In a meeting the other day at a client’s office, we were discussing collaboration and what happens when the collaborative dynamic breaks down. People get defensive, offensive and confrontational which makes things very unsafe. This particular client is in the construction industry and has a full time safety manager, safety coordinators on every job site and a world-class safety record. In the construction industry, safety has become a major strategic focus in the last 20 years and huge gains have been made in insuring worker safety.
But it struck me as interesting the emotional safety is not a part of the safety definition or dialogue.
I’m not picking on them specifically, because this is true of most organizations. In Deming’s 14 principles for Total Quality Management, eliminating fear from the workplace is one of the most important. While the cost of low emotional safety is difficult to quantify, everyone has had the experience of how disruptive an emotional encounter is to productivity.
One could make the case that human beings disagree at times and that we can’t be expected to walk on egg shells all the time around each other. True enough. But I think in the spirit of continuous improvement, it behooves us to think about emotional safety and the costs of fear in the workplace. I believe they are significant.
The challenge is creating an ecosystem where the pursuit of emotional safety does not produce the unintended consequence of burying issues and driving disagreements underground where they fester and create resentment.
But like any other process improvement, it begins with defining the desired reality, studying the current reality and creating a plan to close the gap.
In the final analysis, safety is safety. Ask any psychologist if emotional wounds are any less debilitating to a person’s ability to function and be productive than physical disabilities. In the workplace, we can’t do much about the scars our employees bring with them when they come, but we certainly can be sure that we don’t add to the damage.