Who Can Ask Questions at Work?
For underrepresented employees asking questions at work can be high stakes.
When I landed my first job, I was eager to prove my commitment and investment. I learned during my time in higher education that one way to show strong engagement is to ask great questions. So, for the first few weeks in my new job, I asked all the questions. Like many entry-level employees, I had a lot to learn and I was excited to develop!
Over time, I noticed that the more I asked questions, the more frustrated my boss became. Slowly but surely, she began treating me as if I was incompetent. I was consistently passed over for major projects and during meetings and she would ignore and dismiss my contributions. After a while, I learned to circumvent my boss and instead asked my teammates for support. From this experience, I learned a difficult lesson: for underrepresented individuals, asking questions and leading with curiosity can work against you.
Competency and Bias
I’ve often talked about how competency is racialized and I’ve highlighted that underrepresented employees are misperceived through a competency-deficit lens. As Professor Tressie McMillan Cottom says in her book THICK, “I am highly educated…but nothing can save me from what my Blackness screams when I walk into a room.” By this, Professor Cottom means that her Blackness predisposes her to be understood as unintelligent and incompetent and that this shapes her experience in the world.
Many underrepresented are already working against what is called attribution bias. Attribution bias is a fundamental misunderstanding of a person’s behaviors and actions due to their identity. For underrepresented employees simple behaviors such as asking questions, making small mistakes, and being vulnerable about growth areas can all be misconstrued as incompetence. Cognitive distortions such as these can greatly impede psychological safety for disenfranchised employees. This ultimately harms the entire workplace because employees feel less safe to contribute ideas and push forward new initiatives.
Understanding Psychological Safety
Psychological safety exists in four parts. The first two parts are:
Learner safety: This refers to how much individuals feel comfortable asking questions, making mistakes, and seeking feedback without fear of judgment. Learner safety encourages curiosity, experimentation, and skill development by fostering an atmosphere of acceptance and a growth mindset.
Contributor safety: Refers to creating an environment where individuals feel confident sharing ideas, offering feedback, and taking initiative without the fear of criticism or rejection. It promotes collaboration, innovation, and ownership by respecting diverse perspectives, encouraging open communication, and recognizing contributions.
Many underrepresented employees are not safe to learn and grow in their jobs because they are held to disparate and inhumane standards of perfectionism. Workplaces must address this to ensure that all employees have space to grow, thrive, and contribute to the work environment. When underrepresented employees feel afraid to learn and contribute, the whole work environment loses out on their valuable knowledge and skills!
Fostering Psychological Safety At Work
To create more psychological safety for underrepresented employees consider addressing the following areas:
Understand Perfectionism Bias: In workplaces, we have disparate standards of performance and perfectionism. White employees are often granted space to be fallible, while underrepresented employees are granted little space to make mistakes. In fact, the Punishment Gap highlights that women and BIPOC employees are punished much more harshly for making simple errors at work than their white and male colleagues. Understanding perfectionism bias can help organizations create safe spaces for disenfranchised employees to learn and grow.
Fostering a Growth Culture: A growth culture emphasizes continuous learning, development, and improvement, both at the individual and organizational levels. In a growth culture, employees are encouraged to stretch their abilities, explore new opportunities, and embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and development.
Normalize Mistakes: Mistakes are an inevitable part of the human experience, yet many workplaces stigmatize failure and discourage employees from taking risks or admitting when they've made a mistake. Normalizing mistakes in the workplace involves creating an environment where employees feel safe to take risks, make errors, and learn from their experiences without fear of judgment or reprisal.