Psychological Safety in Theory and In Practice
Read time: 2.5 min
Big Idea
Psychological safety in the workplace requires open communication, asking good questions, and fostering an environment where employees can freely speak up and make mistakes; use practical strategies like setting a clear "leader's intent."
Top Thoughts
Creating a psychologically safe work environment improves productivity and innovation and empowers employees to express their thoughts, ask questions, and admit mistakes without the fear of humiliation or retribution, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, innovation and agility.
Encouraging a culture that values learning from mistakes and a willingness to examine failures and learn from them is essential for personal and organizational growth.
Psychological safety combines trust and respect, enhancing open communication and collaboration, challenging the status quo and innovation within teams.
Pixar's Brain Trust illustrates how structured, open forums improve project outcomes and employee engagement by encouraging candid feedback, ensuring that problems are addressed and ideas are shared openly.
Brains do not operate well in a threat state. Ask open-ended questions, allow space for silence, and create an environment where vulnerability is accepted.
High-performance standards and low psychological safety create "interpersonal anxiety zones". Increasing permission for candor, valuing input, intentional check-ins, and teaching habits to manage emotion transform these into "learning zones" and "high-performance zones" that improve team performance and well-being.
A "leader's intent" clearly outlines commitments and values, creating a standard for behavior and allowing team members to hold the leader accountable. It guides the team through challenges and allows collective learning.
Quick Quotes
"Psychological safety, it’s not about being nice. It’s the idea that you aren’t going to be embarrassed, shamed or even punished for speaking up with your questions, concerns or mistakes on the job."
"All of us have to be lifelong learners, right? That just became something very interesting to me. And then when you start thinking about what does it take to be a lifelong learner, you have to be willing to look at your failures. You have to be willing to look at mistakes so that you can learn from them and do better next time."
"Psychological safety is a composite of trust and respect. But technically it describes the climate. Whereas trust describes my expectations about some other, another person, a company."
"The beauty of the brain and trust is that it’s a structure that by its design lowers the threshold for speaking up."
"You have to be willing to ask open-ended questions where you don’t know what the answer’s going to be, and be comfortable with the pause, the silence that may follow, because that silence is often where people are doing some of their hardest work."
"Brains don’t function well in a threat state, and a lack of psychological safety puts us into that threat state."
"There’s a practice I actually picked up from West Point of all places, which is something that the military called a leader’s intent. On one sense it’s writing the mission to say, 'This is where we’re going. This is what we want to do.' The other aspect of a leader's intent is writing down the commitments to which you are going to hold yourself true and to which you’re not going to break."
Actionable Advice
Actively foster psychological safety - Increase individual well-being, team productivity, innovation, and overall organizational success by empowering employees to speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and express their concerns without fear of embarrassment, shame, or punishment.
Implement structured forums - Implement a system where open and candid feedback can be exchanged without fear of repercussion, similar to Pixar's "Brain Trust" model, which lowers the threshold for speaking up and allows for constructive criticism to improve project outcomes.
Ask open-ended questions - Ask questions without pre-determined, 'correct' answers, to encourage genuine thought and diverse opinions. Offer team members the psychological space to think and respond authentically.
Solidify the "leader's intent" - Proactively and clearly outline leader commitments and values to set a standard of team behavior and open a channel for accountability within the team.
Source(s)
Morra Aarons-Mele, M., Edmondson, A., & Yates, C. (2021, Dec 20). Psychological Safety in Theory and In Practice. [Podcast]. Harvard Business Review. (Link)
