The Essential Ingredient of Performance Management: Psychological Safety
Performance management and data-oriented cultures are built on a foundation of psychological safety.
What is Psychological Safety?
Amy Edmondson, Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, defines psychological safety as "the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking." It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect.
The Role of Data in Performance Management
Data often uncovers hard truths about your city, staff, and community, creating new levels of discomfort for city employees. The performance management routine necessitates transparency and honesty about city operations and the people who run them. Historically, performance management programs or “stat” models used frameworks that often made staff feel “on the hot seat.” This method has been academically shown to be less effective than performance management programs rooted in collaboration and data curiosity.
Best Practices for Performance Management
To avoid becoming a punitive ritual, performance management should foster an environment where staff feel they can contribute without the threat of punishment or having their ideas held against them in the future. Staff must feel that they belong in the conversation, can make errors and learn from them, and that it is okay to challenge ideas. This type of psychological safety drives innovation and continuous improvement in cities.
Accountability and Transparency
Performance management routines should still hold staff accountable. Senior leaders need to use performance management as a tool to hold employees to the goals and initiatives set for the organization. Staff must diagnose and be transparent about their operational issues. If staff try to obfuscate or hide the extent of a problem, performance management can uncover what may really be going on through data and iterative conversations.
Collaborative Problem Solving
Performance management is about developing shared solutions that will be evaluated over time. City employees may not want to discuss problems without having ready solutions, but performance management is designed to work through data-informed, transparent, and collaborative problem solving.
Strategies for Embedding Psychological Safety
Be the Backstop: Senior leaders should support staff who take risks to innovate, ensuring a level of tolerable failure.
Communicate the PM Agenda: To avoid a “gotcha” session, inform staff in advance about the topics and data to be discussed.
Assign Clear Ownership of Follow-Ups: Ensure specific follow-up tasks are assigned and documented to reduce ambiguity.
Squash Negativity Cycles: Manage negativity to promote visioning and ‘what if’ thinking.
Show Up Consistently: Regular attendance by Senior leaders at PM meetings builds trust in the process.
Stay Curious: Ask questions and point out insights from the data without making staff feel inadequate.
Involve Middle Management: Educate middle managers on the principles of psychological safety.
Be Clear About the Past: Ensure staff know that past inaction will not be held against them.
Cultivate a Learning Posture: Use mistakes as learning opportunities through retrospectives.
Ultimately, psychological safety in a performance management program facilitates talking honestly about city operations, being open to solutions from anyone with a good idea, and acknowledging and learning from failure, all essential elements to data-informed innovation.