In my expertise, success has all the time adopted from teams that say the hard things, belief each other, and imagine in working collectively in service of one thing aside from them. When I look back at initiatives that haven’t felt passable, the atmosphere has been fearful or disengaged. It’s teams the place we can’t level out the seemingly apparent issues and discuss them. It’s environments the place no one is aware of why we’re so targeted on delivering that one characteristic.
Keep in thoughts that remote staff might not have the same entry to sources or tools, so present some flexibility in relation to deadlines and outputs while keeping a watch out for the standard of their work. To assist present some readability on your staff with out making them feel boxed in, you must use the analogy of “slack” to elucidate what they want to count on from their teammates throughout working hours. Managing a remote group is so much like managing a standard team; present construction and adaptability, but don’t present an excessive amount of of either. You just can’t command your workers to start out opening up, so attempt taking the lead by allowing yourself to be susceptible along with your staff members.
That’s why the first step in addressing psychological safety is to establish a baseline. Someone — ideally a neutral third celebration like a talent developer or a marketing consultant — wants to gather knowledge and conduct conversations throughout the staff. Instead of blaming or expressing frustration when a staff member brings up an issue, as a substitute be appreciative of their perception and dedication to fixing the issue.
To build trust in your distant team, timely recognition and constructive suggestions are important. If there is not any belief, then the members might not have the flexibility to share their opinions or take up new duties. In this submit, we’ll share 7 easy methods to build psychological safety in your team—whether you’re within the workplace or working remotely.
Encourage the staff to explore ‘what’ went incorrect collectively somewhat than ‘who’ was at fault. This shift not only promotes learning but additionally reinforces that mistakes are a natural part of growth. Emphasize that each setback is a chance to collect insights and improve processes, making the entire group stronger. Imagine a state of affairs where a staff leader shares a recent failure during a gathering. Rather than focusing solely on classes discovered, they emphasize the feelings involved and how it impacted their self-confidence.
Promoting psychological security is not a straightforward task, but there are lots of opportunities to check new strategies in digital environments. I’ve written a quantity of pieces on constructing psychological safety and specific workouts to put it up for sale at work. By constantly working towards these steps, you presumably can build a workplace the place everyone feels snug, valued, and ready to contribute their finest.
This is particularly important in distant groups that will lack the support construction and regular contact of traditional, in-person workplaces. Distributed groups that really feel heard, valued, and linked to their managers and group members usually tend to trust them and work well together. Yes, fostering psychological safety reduces stress and burnout by creating an surroundings where staff feel supported, understood, and valued. Practices like well-being initiatives, active listening, and empowering employees via trust and mental safety at work enhance resilience and job satisfaction. To improve psychological safety on the workplace, leaders should prioritize inclusivity, promote open communication, and mannequin vulnerability.
The solution thus can’t be to demand larger disclosure of private particulars. Management’s accountability is to increase the domain of which work-life issues are secure to lift. Psychological security is needed today to allow productive conversations in new, difficult (and doubtlessly fraught) territory. Creating psychological safety is important for progressive, high-performing, and happy teams.
Many resources hyperlink to third-party websites that aren’t underneath the control of CalHR. CalHR isn’t answerable for the contents of any third-party websites, hyperlinks in third-party sites, or any modifications or updates to third-party sites. The CalHR DEIA Office has listed 5 greatest practices for psychological safety within the workplace. For more information, see the sources listed below from prime industry leaders.
Learn more about how Edstellar can help your organization proactively improve psychological safety and create a thriving, engaged workforce. It requires a thoughtful strategy to gauge workers’ feelings about their workplace. One efficient method is thru confidential surveys, which allow employees to express themselves without fear of judgment or repercussions.
Psychological safety is crucial for creating an environment where staff can thrive. For millennials, this idea is especially necessary, as they search workplaces that value open communication, trust, and inclusivity. For occasion, managers can regularly admit when they have no idea the reply to a query or when they make a mistake. This encourages employees to feel comfy being weak and sharing their own challenges. When leaders model vulnerability, it creates an environment the place employees feel safe to share their concepts and ask for help when wanted.
