*3.2.1 Definition*

Psychological safety is one of the important qualities of organizational communication processes, and it is related to the organizational culture that the previous research has focused on (for example, [22]).

Psychological safety is built by the seminal work by Schein and Bennis (1965) [23] on organizational change. They defined it as the extent to which individuals feel secure and confident in their ability to manage changes. Following researchers have explored the concept of psychological safety in work settings. Kahn (1990) renewed its focus by redefining psychological safety as an individual's perceptions as to whether he or she is comfortable showing and employing himself or herself without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career ([24] p708). He argued that people are more likely to feel psychologically safe when they have trusting and supportive interpersonal relationships with colleagues [24]. Edmondson (1999) proposed psychological safety as a team-level climate and definition of the "shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking" [25].

#### *3.2.2 What psychological safety provides the organization*

Newman et al. (2017) conducted a literature review on psychological safety and identified 62 empirical studies focusing on the outcomes of psychological safety at different levels of analysis [26]. Their review showed the body of evidence on the relationship with organizational communication processes.

At the individual and team levels, it was found that psychological safety was related to greater knowledge sharing among team members [27–30] and reporting of treatment errors, and more interpersonal communication [31, 32]. Psychological safety within couple relationships and teams has been identified its relationship with more voicing behavior among employees [33–36] and a reduction in silence behaviors [37].

Research has shown positive associations between employee perceptions of psychological safety and learning behaviors at both the individual [38] and team levels [39–44]. Meta-analyses conducted by Sanner and Bunderson (2013) [45] found the correlation between team psychological safety and team learning to be 0.42 (95% CI = 0.05–0.85).

Beyond organizational communication processes, early empirical work on psychological safety has shown the association of psychological safety with learning and performance outcomes (for example, [25]). More recent studies have shown its direct and strong influence on performance at the individual [46] and team levels [47], indirect influence through facilitating learning behavior at both the individual [48, 49] and team level [25, 50–54]. Meta-analyses conducted by Sanner and Bunderson (2013) found the indirect effect of psychological safety on team performance through team learning to be 0.17 (95% CI = 0.14–0.20) [45].

In addition to performance, the evidence on the association between the employee's perceived psychological safety and their organizations and creativity [55, 56], both creative thinking and risk-taking at the team level [57], innovation in R&D teams [58, 59], manufacturing process innovation performance [59, 60], knowledge creation [61], team performance mediated by the sharing knowledge [62]. Referring *Communication Strategy for Organizational Leadership and Relationships: Liberating Structures DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105806*

to the study result of no evidence for the psychological safety leading to higher levels of critical thinking within teams [63], Newman et al. [26] suggest that psychological safety may influence performance outcomes through promoting social exchange between the employee and organization, and enhancing the extent to which the employee identifies with the organization [46, 47, 64].

#### *3.2.3 Leadership that provides the organization with psychological safety*

Evidence on the effect of supportive leadership behaviors on work outcomes through psychological safety has been accumulated. For example, empirical studies showed that some properties of leaders, such as inclusiveness [33, 55], support [65], trustworthiness [66], openness [34], and behavioral integrity [57], strongly influenced the employee's perceived psychological safety, and drove the behavioral outcomes such as employees' voicing behaviors, involvement in creative work, job performance and engagement. At the team level, employees' collective perceptions of support and coaching forwarded by the team leader [25, 41], leader inclusiveness [51, 67], trust in the leader [47, 48], and the leader's behavioral integrity [31] have been found to develop psychological safety facilitating team learning behaviors, team performance, engagement in quality improvement work, and reduction in errors among team members.

Research has established the evidence that leaders valuing participation, people, and production use couple discovery rather than group-based discovery methods [44, 68], and an improvement orientation management style [69] are more likely to provide high levels of psychological safety.

