Psychological Safety
“The 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 interpersonal risk taking”
The Background
Psychological Safety is the foundation for inclusion, team contribution, challenging convention, and ultimately, innovation.
When people on a team possess psych safety, they feel able to ask for help, admit mistakes, raise concerns, suggest ideas, and challenge ways of working. When individuals feel safe to challenge, their teams are able to break through the innovation threshold and challenge the ideas of others on the team, including the ideas of those in authority, and challenge the way things ‘have always been done’. Through this honesty and openness, risks are reduced, new ideas are generated, the team is able to execute on those ideas, and everyone feels included.Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
In 1965, Edgar Schein, together with Warren Bennis, wrote “Personal and Organizational Change through Group Methods: The Laboratory Approach“. This is the first time that the term “psychological safety” appears in the academic literature. Schein and Bennis describe psychological safety as reducing “a person’s anxiety about being basically accepted and worthwhile”.
In 1999, Dr Amy Edmondson re-introduced the term in popular literature after her discoveries while studying clinical teams and the number of mistakes that different teams made. During her research she found that the teams with a higher number of good outcomes actually made more mistakes than teams with fewer good outcomes. (Perhaps an inspiration for the common innovation advice of ‘fail forwards’).
Upon further investigation she discovered that in fact those teams with better outcomes were not simply failing more, but were actually admitting their mistakes, whilst the teams with fewer good outcomes were more likely to hide theirs.
This work culminated in Dr Edmondsons 1999 definition of Psychological Safety: “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” – Psychological Safety and Learning Behaviour in Work Teams
The importance of psych safety for healthy cultures and high performing teams has since been increasingly recognised. Google’s Project Aristotle team applied Dr Edmundsons 1999 paper’s methodology to measure psych safety. The results showed that “even the extremely smart, high-powered employees at Google needed a psychologically safe work environment to contribute the talents they had to offer”.
Leading the project Aristotle team to codify team effectiveness as requiring the following pillars: Psychological Safety, Dependability, Structure and Clarity, Meaning, and Impact.
A Personal Background
As a former Royal Navy (RN) pilot I have developed a passion for ensuring psych safety is recognised as a vital element of a team, or organisations dynamic. My belief in its importance dates back to 2006, shortly before gaining my RN pilot ‘wings’, and deploying to Afghanistan.
On September 2, 2006, a Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft called the Nimrod MR2 was on a mission over Afghanistan as part of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The aircraft experienced a mid-air explosion and subsequently crashed in the Kandahar province. All 14 crew members on board lost their lives in the accident.
The cause of the crash was determined to be a fuel leak in one of the aircraft's engines, which came into contact with a hot pipe. This ignited a fire, leading to the explosion. The investigation revealed that a design flaw in the Nimrod's engine bay contributed to the leak and subsequent fire.
The accident was a significant tragedy and resulted in the largest single loss of life for the British military in Afghanistan since the conflict began in 2001. The incident raised concerns about the safety of the ageing Nimrod fleet, as well as the adequacy of maintenance and safety culture.
Charles Haddon-Cave, a British lawyer and Queen's Counsel, conducted a comprehensive review known as the Haddon-Cave Review. This review was initiated to investigate the broader issues surrounding the incident and make recommendations for improving safety culture within the Ministry of Defence (MoD). One of the key recommendations from the review was to develop a "questioning culture".
The concept of a questioning culture refers to creating an environment where individuals are encouraged to ask critical questions, challenge assumptions, and raise concerns without fear of reprisal. This culture fosters open communication, transparency, and continuous improvement. Haddon-Cave recognised the importance of establishing such a culture within the MoD to prevent future accidents and ensure the safety of military personnel.
Haddon-Cave’s "questioning culture" and psychological safety are clearly closely related concepts, as both contribute to creating an environment where individuals feel comfortable expressing their opinions, asking questions, and raising concerns without fear of negative consequences.
A Way Forward
I also believe the creation of psych safety to be a leadership function. Having recently had the opportunity to work within a UK Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) culture, with a particular focus on health, safety, and wellbeing, I had the chance to train with Dr Timothy R Clarke. His book “The Four Stages Of Psychological Safety” described a model of four “stages” of psychological safety that teams can move through, progressing from stage 1 to stage 4. Which I believe provides a useful roadmap to creating psych safety, including Haddon-Cave’s recommended ‘questioning culture’.
These 4 stages are:
Inclusion safety - Can I be my authentic self?
Learner safety - Can I grow?
Contributor safety - Can I create value?
Challenger safety - Can I be candid about change?
Acknowledging that ‘all models are wrong, and some are useful’ (George Box) the four stages can be a useful model to reinforce the point that psychological safety is not a passive outcome: we all move through different degrees of psychological safety in different teams, contexts, and environments, and as leaders we can influence our teams journey through the stages.
To develop a questioning culture, Haddon-Cave was clear that it was a leadership responsibility. Recommending the senior leaders should actively promote and demonstrate a commitment to open communication, encouraging individuals to ask questions and voice concerns without fear of consequences. In addition he recommended training programs to enhance individuals' understanding of the importance of questioning, critical thinking, and the ability to challenge assumptions. This includes guidance on effective questioning techniques and creating an environment conducive to learning.
So, developing psychological safety is not just good for your business (as shown by the work of Shein, Edmondson, and Google etc), it is the right thing to do.
