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Psychological Safety at a glance

Thursday 17 June 2021 | 
Kid jumping in water, mother ready to help

The way I often experienced psychological safety is as follows: you are in a meeting with your management team, and there is a discussion about a strategic move, an investment or an important initiative. A proposal is on the table, apparently supported by the chairperson. You don’t feel comfortable with it: there is something you don’t understand or something feels wrong. Your colleagues around the table don’t seem to have similar doubts though.

Sounds familiar?

In a low psychological safety environment, you’re more likely to shut up than to express your doubts and concerns. In the blink of an eye, you’re more likely to give more weight to the risk of being judged incompetent and not smart enough, or of being looked different than the rest of the team. It’s human, that reaction is very standard. If you shut up though, the team has maybe lost the opportunity to look at the proposal from a different angle, to improve it or even drop it.

In a high psychological safety team, you will not have such fear to express your doubts and concerns. You will not hesitate because you know that the team including the lead appreciates you for your own views, even when they’re different. The entire team, including the lead, knows that decisions are better and stronger when doubts, fears, alternatives can be raised. Not only can you do that, but it is actually welcomed, expected, encouraged. The personal risk in insignificant compared to your contribution to the success of the team and organization.

This phenomenon can happen in any team: a board, an executive committee or a project team. It’s proper to human functioning.

You guessed it already, psychological safety can materially impact a team performance.

In low psychological safety teams,

  • Diverging ideas, doubts, fears are not shared.
  • The opinions from the holders of authority are not challenged.
  • In case of mistakes, the focus is on who to blame.
  • People focus their energy on avoiding to stand out from the perceived accepted norms, opinions and attitudes.
  • They’re managing their own personal security as a matter of priority.

To the contrary, in high psychological safety teams:

  • Diverse opinions and ideas are welcomed.
  • Members would not hesitate to challenge the leader’s views when they feel it’s necessary.
  • Mistakes are shared diligently and openly. The focus is on learning from them and on avoiding that they occur again.
  • People feel free to share their ideas, even if different from the consensus.
  • They also dare to put more difficult topics on the table when they’re convinced it is in the interest of the team.

Guess what is the result of high psychological safety?

  • A learning team and organization, making collectively less mistakes
  • Diversity leveraged through genuine inclusion.
  • Collective intelligence enabled.
  • A growth mindset.
  • More engagement.
  • Creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation facilitated.
  • A higher probability to succeed thanks to more open conversation including on more difficult topics

Google’s project Aristotle identified five key features to achieve top team performance:

  1. Psychological safety (team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other)
  2. Dependability (team members gets things done and meet expectations: they can count on each other)
  3. Structure and clarity (team members have clear roles, plans and goals)
  4. Meaning (work covered by the team is personally important to team members)
  5. Impact (team members think their work matters and create change)

Interestingly, it identified that the four others features only really kick-in when psychological safety is established: it’s the soil, not the seed.

For me, psychological safety is the organizational / cultural complement which enables and encourages individuals – including leaders – to dare to be authentic and vulnerable. And every modern leader knows this is today the better guarantee for sustainable success and engagement.

Interested to know how high your team psychology safety is? And where you can improve further?  Let’s discuss and start the conversation.