Diploma in Leadership & Management
Psychological safety
Contents
3 Lesson outcomes
3 Introduction
4 Psychological safety
11 References
Lesson outcomes
The student will be able to understand the fundamentals of psychological safety. Students will understand the
importance of create a psychologically safe environment for their team as well as how to plan and conduct their own
psychologically safety workshop.
Introduction
The need to feel safe in the workplace is something that a lot of employees and company leaders crave. Yet we don’t know
how to create this environment. If you think you spend the majority of your week in an office working then why would we
not want a space that is comfortable, accommodating and safe? Teams that have psychologically safety will always
outperform teams who do not have this in place. Psychological safety is an underrated tool that managers and leaders
hardly ever use. This lesson gives you the tools to be intentional and create a safe environment for your team. This is a no
brainer and I recommend that every person taking this course, research, plans and conducts their own psychological
safety workshop.
Key reading materials:
● [Link]
● [Link]
Psychological safety insights:
Please note that these are direct quotes that give us a better understanding of psychological safety as presented by Amy
Edmondson, (Lagace, n.d.). Amy is the author that brings us insight related to psychological safety. She helps companies
understand the importance of this act and who to create this environment for employees. I want us all to go over this
interview that the Harvard business school conducted with her.
Intro:
“Psychological safety at work takes effort. It’s not the norm. But it’s worth the effort,” says Professor Amy Edmondson. She
explains how and why a culture of open candor—and the willingness and courage to speak up—is a strategic asset and can
be developed in companies of all sizes, in her new book The Fearless Organisation: Creating Psychological Safety in the
Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
“These are not things that happen routinely in most organisations, but they are mission-critical to doing well in a complex,
fast-changing world,” she says. In our Q&A we asked her guidance for managers and leaders.
Martha Lagace: What makes a workplace psychologically safe or not?
Amy Edmondson: Individuals feel they can speak up, express their concerns, and be heard. This is not to say that people
are “nice.” A psychologically safe workplace is one where people are not full of fear, and not trying to cover their tracks to
avoid being embarrassed or punished.
What I am advocating is candor. Being open. And sometimes that might mean being direct to a fault, knowing that you
have a right and a responsibility to ask hard questions about the work: “Is this the right decision? Are we collecting the
right data? Do we know the impact this might have on others?”
When we are psychologically safe at work we’re willing to accept that we can be ignorant about some things and very
smart about others. Psychologically safe employees are more interested in learning, excellence, and genuinely connecting
with others than in looking good.
That sounds like what everyone wants, but as human beings, we’re hardwired and socialized to care what others think of
us. This is not bad or good, it’s just true. And it is sometimes unhelpful in knowledge-intensive work. We may need to
override some of our very human instincts, the instinct to look good instead of being truthful, to avoid hurting someone’s
feelings instead of truthful. Or the instinct to agree with the boss instead of saying, “Hmm, I’m not sure that’s going to
work.”
I care about psychological safety and the impact it can have on business risk and human safety. Without psychological
safety, there’s a greater risk of cutting corners and people getting hurt, whether employees, customers, or patients.
Product launches might fail because we didn’t listen when colleagues asked hard questions about how the product would
work. Without psychological safety, if the boss says, ‘You must hit this target’ but the target is impossible, you can end up
with cheating and scandal, which obviously nobody wanted.
Lagace: How do Organisations help or hurt psychological safety?
Edmondson: Organisations are usually designed in ways that exacerbate rather than ameliorate our natural tendencies for
self-protection. Most Organisations are hierarchical, but in some more than others employees are acutely aware of status
differences. In those Organisations, people are overly careful and cautious around those higher up in the hierarchy.
That’s a psychologically unsafe situation and ultimately it is a risky situation for the company. At hospitals and NASA test
sites, for example, psychological safety matters for human safety and sometimes even life and death. Well-run, high-risk
Organisations have nailed this by creating a climate of directness. They make clear that anyone can voice a good
observation or idea independent of his or her position in the hierarchy.<p>
Lagace: How can managers create psychological safety among people they lead?
Edmondson: Managers in any role—whether at the top or front line of an organisation—can do this. On one level it is so
simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy. And simple doesn’t mean it will occur to someone at the moment to do it.
First, set the stage. Create a shared understanding of the nature of the work we do and why everyone’s input matters. If I
am a physician running an intensive care unit, for example, I need to frequently set the stage by reminding people what is
at stake, how fragile our patients are, and how complex and error-prone our systems are. This is not about calling out
potential incompetence. It means acknowledging out loud that by their nature our systems can compound mistakes, and
unless we do everything with interpersonal awareness and focus, things can go wrong.
