Psychological Safety and Speaking up
Rosa Antonia Carrillo, MSOD, founding president of Carrillo & Associates, for the past 15 years has worked globally with Fortune 100 companies.
Ms. Carrillo is an experienced organization development consultant specializing in multi-cultural settings, leadership development, executive coaching, and team building.
Ms. Carrillo's considerable experience in leadership development and coaching will help managers become self-aware and able to establish trust and credibility with direct reports.
Her unique background, as well as her deep understanding of how people learn and grow enhance their people skills.
Why consider these services?
Silence in the workplace is a hazard with huge risks. An initiative to create the conditions for people to speak up and be heard will fail if it does not first address the need for top senior leadership participation. This point is what makes the seven-step change management formulas so it irrelevant. Not one of them recognizes or can tell you how to mitigate the silence hazard. If you succeed with the senior group, the rest falls in place.
Hazard: something that could potentially cause harm. Risk: the degree of likelihood that harm will be caused.
Silence could potentially cause harm so it is a hazard. What are the risks? There are risks to the individual who doesn’t speak up and for the organization. Temple one below is a partial list of the risks in the workplace caused by people feeling unheard and silenced. It doesn't have to be this way and the fix is simple.
Table 1. The personal and organizational risks of silencing voice in the workplace
| Individual Risk | Organizational Loss Risk |
| Shame | Innovation |
| Pain | Process improvement |
| Fear | Competitiveness in the marketplace |
| Stress | Medical errors |
| Discrimination | Data breeches |
| Unrealized potential | Unrealized potential |
| Loss of identity/ Self | Accidents/ Disasters |
Psychological Safety, Speaking up, and Accountability Consulting
This series of workshops establish why it is imperative for business leaders to concentrate on how their company culture affects their employees, and whether their employees feel safe, seen and supported.
The concepts and practices are the ones that leaders have used across the ages to create commitment, accountability, and excellence. Managers will benefit from a deeper understanding of how these issues impact every aspect of organizational performance.
These concepts are essential for executives, leaders and those interested in leadership. They could be in the C-suite, operations, health & safety and HR. It is also directly relevant to organization development and change management specialists interested in including safety within their practice.
Where psychological safety is high, people are more likely to speak up, admit mistakes and ask for help when needed. Stress levels are reduced, as are associated sick leave, burnout and staff turnover. Moreover, increased psychological safety promotes higher trust levels and enables mental health challenges to be more readily discussed.
These workshops are based on evidence and research. They are specifically designed to help leaders create high levels of psychological safety within themselves and their teams.
Health and Safety Leadership Strategy Workshops
The 2-day program focuses on key drivers of psychological safety and covers elements including:
- The senior leader’s role in psychological safety
- Conversation strategies to gain alignment and accountability
- Everyday micro practices that grow trust and psychological safety
- Creating accountability and intrinsic motivation
- Resilience and cognitive re-framing skills
- Leveraging relationships to delegate responsibility and accountability
- Mindfulness and other tools for managing stress
Team Workshops
The 1-day Teams Workshop focuses on many of the above elements with a strong emphasis on skill development and practice. The benefits of this highly practical session extend beyond the workplace, with participants able to apply their new skill sets at home and in family and social situations.
1-1 Coaching
It is through effective coaching - group or individual - that these new behaviors become embedded. We provide post-program coaching as well as offering a 2-day intensive coaching course for supervisors/leaders to build internal capability. The coaching course equips participants with core skills of coaching (e.g., building rapport, listening skills, asking effective questions etc.) and the opportunity for hands on practice.
