The Mint House invited me to facilitate a breakout room on the theme of ‘Creating (psychologically) safe spaces’ at their online conference in June, and I wrote up my notes (a combination of my own introduction and conversation starter, and points that come up in the discussion) for inclusion in the second edition of the Reflection Aids for Restorative Leaders toolkit. Below is an expanded version, with additional background and further reflections.
The Mint House is a centre for restorative practice – and restorative practice is a way of building, maintaining, and repairing relationships, particularly when harm or conflict have occurred. It focuses on accountability, understanding the impact of our actions on others, and repairing the damage done, rather than centering punishment. “Participants in our dialogues recognised that restorative practice involves making yourself vulnerable, sharing something of yourself, opening yourself up to new ways of thinking and that this depends on creating genuinely safe spaces.” (source)
As a facilitator, the term “safe spaces” makes me twitch a little, for reasons I’ll go into below. But psychological safetyis an established and clearly defined concept, developed for workplaces and teams. It is based on the shared belief and collective understanding (i.e. the group culture, its social contract) that together it is safe to take risks and try new things, express ideas and concerns, ask questions, admit mistakes and learn from them – without fear of negative consequences like embarrassment, rejection, or punishment.
In psychologically safe workplaces, people feel comfortable being their authentic selves, contribute their best work, are happier and have higher wellbeing, and produce better designs / products / services as a result. Their outputs are also better because this kind of culture enables inclusion and diversity (of experiences and therefore of thinking), which leads to greater innovation and accessibility. Psychological safety requires trust to exist, and trust requires healthy relationships. In team settings, these are built on connection, mutual understanding, respect, care, and valuing one another.
As a facilitator however, I am often working with groups of people who are new to each other, and where there isn’t a pre-existing relationship of trust and care. I am always thinking about how to create this quality in the group – and especially when there are different experiences of power, privilege, marginalisation and discrimination across the participants, and minorised voices who are invited to attend alongside traditional power-holders.
Much has been written about “safe spaces” and their implications. We might argue that despite our best intentions as organisers, we can’t guaranteesafety since we can’t control what everyone present thinks and says. Furthermore, prioritising safety through clumsy implementation might lead to everyone being “nice” and refraining from sharing their thoughts, or worse, to “challenging” voices (generally minoritised voices speaking up about oppression and discrimination) being shut down because “they are making people uncomfortable”. Low challenge, leading to a lack of clarity, honesty, and learning… and perpetuating harm.
Some argue for the term ‘brave spaces’ instead of ‘safe spaces’ – spaces for courageous conversations, for sitting with discomfort. This raises the question, whois being courageous, and whois sitting with discomfort? Brave spaces can still perpetuate inequity. Let’s point out that minoritised people already have to be brave and courageous every day, just to exist in society in the face of systemic discrimination – and in these workshop and meeting spaces, they are often the ones who are expected to step up and share their lived experience and their trauma, to educate and enlighten others who are more privileged.
Sometimes the term ‘accountable spaces’ is proposed, where everyone has an awareness of their power and privilege, and where respect and care are centred. Accountability must be shared by all, leveraging structures and mechanisms that enable compassionate discussions of harm, and the processing of defensiveness into insights, learning and growth.
Whatever our preferred descriptor, the discourse around the “correct” term to use highlights the potential inequity and harm that can occur in groups unless they are designed and held skillfully. So as facilitators and convenors, how do we create the conditions for this to happen? How do we make explicit the social contract and rapidly establish collective ways of working? How do we moderate, adjust, guide, and even enforce where needed?
Here are suggestions from the Mint House conference discussion:
- When setting ground rules, open the discussion about what safe / brave / accountable space means. Negotiate and define it together. Talk about how we can make mistakes, bring challenge and learn together. How do we balance accountability and safety?
- Take your time with the contracting and group agreements. If we all agree we will “communicate respectfully”, let’s check what that looks like in practice. For example is it acceptable, for this group, to use swearing or slang? Work out the details. Talk about language and behaviours.
- Ask about people’s individual needs, and build them into ways of working. For example, having time to think and a quiet moment to have their say. What practicalities will support this, do we need a talking piece?
- Agree as a group how you want to challenge language or behaviours. Can (and will) anyone speak up from within the group to name it? Do we need a safe word (like “banana”, which is unexpected and funny), or a card? We can use “Ouch” to express that someone feels hurt or offended, and “Oops” to recognise that we have caused harm, even if unintentionally. Do we want to bring the issue to the facilitator to raise it? All of the above depending on what it is?
- Be clear and explicit about your facilitator role, including when and why you will step in – for example, when someone uses language that is unwittingly discriminatory or shows they are unaware of their privilege, you might suggest alternatives and explain why. Own your role and responsibility as guardian and protector of the space.
- During the sessions you will be weighing up when to let things run and when to step in (and we always second guess ourselves after the fact, you are not alone!)
- Outside of your active facilitation, do the work on yourself to develop and deepen your self-awareness, including of your power and privilege, so that you can be really present, open and accepting with all the people who participate in your sessions. Our own nervous system regulation affects other people’s, and the quality of our presence has an impact on the participants and on the spaces we create.
Like so many things in the fields of complexity and relational work, a safe space is a journey not a destination – or maybe a better metaphor would be a house that we build together, with everyone’s hands contributing to the task, and with understanding and care being the materials that we use. As facilitators, we don’t provide a ready-made house, but we enable the group to build it together.
Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash