**3.1 Leadership styles and performance**

Leadership styles matter the organizational performance. Fiedler (1996) argues that effective leadership is critical for the success or failure of a group, organization, or country [10]. For organizations to become capable enough to cope with the increasing volatility and turbulence of the external environment, leaders should be trained and equipped with the necessary skills [11–13]. It is very applicable to the everchanging circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and effective leadership is indeed needed.

In the area of management, the relationship between leadership styles and performance has been plentifully discussed [14, 15]. The study's results are that the democratic and participative leadership styles tend to yield more success for the organization [16].

Among mainly case studies that provide evidence for the relationship between leadership and performance in general (for example, [17–19]), Thorlindsson (1987) conducted an empirical study that assessed the impact of leadership on performance in the context of Icelandic fishing ships [19]. Analyses of the study data over three years revealed that the captains' leadership qualities accounted for 35–49% of the variation in the catch of crews. Pointing out the limited empirical evidence of leadership and organizational performance, Ogbonna and Harris (2013) examined the relationship between the leadership style and organizational performance with mediating effects on organizational culture among the middle and large companies in the United Kingdom. They analyzed survey data from 322 key informants who knew various tactical and strategic activities of their companies and found that the associations between the leadership style and the organizational performance were all mediated by some form of organizational culture. They also pointed out that among all of the leadership styles that were indirectly significantly associated with the organizational performance, instrumental leadership styles that focus on exchange [20] were negatively related. In contrast, supportive and participative leadership styles were positively related.

Looking at the area close to social work, the empirical evidence of leadership styles is limited but exists in the management of eldercare homes. Donoghue and Castle (2009) examined the relationship between eldercare home administration (NHA) leadership styles and caregiver turn- over from 2900 eldercare homes [21]. They found that the NHAs' leadership style that heard and acted upon their employees' voices (i.g., consensus manager) was associated with the lowest turnover levels. In contrast, the other that did not communicate with their employees about decision making or expectations (i.g., share-holder manager) was associated with the highest turnover levels [21]. Adding the aspect of directors of eldercare homes (DONs) along with NHAs, Castle and Decker (2011) assessed how the top eldercare home management leadership styles were related to the care quality and other performance indices [22]. Their findings showed that a consensus manager leadership style was strongly associated with better quality.

As the research on leadership styles suggests, it would say that leadership styles that are supportive and participative with bi-directional communication processes, including listening and acting upon the employee's or follower's voice, can yield better organizational performance.

## **3.2 Psychological safety in the organization**

#### *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*.
