10 things you can do to build psychological safety in your groups

Through years of research, collecting data, and thousands of interviews, Google’s Aristotle Project found that the single most important ingredient to making a team work boiled down to one thing:

Psychological safety.

The same is true for learning effectively in groups. People learn best when they feel safe to take risks, speak their minds, and when they feel supported by others. This is true in a classroom, for online courses, and in workshops. 

What is psychological safety?

In his book the 4 stages of Psychological safety, Timothy Clark defines psychological safety as: 

A condition in which human beings feel (1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, (4) safe to challenge the status quo.  

When psychological safety is not present, fear takes over and people shut down. Participation and engagement drop and people check out. Even worse, as a facilitator or teacher, you can unknowingly reinforce negative experiences for your participants. 

When you intentionally work to build psychological safety the opposite happens. People become willing to take risks and speak their minds. They are more likely to move out of their comfort zone and support others in the group to do the same. It’s that kind of learning that can lead to deeper insights and breakthroughs. It can be transformational.  

Seasoned facilitators have tried-and-tested techniques for creating psychological safety where deep connection and learning can happen. They know that there is an important opportunity at the beginning of a session or course to lay the foundation for psychological safety to take root and flourish. 

How do you create psychological safety? 

Here are 10 facilitation tips inspired by Partners for Youth Empowerment’s Creative Empowerment Model.  

1) Learn about your participants before the session. Learning about your group before the event gives you an opportunity to get to know participants. If possible, circulate a pre-session survey where you can ask them about their experience, interests, challenges, and what they are aiming to get out of the workshop. Send a personal message to participants introducing yourself, and letting them know what to expect. When you first meet group members you can reference things that you have learned about them in introductions. This shows that you’ve done your research and that you care.  

2) Create a welcoming environment. Taking the time to prepare the physical or virtual space before the session communicates that the participants are important to you. In-person this means organizing and even decorating the room. If the session is online, you can create a welcome slide and have music playing when participants join. This helps people to feel comfortable and at ease. It shows that your participants are important to you.

3) Learn names. Addressing participants by their names makes people feel seen and important. Teachers are famous for having techniques for memorizing their students' names quickly. Study the participant list before the session so that names will be easier to remember. Screenshot a Zoom room to help you put names to faces. Do activities that help participants to learn each other's names. 

4) Get all voices in the room. Patterns of participation can be set early in a group learning process. This includes whose voices are heard and whose are not. When you give all participants an opportunity to get their voices heard at the beginning, it opens the door for even the shyest participants to speak up. This can be as simple as having each participant share their name and where they are from - either verbally or in the chat. 

5) Give people opportunities to connect. Activities that connect participants at the beginning of the session give people an opportunity to share something about themselves and get to know each other. Organize small breakout groups within the first 10-15 minutes of the beginning of the session where people can introduce themselves. This builds empathy among group members and helps the process of building relationships.

6) Share your goals. Sharing the goals for the session gets the facilitator and the group on the same page on an agreed destination. When you present the goals, include not only what the aims are, but also why they are important to the group. 

7) Create agreements. These are also called guidelines. Group agreements give the group an opportunity to actively create group norms together and how they will function best. They can include agreements like “try something new”, “participate fully”, and “lift each other up”. Agreements can help to create an environment where it is safe to learn, take risks and make mistakes. It also helps to create buy-in and responsibility of the group for the learning process and provides something that the group can reference when conflicts arise. 

8) Acknowledge fears. When you verbalize your participants’ hesitations you alleviate the anxiety that some people feel when embarking on a group learning experience. Share your own experiences of fears that you had and how you worked through them. This can help people recognize and move through their own resistance.

9) Embrace diversity of experience. Participants’ ability to feel safe can be influenced by race, ethnicity, gender, ability, and other experiences. As a group facilitator or teacher, finding ways to acknowledge diversity can help to create an environment where people feel welcomed and included. Holding yourself accountable at the beginning of a learning experience can help to build trust in you as the instructor. 

10) Be humble. A wise tip from Amy Edmondson, one of the pioneers of psychological safety research. As facilitators and teachers, we don’t have all of the answers. It’s OK to say that you don’t know and that you need to hear from the group. Owning your own fallibility creates safety for others to speak up.

Creating psychological safety is a process. 

As facilitators, teachers, and instructions there are things that we can do to create conditions for psychological safety at the beginning of a learning process. Maintaining a safe and supportive learning space needs on-going care and a healthy dose of humility and curiosity.

Inspired by Partners for Youth Empowerment and the Creative Empowerment Model. Thanks to Romy Solomon for sharing research links on psychological safety.

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Gwyn Wansbrough is a Creative Facilitator and Experience Designer based in Barcelona, Spain. She works with people and organizations around the world to create dynamic and empowering learning experiences online and in person. She writes about facilitation, creativity, and learning in a weekly newsletter called The Quest. Subscribe here or visit www.gwynwansbrough.com to learn more.