Psychologically Safe Space

Organizations looking for innovation are now seeking ways to create what they call psychologically safe spaces for their employees. By psychological safety, they mean encouraging a culture of greater risk taking, discovery, and trying new ways of working without fear of judgment. Leaders are faced with increasingly complex problems to solve and are unsure how to achieve the results they want if they encourage and foster teams and environments that are safe and supportive. Proponents of the Management Grid theory proposed that the best managers were able to balance a concern for task production and results with a concern for people. Those managers unable to achieve the balance, and focused too much on the concern for people and too little on achieving results, would end up with what was once called “country club” management. Research has shown that most often managers are unable to achieve this balance and resort to getting short term results above all.

The Basadur Profile offers a simple approach to getting both.

The Profile guides teams through experiencing a practical method of achieving innovative results while simultaneously creating a psychologically safe space. The Profile enables teammates to discover and understand each other’s thinking styles and how to synchronize them methodically, safely, and without blame. It measures and explains how problems are solved and avoids trying to explain how personality trait differences cause conflict.  In essence, employees have to unlearn current negative ways of thinking and problem solving together and learn positive new ways that achieve better results. The thinking style differences enable them to identify actions and behaviors that previously prevented collaboration and innovate a new path forward.  The secret sauce to making these changes is based totally on employees accepting that they think and solve problems in uniquely different ways versus focusing on personality. By understanding individual thinking styles, organizations can create psychologically safe spaces in which teammates feel free to leverage their different ways of thinking to find breakthrough results.