People who are not frightened of being ridiculed will are inclined to provide you with artistic options that may assist the team and the company. Leaders should focus on recognizing potential conflicts early and addressing them with empathy. Having a transparent process for resolving disagreements turns these moments into opportunities for progress, helping groups improve and build stronger connections. To keep away from others falling into the identical entice of misinterpreting your communication, embrace emojis and gifs, even if they’re not your ordinary style.
Can your staff voice disagreement or admit mistakes without worry of termination? Burnout and stress have especially affected distant groups through the pandemic. People are working longer hours and juggling childcare and virtual studying.
Blame culture additionally promotes indecision, lack of accountability, anxiety, and stress. When workers don’t assume you care about their opinions, they are much less more doubtless to share them. When giving and receiving suggestions is engrained in the company culture, it is much less intimidating. Psychological safety—the belief that one can converse up, take risks, and be authentic with out worry of negative consequences—is essential for team performance, creativity, and overall well-being. In a hybrid surroundings, the place some staff are bodily present and others are distant, creating and maintaining this sense of safety may be tricky however is more necessary than ever. The office panorama has been permanently remodeled by the rise of hybrid teams—a blend of distant and in-office employees working together in the course of common goals.
Ensuring psychological safety for remote hires is essential to creating a constructive work setting. By implementing strategies to construct belief, communicate successfully, help mental well being, and create a constructive work culture, companies can create a sense of group, foster collaboration, and enhance productiveness. With the following tips and finest practices, you possibly can create a psychologically secure work environment in your remote hires and ensure the success of your group. Psychological security may be hugely helpful for teams and leaders all over the place to foster in order to make your office more accommodating for everyone, especially in a distant or hybrid office.
Train leaders to align teams, drive change, and make high-stakes choices. Train groups to construct, run, and support business-critical methods effectively. Whether you stumbled across an incredible developer based mostly in Argentina, or you’ve had your eyes set on building a fully distributed team all along, Oyster makes it easy to go world your way. Psychological safety can even create resilience to alter, allowing staff to adapt better in response to organizational modifications.
The lack of these human-to-human interactions in a hybrid setting can create a disconnect between people, sabotaging their capacity to really feel secure with each other. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of primary needs, employees should feel accepted earlier than they’re able to contribute totally in ways in which enhance their organizations. Promote skill at giving and receiving feedback, and create space for people to raise concerns. Ask colleagues highly effective, open-ended questions, after which hear actively and intently to grasp their feelings and values, in addition to information. Provide opportunities to discover ways to share constructive suggestions to one another and what respectful responses appear to be.
An excess workload coupled with persistently high-stress environments undermines psychological security at work. When workers are underneath an excessive amount of strain, they make more errors but not often own errors or share concerns. Training classes can demystify the concept of psychological security and equip team members with the skills to domesticate it. Use partaking activities that reveal the principles of psychological security in action.
Make sure to reframe it as a way to supply steering, quite than criticize someone’s work. Ask your workers to be as transparent as attainable so that everyone can learn how to acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, and create goals to help orchestrate continuous improvement. Psychological safety is all about constructing belief and empathy inside your relationships. This means treating transparency like a two-way avenue and never demanding your staff to confide in you right away. Your team should also by no means really feel like they need to be another person or continually preserve a picture at work.
These platforms foster collaboration and keep everyone connected, irrespective of the space. Encourage brainstorming sessions the place everyone’s enter is valued, and promote energetic listening to indicate that each voice issues. That is when persons are comfy making mistakes and studying from them, and the team gets stronger. This leads to better decision-making efficiency in workflows and better productivity. Therefore, use polls or anonymous types to make sure all voices are heard. Fostering psychological safety is an ongoing process, particularly in digital environments the place conventional trust-building strategies won’t work as successfully.
Emojis and gifs can help build and keep psychological safety by guaranteeing that your communication is obtained in probably the most positive means potential. To keep psychological security and wellbeing, group members need to be able to remove themselves from work and maintain their own private, home and household area. Remote work typically (although not always) means work invades our houses and our personal area. It’s very straightforward to allow work to additionally invade our personal time, notably if boundaries usually are not well-defined. This might include making certain group members can turn off their telephones after 6pm with out worrying about missing essential messages, or purchasing house office equipment so that they don’t need to work from their kitchen desk. Psychological security is the number one requirement for top performing teams.
