Psychological Safety
Following the pervious post on trust, trust and Psychological Safety are definitely intertwined (and to a large extent one feeds the other), they are slightly different concepts: think in terms of Trust being about “how much I believe others”, whereas Psychological Safety is about “how much slack I believe others will cut me”.
Similarly, the level of trust within an organization can
also have a profound impact on productivity and its overall culture. Stephen
M.R. Covey (Speed of Trust) talks of a “trust dividend” in organization where
trust is high; and a “trust tax” where it is low. He proposes a relationship
of:
High Trust = Lower
Effort + Faster Speed of Delivery; and
Low Trust = Higher
Effort + Slower Speed of Delivery.
Many people think that Trust is like Jell-o: you can see and
feel it, but it is so squishy that you can’t really change it.
In this post I cover Psychological Safety for creating team
effectiveness.
The concept of psychological safety appeared half a century
ago in the organizational science field, but in recent years, empirical
research flourished. Previous literature has shown that Team Psychological Safety
(TPS) has a direct influence on work performance. Besides, more authors insisted that
organizational support, safety climate, and performance are unquestionably
related, implying that psychological safety might involve benefits that extend
its influence on work engagement.
As Amy Edmondson, professor of leadership and management at
Harvard Business School and the most prominent academic researcher in this
field, pointed out, Team Psychological Safety (TPS) is the engine of
performance, not fuel. Various factors affect the mechanism in the underlying
process. What we need to understand is “how” psychological safety leads to team
performance. What is necessary for identifying such mechanisms are
(i)
extended, sustained
research at group level and
(ii)
expansion of the studies in
various contexts (e.g., country and culture).
Notably, research conducted at
the group level is insufficient compared to those conducted at the individual
level in psychological safety literature. If related work continues and data
accumulate, the theoretical background to examine the incremental validity
issue at the group level will be intensified.
Psychological safety has received
a lot of press in the last couple of years, thanks largely to Google, which has
done exciting research into what makes teams effective. Pioneered by Amy
Edmonson of Harvard Business School, psychological safety seems so intuitive
and accessible that managers and teams have been quick to seize on it without
always understanding what’s involved.
Team psychological safety (TPS) is a shared belief
that people feel safe about the interpersonal risks that arise concerning their
behaviors in a team context (Edmondson, 2018). “Project Aristotle,” which
explored over 250 team-level variables, found that successful Google teams have
five elements in common (Google, 2015):
1-
psychological safety,
2-
dependability,
3-
structure and clarity,
4-
meaning, and
5-
impact of work
The findings argue that psychological safety is the most
critical factor and a prerequisite to enabling the other four elements.
However, surprisingly, despite the importance of that psychological factor,
only 47% of employees across the world described that their workplaces are
psychologically safe and healthy.
The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological
safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake.
Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking,
speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of
having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to market
breakthroughs. So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team?
First, approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary. When conflicts
come up, avoid triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by asking, “How could we
achieve a mutually desirable outcome?” Speak human-to-human, but anticipate
reactions, plan countermoves, and adopt a learning mindset, where you’re truly
curious to hear the other person’s point of view. Ask for feedback to
illuminate your own blind spots. If you create this sense of psychological safety
on your own team starting now, you can expect to see higher levels of
engagement, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning
and development opportunities, and better performance.
Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is
safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In psychologically safe teams, team members
feel accepted and respected.
·
Psychological Safety
— Can we take risks on the team without feeling insecure or embarrassed? Team
members need to know that their management and team fellows will support them.
This makes them comfortable in taking risks and even to fail.
·
Dependability — Can
we count on each other to do high-quality work on time? Everyone needs to
contribute to the best of their ability and deliver high-quality work within in
the constraints and resources agreed on. Dependability is synonym with
commitment and accountability to do the job.
·
Structure and Clarity
— Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear? Everyone needs to
understand what part they play on the team.
·
Meaning of Work — Do
we know that the work we’re doing matters? Individual personal satisfaction is
directly linked to the importance and meaning, of the job we perform.
·
Impact of Work — How
does the work that people are doing actually benefit the company? Team members
want to feel that they are not simply wasting their time when doing things.
This again supports many ideas in Daniel Pinks’ book.
According to Google, if you can create an environment of
psychological safety, where “team members feel safe to take risks and be
vulnerable in front of each other”, it will underpin everything else needed for
extraordinary performance, such as dependability, structure, and clarity.
The most crucial and at the same time most difficult point
in creating psychological safety: being comfortable with being wrong. The
reason why it is difficult is many of us have been taught to avoid that at all
cost (Lauren Joseph, 2016).
To create psychological safety try to establish
·
Being wrong is OK. –
Most organizations avoid failing like a plague. Often, failure is associated
with humiliation, blame, and shame. Create a safe space by decoupling an
opinion or argument from the personality of the person espousing it. For this
create a healthy debate culture use the roleplaying of devil’s advocate where
the team focuses on the facts and ideas as opposed to the person bringing them.
·
Don't play the Blame
Game. – The essence of the blame game is finger pointing and blaming people
being accountable or being alleged accountable.
In their article “Making Dumb Groups
Smarter”, Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie (2019) explain that managers view
failure as an opportunity to “point fingers, humiliate the guilty and throw a
few overboard”. In contrast to focusing on blame, psychologically safe
environments embrace mistakes and treat failure as learning opportunity –
keyword "failure bow". As a leader encourage your employees to take
risks. And show gratitude for the work and effort invested, regardless of a
negative outcome.
·
Regard outlying views.
– Organizations and teams tend to group thinking and common knowledge effect.
This means that outlying views are ignored. As a manager listen actively for
outlying or contrarian views and reward them. Even if the idea is not perfect.
If you acknowledge and demonstrate authentic interest in understanding its
merits, you demonstrate to the rest of the group that uncommon knowledge is
welcome and valued.
Studies on psychological safety point to wide-ranging
benefits, including increased confidence, creativity, trust and productivity. A
2017 Gallup report found that if organizations increase psychological safety,
it makes employees more engaged in their work and can lead to a 12% increase in
productivity (J.Herway 2017).
What is psychological safety?
Timothy R. Clark has contributed to the concept of
psychological safety with the 4 Stages of Psychological Safety framework. He
defines psychological safety as "a condition in which human beings feel
(1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, and (4) safe to
challenge the status quo – all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized,
or punished in some way." (Clark, 2019). TPS is a group variable that
describes team context. In the last decade, the concept of psychological safety
started attracting attention as a primary factor in predicting TEF.
The theory adequately describes the mechanism of how
psychological safety leads to its outcome variables and the relationship
between behavioral changes and cognitive beliefs. Psychological safety at the
group level as a model of team effectiveness framework (TEF) uses some forms of
the input–process–output (I–P–O) model as a theoretical framework.
Researchers in academia and in business have found that
these kinds of questions give us an insight into a very important dimension of
teamwork: psychological safety. A team feels psychologically safe to its
members when they share the belief that within the team they will not be
exposed to interpersonal or social threats to their self or identity, their
status or standing and to their career or employment, when engaging in learning
behaviors such as asking for help, seeking feedback, admitting errors or lack
of knowledge, trying something new or voicing work-related dissenting views.
Interpersonal or social threats are things like: being branded negatively, e.g.
as ignorant, incompetent, or disruptive; being responded to with ridicule,
rejection, blame, disrespect, anger, intimidation, and disregard; or, being
punished e.g. with negative performance appraisals, unfavorable work
assignments or reduced promotion prospects. Research has shown that the absence
of such threats is strongly associated with team members bringing their whole
self to work, expressing their creativity, talents and skills without
self-censoring and self-silencing and learning actively on the job developing
their capabilities and those of their team.
Edmondson defines psychological safety as “the shared belief
among team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” and
explains that “team psychological safety involves but goes beyond interpersonal
trust; it describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and
mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves”. In the
simplest of terms, you feel psychologically safe in your team if you feel at
ease with admitting to a mistake, pointing out a mistake made by a team member,
speaking about work-related matters without censoring yourself and trying out
new things.
