Chapter 5: Creating Equity-Focused Psychologically Safe Climates in Policing: A Leadership Imperative

Psychological safety has become one of the top indicators of high performing teams and organizations. Having a psychologically safe working environment has been shown to reduce employee errors, enhance safety, and increase individual and team learning; all important components of healthy police organizations.

There are significant implications for both the presence and absence of psychological safety in policing environments. Organizational cultures where pressure, uncertainty, hierarchy, and anxiety are common, such as police services, benefit the most from strategic psychological safety interventions. The tenets of psychologically safe climates align positively with policing environments (high stress, pressure, rapid decision-making, etc.) and yet, research on how to improve the psychological safety of police officers and leaders is limited.

The process of facilitating and cultivating a psychologically safe environment is a leadership imperative as leaders play a critical role in promoting psychologically safe organizations and teams. In an ideal setting or scenario, a leader could assess their team, evaluate the extent to which their team members experience psychological safety, and identify strategies to close the gap. In practice, creating psychologically safe environments is far more complex and nuanced; it requires an assessment and understanding of organizational context, culture, and environment. This chapter aims to apply an equity lens to psychological safety in the context of police leadership and offer strategies for police leaders to advance equity-focused psychologically safe climates within their teams.