Today’s leaders need the power to address complicated challenges in new and revolutionary ways. Strengthen your organizational culture and help your groups establish a local weather of trust and psychological safety at work utilizing our research-based topic modules. No team can really feel psychologically secure at work unless the leadership staff helps them. In right now’s workplace, leaders must remind staff of the value they carry to the group. Amid the increased significance of workplace equality and allyship and the rising loneliness and isolation among virtual groups, it’s by no means been extra critical that leaders create psychological safety amongst their teams.
Further, they’ll nip negativity within the bud, acknowledge staff wins, and include employees in the decision-making process. When leaders mannequin such behaviors, it quickly turns into a norm and firm tradition. Talk together with your team concerning the significance of making psychological safety at work. Connect it to a higher function of higher organizational innovation, group engagement, and inclusion. Model the behaviors you want to see, and set the stage by utilizing inclusive management practices. The rise of the hybrid workplace and virtual work arrangements because the pandemic have made psychological security at work more advanced for leaders right now.
Investing time in understanding what motivates and supports your team is significant. Whether acknowledging their onerous work, providing progress alternatives, or guaranteeing their voice is heard in conferences, every worker’s wants are distinctive. Contributor safety emerges when employees really feel assured in sharing ideas and taking part fully in their roles. When individuals know they’re trusted to contribute, they turn out to be more engaged and take ownership of their work. Psychological security is one thing each chief aspires to combine into their staff, but many battle to fully grasp its meaning or how to go concerning the integration effectively. According to latest McKinsey research, solely 26% of leaders exhibit workplace behaviors that create a sense of psychological safety.
A trust-based tradition boosts motivation, reduces absenteeism, and increases retention. For occasion, staff who belief their employers are 260% more motivated to work, take 41% fewer sick days, and are 50% much less prone to seek for different jobs. Yet, 1 in 4 staff report a lack of belief of their employer, with employers often overestimating belief ranges by nearly 40%.
This exercise presents alternatives for wealthy dialogue round firm culture, and a chance for folks to work in a bodily medium which might help activate their creativity another way. If you’re in a room all collectively, you possibly can have folks stand or sit primarily based on their response to the prompt, or for more physical engagement you’ll have the ability to have them line up on an invisible line on the ground. Start by explaining that in a Round, we create house to hear to from every participant with out interruption. This helps to ensure we honor all voices, and helps us join and study extra about each other before we begin our work collectively.
It can be improved when these in management positions present interest when interacting with workers. Remember, the goal is to create psychological security at work where staff members aren’t nervous about feeling rejected for speaking up. When that’s the case, not solely does interpersonal risk-taking turn into the norm, but groups are additionally extra adaptable within the face of change. There’s a typical misconception about psychological safety and associated ideas. Too often, leaders assume that I’m asking them to “go easy” on workers and to not give constructive feedback. They concern that once we speak about a protected environment, we really imply considered one of “constant comfort,” pampering, and praise, where nobody can be criticized or held accountable for their failures.
An worker who doesn’t meet a deadline may present a perfectly valid excuse, such as having to care for his or her youngster and keep residence with them that day. Despite its incompatibility with conventional office communications, emojis are a nice way to keep away from any misunderstandings by shaping how your messages are perceived on-line. Be certain to not take these strategies as a one-size-fits-all strategy, but quite use them as a starting point that you could tailor to your company’s specific needs. In this way, the group can create higher solutions to the issues they or your customers face. Enable teams to design, deploy, and scale AI options throughout key workflows. It’s very simple to misread a text or e mail when you lack tone of voice and physique language clues.
This concern of speaking up stunts progress, stifles creativity, and prevents teams from reaching their full potential. Psychological safety is the reply to this downside and is now recognized as a crucial driver of innovation, collaboration, employee engagement, and overall staff efficiency, resulting in more creativity . Creating a piece environment the place everybody feels safe to share their thoughts and concepts is essential for team success.
Recreate the “Bring your kids/ pets to work,” however just about, fostering camaraderie. The function of accelerating psychological security is to make remote team members feel protected and encourage courageous conversations. Promoting psychological safety has turn into challenging for remote teams, however there are heaps of methods to create a protected digital house. It is the boldness that one will not be punished or humiliated for talking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. This feeling of safety permits people to feel comfy expressing their opinions and suggestions without fear of repercussion. Lead by instance and be self conscious – doing so makes it a lot easier in your group to follow swimsuit.
