“A belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” -Amy Edmonson
What is psychological safety
It is the belief that mistakes are opportunities, well-considered risks are valuable – the belief that nothing bad will happen if you make a mistake (such as poor evaluations, being judged negatively by a colleague, or being given work that is deemed less valuable going forward).
It may not always be predictive, but the fear of consequence is still there.
It affects to what extent people are governed by fear, consequences, shame or pressure, instead of autonomy, creativity and security.
It is essential to high performing teams as people working in teams that have good psychological safety are free to take sensible risks, suggest improvements to their current process and push back on unreasonable demands.
What psychological safety is NOT
- Psychological safety is not a requirement of the workplace
- A lack of psychological safety is a concern but does not mean there is bullying, harassment or inter-personal disrespect – it is most often a cultural and/or system artefact
- Psychological safety does not mean a hyper-awareness of people’s feelings and emotions; however, openness to share feelings is part of it
How do I know if my teams are psychologically safe?
Psychological safety may be difficult to notice as management, but if you observe carefully, some of its symptoms become apparent. These are: Lack of push back, lack of creativity, a mismatch between real world experience of teams like employee attrition versus what people are telling you about how they feel.
Hiring in experts to assess this for you may be the most effective way of ensuring no bias, and ensuring that if leadership also suffer from low psychological safety that this doesn’t diminish the accuracy of your findings.
What’s in it for us?
In a knowledge industry, the work that people do is novel, complicated and creative. The expertise and specialties exist at the bottom of the organization, and it is the people doing the work that are best placed to determine how this complex new work can be performed best. It is organizational and/or management hubris to expect that the processes and practices can be universally-define and enforced.
Organizations stand to benefit from the process improvement outcomes that result from employees’ creative ideas, innovative behaviors, and proactive suggestions (see the Oxford Bibliographies in Management Studies articles “Creativity”, “Innovative Behavior”, and “Employee Voice.”)
“Employees, however, may recognize risks associated with such activities: an idea may not be accepted or, if accepted, may not produce the intended results, a suggestion may benefit some stakeholders at the expense of others, etc. Psychological safety reflects employee beliefs about the safety of interpersonal risk taking; employees who perceive their work environments as psychologically safe are more likely to take risks due to the reduced fear of negative repercussions”.
From: Psychological Safety - Ryan L. Klinger, Nathapon Siangchokyoo, Mahdi Forghani Bajestani (DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199846740-0154)
