Psychological Safety in Teacher Meetings

Contributed by Carolyn McKanders and Robert Garmston

Teachers meet continuously as an expected part of school duties. They meet in pairs,
in faculty groups, departments and grade level meetings. Facilitation practices are
necessary in all these venues. Essential to meeting success and teacher satisfaction is
psychological safety. Many studies demonstrate this. Psychological safety is a belief
that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions,
concerns or mistakes. (Edmonson 2018) We also found this to be true in our
interviews with over 400 teachers in International and North American Schools.
Garmston, Mckanders 2022)

Check out the Psychological Safety Practice Playbook for Education.

Teachers as facilitators encounter numerous challenges unique to the role. Friends
may seek favor, and teacher facilitators are sometimes asked, “What do you think?”
yet meeting success requires impartiality. Teacher-facilitators have no role authority
to make things happen and part of their duties may be at the direction of a supervisor.
Time allocated for meetings is often too short and demands too long.

Without capable conversations in hard-to-talk-about topics groups operate below their
potential. Important perceptions and ideas are lost to the group. Agreements become
difficult to reach, relationships sometimes damaged. Facilitators strengthen
psychological safety by maintaining a mindset that behaviors are ways people try to
support themselves. It’s not unusual for unconsciously held positive intentions to be
disruptive. For example, broken record speakers may urgently want to be heard,
testing patience and time of many groups. A facilitator might paraphrase and often a
speaker feeling understood will cease further comments. As a next step, a facilitator
might paraphrase and record the comment on chart paper. If another step is needed a
facilitator might turn to the chart AND read what’s recorded, then ask in a calm,
invitational voice “Is this what you want people to know?” Dignity is preserved and
members value the facilitator’s respectful interactions with the speaker.

In this and many ways effective facilitators bring awareness that ensure inclusive
interactions and know ways to support respectful discourse, therefore creating safe,
equitable environments where important work gets done. They ask safe but
penetrating questions. They model intense listening. Authentic listening
communicates more than anything else that member voices are valued and heard.
Savvy facilitators set up structures and processes within which difficult and
psychologically safe work can be done.

References

Edmonson (2018) The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the
Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons, 2018.
Edmundson (2019) The Role of Psychological Safety. Maximining Employee Moral
and Commitment. 03 January 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/ltl.20419
Garmston, R., Mckanders, C. (2022). It’s Your Turn. Teachers as Facilitators. A
Handbook. MiraVia