Many of us have likely heard the following advice: “Bring your authentic self to work!” I doubt we disagree with this sentence in principle, but what does an “authentic self” actually encapsulate, and what can workplaces do to truly welcome people’s “authentic selves”?
To me, bringing our authentic selves to work means liberating our inner misfits—embracing our unique ways of thinking, doing, and being that allow us to boost productivity and thrive in the workplace. In turn, organizations can welcome people’s authentic selves by fostering environments that prioritize psychological safety.
That seems like a useful concept! you may be thinking. But what, exactly, is psychological safety?
At its core, psychological safety in the workplace refers to “a shared expectation held by members of a team that teammates will not embarrass, reject, or punish them for sharing ideas, taking risks, or soliciting feedback.” Psychological safety does not mean everybody’s getting along with everyone 100% of the time—that’d be a bit unreasonable!—but it does mean “knowing that leaders value honesty, candor, and truth-telling, and that team members will have one another’s backs.” Creating a psychologically safe workplace thus means developing and investing in a work culture that allows people to express themselves without fear of judgment or retribution. After all, as leaders, we want our teams to feel comfortable sharing new ideas and representing themselves in the truest way possible!
Sounds good, may be the next thought crossing your mind. But how can a workplace actually go about fostering psychological safety?
Fortunately, there are multiple straightforward strategies an organization can take to invest in psychological safety! Allow me to walk through a few:
1. Encourage Experimentation
One primary effect of individuals safely expressing themselves is the introduction of a variety of new ideas and new ways of thinking into the workplace, and the best way to ensure this influx of creativity keeps flowing is encouraging experimentation rather than punishing it. Leaders can emphasize that mistakes are opportunities for growth, including sharing their own failure stories, to help employees feel more comfortable about taking risks that align with their individual cognitive diversity. If we all thought the same way, after all, every workplace would be the same shade of boring!
2. Embrace Positivity
It seems to go without saying that psychological safety (and in turn, self-expression) will increase when organizations recognize their employees’ successes, but nonetheless I will state it with emphasis: acknowledge and highlight positive contributions, no matter how small, especially when those contributions go against the grain! If moments of employees’ self-expression are explicitly recognized as valuable to an organization, then employees are more likely going to find meaning in their own uniqueness and are more likely to find themselves willing to express their own unconventional ideas. Success often comes from the unexpected, and when companies recognize that reality, they help create a work culture where individuals feel psychologically safe to be themselves.
3. Emphasize the Individual
When we’re talking about fostering psychological safety, it can be easy to get lost in the “overall”: overall, how psychologically safe is our workplace? Overall, do people feel safe to express themselves? Overall, do we see cognitive diversity? And while this bird’s-eye view is crucial, it is equally important that we invest in individual’s perceptions of psychological safety (and in turn, their comfort and ability to express themselves). From anonymous comment boxes to one-on-one meetings to optional-identification surveys, finding what works to parse out individuals’ feelings toward psychological safety is imperative to creating productive opportunities for self-expression in the workplace. In short, if some team members feel more secure in their ability to express themselves than others, we should investigate why and determine what we can do to make this experience level across the board.
4. Employ Opportunities for Self-Expression
One surefire way to foster psychological safety in the workplace is simply by implementing policies that open opportunities, however small, for employees to more freely express themselves! Allow for things like a more unconventional dress code—especially for individuals with jobs that are not public-facing—such as bold colors, dyed hair, or vibrant accessories. Offer alternative work schedules that diverge from the traditional 9-to-5, in-person office work. Encourage employees to bring their external passions to the workplace; someone who reads and writes poetry in their spare time may not necessarily be on the marketing team, for example, but they still might know the exact rhetorical strategy needed for this new product advertisement to get consumers emotionally invested—open a door for that creative possibility to manifest!
If I haven’t persuaded you of the value of psychological safety and employee self-expression yet, allow me to point out a couple of the more tangible benefits:
A) Employees who feel safe to express themselves are more productive than employees who feel pressured to conform. One study found that “misfit” employees, i.e. employees who felt psychologically safe to challenge the status quo, “were significantly less likely to suffer low engagement and performance” because they were able to “more regularly take new approaches to tasks or change minor procedures.” Another study found that “misfit” employees were more likely to draw connections—both literal and figurative—across their organization, thus “generating a greater wealth of information at their disposal” that allowed them to facilitate higher productivity.
B) Employees who feel safe to express themselves are better at problem-solving than employees who all feel pressured to fit into identical molds. One study determined that in a group of people attempting to solve a problem, “adding an outsider”—i.e. someone comfortable with thinking differently and expressing their different approaches—“doubled [the group’s] chance of arriving at the correct solution, from 29% to 60%,” than adding someone to the group who had a similar mode of thinking to the original members. In other words, creating opportunities for “people to reveal and deploy their different modes of thinking” and “mak[ing] it safe to try things multiple ways” increases people’s ability not just to solve problems but to craft innovative solutions—sounds like a win-win to me!
I hope by now we’re all convinced in not just the benefits but the necessity of psychological safety to a productive, creative, and welcoming workplace. So why delay? Let’s embrace self-expression, both in our employees and in ourselves!
Dima Ghawi is the founder of a global talent development company with a primary mission for advancing individuals in leadership. Through keynote speeches, training programs and executive coaching, Dima has empowered thousands of professionals across the globe to expand their leadership potential. In addition, she provides guidance to business executives to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies and to implement a multi-year plan for advancing quality leaders from within the organization. Reach her at DimaGhawi.com and BreakingVases.com.