The mechanisms of the relationship between supportive leadership behaviors and psychological safety have been referenced in social learning theory [70]. The explanation is that leaders play model roles to employees/followers by listening, forwarding support, and providing clear and consistent directions to them, which makes them feel safe to take risks and engage in honest communication [38, 51, 71, 72]. The other (for example, [47]) pushes the social exchange theory; when followers are supported by the leader, they will reciprocate with supportive behaviors themselves, which secures the psychologically safe environment of the entire team. Newman et al. [26] argue that it is likely that the effects will be stronger and more enduring when psychological safety is built through employee/follower's learning of leaders' behaviors, rather than them being displayed at points of exchanging certain behaviors with leaders.

#### *3.2.4 Points to make*

So far, I have shared enough scientific evidence for the important roles of communication processes that can be facilitated by the leadership style. Leadership styles strongly affect outcomes in direct and indirect manners, fostering and hampering, for example, a creative and innovative organizational environment with psychological safety. I emphasize leadership styles are displayed and realized only through the leader's behaviors that are mostly organizational communication processes.

On the other hand, leaders' personalities matter, and not all leaders have personal properties such as traits and skillsets yet to secure the quality of organizational communication processes. To overcome such obstacles, I introduce the tool for enhancing quality organizational communication processes, e.g., *Liberating Structures*.

### **4. Liberating structures**

As mentioned, the remaining part of this chapter will be devoted to introducing the specific tool that helps leaders in social work equip communication processes for a better organizational environment and performance that is *Liberating Structures* (L.S.s) [73].

#### **4.1 L.S. Overview**

Although we want to be better in daily performances as a member of social organizations, including private or public, we are not good at making changes. We are in the loop of "habits," and it is difficult for us to escape from it. Habitual practices in the organization, which are being followed by the majority of members, are thought that there is no other way even though there are other ways. One of the typical habitual practice examples is the communication style. On the public occasion, we commonly use five styles of communication, which are presentations, managed discussions, status updates, brainstorming, and open discussions) (**Figure 1**) [74].

They point out the unintended consequences of following the conventional styles include exclusion, suffocation, unjust participation with over-or under-controls and inability to yield ideas for next steps and the future. Those styles often limit space for good ideas to emerge, be shared, merged, and refined. Thus, they will never produce creativity and innovations. We tend to blindly practice the styles because they are thought to be the only way, although they get frustrated with the consequences. Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2020) point out that huge costs are spent working the way in efforts to fix the problems, which actually creates or exacerbates them [74].

To make real changes in organizations, which are sustainable and habitual with good causes, all levels of individuals should be involved. Involvement means not only participation but engagement as change agents, which requires change methods everybody can use, and those methods should be routinely used in daily living [74].

Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2020) suggest the importance of paying attention to "microstructures" of communication styles, which matter to the quality of communication processes, which are the essence of L.S.

They point out that the requirements for small-scale changes are similar to the requirements for large-scale systemic changes. The caseworker who wants to improve the quality of care for the client, the manager who wants to improve department performance, the teacher who wants to engage students, the doctor who wants to improve teamwork, and so on, all need and are benefitted from methods that are very simple, quickly learned, easy to use, and endlessly adaptable. They listed the key attributes for such methods include, 1) *versatile* (being useful in many different situations, regardless of a person's profession, position, culture, or purpose), 2) *easy to learn* (requiring no extensive training), 3) *expert-less* (requiring only a few minutes to introduce), 4) *results-focused* (generating tangible results so quickly that people will sustain the effort), 5) *rapid cycles* (being short enough to fit in the existing cycles of work and to be repeated quickly to improve results, 6) *multi-scale* (being useable with varied group sizes for everyday tasks, projects, or strategy and goal setting, and 7) *enjoyable* (having participants experience working together as pleasurable and satisfying rather than the usual drudgery).

*Communication Strategy for Organizational Leadership and Relationships: Liberating Structures DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105806*

**Figure 1.**

*Big 5 conventional micro-structures. (Source: Lispmanowicz and McCandless, 2020 [74]).*

Equipped with those features, L.S.s are the simple change methods that everybody can use to improve or change the way work supposedly gets done. There are 33 structures in which everybody is included and invited to participate in shaping the group's shared future (**Figure 2**). The detailed descriptions of 33 structures are freely and publicly available [75]. Because most L.S.s take only 10 to 30 minutes, they can be used for daily communication processes, including meetings in the organization.
