What Is Psychological Safety?
Author: James Conlon
Psychological safety is a popular topic. Many organisations I have worked with over the last few years have grappled with it. Whilst most see the benefit, people's interpretation of what it is and how it can be achieved vary greatly. This difference was highlighted at a networking event I attended recently. The theme for discussion was 'How Psychological Safety Can Benefit Your Organisation?' After some debate, the majority's position was that a psychologically safe environment is one where colleagues are not made to feel uncomfortable or vulnerable by the actions or words of others.
Now, this philosophy has a lot of merit. Most of us want to work in a supportive and compassionate environment. But is it realistic or helpful to create an environment where causing discomfort isn’t permitted? When I look back on my career, the times when I learnt the most tended to be times of greatest discomfort. Receiving difficult feedback from peers or a correction from a line manager can be very uncomfortable but without it, our career development would be greatly hindered. And if avoiding discomfort becomes the goal, how do we challenge, disagree and debate?
I once worked with a company that created a psychological safety policy giving everyone the right to stop a conversation if it made them feel ‘psychologically unsafe’. [They have given their permission for me to share this story]. I observed this being implemented frequently in meetings. When someone didn’t like the course of a discussion they would simply say ‘psychological safety’ and we all had to move to the next agenda item. The senior leadership were proud of the culture they had created but were concerned about productivity. On the ground there was frustration. People felt it was impossible to change the status quo.
I worked with the organisation to explore how debate and disagreement could be encouraged whilst maintaining respect and common values. We ran communication skills workshops and facilitated discussions between teams on how they wished to be engaged and created Team Charters. In a short period delivery barriers started to come down and collaboration between departments increased.
“ Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas. ”
When I think of psychological safety I think of the work undertaken by Dr Amy Edmonson and Julia Rozovsky
The Fearless Organisation
Dr Amy Edmonson examined the negative results associated with organisations who’s culture deterred employees from speaking out.
Her book, ‘The Fearless Organisation’, a must-read for any manager or leader, documents many expensive and often tragic mistakes that could have been easily avoided if people lower in the organisation had raised their concerns.
She defines psychological safety as :
“ The shared belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. “
This suggests psychological safety is about creating an environment where people are free to express their concerns and disagree, rather than avoiding discomfort.
Her findings were echoed by Google’s research into team performance.
Project Aristotle
Project Aristotle was Google’s 2-year study into what makes a successful team. Led by Julia Rozovsky the study analysed 250 attributes of 180 teams. The hypothesis was that team success was a combination of high-performing individuals, an experienced manager and unlimited free resources. The results did not support this. Instead, they found that their high-performing teams all had the following 5 five characteristics.
The researchers noticed a strong correlation between team members' ability to respectfully challenge and disagree and high levels of productivity and innovation. They believed that ‘psychological safety’ underpinned the other four characteristics.
The following are principles I implement when working with organisations to improve psychological safety, and consequently productivity and innovation.
