You might not think that you don’t feel psychologically safe, but there are lots of ways that feeling shows up even in a job you think you’re happy in – is it your own self-limiting beliefs which drive this feeling? Here’s an example. 

Picture the scene. An email pops up in your inbox. The title? ‘Staff survey’. It’s that time of year where senior management want to take the temperature of your organisation and do some self-reflection; to get some honest feedback to help form, shape and improve.

How do you feel about filling this in? Honestly?  

Do you open the email immediately, scan it, and start formulating your responses? Are you happy to speak your mind to benefit the company as a whole and by association, yourself too, with positive but candid, challenging answers? Are you confident enough to be honest?

Or do you close the email, put it to one side to deal with later because the thought of filling it in makes you nervous? Do you return to it later and find yourself writing, deleting, then rewriting with an overly favourable sheen of gloss? Or do you never feel secure enough to even complete it, thinking that your answers might identify you and then come back to bite you?

What’s holding you back? Is it the company culture – fear of retribution perhaps – or is it something more personal? Could it be your own self-limiting beliefs that prevent you from feeling psychologically safe?  

What is psychological safety? 

Psychological safety is a term coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmonson. It is defined as ‘a shared belief held by members of a team’ that it is safe to ‘express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions and to admit mistakes’ without fear of something negative happening to as a consequence. Edmonson clarifies it as a ‘felt permission for candor’. The presence of psychological safety means an individual who is part of a team feels comfortable in speaking up and being candid, because they do not feel at risk by doing so.

Some organisations can make it difficult for its employees to express themselves honestly because they do not have a culture which supports them to do that. I discussed this in my blog about Kim Scott’s Radical Candor. Leaders can, for example, present themselves as being unapproachable, or not open to being challenged; this can understandably lead to a culture of fear. However, many companies do genuinely foster – and indeed nurture – an inclusive culture. They provide opportunities to challenge, giving their employees a voice, encouraging them to speak up, contribute ideas, to constructively debate, to engage in healthy conflict and disgreement or even where needed whistleblow.

While it’s obvious why a company would want to support employees to come up with new ideas and innovations, it is also in the company’s interest to enable its people to question, challenge or even disagree with the status quo.

I spoke about the importance of challenge in feedback in a recent blog. Challenge is a key component of improvement.  Developing a culture where people feel able to speak up can lead to improvement and growth on a company level, as well as benefit the individual’s own career trajectory, if their contribution is recognised by management. As Penny Green puts it in Forbes, ‘the hard questions are… best suited to drive change.’ Yet, even in organisations with a supportive culture, employees may still feel psychologically unsafe.  

If that sounds familiar to you, perhaps it’s time to ask yourself what you need to make you feel sufficiently secure psychologically? Is there something missing from your working environment or the people around you – or are your own limiting beliefs stopping you from feeling psychologically safe?

What are self-limiting beliefs – and how do they affect us?  

Self-limiting beliefs are perceptions and thoughts we have about ourselves, that prevent us from doing things that we are actually able to do. They are self-imposed, personal barriers we put on ourselves which negatively affect our actions. Sometimes these grow out of a misguided attempt to protect ourselves – a defence mechanism that has outlived and outgrown its usefulness and ends up stopping us from achieving. Self-limiting beliefs can lead to behaviours which stop us from taking risks – even if the environment we are in supports these perceived ‘risks’ and makes it safe for us to take them.

In the world of work, these self-limiting beliefs can stop us feeling psychologically safe and can limit our behaviours, resulting in a negative outcome. There are many potential situations where our own self-imposed lack of psychological safety can hold us back. 

For example, not feeling confident to question a Managers decision, worried about giving a different opinion in a meeting, holding back from putting forward an idea or suggestion or feeling too nervous to give feedback to address unhelpful behaviours from colleagues or managers means that the behaviours or situations may endure, because the other party involved is not challenged or questioned. I have blogged about the necessity for honesty in feedback. If the employee has put up their own barrier of self-imposed, self-limiting beliefs which prevents them from being honest, it results in the status quo not changing.

Listening to your self-limited beliefs can also curb creativity. If you don’t feel psychologically safe enough to risk contributing an idea, then your creative potential won’t be fulfilled, which can result in feelings of frustration. (Have you ever found someone else putting forward an idea or suggestion that you thought of but held back on giving?) If you don’t contribute, you are potentially holding yourself back from having a say in shaping or forming projects. Your own limiting beliefs are doing just that – limiting you.

Some self-limiting beliefs have grown out of the way we perceive our environment, rather than its reality. An example of this would be fear of the effects of hierarchy. It might seem daunting to offer up a critique or an idea to a room full of your managers; if that fear of making yourself vulnerable in front of more senior people becomes a self-limiting belief, it can make you feel psychologically unsafe and unable to make any contribution personally. Far from having only an internally damaging effect, adhering to self-limiting beliefs can adversely affect the way other people see you. If you are too nervous to volunteer ideas, you may be seen as uncreative, or not a team player, or the type of person who is happy to let everyone else come up with solutions. If you are uncomfortable about speaking directly to someone about an issue, you may be seen as not communicative, not honest, or perhaps as wanting other people to sort out problems for you.  

Your limiting beliefs could be the very things that prevent you from feeling psychologically safe. Whilst it’s up to leaders within your organisation to help provide an environment that enables this level of trust it’s also in your interest to make yourself feel safe enough to challenge your own beliefs.  

Finding your own psychological safety – the benefits 

Challenging the beliefs you’ve imposed on yourself means accepting that you need to be able to reflect on your situation honestly. Has your organisation done everything it can to promote a culture where people are free to speak up and be honest, regardless of seniority? Are your colleagues and your managers able to communicate without prejudice and to support that safe working environment? If so, you need to look for psychological safety within yourself – it could be your own self-limiting beliefs that mean you don’t feel safe. 

These beliefs will need to be worked through and resolved. Removing self-imposed barriers will mean that you will be able to see opportunities developing for you – and will be able to commit to making the most of them. You’ll be able to address issues as they come up, rather than bottling things up and letting them build up, so they end up coming out in an uncontrolled way. You’ll be able to provide and receive honest feedback, which will help shape and fulfil both your potential and that of your organisation.

Removing your own self-imposed barriers can provide you with the feeling of psychological safety, which can allow you to step into the limelight, make your contribution and show what you can do.  

Hints and tips 

Trying to push yourself out of your ‘comfort zone’ beyond your self-limiting beliefs can be daunting, but there are lots of achievable things you can try to adjust to a new mindset. They don’t have to be huge changes, but challenging yourself to attempt to do some of the following things can help you realise that you are, in fact, in a psychologically safe space. Here are some hints and tips to help encourage you.  

• Be discerning 

You don’t have to be a truth warrior picking everyone up on every little thing. Be discerning – pick your ‘battles’, being careful to frame your feedback in a positive way. 

• Be constructive 

Remember that being aware of context and how you deliver your contributions is vitally important. Once you’ve chosen what you want to challenge, contribute or offer your ideas about – deliver that in a constructive, rather than combative way.  

• Be curious 

Ask questions, pitch something that’s on your mind, query something that you’re wondering about. You might just land on something that someone else thinks is a great idea.  

• Be the spark 

Use your influence and don’t worry about not coming up with a total solution. You don’t have to have the expertise to see an idea all the way through to fruition. Let people become your allies or your champions. You can be the spark – let someone else fan the flame! 

If you’d like to explore whether self-limiting beliefs are the reason you don’t feel psychologically safe, email me to book a first free session.