-reading time: 3 minutes- / -audience: Leaders-
CREATE YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY EXCELLENCE ROAD MAP
My research showed that it is very hard to create a psychologically safe team climate for leaders who suffer from an overdose of psychopathic personality traits or hang around too long on the dark side of narcissism; mainly due to a lack of empathy. But fortunately, most of us have more than enough empathic capacity to create a psychologically safe team climate.
But how do you know if you can? And to which extent?
The Chief Empathy Officer Persona
Empathy is the key word in making psychological safety happen, so therefore I created The Chief Empathy Officer, a persona with 23 behaviours and traits attributed to the leader who has full command of psychological safety in his/her leadership repertoire to drive performance. These 23 behaviours and traits are based on scientific research.
For example, The Chief Empathy Officer cultivates trust and courage, innovating behaviour and creative problem solving, high satisfaction, and demonstrates authentic, humble and supportive leadership, while supporting personal growth and development, but nonetheless being performance driven.
Since personality traits are linked to your value system, and therefore to your attitude, and eventually your behaviour, your personality has a great influence on how you can obtain full command of psychological safety and demonstrate the corresponding behaviour.
Hogan Personality Assessment: mapping the bright-side and dark-side
The Hogan Personality Assessment system is, with a very high probability, the best personality assessment instrument for professionals to find out and improve how they behave when they are at their best (bright-side) and when they are under stress (dark-side). This is of course a great source to find out if a leader’s personality traits and behaviour are promoting or hindering psychological safety under relaxed and stressful conditions.
I have mapped Hogan’s bright-side and dark-side behaviour attributes with the 23 behaviours and traits of The Chief Empathy Officer persona, which provides the leader great insight in how bright-side behaviour promotes or risks the potential of psychological safety. And also how dark-side behaviour – when you are under stress – hinders or sustains the potential of psychological safety.
Impact of personality traits and behaviour on 6 psychological safety pillars
To see the impact of promoting and risking on the bright-side, and hindering and sustaining the potential of psychological safety on the dark-side, I have identified 6 pillars (such innovation, engagement & commitment, performance, voice behaviour, responsibility & ownership) to give the leader more insight in the areas that are positively or negatively affected.
This allows the leader to select the pillar(s) that are important for the company performance and values. And then to go back to his/her behaviour and develop a road map to Psychological Safety Excellence. For each mapped personality attribute for both the bright- and dark-side, coaching notes have been developed. These notes serve as starting points for the leader to complete the Psychological Safety Excellence Road Map, by reflecting on what to do and how to do it, but also what not to do and how to prevent it.
Psychological Safety Excellence Assessment for Leaders
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The 60 page Psychological Safety Excellence Assessment for Leaders will be available in the near future. Together with a 2-hour in-depth structured interview, the assessment will be the preparation for a 2-day private executive coaching seminar. During these 2 days, we reflect on the outcomes of the assessment and interview, challenge and dig deeper, identify the focus for your Psychological Safety Excellence Road Map and complete the road map.
If you are interested to know more for yourself or for leaders in your organisation, please visit PsychologicalSafetyExcellence.com
