Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace

In 2012, Google initiated “Project Aristotle” to try to build the perfect team. The company studied hundreds of teams to figure out why some were successful and others were not. As Charles Duhigg explains in his New York Times Magazine article “What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” when researchers analyzed the data they found that “psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.” Duhigg says people experience psychological safety when they feel free to express themselves without fear of recriminations, when they are able to talk about what is messy or sad, and when they can have hard conversations with colleagues. He writes, “it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences—like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel—that can’t really be optimized.”

Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Prof­essor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, coined the term “psychological safety” in the late 1990s. More than two decades later, Edmondson says psychological safety is more important than ever, but psychologically safe work environments are quite rare in practice. “Every time we withhold our thoughts, we rob ourselves and our colleagues of small moments of learning. This stifles innovation in our teams and companies. . . . By modeling curiosity and asking lots of questions, leaders can begin to elicit ideas that can spark innovation,” she writes in a post for Harvard Business School. In her book The Fearless Organization, Edmondson provides practical guidance and a blueprint for creating psychological safety. She explores the connection between psychological safety and high performance; offers guidance on how to create a “safe” culture where employees can express their ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes; and presents a step-by-step framework for readers to establish psychological safety in their team or organization.

On August 8, 2022, Edmondson tweeted, “How best to respond when people talk about #psychsafety as equivalent to a #safespace? To me, the 2 notions are almost opposites.” Indeed, there is an important distinction. In “Psychological Safety vs a `Safe Space,” the author explains that, “In safe spaces, we don’t want to be challenged, we want to be comforted and sheltered, and with good reason: we want to heal. Psychological safety may well exist in these places, but the social contract of the space is different—and the and intent and purpose of the space is very different.” In his Linkedin article “Why a safe space is more than psychological safety,” Anton Guinea argues that a safe space is part of but more than psychological safety. Creating a “safe space” requires that leaders and teams adopt a “DO NO HARM” intent. “Psychological safety is about being able to speak up. A safe space is also about control, care factor, and courage. And giving people more than a voice to speak with ideas—giving them permission to speak with influence, impact and inspiration,” he writes.

Timothy R. Clark presents a framework for psychological safety in his book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. He identifies and presents four stages of safety—inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety, and challenger safety—through which teams can progress. Increasing psychological safety of the entire team and having everyone progress at a similar pace is key, he contends. By pursuing psychological safety, Clark argues, leaders can transform their organizations into inclusive workplaces that are incubators of innovation. He also emphasizes that leaders need to set the tone and model behaviors. The article “The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety by Timothy Clark” presents an excellent summary of Clark’s four stages of safety.

In “Psychological safety and the critical role of leadership development,” McKinsey & Company presents its survey on how organizations can foster psychological safety. It found that leaders at all levels need to develop and demonstrate specific leadership behaviors. According to the article, “Positive team climate is the most important driver of psychological safety and most likely to occur when leaders demonstrate supportive, consultative behaviors, then begin to challenge their teams.” The article describes several ways organizations can develop psychological safety: deploying an “at-scale system” of leadership development rather than one-off training programs; investing in leadership development experiences that are emotional, sensory, and which create aha! moments; and creating ways to make development part of leaders’ day-to-day work.

Henrik Bresman and Amy C. Edmondson share their research on psychological safety in their Harvard Business Review article “To Excel, Diverse Teams Need Psychological Safety.” According to their research, “psychological safety appears to help teams realize the potential of diversity for both performance and well-being.” Bresman and Edmondson explain how diverse teams can use framing, inquiry, and bridging boundaries to build psychologically safe environments. Leaders of diverse teams can use framing in their meetings as opportunities for information sharing and to frame differences as a source of value. They can use inquiry to ask questions that are open and that build shared ownership and causality. And to bridge boundaries, leaders can encourage their team members to ask each other what they want to accomplish, what they bring to the table, and what they are up against.

Yuwen Liu and Robert T. Keller also argue that psychological safety can im­prove team performance. In the Research-Technology Management article “How Psychological Safety Impacts R&D Project Teams’ Performance,” Liu and Keller share the results of their study of R&D teams in Taiwan. They found that psychologically safe teams “will be more willing to speak up without fear of repercussion and to share ideas and engage in debate to advance innovation and new product development. Psychologically safe environments are conducive to learning and engagement.” They argue that companies that focus on creating a psychologically safe environment can “benefit from increased productivity and may be at lower risk for loss of knowledge and collaboration because their employees will remain engaged.”

Another RTM article, “The Role of Psychological Safety in Implementing Agile Methods Across Cultures,” presents the results of applying a psychological safety framework in an empirical case where Agile methods were implemented across workplace cultures. Sara Thorgren and Elin Caiman identified challenges in three areas: cultural differences related to attitudes toward inclusiveness; cultural differences related to perceptions of and trust in collective responsibility; and cultural differences related to openness in communication.

The pandemic upended many things, including how and where we work and how we interact with colleagues. As much as possible, companies shifted to remote work arrangements. Post-pan­demic, a lot of workers find themselves in remote or hybrid work environments. These new forms of work impact psychological safety, suggest Amy C. Edmondson and Mark Mortensen in their article “What Psychological Safety Looks Like in a Hybrid Workplace.” The authors offer five steps leaders can use to create a culture of psychological safety that includes broader aspects of employees’ experiences. The first step is to get the team to problem solve together new ways to work effectively. The second step is for leaders to share their own challenges and constraints surrounding remote and hy­brid work. The third step is to start small, with small personal disclosures, and welcome others’ disclosures to build trust. The fourth step is to share positive examples and be transparent with the team. The fifth and final step is to watch for comments or actions that might undermine psychological safety.