Psychological safety is crucial for group cohesion, trustworthy suggestions, and employee wellbeing. Organizations want psychological safety for innovation, purpose, and revenue. Individuals need psychological safety to thrive, really feel a way of belonging, and do one of the best of their careers. Cultivating a psychologically secure work setting is not only good for the underside line – it’s the proper thing to do, at a human degree, for all of us.
Leaders play an important position in modeling openness to feedback and valuing diverse perspectives, ensuring this stage of safety flourishes. A protected office encourages employees to stay centered and present, eliminating the tendency to disengage or count the hours until the day ends. This sense of belonging motivates them to bring their best selves to work every day. Oyster is a global employment platform designed to allow visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing firms give valued worldwide group members the expertise they deserve, with out the similar old complications and expense. Kick-off calls, regular check-ins, digital drinks at the finish of the week, etc. can all be essential rituals that keep a secure sense of routine in staff members’ minds while additionally making them really feel included and appreciated.
The finest method to offer a protected and open setting is to encourage discussion each time possible, corresponding to organising regular roundtable discussions with all staff on the identical day for every week. Older employees would possibly require a bit extra hand-holding to stand up to hurry with these tools. As people, we never cease studying and we solely get issues right by making mistakes. Where there may be low psychological safety, people might be afraid to make mistakes.
To construct psychological safety, examine in with group members regularly, invite participation, ask questions, and ensure that everyone present has had the chance to contribute at least once earlier than ending a gathering. It is created through repetitive and constant actions that permit people to really feel secure opening up. The most power motion a pacesetter can do to create psychological safety is mannequin psychologically safe behavior for others. When a leader models those behaviors – not getting defensive, admitting failure, sharing learnings openly – the remainder of the group usually feels safe to do the identical factor. As vaccinations take hold and we begin to turn the corner on Covid-19, extra employees might be returning to the workplace.
This openness fosters creativity and innovation, permitting everybody to contribute their distinctive perspectives. You’ll find that when people feel safe, they’re more prone to take dangers and have interaction totally in tasks. Creating psychological safety is a foundational step in cultivating a high-performing group tradition. Dr. Amy Edmondson, a pioneer of the concept of psychological safety, characterizes this time period as a “climate of openness” where team members really feel comfortable sharing ideas, admitting errors and difficult the standing quo.
A coaching mindset creates a collaborative and supportive setting the place workers really feel empowered to develop, contribute, and excel. This method not solely enhances individual performance but in addition strengthens company loyalty. Over time, a coaching-focused workplace nurtures belief, innovation, and engagement—key elements for sustaining a thriving and resilient organization. It ensures that employees from diverse backgrounds no matter gender, race, colour, cultural heritage, or political beliefs feel welcome and valued.
At Planio, it took me a while to grasp just how essential tradition is to driving enterprise results and creativity. But just as I felt I had a grasp on it, the pandemic hit, and every little thing changed. You’re there to assist guide your staff in the path of the absolute best end result, not be a micromanaging dictator. So, the next time you have been in a meeting or somebody came to you with an issue, as an alternative of providing up your ideas and options, you stayed silent. We suggest framing this as a necessity for the group to downside solve to develop new methods to work successfully.
Follow all of your departmental insurance policies and procedures before you implement these best practices. Psychological safety isn’t simply good to have — it’s the bottom layer for actual teamwork. You should provide clear work-hours tips, communication expectations, and deliverables. Also, encouraging workers to set wholesome work-life boundaries may help to stop burnout and preserve a optimistic work-life stability.
In this stage, employees really feel secure to ask questions, make mistakes, and explore new abilities with out concern of ridicule. Encouraging learner security is vital for innovation and growth, making it a core element of building a psychologically safe workplace. In virtual teams, psychological security refers to the shared perception that staff members can voice their ideas without fear of unfavorable penalties. This is essential for constructing belief in remote environments, the place efficient communication usually faces unique challenges. Leaders who grasp these concepts can higher handle the hurdles of digital collaboration. We should promote equality and inclusiveness to minimize back the potential of hybrid groups fracturing into office-based and distant sub-groups, who more and more find less in common with one another.