Having psychologically safe teams can improve learning,
creativity and performance within organizations. Within a healthcare context,
psychological safety supports patient safety by enabling engagement in quality
improvement and encouraging staff to speak up about errors.
When psychological safety is present, team members think
less about the potential negative consequences of expressing a new or different
idea than they would otherwise. As a result, they speak up more when they feel
psychologically safe and are motivated to improve their team or company.
Is your team at work psychologically safe?
Think for a moment about your work and the work team you are
a part of. Ask yourself the following questions:
·
Do people feel comfortable
in team meetings asking about things they do not know or they do not
understand, or do they generally try to maintain an image of perfect knowledge
about work matters?
·
Do people feel comfortable
in team meetings raising difficult issues, concerns and reservations about
specific pieces of work, about ‘how things are done here’ or about how well the
team works together or do these conversations take place informally outside
team meetings?
·
What happens when mistakes,
near misses, failures and critical incidents happen? Is people’s first reaction
to distance themselves from them so they are not blamed or are they seen as
opportunities for team learning?
·
How often do people give
and receive feedback? Do people invite others who are not members of the team
to give feedback on the team’s work?
·
In team meetings, are all
team members invited to contribute irrespective of their rank or job title?
·
Do you feel that your
skills and talents are valued and utilised? Are you encouraged to contribute in
any way you feel able to? Or do you feel you are you expected to stay strictly
within the parameters of your role and to seek permission for doing anything
else?
·
Have there been times when
you felt that your contribution and efforts were compromised by others in the
team?
·
Do people ask each other
and the team for help when they need it?
·
In team meetings, do people
feel comfortable expressing disagreement and offering dissenting views? Do team
meetings include discussions and debates about work matters?
·
How much do you know of
your team members as people outside work?
What picture do your answers to these questions paint of
your team? How much would you say this picture relates to how happy you are
with your team and your place in it, and to your team’s performance?
Who is accountable for psychological safety?
Who is accountable for psychological safety in a team? An
obvious response is the leader. Groundbreaking work Harvard's David McLelland
in the 1960s suggested that 50 to 75 percent of the variability in team climate
is based on the leader's behaviors.
To increase psychological safety, leaders must actively
listen and must not disparage the person or their ideas. Even your tone of
voice when you thank the team member for their input can impact the feeling of
psychological safety if you come across as belittling the person.
Leaders can build psychological safety by creating the right
climate, mindsets, and behaviors within their teams. In our experience, those
who do this best act as catalysts, empowering and enabling other leaders on the
team—even those with no formal authority—to help cultivate psychological safety
by role modeling and reinforcing the behaviors they expect from the rest of the
team.
The top leadership development is equally important,
according to the data researched by McKinsey (2021), fostering psychological
safety at scale begins with companies’ most senior leaders developing and
embodying the leadership behaviors they want to see across the organization.
Many of the same skills that promote positive team-leader behaviors can also be
developed among senior leaders to promote inclusiveness. For example,
open-dialogue skills and development of social relationships within teams are
also important skill sets for senior leaders. In addition, several skills are
more important at the very top of the organization. Situational and cultural
awareness, or understanding how beliefs can be developed based on selective
observations and the norms in different cultures, are both linked with senior
leaders’ inclusiveness.
According to the data, fostering psychological safety at
scale begins with companies’ most senior leaders developing and embodying the
leadership behaviors they want to see across the organization. Many of the same
skills that promote positive team-leader behaviors can also be developed among
senior leaders to promote inclusiveness. For example, open-dialogue skills and
development of social relationships within teams are also important skill sets
for senior leaders.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
The 4 stages of psychological safety is a universal pattern
that reflects the natural progression of human needs in social settings. When
teams, organizations, and social units of all kinds progress through the four
stages, they create deeply inclusive environments, accelerate learning,
increase contribution and performance, and stimulate innovation (Clark, 2019).