A study by Workhuman found that only 26 percent of workers felt psychologically safe during the pandemic, and women experienced less psychological safety than men. Bryan Robinson discusses the implications of Workhuman’s study in his Forbes article “10 Red Flags That Psychological Safety Is Lacking in Your Workplace.” He shares 10 signs that a company may not have a psychologically safe hybrid work culture, such as no real plan for how a hybrid workforce will function, no senior leaders who work remotely, failure to prioritize digital communication tools, lack of transparency in communication and information sharing, and others. Robinson’s article also offers guidance on how companies can build psychological safety. In her article “10 Signs That Psychological Safety Is Missing in Your Team,” Isabel Nyo writes, “Fostering psychological safety is a continuous pursuit for leaders.” The 10 signs she highlights are behavioral and include high attrition rates, employees taking leave, employees not speaking up and always agreeing with leadership, micromanagement, and fear of failure. She presents actions for leaders for each sign.

Organizations need to make psychological safety a strategic priority to become resilient and to be able to weather uncertainty, suggest Maren Gube and Debra Sabatini Hennelly. “When leaders recognize the connections between psychological safety and resilience, they can model the behaviors that welcome candor — and set expectations throughout the organization to enhance integrity, innovation, and inclusion,” they write in their HBR article “Resilient Organizations Make Psychological Safety a Strategic Priority.” Gube and Sabatini Hennelly discuss the connection between psychological safety and resilience, present obstacles to psychological safety, and share five areas leaders can focus on to prioritize psychological safety.

In the future, more innovative companies may be the ones that focus on creating a psychologically safe environment as a core part of their workplaces. We hope these resources help leaders as they navigate a complex set of factors required to develop a psychologically safe workplace where all employees feel free to express their thoughts, ideas, and opinions. The result will be a more collaborative, innovative, and productive work environment.

Resources

PRINT

Timothy R. Clark. 2020. The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Amy C. Edmondson. 2018. The Fearless Organization. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

ONLINE

Henrik Bresman and Amy C. Edmondson. 2022. To excel, diverse teams need psychological safety. Harvard Business Review, March 17.

https://hbr.org/2022/03/research-to-excel-diverse-teams-need-psychological-safety

Charles Duhigg. 2016. What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times Magazine, February 25. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html

Amy C. Edmondson. 2022a. Leading in tough times: HBS faculty member Amy C. Edmondson on psychological safety. Harvard Business School, November 22. https://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/insights-and-advice/blog/post/leading-in-tough-times

Amy C. Edmondson (@AmyCEdmondson). 2022b. “Genuine question for the #psychologicalsafety community.” Twitter, August 8. https://twitter.com/AmyCEdmondson/status/1556681972319232003

Amy C. Edmondson and Mark Mortensen. 2021. What psychological safety looks like in a hybrid workplace. Harvard Business Review, April 19. https://hbr.org/2021/04/what-psychological-safety-looks-like-in-a-hybrid-workplace

Maren Gube and Debra Sabatine Hennelly. 2022. Resilient organi­zations make psychological safety a strategic priority. Harvard Business Review, August 25. https://hbr.org/2022/08/resilient-organizations-make-psychological-safety-a-strategic-priority

Anton Guinea. 2022. Why a safe space is more than psychological safety. Linkedin, March 11. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-safe-space-more-than-psychological-safety-anton-guinea?trk=articles_directory

Yuwen Liu and Robert T. Keller. 2021. How psychological safety impacts R&D project teams’ performance. Research-Technology Management 64(2): 39–45. Doi: 10.1080/08956308.2021.1863111

McKinsey & Company. 2021. Psychological safety and the critical role of leadership development. February 11. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/psychological-safety-and-the-critical-role-of-leadership-development

Isabel Nyo. 2022. 10 signs that psychological safety is missing in your team. Medium, October 24. https://betterhumans.pub/10-signs-that-psychological-safety-is-missing-in-your-team-e6dbdcf95a9b

Psychological Safety. 2022. Psychological safety vs a “safe space.” December 15. https://psychsafety.co.uk/psychological-safety-vs-a-safe-space/

Bryan Robinson. 2021. 10 red flags that psychological safety is lacking in your workplace. Forbes, June 13. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2021/06/13/10-red-flags-that-psychological-safety-is-lacking-in-your-workplace/?sh=4582e02110c1

Sara Thorgren and Elin Caiman. 2019. The role of psychological safety in implementing Agile methods across cultures. Research-Technology Management 62(2): 31–39. Doi: 10.1080/08956308.2019.1563436

Wind4Change.com. 2022. The 4 stages of psychological safety by Timothy Clark. https://wind4change.com/4-stages-psychological-safety-timothy-clark-inclusion-learner-contributor-challenger/

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Tammy McCausland

In this space, we offer a series of summaries on key topics, with pointers to important resources, to keep you informed of new developments and help you expand your repertoire of tools and ideas. We welcome your contributions, in the form of suggestions for topics and of column submissions.