How Can We Tell?: A Pilot on Measuring Psychological Safety With Leaders and Teams

Facilitated by Katie Maschmann, Farm Credit Services of America

Psychological safety – What is it? Why is it important? And how can we tell if we have it?

Come learn about what a Senior Leader and their leaders did with each of their teams, in partnership with OD, to answer these questions. 

We will discuss some tools we used to help support these leaders and teams to uncover how much psychological safety was present, and more importantly, actions to take to improve it. This approach focuses on bringing awareness to individuals, the team, and the leaders about their contributions (mindsets and behaviors) leading to the amount of psychological safety present. It is about everyone taking ownership of this shared experience, and then providing the leader with tools to take and continue this work with the team. 

We also value continuous improvement and recognize that this was a pilot. So in addition, we are looking forward to hearing from all of you. How would you have approached this? How would this work in your organization? What would you do differently?

Feel – Is there something you can personally do to improve psychological safety on your team?

Know – A potential way to help leaders/teams identify if they have psychological safety and how to improve it.

Be able to do – Think critically about if there is anything that would be valuable to do in their organization around understanding psychological safety, and how to make it applicable. 

Katie has had the privilege of working with over 250 leaders from more than 50 organizations experiencing major individual and organizational change curves. Her passion is guiding others through these challenges and realizing their full potential by helping them define their vision, problem-solve barriers, and outline an actionable path toward achieving their desired outcomes.

Katie has spent over 10 years helping organizations improve their effectiveness by leveraging people and processes through Operations Consulting, Process Improvement, Executive Coaching, and Strategic Planning roles supporting for-profit, non-profit, education, and government organizations. She also has served in leadership and board roles for several non-profits. She loves that she gets to use all of these cumulative experiences to focus on Organizational Development within one company now. She supports development at the teammate, leader, team, and organizational levels. Katie utilizes tools that she has gained through certifications (Lean Six Sigma, DISC, Five Behaviors, CliftonStrengths); tools learned through reading, researching, and observing; and tools she has personally developed. 

Katie is a huge Husker fan as she graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Marketing with a minor in Communication Studies. And while she values her college education, she equally values her experience growing up on a farm raising cattle, and being heavily involved in 4-H. Grit and genuineness are values that were engrained in her as a child, and values she still upholds today.