Plus, your team doesn’t always really feel like they have the opportunity to, or can give suggestions to you, which is a vital part of fostering psychological security. To create a psychologically protected distant work tradition, you have to begin by establishing your company’s core values. These ideas are the inspiration of your group and information your people’s decisions and behaviors. When group members align on shared ideals, they’re more prone to work towards making a safer, extra inclusive office.
This transparency results in stronger relationships and better collaboration. When you present honesty and admit your personal mistakes, your team feels protected doing the same. Encouraging open dialogue means building an surroundings where staff members feel safe sharing their concepts and considerations. Regular check-ins – whether or not for quick updates or extra in-depth discussions – assist be positive that each team member has an opportunity to contribute. The greatest approach to communicate in any given scenario depends on so many elements – the context, our preferences, our entry wants and the urgency and sensitivity of what needs to be shared.
Most of the habits and practices I give attention to are to make the work less onerous and less lonely.We’ve moved our default communication with one another from vocalizing to Slack messages. When we’re bodily together, I’m more likely to ask “silly questions” before being ready to give it a second thought. Often I’m not seeking to discuss with somebody in particular, however any group member. Maybe it’s to brainstorm solutions or maybe it’s a sentry error I’m struggling to reason about. By using a group handle I’m inviting anybody interested and obtainable to participate.
Employees who feel psychologically safe are also more prone to report points or concerns earlier than they become unbearable. All this leads to improved worker retention and lowers prices spent on absenteeism and turnover. During your subsequent group assembly, hold a dialog with your team concerning the significance of feedback.
It may even help that quiet staff member really feel valued and more likely to contribute at the subsequent assembly. Organizations must spend money on comprehensive manager improvement packages emphasizing communication expertise, conflict resolution, and emotional intelligence. These abilities enable managers to create a safe and supportive environment the place team members really feel valued and revered.
When staff can join the work they do to the one that benefits from their labor, not solely has performance been confirmed to increase but more objective is discovered within the work. For example, scholarship fundraisers felt more motivated to safe donations after they had contact with scholarship recipients. When leaders share their thoughts a couple of matter and then ask for the team’s opinion, it’s too late.
Creating duties, viewing every other’s tasks, and collaborating on them is a clean undertaking in ClickUp, fostering a sense of teamwork and transparency. Creating a robust sense of cooperation and group spirit is essential for a productive work surroundings. Establishing work-life boundaries and offering flexible work preparations can reduce worker overload, stop burnout, and promote a constructive work-life steadiness. Building trust inside teams involves constant actions that show respect, honesty, and transparency. This cannot be careworn enough—psychological safety is as essential as bodily security and should be treated as such.
By modeling psychological security, you presumably can create a tradition the place staff really feel comfy expressing themselves. This could be achieved by creating clear expectations for respectful conduct, open communication, and constructive feedback. Frequent appreciation fosters inclusivity and strengthens team belief by making employees feel valued and related. According to the Achievers Workforce Institute (AWI), 53% of employees who regularly obtain recognition from their managers report higher levels of trust, psychological safety, and a sense of belonging. It highlights the highly effective position appreciation performs in making a supportive workplace. Fostering innovation must be a priority to construct a very dynamic and forward-thinking group.
They ought to prioritize mentoring by dedicating time to understanding and supporting their staff members. Encourage leaders to actively listen throughout one-on-one conferences and provide opportunities aligned with staff’ objectives and aspirations. To foster a supportive and productive workplace, prioritize understanding and assembly your staff members’ preferences. Managers typically make choices without consulting their workers, leading to disengagement. Ask workers about their most well-liked communication styles, desired frequency of one-on-one conferences, and feedback expectations.
If they’re afraid of being micromanaged, treated poorly, or just ignored, they will be unable to do their jobs properly. While belief and psychological security are very important for any team—Google’s Project Aristotle discovered that psychological safety was the top issue driving high-performing teams—hybrid teams have some distinctive concerns. With the rising benefits of psychologically safe work environments, leaders ought to provoke an intentional effort to integrate psychological security into every facet of the organization. From onboarding to efficiency reviews, psychological security has to be embedded into the organization’s tradition quite than changing into a separate initiative.
Diversity, curiosity, and collaboration are all components that support the chance for a corporation to thrive. The aim of a group is to lift each other up and really feel comfy sufficient to share any gaps in knowledge so that others can help fill them. Psychological safety can usually really feel like it’s about throwing out the rulebook.