·
Stage 1: Inclusion Safety
·
Stage 2: Learner Safety
·
Stage 3: Contributor Safety
·
Stage 4: Challenger Safety
Stage 1: Inclusion Safety
Inclusion safety satisfies the basic human need to connect
and belong. Whether it’s our first day of school, we’ve taken a new job, or
joined a neighborhood book club, when we have inclusion safety, we feel
accepted by a social unit and can interact with its members without fear of
rejection, embarrassment, or punishment. We’re given a shared identity with
others and destigmatized as an outsider. In fact, the need to be accepted
precedes the need to be heard. Granting inclusion safety to another person is a
moral imperative that activates our humanity. Only the threat of harm can
excuse us from this responsibility. When we create inclusion safety for others,
regardless of our differences, we welcome them into our society simply because
they’re human.
Stage 2: Learner Safety
Learner safety satisfies the basic human need to learn and
grow. It allows us to feel safe as we engage in all aspects of the learning
process–asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, experimenting, and
even making mistakes, not if but when we make them. We all bring some
inhibition and anxiety to the learning process. Who hasn’t hesitated to raise
their hand to ask a question in a group setting for fear of feeling dumb?
Because learning is an interplay of the head and the heart, learner safety
cultivates confidence, resilience, and independence in that process.
Conversely, a lack of learner safety triggers the self-censoring instinct,
shuts down learning, and thrusts the individual into a mode of managing
personal risk . When we create learner safety for others, we give encouragement
to learn in exchange for a willingness to learn.
Stage 3: Contributor Safety
Contributor safety satisfies the basic human need to
contribute and make a difference. When contributor safety is present, we feel
safe to contribute as a full member of the team, using our talents and
abilities to participate in the value-creation process. We have a natural
desire to apply what we’ve learned to make a meaningful contribution. Why do we
dislike micromanagers? Because they don’t give us the freedom and discretion to
reach our potential. Why do we like empowering bosses? Because they encourage
us and draw out our best efforts. The more we contribute, the more confidence
and competence we develop. When we create contributor safety for others, we
empower them with autonomy and guidance in exchange for effort and results.
Stage 4: Challenger Safety
Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to change
and improve. It’s the support and confidence we need to ask questions such as,
“Why do we do it this way?” “What if we tried this?” “May I suggest a better
way?” It allows us to feel safe to challenge the status quo without retribution
or the risk of damaging our personal standing or reputation. Challenger safety provides
respect and permission to dissent and disagree when we think something needs to
change and it’s time to say so. It allows us to overcome the pressure to
conform and gives us a license to innovate and be creative.
Ways to Promote Psychological Safety At Work?
·
Admit what you don’t know
·
Respond productively to
problems
·
Get comfortable with new
technology
·
Have a sense of purpose
·
Engage With Consideration
And Authenticity
·
Don't Rush To Fix Things
·
Lead With Empathy, Not Ego
·
Be Open To Feedback
·
Build Trust By Being
Transparent
·
Approach Issues From A
Curious Perspective
·
Build A Culture Of Team,
Not Talent
·
Build A Culture Where
Mistakes Are Okay
·
Actively Listen
·
Create A Sense Of Belonging
·
Help Employees Meet Their
Basic Needs
·
Foster Support Between
Co-Workers
·
Promote Openness And
Inclusivity
·
Value Your Staff As Humans,
Not Resources
Psychological safety is the number one attribute of
high-performing teams. Below is a set of
practices that have been proven to be successful.
