Dr. Bill Howatt talks about Psychologically Safe Leadership

The role of a psychological, safe leaders to help create psychological, safe workplaces where employees want to come to work, they create a place where employees feel safe to share their thinking, their ideas without any fear of Reprisal or to be judged or um uh, evaluated in a way that could be detrimental to the career.

why psychological safe leaders are important is that they are a protective factor in facilitating the employee experience. Perhaps there is no more important relationship for uh worker is then their manager employee relationship. So when employees can feel safe working with their direct leaders, that can be a source of resiliency that can help charge their batteries and help them come to work because they want to versus feeling they have to. And and there's the old saying as many times Employees up to 70% employees who leave the rolls leave is because of the manager employee relationship. So, securing those relationships is critical for retaining a sustainable workforce as well. It also helps leaders maximize their opportunity experience as well. It's a lot easier to work with people who feel safe, engaged and comfortable with the leader than a leader who's feeling they're always pushing and grinding. So there's a benefit for the worker and there's a benefit for the leader as well. And obviously the organization.

what is gained by incorporating psychological safe leadership into workplaces is creating a standard and an expectation for how managers will facilitate the employee experience. Psychological state leaders not into edible, intuitive, it's a trainable skill like resilience or any other type of skill that allows people to develop the habits that can strengthen organizations, opportunity for success. Leaders can help strengthen the workers experience as by being a protective factor that can add to worker resiliency, which can insist in protecting workers from mental harm and mental injuries. That can increase the organization's opportunity for maximizing productivity through its people and to mitigate risk to mental harm that can result in disability and other things that can be draining organizations or turnover. So there's a lot of positive for creating psychological safe leaders. And we know in the literature in the United States for example, that 10% of all the health care costs are attributed to the manager employee relationship. So it's really we're starting to learn more and more how important this relationship is. And purpose of this idea of giving leaders psychological safe leadership skills is to facilitate organization's ability to create cultures where employees want to come to work and when they come to work, they have the support by leaders with the tools to help them thrive and to flourish

Our view, it's anybody who's a people leader, anybody that has direct reports, whether you're a frontline leader, a middle leader or a senior leader, you will benefit from getting insights on what is a psychological, safe workplace and what organizations can do to facilitate that, understanding how your role and your how you show up can play a big role in creating the employee experience, as well as the types of micro skills and things you can do to facilitate a psychological, safe, secure relationship with the direct reports.