To build trust, promote collaboration, and foster a way of belonging between your remote team members, you also wants to take into consideration the communication channels you employ. Some of your folks may not really feel comfy opening up over a Zoom call to managers they’ve by no means met. But they’re more prone to bring up any issues with their fellow staff in a group that can then hold leaders within the loop. But with distributed teams, there are fewer alternatives for face-to-face interaction. This could make it more durable to ascertain connections and empathy between friends, or between teams and management. Simply put, psychological security is a should for building healthy and productive relationships, groups, and organizations.
Resist the temptation to revert to extra conventional, “lazy” kinds of administration by measuring outputs corresponding to paperwork created, traces of code written, tickets closed or occasions booked. Google’s Project Aristotle, again in 2013, showed that the co-location of teams had no impression on their performance so long as they possessed psychological safety. That is, virtual groups can carry out simply as extremely, if not much more so, than groups in the same place – but psychological security is crucial.
Psychological security creates a protected house for workers from various backgrounds to share their opinions, experiences, and ideas openly. Encouraging alternative viewpoints promotes inclusive and dynamic teams that are fun to work on. Unfortunately, WFH and hybrid working makes psychological safety something however straightforward. Finally, many ERGs educate and raise awareness round points related to variety, equality, and inclusion (DE
If you’re able to say “yes” to all of those questions, likelihood is you’ve an excellent level of psychological safety on your staff. In this information, we’re covering what psychological safety is, why it matters, and how to build it in your remote staff. The good news is that digital environments have as many opportunities to construct stronger groups as they do challenges. Online, criticism is really easy and tempting to share – it’s simply constructive feedback, right?
To develop a clear and protected workplace, ensure that information is shared overtly, is well accessible, and promotes mutual understanding. An inclusive approach strengthens teamwork, boosts morale, and drives sustained organizational success. A workplace built on mutual belief and respect free from blame allows employees and managers to feel safe and authentic.
That strategy to communication needs to proceed with hybrid groups and not just with the remote members. Those in the workplace will also have their issues and issues, particularly if there is a situation where remote work continues to be seen as a perk, so office-based workers could really feel they are not equal to their remote peers. Psychological security refers again to the feeling of being ready to categorical oneself without fear of negative penalties, similar to ridicule, punishment, or ostracism. Remote hires are particularly weak to feeling isolated, disconnected, and unsupported. This can result in decreased motivation, job satisfaction, and productiveness. To guarantee a psychologically secure work surroundings for remote hires, companies have to implement a range of methods and best practices.
When workers feel psychologically protected, they are more likely to share ideas, admit mistakes, and ask for assist, which ends up in better decision-making, innovation, and stronger team dynamics. Let us know if there’s any method we can help…” Be open about your intentions to be inclusive and helpful so that folks don’t see requests for his or her presence as a rebuke. At the identical time, be able to firmly censure those that inappropriately take benefit of shared personal data. For HR professionals and people managers, mastering the art of making psychological security within the workplace is important for fostering innovation, collaboration, and trust. This article offers actionable insights into building a psychologically protected workplace, equipping managers with instruments to enhance team morale and productiveness. When you create an environment of psychological security, your group members can share their opinions without worry of judgment.
Outside of these meetings, there are plenty of ongoing actions you’ll have the ability to take as a leader. It might be that you have to make some organizational modifications to help employees reach their objectives and construct high performance into your team’s DNA. While it’s robust to draw a causal line from psychological security to income, research signifies that without psychological security, income shall be short-lived (if they arrive at all).
On the opposite, it encourages folks to have robust conversations, determine errors, and take ownership of improving their operating system. During that time, people are allowed to vent within the open with out fear of retaliation. At the tip of the session, everybody proposes options to get rid of the frustrations and issues that had been made public. Getting to know your team members increases coronary heart trust (the concept that you just believe folks could have your curiosity at heart). If we don’t provide the proper conditions to shift from reflection to motion, folks can quickly fall into a sample of detachment.
The key’s to create a secure house the place trustworthy feedback is welcomed and appreciated. By reinforcing that suggestions is a software for progress, you encourage group members to share insights and be taught from each other actively. Consider holding regular check-ins that particularly invite open discussions.