Conflicts and psychologically unsafe behaviours can and often do happen in our workplaces and having those difficult conversations is not something you should avoid or delay. Both can lead to significant discord within the workplace, possible complaints of bullying and/or harassment, and lead to higher levels of stress for the whole work team.
It’s never easy to intervene in a respectful way when we see behaviour that we consider psychologically unsafe. We may feel uncomfortable intervening, or we may believe we don’t have the authority to do so. We might also fear the consequences if we choose to do so, particularly if the person exhibiting the behaviour has more power or rank than we do. Or it may look like we are bullying the bully.
It doesn’t mean we never disagree or bad days go away, but they will have less impact on work teams. There are free workshop materials that you can use to help your teams develop critical thinking about how they may contribute to a psychologically safer workplace.
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