Addressing Psychologically Unsafe Situations

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.

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.

Psychologically Safe Interactions

This is a technique that can alleviate these concerns within your workplace. When meeting with the parties, you can ask questions to help both parties understand the difference between what they intended and how it was perceived, and to understand and re-examine the validity of the assumptions they made.

When we have psychologically safe interactions in our workplaces, we can reduce stress and support employees to:

- Feel safe speaking about legitimate concerns
- Resolve disagreements themselves
- Respectfully intervene when warranted
- Feel included and valued

Other resources:

- Workplace Strategies for Mental Health – Psychologically safe interactions workshop
- My Workplace Health – 3 Ways to Manage Conflict