Summer 2024: Psychological Safety and Anxiety
Anxiety is common among those with high standards for performance, such as athletes and coaches. Although anxiety presents on an individual level, there may be group level solutions. Dr. Amy Edmondson, the leading scholar regarding the concept of psychological safety, demonstrated that establishing a psychologically safe environment can serve as a protective factor against anxiety provocation (O’Donohoe & Kleinschmit, 2021). Therefore, coaches and leaders in the athletic space must understand that the environment is an integral factor to consider in regard to the mental health of athletes. Psychological safety is a key concept to establishing such environments (O’Donohoe & Kleinschmit, 2021).
A psychologically safe team depicts an environment where team members feel safe to ask questions, propose changes, interact honestly, and make mistakes without fear of retribution or embarrassment (Bariso, 2020; Frazier et al., 2017). In this way, psychologically safe team environments welcome authenticity, vulnerability, and communication while dismantling the need to posture to appear smart, “better than”, or worthy. However, psychological safety is often misunderstood to be a team without conflict, disagreements, or emotions like frustration, anger, or shame. Rather, a psychologically safe environment provides a space to process conflict and emotion openly and constructively. Therefore, conflict coupled with the ability and openness to handle the conflict allows for it to be resolved efficiently while creating systems to prevent the same problem in the future.
Dr. Edmondson posited (see image below) that psychological safety is a mechanism for easing the high levels of anxiety in high performance environments. Therefore, high levels of psychological safety combined with high performance standards, puts team environments into a learning zone which is an ideal zone for learning and thus leads to higher levels of performance. However, high performance standards without high levels of psychological safety puts team environments into an anxiety zone–thus stifling performance and hindering team member wellness. Many athletes are likely operating in team environments characterized by a climate of fear and rife with individual and collective anxiety.
Image adapted from Amy Edmondson
These conditions are counterintuitive when seeking high performance. In order to get athletes into “the learning zone” and thus increase performance, we must educate coaches regarding the importance of psychological safety. Interested in learning more about how to create a psychologically safe team environment? Signup for our free Webinar on September 20th at 12 pm ET here: Register Here!
References
Bariso, J. (2020, February 25). After years of research, Google discovered the secret weapon to building a great team: It's a lesson in emotional intelligence. Inc. https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/after-years-of-research-google-discovered-secret-weapon-to-building-a-great-team-its-a-lesson-in-emotional-intelligence.html
Duhigg, C. (2016, February 25). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html
Fransen, K., McEwan, D., & Sarkar, M. (2020). The impact of identity leadership on team functioning and well-being in team sport: Is psychological safety the missing link? Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 51, 101763–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2020.101763
Frazier, M. L, Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan, A., & Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological safety: A meta‐analytic review and extension. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 113–165. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12183
Gosai, J., Jowett, S., & Nascimento-Júnior, J. R. A. D. (2021). When leadership, relationships and psychological safety promote flourishing in sport and life. Sports Coaching Review. DOI: 10.1080/21640629.2021.1936960
