not interchangeable.
Although Psychological Safety may seem more applicable to team coaching, coaches working one-on-one within an organization can still help to cultivate a safe environment beyond their sessions. The coach can help teams—both leaders and team members—become more aware of what it means to create Psychological Safety.
So how do you establish trust? And what does it mean to have Psychological Safety in a coaching environment? I often see this mentioned in passing, as though “build trust” or “establish rapport” are simple boxes to check off your coaching to-do list, but to achieve this coaches need to ensure clients will experience a psychologically safe environment during their meetings. One way is to practice the four dimensions utilized in the Fearless Organization Scan: attitude to risk and failure; open conversation; willingness to help; and inclusivity and diversity during coaching sessions.
Translating Theory into Practice
With the goal of building trust, here are a few concrete ideas for incorporating each of the four dimensions of Psychological Safety into a coaching session:
Attitude to Risk & Failure
This is a critical topic to explore as a coach. On an individual level, an exploration of the growth mindset is a great starting point. Expanding self-knowledge by discussing a person’s Intrinsic Motivator Report can also be an opportunity to practice non-judgment, first with the client’s results and then by considering how they would respond to seeing their team members’ reports. Address fear of failure head-on, spend time discussing what can be learned from previous failures, and address the negative assumptions that might hold someone back from taking action.
Frameworks like WOOP can set coachees up to practice doing a premortem: identifying potential obstacles and coming up with ideas to overcome them before they happen. Considering the worst-case scenario and realizing that they will survive can inoculate people against the fear of failure, especially if they believe their team will not punish them for it.
When it comes to the group environment, ask questions about how the team responds to failures. For example, is there a stigma around failure that might make people less likely to take intelligent risks? What can be done, as a team, to celebrate brave attempts? What processes and policies does the company have in place that might signal how much risk-taking is tolerable?
Open Conversation
Most coaches will already be leveraging powerful questions and person-centered dialogue in their sessions, but it may take some time for coachees to be ready for more difficult conversations. Remember to ask permission before introducing a new tool, which helps build trust and ensure that clients maintain a voice in the process. And beginning the coaching engagement with a clear discussion of confidentiality, ethics, and a designed alliance can go a long way in managing expectations.
From there, it may be helpful to look at the team environment with your coachee. How are sensitive topics usually handled with their manager or colleagues? If you are coaching someone in a leadership role, how frequently do people raise questions or concerns? How often are they asking questions rather than giving advice? If your client wants to be more intentional about inviting these types of conversations, books like The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier or Dare to Lead by Brené Brown are good places to start.
Willingness to Help
Discussing Altruism and what it means to your client is one way to initiate a discussion about their willingness to help others at work. Try to keep an open mind and consider how other top Motivators might also express themselves as help, since Intrinsic Motivation is not the same as behavior.
If your coachee struggles to identify ways that they are helping others, it may reflect their engagement level in addition to the Psychological Safety they are experiencing at work. Consider spending some time exploring the impact they can have on their colleagues, customers, or community. For example: how connected do they feel to the broader goals of their organization? What part can they play in achieving them? Who can they turn to when they need help? What steps do they want to take toward deepening those relationships?
Leaders and managers should also be mindful of systems that inadvertently discourage employees from helping one another. There are many examples of incentives that accidentally pitted people against their colleagues, or even the best interests of their customers, contributing to an environment that was not psychologically safe. Coaches could use a model such as GROW for this conversation, because it creates clarity while also demanding objectivity. This exercise might help leaders identify ways they can better align their team’s reality with its goals.
Inclusivity & Diversity
It is not enough to have employees from various backgrounds and identities; for Psychological Safety to exist, people need to feel welcome to be themselves at work. On an individual level, coaches may find it helpful to focus on overcoming limiting beliefs or helping clients deepen their self-regard. For teams using Attuned, having a workshop where members share their top Motivators, identify blindspots, and brainstorm ways to support each other can also be impactful.
Coaches could consider running a well-structured 360˚ feedback process to help managers understand how included people feel. The debrief sessions can emphasize closing the gap between the current situation and a more inclusive culture that better represents where they want to be. This can require significant changes in both mindset and behavior.
Edmondson speaks to the challenge that some leaders experience when trying to overcome their biases and understand new perspectives—especially when being decisive or “knowing what’s going on” has contributed to their success up to that point. Adam Grant’s book Think Again could be a good resource for clients working on this as it focuses on the humility of considering what we don’t know.
During coaching sessions, encourage managers to look at behavioral patterns, such as who speaks first and last during meetings or how frequently they ask for ideas from their team. What steps can they take to bring more people into the conversation? Where can systems be improved to minimize bias or be more welcoming? Do the habits of team members reflect the values they want to uphold? If not, what can they do to move things in the desired direction?
Safe Enough to Grow?
Whether in a coaching session or at work, growth can feel risky, but cultivating a culture of Psychological Safety empowers teams to increase their performance. Ultimately, for people to be willing to push through the challenging moments, they need to believe that they are safe to be themselves—especially when they are in the messy middle—and that, in the end, it will be worth the effort.
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