Safe at Work
“Psychological safety” may be the single most important idea about people management. So why is it so hard to come by?
The term “psychological safety” was first used by Amy Edmondson in this paper in 1999. It’s been further developed by her and others over the past 20+ years.
Edmondson develops the idea that people are more willing to speak up and take risks when they believe they won’t be punished for doing so. This is also sometimes called “permission to make mistakes.” Amy’s definition as given to Harvard Business Review in 2021:
…[T]he confidence that candor and vulnerability are welcome
Her research and others’ convincingly shows that teams perform better when they feel comfortable telling each other the truth in groups and one-to-one. In fact, Google’s famous Project Aristotle found psychological safety to be the #1 indicator of the effectiveness of teams.
Put another way, team effectiveness is reduced when there’s fear of recrimination, humiliation, or retaliation for pointing out mistakes, suggesting improvements, or blowing the whistle on ethical lapses.
Why don’t people feel safe to speak up? Teams may learn to fear consequences if their experiences taught them that silence will lead them down a more peaceful and prosperous path.
Even in the absence of disincentives to participate, some might conclude that pointing out errors could cause them to be perceived as “negative,” not collaborative, or not a team player.
Here’s some common sense: You can build trust by encouraging participation without fear of recrimination. If you come right out and tell people that you trust them to say what they believe, they might feel safer doing it.
You can do that because teams that have an open, candid culture are shown to be more effective at achieving positive business outcomes. Or you can do it because that’s the kind of team you want to work on. Your people will thank you, either way.
I’ve noticed that in the past few years, the term “psychological safety” seems to have taken on a broader meaning. Here’s how I summarize the way I see it being used colloquially online:
The expectation that while in the workplace I will be free from emotional harm.
Here are a bunch of examples of incidents that I might describe as impacting psychological safety:
Leaders engage in, condone, or tolerate conduct that is aggressive, disrespectful, or discourteous
A co-worker makes comments or uses harmful words that you felt were insensitive, offensive, or exclusionary
An insufficiently diverse, equitable, or inclusive culture makes you feel unwelcome, or like you can’t be yourself at work
Leadership is vague, imprecise, or contradictory in setting goals or expectations for your work or your team
Decisions that enable you to work effectively are postponed, made without your input, or made in ways that seem arbitrary
A leader describes my work or contribution in an ambiguous way or seems to minimize your contribution
Your manager cancels or skips meetings, doesn’t have regular meetings with you, or is distracted or disengaged when you meet
Your performance review contains an assessment of your work that takes you by surprise
The company ignores or minimize the impact of distressing local or global events on the well-being of you or your team
Your job requires, expects, or encourages you to make decisions about how, when, and where you work that jeopardize your health or well-being
Clearly these issues overlap with the ideas developed in the research about psychological safety. But they’re not the same. The examples in the list are all descriptions of how you feel without respect to how you act, or the corresponding business impact.
How we Work
In a fascinating and fairly recent evolution of our workplace, we increasingly expect our interactions and experiences at work to be positive ones.
We don’t expect every day to be 100% sunshine and rainbows, but nor do we want bad experiences to be a common occurrence. What happens at work affects us emotionally. It impacts our mental health. We want to be mentally healthy, and we want our leaders and peers to be thoughtful about their contribution to that.
In this efficient and concise Medium essay, Biology before Psychology, Kate Arms points out that fundamental aspects of our stress response are really biological, not psychological:
Once our bodies have assessed a situation as unsafe (whether physically or psychologically), we take evasive or defensive action without conscious thought… Every person in a room is always having an impact on how safe everybody else in the room is feeling. We include how safe other people appear to feel as part of our safety assessment.
She refers to Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, a favorite citation of mine. Because experiences that impact our sense of safety are processed sub-liminally, there’s no time for us to make decisions about how we “handle it.” This puts the lie to the idea that more “resilient” or “mature” people can or should simply ignore or overcome harmful experiences at work.
Some readers will surely roll their eyes at the idea that people have an intrinsic right to be safe from anything that offends them or makes them uncomfortable. And it’s true that we aren’t entitled to a life free from bad things or unpleasant moments.
But as Amy Edmondson wrote in Harvard Business Review last year, the point isn’t to create an environment that’s so safe that even a perfect snowflake is safe from melting.
The point is to make an environment that’s safe for people to do their work.
…[I]t’s harder to create change when the goal is stated as “helping people feel safe” or “becoming better listeners.” Those things matter, but they’re means, not ends. Senior executives buy into the importance of psychological safety when they appreciate its role in solving complex problems.
Complex problems like… doing your damn job!
One of my clients, a design leader, put it even better. He described psychological safety as relating to the “ambient conditions one needs to do their best work.”
I love the idea that our ambient emotional environment is just as important, investable, and accessible to leaders as a room full of Herman Miller or Knoll furniture or a working-hours barista.
The same client gave an example that highlights the relevance of diversity and inclusion to safety. He described an environment where
“…there’s a culture of inclusivity and welcomeness to everyone, including those who are underrepresented in leadership. That means actively seeking out ways to bond with subordinates that have different life experiences than you.”
Doesn’t that sound amazing? And yet very different from the ideas that business leaders typically associate with psychological safety — often a hard-nosed bargain that aims to measure the impact that people skills have on business outcomes.
Not that there’s nothing wrong with that. I think psychological safety contains a very important set of ideas for building trust and respect among teams. If you put those ideas to work, it will show up in your bottom line. In fact, it might be the single best way for you to organize your priorities in how you relate to your team.
But the words are doing much harder and more important work when they capture the idea that our workplaces should be just as concerned with preserving and protecting our mental health as the foreman on a factory floor is with preventing accidents and injury.
In my opinion, these ideas describe fairly recent changes in our culture. A managers who is a bit insensitive to our psychological safety or emotional needs might not be guilty of anything worse than being a bit behind the times. People with different work histories or cultural backgrounds might still be adjusting to these expectations.
But from my experiences talking to dozens of people and managers making their way out there, the table stakes have raised.
We expect leaders to clearly communicate their expectations for a psychologically safe environment to their managers and teams. Because people who exhibit, condone, or tolerate bad behavior on their teams can be just as dangerous to our well-being as an unsafe factory floor.