A beginner’s guide to psychological safety
It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted. I’ve been busy working, reading, making calls, signing petitions, making donations, and talking to friends and family. One of the most important things I’ve learned over the past few years of activist work is to use your unique gifts for activism. Not everyone has to do the same thing and there’s no one way to be an activist. You build websites? March? Call? Write? Paint? Legislate? Design? Great. Activism needs all of those things. I write but I also steward space. It took a while for me to realize that that stewardship was its own form of activism: I create, take care of, and grow spaces dedicated to inclusion and equity. I listen. I cede power. And I convince or guide others who might not be dedicated to equity to at least break down the barriers they have built if not fully design a new and equitable system.
So what does that have to do with psychological safety? Well, as soon as I first saw the term defined, I realized: that’s what I do. I create environments that are psychologically safe for marginalized people to speak, act, and even exist. Why is that activism? It is work. It is action. Our existing systems are strong, like mountains, and I am rain, carving rivers.
I’ve seen so many posts in the past few weeks from companies and leaders saying they’re learning, going to do better, support Black people, and so much more—right next to tweets and posts from BIPOC at those companies saying their time there was full of racism and microaggressions. You can talk all day, but if your actions and environment don’t match up, your words mean nothing.
Have you ever wanted to ask a question or make a suggestion, but instead found yourself reluctant to shake up the status quo out of fear of retribution or admonishment? In a psychologically safe environment, you would feel empowered to speak up. If you’re on a team or part of an organization that doesn’t have a culture of psychological safety, you might not. In this two-part post, I’ll define psychological safety and show you why it’s the most important quality of any successful team. In part two, I’ll tell you how to assess your team’s level of psychological safety and show you what you can do to increase it.
What is psychological safety?
If you’re reading about psychological safety, you’ll eventually come across work by Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School and author of the books “Teaming” and “The Fearless Organization.” In her TEDx talk “Building a psychologically safe workplace,” she defines psychological safety as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”
She first started researching psychological safety when she was studying medical error and how learning occurs on teams. She was surprised to find that the better teams were making more mistakes, not fewer. Then she realized that the better teams weren’t actually making more mistakes: they just had an environment or a culture where people were more willing and able to talk about them.
Psychological safety means you feel like you can speak up, make mistakes, share ideas, or give feedback without being punished or humiliated. Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Most teams will say that input is welcome, come to leadership with any ideas, mistakes are how we learn, and there are no stupid questions. But how many match their actions to their words? Because people are making mistakes. That’s what humans do. In an environment that lacks psychological safety, they’re just expending a lot of energy to cover them up—energy they could be using to be more effective at their jobs, innovate, collaborate, or I dunno, get a good night’s sleep.
Think about the last time you felt psychologically unsafe. Maybe your boss made a mistake in a report that was going out to a client, but the last time you corrected him, he snapped at you in front of the team or said something like, “If I need your input, I’ll ask for it.” Maybe a professor missed a slide in a presentation and when you pointed it out, they got mad. Maybe you forgot to send something on time so you didn’t tell anyone or ask for help. Maybe you made a suggestion about a project to a coworker and you later heard them badmouthing you in the breakroom. After these things happened, did you ever speak up again?
It’s easy to tell someone to have a thicker skin or get over it, but time and again, studies have shown that our behavior is influenced by our experience. If we have a bad experience speaking up at work or sharing our ideas, it affects our future behavior—and those patterns are really hard to break.
No team or company outwardly says “your input or ideas aren’t welcome here” or “we hate innovation and progress” or “we’d rather you shut up than try to help us get better” (if they are saying that, RUN!). Instead, organizations say they love diversity of thought, they have giant tenets about innovation and disruption spray painted across their walls, and they list lengthy manifestos about embracing change and how much they value input on their websites. But if you don’t walk the walk, all the words in the world aren’t going to save your culture.
Most people are conditioned to assess and avoid risk. After being burned, they’re not going to jeopardize their job or worklife just to share a bright idea or admit a mistake—and your organization will suffer because of it.
Why is psychological safety important?
When I ask people what makes a team successful, I get all sorts of answers: a successful team is made up of rockstars, a successful team works hard, a successful team takes risks. Those are true, but above all, a successful team is psychologically safe.
Google’s People Operations team conducted a two year study that they shared in 2015 that shared the five dynamics of successful teams: impact of work, meaning of work, structure and clarity, dependability, and psychological safety—and they found that “psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dynamics”. Successful teams can’t take risks without psychological safety and they also won’t admit mistakes, embrace change, or give effective feedback.
Think of it this way: say two kids wet their pants. One parent says, “It’s fine, we’ll figure out a solution, just let me know as soon as it happens next time and we can take care of it right away.” The other parent yells at their kid.
When the first kid wets their pants again, they feel safe enough to let their parent know so they can handle the situation together. The second kid hides their pants under their bed to avoid being yelled at.
The people you work with are not pants-wetting toddlers, but our behavioral psychology is the same. Without psychological safety, we don’t challenge, innovate, or ask questions. We hide mistakes. We stifle growth. We halt progress. Without psychological safety, one day you’ll look under the bed and see a whole pile of dirty laundry.
Without a psychologically safe environment, the only people who are going to feel comfortable speaking up, taking risks, and (maybe) making mistakes are the ones who look, think, and act like the people in power. In a psychologically unsafe environment, the risk is too great for anyone else.
How do I know if my environment is psychologically safe and how can I increase psychological safety on my team?
Can’t wait? Want to create a culture of psychological safety on your team right now?
In my workshop, Cultivating a Psychologically Safe Work Environment, we learn what it means to have a psychologically safe work environment and how we can cultivate a culture where people feel empowered to ask questions, give feedback, and (truly) make mistakes. We explore the concept of psychological safety, the research around why it makes teams so successful, and actions you can take to create a psychologically safe environment on your teams, no matter your role. Get in touch and we can talk about bringing the workshop to your group.