Having set the stage, it’s also important to proactively invite input. Asking is the simplest and best way to get people to
offer their ideas. Even if a leader has explained how error-prone the work is, people still have a threshold to overcome in
speaking up with concerns or mistakes. To help them, simply ask questions. Questions like: “What do you see in this
situation?” Most of us feel awkward not answering a question addressed to us.
Third, respond appreciatively. Having explained the nature of the work and asked for input, if you bite someone’s head off
the first time they bring bad news, that will kill the psychological safety pretty quickly. Managers need to say things like,
“Thanks for that clear line of sight.” And, “What can we do to help you out?” Responding appreciatively does not mean
that you’re thrilled with everything that was said; it means that you recognize the courage it takes to come forward with
bad news or to ask a question when you’re unsure about something.
It’s important to note that psychological safety is a necessary not sufficient condition for organisational learning,
innovation, or excellence. Other drivers of success include the willingness to have challenging conversations thoughtfully,
the willingness to be wrong, and such things as good experimental design. There are many factors that affect an
organisation’s success in the 21st century. This is just one of them.
Lagace: You write that psychological safety varies a lot even in one company.
Edmondson: Yes. In most organisations of any size that I’ve studied or that others have studied, we find significant
differences across work groups, regions, or branches; a lot of that is because of local leadership: the team leader, the
branch manager, or whoever leads the local unit.
Psychological safety also has an important relationship with diversity, inclusion, and belonging. As the experts note,
diversity can be directly altered. It is a lever that managers can pull, so to speak, given the power and resources to do so.
Specifically, they can decide to design hiring to achieve greater diversity—whether gender, race, geography, or national
culture. But simply hiring a diverse talent pool is not enough, of course. Inclusion is the next level when people of different
backgrounds feel that their voice matters and that they are included in the important meetings. Then, belonging can be
seen as a higher level still. It’s possible for people to be at important meetings even to be speaking up, and still do not feel
that people like them belong there. Belonging means this is a place where I can thrive; I feel that I am truly a member of
the community.
As organisations seek to convert diversity into inclusion and belonging, psychological safety is increasingly important.
Without psychological safety, diversity does not automatically mean people can bring their full selves to the work.
Psychological safety break-down:
According to (Friday, n.d.) we see the following definitions and break-down related to psychological safety:
Psychological Safety Defined
Psychological safety is defined as, “being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of
self-image, status or career”. In other words, psychological safety means team members feel accepted and respected
within their current roles.
The notion of psychological safety was first introduced by an organisational behavioral scientist, Amy Edmondson, who
coined the phrase and defined it as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-
taking.”
“It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable
being themselves,” states Edmondson.
How to create an environment of psychological safety?
During her TEDx Talk on “Building a psychologically safe workplace”, Amy Edmondson pointed out that there three main
things to consider when trying to create psychological safety in teams:
• Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem
• Acknowledge your own fallibility
• The research carried out by Edmondson and Google suggests that teams that make mistakes but are more willing
to discuss them with each other.
• Model curiosity and ask lots of questions
With Edmondson’s factors taken into consideration, here are some ways you can encourage and cultivate an environment
of psychological safety
1. Gather people’s opinions on important decisions in writing before you meet to discuss them (we recommend
doing weekly check-ins)
2. Ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to put forward their ideas before you announce which ideas
you support
3. Always try and experiment using multiple plausible arguments/ideas, rather than settling for one option
4. Hold group discussions in meetings if there are disagreements rather than keeping things between two or
three people
5. Appreciate when team members take the time and effort to challenge your views
6. Make a point of ensuring that other team members who have less authority on paper have their voice heard –
adding a “no interruption” rule can help quieter team members have their say as well.
How to measure?
In an attempt to make your team more successful, you first need to establish a baseline and measure improvements over
time. You might think you have a good feel for your team, but it’s surprising what you’ll learn when you actually measure
for psychological safety.
In order to measure this, Edmondson asked team members how strongly they agreed or disagreed with these questions:
1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you?
2. Are members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues?
3. Have people on this team sometimes rejected others for being different?
4. Is it safe to take a risk on this team?
5. Is it difficult to ask other members of this team for help?
6. Would no one on this team deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts?
7. When working with members of this team, are my unique skills and talents valued and utilized?
References
• Friday. (n.d.). What is psychological safety? Retrieved from Friday: [Link]
psychological-safety
• Lagace, M. (n.d.). Fearless organisation . Retrieved from Harvard business shool :
[Link]
