What Change Leaders Can Learn from Research on Psychological Safety

Curated by Theresa Moulton, Editor-in-Chief

McKinsey’s research on psychological safety and leadership behavior cites that there are two main types of behaviors that leaders need to role model to demonstrate inclusiveness and psychological safety. First, a leader must be consultative and build a positive team climate as the foundation for the team culture and second, a leader must enact supportive behaviors and commentary at both the team and individual team member level.

When we coach and advise change leaders and sponsors about leading change, it is often easier to rely on the “methodology-based” approach of providing them with key behaviors to role model and targeted messages for the organization.

However, my experience is that the challenge is to get the whole leadership team to show up unified and committed to the change at the same level. Often the root cause of the issue is that the executive team climate is not one with psychological safety, which requires a deeper approach to address than the traditional change management methodology.

Upon reading the McKinsey article cited below, I asked myself, are we as change management professionals really providing the breadth and depth of service needed to ensure that the sponsorship of a transformational initiative is stable enough to lead?

Are we looking for the root cause in change leadership behaviors that don’t work and asking ourselves, “how can we make leading change psychologically safe for our executive change leaders?”

Read the article below and see what you think.

Psychological safety and leadership development | McKinsey