Develop Ground Rules:
As a foundation, it’s critical to establish a set of ground
rules either upon the formation of a new team, appointment of a new leader,
significant team turnover, or as part of the annual planning process. Many
teams already define Team Values, but it’s critical to include attributes that
ensure psychological safety, and as with all team rules, you will want to make
sure the process in creating these rules is iterative and allows for input from
all team members (e.g. not simply a management “decree”). Keith Ferrazi, CEO of
Ferrazzi Greenlight, advocates for establishing something called Red Flag Rules
with executive teams. A sample set of ground rules that address psychological
safety might be:
We do not interrupt fellow teammates
No idea is dismissed out-of-hand
Everyone has a platform to voice their opinion and no one
person has a monopoly on airtime (Some conference call software like
UberConference even tell you how long each person spoke during a call)
Ideas and proposals are debated in the open, not in secret
We do not talk behind each other’s backs
Lead by Example: Once
the ground rules have been established, it’s imperative that leaders lead by
example and model a new set of behaviors aimed at boosting psychological safety
within the team. The good news is that as a leader, you are firmly in control
of establishing psychological safety within your team. One of the most
impactful ways of doing so is by being vulnerable to your team. This isn’t to
say you open the proverbial kimono all the way, but you do provide a sense of
your concerns as well as stories of growth and failure on your way to gaining
your current role. Doing so will help establish authenticity and demonstrate
that being vulnerable isn’t a sign of weakness. In fact, being vulnerable has many
other benefits as highlighted in the HBR Article What Bosses Gain by Being
Vulnerable.
Make it Personal:
As leader, be sure to make time during team interactions to
allow for connecting on a more personal level. Doing so will create a sense of
shared understanding and empathy for one another. Ultimately, this will turn a
group of executives into a team that cares about one another’s development and
success. One way to foster more personal interactions is by using storytelling
as the foundation for the conversation during team dinners. Instead of leading
dinners consisting of idle chit chat and impersonal updates, try asking a
thought provoking question such as “What do you want your personal and/or
professional legacy to be?” as the basis for the conversation. As the leader,
make sure you go first to model this behavior for the team and set the tone in
terms of the depth of sharing.
Assign a Referee:
During periods of time and performance pressure (which seems
to be the norm these days), teams will often fall short in living up to their
team values and following the ground rules established previously. One way to
maintain alignment with team values and ground rules is to assign a meeting
referee whose job it is to call out violations of ground rules (e.g. talking
over someone) and values which ultimately undermine an atmosphere of
psychological safety.
Encourage and Enforce:
As a leader, it is not only important to model behaviors
that create psychological safety, but also to acknowledge and celebrate team
members who do so. For example, you can use the final few minutes of meetings
to celebrate team members who took risks and stepped out of their comfort zone
to provide perspective on a topic or team challenge. The flip side is enforcing
discipline to the rules by making sure that team members are held accountable
to those rules. Lastly, it means empowering the “Referee” above to hold you
accountable to those same rules.
Measure It: In order to keep it top of mind, team
leaders can establish metrics that measure psychological safety over time. A
simple way to do this is to integrate questions that assess the overall level
of psychological safety within the team. Sample questions may ask respondents
to rate how strongly they agree with the following statements:
·
I feel comfortable voicing
my opinions, even when they may be unpopular
·
I always have an
opportunity to share my perspective on an issue or topic
·
My teammates are present
and actively listening to each team member’s contributions to a conversation
Cass R. Sunstein and Reid Hastie (2014) Making Dumb Groups
Smarter, Available online at: https://hbr.org/2014/12/making-dumb-groups-smarter
Clark, T. R. (2019). The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety.
Available online at: http://adigaskell.org/2019/11/17/the-4-stages-of-psychological-safety/
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating
Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Edmondson, A. 1999. Psychological Safety and Learning
Behaviour in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44
Frazier, M. L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan,
A., and Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological safety: a meta-analytic review and
extension. Pers. Psychol. 70, 113–165. doi: 10.1111/peps.12183
Google (2015). Five Keys to A Successful Google Team.
Available online at: https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team
Herway, J (2017) How to Create a Culture of Psychological
Safety, Available online at: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236198/create-culture-psychological-safety.aspx
McKinsey (2021) Psychological safety and the critical role
of leadership development, Available online at:
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/psychological-safety-and-the-critical-role-of-leadership-development#
https://medium.com/@johnpcutler/of-course-psychological-safety-but-how-21adb8d97ba7
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