"Today's leaders must be willing to take on the job of driving fear out of the organization to create the conditions for learning, innovation and growth."
Amy Edmondson - The Fearless Organization
Not just a nice-to-have
Psychological safety is not just another 'nice-to-have', HR-driven fad. Rather, it is a key success factor that forms the foundation of the 21st Century organisation's capacity to learn, innovate and grow within a competitive environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Whereas success in 19th and early 20th Century work environments was mostly characterised by individuals' and teams' ability to follow clearly defined rules and procedures, success in 21st Century work environments is most-often grounded in individual and team learning as the bases of rapid innovation that can drive sustainable growth. To succeed, therefore, organisations need to create the conditions for team learning. And multiple research studies show us that the essential precondition for team learning and consequent success is psychological safety.
Psychological safety – a belief system that underpins success
Psychological safety was first popularised by Amy Edmondson (Harvard Professor Leadership & Management, and author of The Fearless Organization) who defined it as:
"... 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 inter-personal risk-taking. Think of it as felt permission for candor."
The value of mistakes
Edmondson happened upon psychological safety accidentally while studying mistakes in team environments. What she discovered was that high-performing teams don’t make more mistakes. Rather, they are more open and honest about the mistakes they make, and therefore can both correct mistakes and learn from them. Edmondson further discovered that, in high-performing teams, team members are willing to disagree with each other. And they do so in service of ‘doing their best work’ and ‘getting it right’ in order to ‘best serve the customer’. But, why are high-performing teams able to engage with their work and each other in this way?
Interpersonal fear and risk-taking
Edmondson discovered that high-performing teams are able to do so because they lack interpersonal fear. And the absence of interpersonal fear allows individuals to take interpersonal risks, i.e. to confront "differences with others in ways that lead to learning and change."
What Google discovered
The importance of psychological safety was further confirmed by Google in their study of Google’s most-effective teams. Of the five key[1] characteristics shared by Google’s most-effective teams, psychological safety was the most important. In particular,
“Google researchers found that individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google, they’re more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they’re rated as effective twice as often by executives.”
Psychological safety and ROI
The return on investment of psychological safety is therefore clear as psychological safety increases employee retention, creates the capacity to leverage diversity, makes teams more effective and ultimately increases revenue. In addition, given the need for organisations to create diversity, equity and inclusion, it might be said that psychological safety’s capacity to leverage diversity in particular makes it a key organisational strength.
Psychological safety and DEI
Fostering diversity, equity and inclusion remains one of the central problems facing 21st Century organisations. As diversity in team composition increases in order to foster equity in societies, leaders are faced with the challenge not only of making all employees feel included, but also of how to leverage the diverse identities, knowledge and skill sets within teams. What HR teams and team leaders know well is that the deliberate hiring practices that create diversity in the workforce do not inevitably generate inclusion. Rather, inclusion is the outcome of what happens in teams in everyday business-as-usual. By now it should be clear, though, that psychologically safe teams are far more likely to make their members feel included and like they belong, despite differing identities, because everyone’s opinions and ideas are not only permitted they are sought actively. In psychologically safe teams, therefore, diversity is leveraged actively and positioned as a key success factor rather than a tickbox hiring practice that has limited impact on how teams operate and what they can ultimately offer to overall organisational goals.
Given its importance, therefore, how can you measure the degree of psychological safety in your organisation and team, and grow psychological safety on the basis of that information?
A psychological safety measurement tool that prioritises learning behaviours
Edmondson’s research produced a survey tool to assess the level of psychological safety in teams by stating how strongly you agree or disagree with each of the statements below. If your results closely match the answers provide below, then you are working in a psychologically safe team.
If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you. (Strongly disagree)
Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues. (Strongly agree)
People on this team sometimes reject others for being different. (Strongly disagree)
It is safe to take a risk on this team. (Strongly agree)
It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help. (Strongly disagree)
No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts. (Strongly agree)
Working with team members, my unique skills and talents are valued are utilised. (Strongly agree)
And if you are working in a psychologically safe team, then all of its members are practising most or all of these learning behaviours:
Seeking feedback
Asking for help
Asking questions
Sharing information, ideas and opinions
Challenging ideas and opinions
Discussing mistakes
Listening actively
Experimenting
Building psychological safety
However, if your survey results confirm for you that your team is not a safe environment, then it is time to implement an intervention that will build psychological safety. There are a number of approaches to doing so. Timothy Clark (author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety) offers an approach in which team inclusion is a precondition for learning, and contribution to team thinking and challenge are an outcome of learning safety. Edmondson on the other hand proposes a three-step process as outlined below:
Step 1: Set the stage
Frame the work as a learning opportunity
Destigmatise failure
Connect the work to an overall organisational purpose
Step 2: Invite participation
Create the systems and structures that foster safe and effective participation
Practise situational humility
·Seek input proactively
Step 3: Respond productively
Express acknowledgement and appreciation
Engage with failures constructively
Sanction violations
In this way, Edmondson shows that psychological safety is not about lowering performance standards or ignoring clear violations. Rather it is a set of practices that are designed to improve team performance and outcomes by creating a safe learning environment that operates within the necessary rules and constraints of high-functioning organisations.
Building Psychological Safety - The Programme
In my Building Psychological Safety programme, I incorporate both Edmondson and Clark’s models to support teams and their leaders to take the necessary steps towards changing their ways of working.
You can read more about the programme here. Alternatively, reach out to me to discuss how I can support you and your teams to create psychological safety.
[1] The other four factors are: dependability (team members do what they say they will do); structure and clarity (decision-making processes are effective); meaning (the work is personally meaningful); and impact (the impact of the team’s work on organisational goals is clear).
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