Sustain High Performance With Psychological Safety

Search the internet for "worst bosses" and you will find plenty of real-life horror stories. Toxic leadership extends beyond screaming threats to subtler but equally damaging bullying, silence or ignoring, and exclusion. Three decades of research by academics and applications by practitioners have shown that, in contrast, leaders who create psychological safety gain and sustain high performance among employees. Psychologically safe cultures treat team members with care and empathy. In this issue of TD at Work, Kenneth Nowack and Paul J. Zak detail the role talent development professionals play in helping leaders hone their management skills. Further, they:

• Provide a brief history and explain the neuroscience of psychological safety.
• Review the reasons it leads to high-performance teams.
• Identify ways leaders and organizations can create safe cultures.
• Demonstrate how to measure psychological safety and related outcomes.

Job aids included in this issue are a team psychological safety survey, a psychological safety exercise, and a leadership checklist.

About the Author

Kenneth M. Nowack, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and co-founder of Envisia Learning. He received his doctorate degree in counseling psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has published extensively in the areas of 360-degree feedback, assessment, health psychology, and behavioral medicine. Nowack serves on Daniel Goleman’s Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations and serves as editor-in-chief for the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice & Research and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 13; Society of Consulting Psychology).

Paul Zak is the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies; professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University; and founder and chief immersion officer of Immersion Neuroscience. His two decades of research have taken him from the Pentagon to Fortune 50 boardrooms to the rainforest of Papua New Guinea—all in a quest to understand the neuroscience of human connection, human happiness, and effective teamwork.