We all know that teams and individuals work better when they have the freedom to speak up, sharing their ideas, questions, concerns or even mistakes freely, without fear of punishment or humiliation.
Psychological safety has become a widely used term, largely thanks to Amy Edmondson’s brilliant research and work in this area. Sure enough though, when terms get used a lot, there’s a risk that they become misunderstood and misused, sometimes with detrimental effects.
Psychological safety sounds like something we should all expect, but it’s complex and nuanced and merely being aware of it as a concept doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. And when it doesn’t, people often look to the embattled leadership for answers and sometimes will use it against them. We think the popularity of the term has led to it becoming misunderstood. Organisations can find themselves running around in circles trying to convince people it exists in their workplace, without a deeper understanding of what it means and what they can reasonably do to create it.
How to think practically about psychological safety in your organisation
First, if you are really interested in this topic, you should read Amy Edmonson’s excellent original work as we can’t capture all the nuances in a short blog. However we think it is important to consider where the term came from. Most of Amy’s original work was in clinical settings, where being afraid of owning mistakes or speaking up about concerns was literally a risk to life. This led to research which outlines both the many benefits of deliberately creating psychologically safe environments and some issues organisations face without it. These can be extrapolated into pretty much any organisational environment.
Essentially, psychological safety is about taking an ‘interpersonal risk’. If people fear being shamed or put down in some way, they are likely to protect themselves and decide to keep quiet. And that’s not good for the people or the organisation. On a wider team performance level, psychological safety is critical to successful collaboration, innovation and creativity. A lack of psychological safety affects future performance. People make a decision to protect themselves now at the detriment of future consequences for self or others. Even in non life threatening situations this can make organisations slow and ineffective – how many times has a project continued full steam ahead even though everyone knew it was a turkey?! Having people that aren’t afraid to speak up about things that are critical to the performance of the organisation or to the wellbeing of employees, just makes sense on many levels. This is particularly the case in organisations where collaboration and innovation are essential.
Without psychological safety:
- People will continue to focus on promotion as their only route to safety and assurance of their worth – so the bun fight in promo cycles will be distracting and all consuming
- People will take small incremental steps forward in progress towards their goals because it feels safer
- Some people will be sensitive and protective, it will be hard to find out what is really going on
- Mistakes will get buried
- Learning will be slow
- The organisation will be less efficient
So far so good, it’s effectively a no brainer for any organisation to want to create this right? Yes – but in the day to day of organisational life integrating psychological safety is messy and too frequently misdirected. The main reason for this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what types of behaviour really illustrate an attempt to build psychological safety.
Common misconceptions
One of the key issues for organisations around psychological safety is what topics should people speak up about and where do they take direct concerns on certain topics. In a hospital it is fairly obvious – asking yourself ‘is this going to impact patient care’ is a pretty helpful guide. However, in other types of organisations, a lack of clarity and good process for collecting and sorting concerns and questions can result in a free for all. We’ve heard stories where one persons’ complaint about the efficiency of the lifts derails a whole team meeting or more seriously, people airing their moans and complaints about their colleagues publicly, rather than trying to resolve the situation privately first.
We are often asked by organisations ‘should people be able to voice their concerns about anything, even things they know nothing about?’ – we say yes, but there should be avenues and signposts to appropriate places and channels and some support and guidance around best practice. With the ever evolving horror of social media discourse, some employees are taking to in-work messaging channels and anonymous posts to air their grievances about all sorts of things and even just about people they don’t like. This is causing well intentioned organisations a massive headache. If they shut down these channels they will be accused of violating psychological safety, but to leave them open risks letting noisy and destructive discourse actually violate psychological safety as those in ‘the reasonable middle’ are afraid of being attacked by their colleagues, so keep quiet and say nothing.
What it’s not
Psychological safety is not making everyone speak up in meetings. Not everyone has something to say and trying to enforce this can undermine psychological safety rather than promote it.
It is also not about acting on every concern raised. The key to psychological safety is that people feel safe to raise their concerns and their concerns will be treated with respect, they won’t be shamed or ignored. This is not the same as putting every concern into action which is not always possible or even wise.
Is the term being weaponised?
The expectations placed on leaders to create and maintain psychological safety are high and potentially unrealistic. The term has become a bit of a stick to beat leaders with. In some instances leaders can be accused of violating psychological safety unjustly, because it suits the person’s agenda to accuse them of this. We’ve heard of organisations being accused of violating psychological safety because they chose not to implement a suggestion from someone who had no expertise in the field they were complaining about. People absolutely should have the right to raise these things, but it does not follow that the organisation has to action it. However, If leadership fails to implement reasonable suggestions and improvements as a pattern, employees can ultimately vote with their feet (and they should).
We’re arguing that leaders in organisations need to go deeper and not accept accusations around psychological safety at face value. Instead, be curious about what’s behind it, be open to being wrong and taking action if appropriate and don’t overreact to these accusations.
Tips to support psychological safety
These are our top tips for organisations to consider when creating and maintaining psychological safety:
- Implement multiple channels for raising concerns, asking questions and making suggestions. Publicise them clearly and make sure you follow up in the way you’ve said you would. Think about what is reasonable and appropriate for different types of concerns. You do not need to go back on every suggestion, you could do a monthly report on key themes but concerns about bullying or harassment, for example, demand quicker and more personalised action. Also think through whether anonymous channels are appropriate. Time and effort spent on designing good practices will pay off for everyone in the organisation.
- Leadership should create frames that clarify what topics are up for discussion and when. This doesn’t need to be overly prescriptive but at a basic level everyone in the organisation should know what they can (and should) raise in 1:1 meetings, at team meetings, project meetings and in wider company meetings. No topic, relevant to the organisation and it’s work should be off limits completely though, so make sure there is an appropriate forum to discuss these things.
- Create a common language that is useful and constructive – without coming across as corporate robots. For example; be careful with using dramatic emotion packed language which can trigger people unintentionally, check the stories and metaphors you use, focus on where you are going more than where you have been. You do not need to be bland and faceless but many old war stories can inadvertently create toxic dynamics or myths and may also be out of date now.
- Implement blameless reporting that carefully scrutinises what went wrong, without focusing on who did it.
- Be prepared to investigate bullying and poor behaviour complaints fairly and without discrimination.
- Practice situational humility. No one wants to take interpersonal risk if leadership appears to think they know everything.
- Express appreciation – for listening, for time, for sharing, for speaking up but be careful about the term ‘thank you for the feedback’. Firstly it can sound disingenuous but it also implies you agree with it or are going to do something about it. If you are then great, but if someone has just ambushed you with an opinion, you can thank them for raising it or taking the time to discuss it with you without implying some kind of action on your part.
- When someone violates policy, your organisational values for example, design appropriately tough sanctions and act quickly. This lets people know this organisation is serious about its culture and values and will create a feeling of safety in the organisation.
In conclusion
For psychological safety to exist, people need to know that their freedom to speak up will be met by leaders willing to listen. If it raises expectations, then expectations need to be managed. The last time we looked, leaders were humans, with a multitude of plates to spin. The danger of a popular (and possibly misunderstood) term is that people can use it to throw it back in the faces of those who they think should be delivering – aka leaders and managers. Everyone needs to play their part in creating a healthy work environment and getting that balance right isn’t easy. The more that psychological safety is supported and embedded, the less organisations, and their leaders, run the risk of it being used against them.
