The Forum on Workplace Inclusion in Minnesota, USA, March 2017 is one of the largest D&I conferences that is held across the globe. Symmetra CEO, Heather Price, presented a paper on Psychological Safety: A Critical Ingredient for Innovation, as well as a Fireside Chat with Florence Chan on ‘Is Ethnocentrism a barrier for US companies in Asia’

Symmetra has been conducting research on psychological safety over the last two years across a large range of global clients, assessing whether leaders in organisations, who are intent on leveraging diversity of thought to optimise performance, have developed the skills to create the safety for their diverse team members to express their divergent views, to disagree, to express their concerns, to experiment with unproven actions and to admit failure.

Says Heather “It is evident that in many cases whilst organisations work so hard to recruit and retain the best intellectual capital, a lot of it is wasted by leaders who shut people down – quite inadvertently. Building psychological safety in teams is critical if leaders are to get access to the rich diversity of thought that resides in their team members . We are working with leaders across the globe to build this capability and the impact on team innovation is extraordinary.”