In today’s uncertain business environment, psychological safety in the workplace is essential to foster a growth mindset – where employees feel empowered to take risks, learn from failure, and drive innovation.
Businesses are increasingly aware of the value and importance of fostering a growth mindset within their organisation and, in today’s rapidly evolving world, embracing these skills is more crucial than ever.
Yet, we are living in fast-evolving and uncertain times, with a number of ongoing factors contributing to increased feelings of insecurity within workplaces.
So how can businesses ensure their people feel psychologically safe enough to develop a growth mindset?
What are the key growth mindset skills?
Curiosity fuels a desire to explore new ideas and solutions. Adaptability empowers us to navigate change with confidence. Resilience helps us bounce back from setbacks stronger than before. And self-belief gives us the courage to pursue our dreams and push boundaries. These are all skills needed under the banner of ‘growth mindset’.
While many businesses aim to foster these skills, it’s essential to lay the groundwork first and establish key foundational factors must be established before the development of curiosity, adaptability, resilience, and self-belief can truly begin. An important facet of developing a growth mindset is the capacity to fail, and people will not risk failure unless businesses first establish an environment of psychological safety.
Safe to fail: a short history of growth mindset theories
Developed in large part from the theories of American Psychologist Carol Dweck, a growth mindset is an approach that asks people to continually seek new ways to achieve a goal. It requires people to consider all experiences – including failures – as opportunities to learn.
So, if employees are to develop a growth mindset, they must be supported in learning to fail. There are two specific ways of ‘failing’ that the growth mindset approach encourages:
- ‘Fail Fast’: trying lots of different things to see what works
- ‘Fail Forward’: a willingness to make mistakes in order to grow
Becoming more accepting of mistakes will allow employees to become open to new experiences and the ideas of different people, and to take (appropriate) risks. This in turn can help push them and their organisation forward, enabling a more courageous culture. It helps people challenge their beliefs that things should be done the way they have always been done, or a ‘fixed mindset’ – the opposite of a growth mindset.
One of the key conditions needed for people to start to trust that it is okay – even useful – to fail, is psychological safety. As theorised in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, human needs and behaviours are arranged in a hierarchy, with basic survival needs at the bottom and more creative and intellectually oriented ones at the top. People cannot reach the higher levels – those required for a growth mindset – without first achieving the basic foundations of physical and psychological safety.
Psychological safety in uncertain times
So, what relevance does this have on the development of a growth mindset for businesses today?
On one hand, businesses are increasingly interested in the benefits of their employees developing a growth mindset to deal with the challenges of the modern working environment. Yet many of these same challenges are contributing to a lack of psychological safety
We are living in fast-evolving and uncertain times, with a number of ongoing factors contributing to increased feelings of insecurity within workplaces. For example, there is a growing discourse, spread in large part through social media, which suggests that employers do not really care about their employees. This narrative encourages people not to make any real effort as a result – indeed, it has fostered the increasingly prevalent ‘quiet quitting’ trend, where employees do the bare minimum or less, without formally resigning.
This comes at the same time as increased job insecurity around the rise of technology, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI); and the prolonged impact of Covid, which caused a more ‘inward looking’, or protective mindset both from an employer and employee perspective. This is something we are only starting to see many people and businesses emerge from now.
If not addressed or recognised, these factors can stifle the development of a growth mindset.
How to increase psychological safety
For businesses looking to embed a growth mindset throughout their organisation, it is important to explore how their culture fosters psychological safety among employees.
Business leaders must ask some probing questions to develop an accurate view of how employees feel. For example, do people feel safe to take risks and make mistakes in this organisation? Does the business culture help create relationships based on trust? How well do senior people hold space for employees to ask questions? At the same time, they should consider whether they, themselves and others within leadership and management are open to being challenged. Moreover, do managers deliver difficult messages with compassion and integrity? And can people be their authentic selves at work?
An important part of creating the foundations of psychological safety is helping people learn how best to ask questions and challenge others. This can feel intimidating, especially when confronting more senior team members, but it is a valuable skill that encourages curiosity, one of the most fundamental aspects of a growth mindset.
No growth without failure
Establishing an environment that fosters psychological safety is essential for embedding a growth mindset throughout the organisation. When employees feel safe to take risks and make mistakes, the key skills of curiosity, adaptability, resilience, and self-belief can truly flourish. Without this foundation, fear of failure stifles innovation and growth.
Creating an environment where it’s safe to fail is not just important—it’s transformative. It empowers employees to experiment, learn, and ultimately drive the organization forward. Remember, without the freedom to fail, we can never truly grow.
Morgan, a dynamic in-house disruptor and Organisational Psychologist, challenges comfort zones, fuels curiosity, and fosters growth through innovative, fresh and impactful development. As a specialist in performance management, she brings a unique edge to her work. With her expertise in leadership, wellbeing, and behavioural analysis, she is a highly sought-after consultant.