Psychological safety (PS) at work – Why you need it and how to develop it
What is psychological safety at work? Why do we need it? How to develop it in your team and your organization. In this article, I am going to answer these questions.
Do you remember the Colombia space shuttle disaster?
On January 16th, 2003, the space shuttle Colombia blasted off into space on its 28th mission.It was a sunny day in Florida, and everything seemed to be perfect about the launch. But things were not perfect.
A piece of foam had broken off from the outside of the rocket and hit the wing area during the lift-off. On Tuesday, January 21st, five days after the launch, a team of engineers at NASA had their first formal meeting to assess the potential damage from the piece of foam that had struck the wing.
They agreed that NASA should immediately observe the wing area impacted, even if the impact was minor. This could be accomplished by others using other satellites or powerful telescopes on the ground.
The team of engineers selected Rodney Rocha, an experienced but mild-mannered engineer, to convey their recommendation.
Rodney Rocha attempted to inform his superiors and request them to observe the wing’s possible damage, but he was simply brushed aside. One manager told Rodney Rocha to stop being a “Chicken Little” – referring to the cartoon character who was always running around afraid and warning others that the sky was falling.
Despite his severe concerns about the mission’s safety, he had no choice but to keep quiet.
On 1st February 2003, the space shuttle Colombia disintegrated into pieces while returning to earth. Seven astronauts, including mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, died in the tragic accident.
NASA suspended any further space flights for the next two years while investigating and eliminating what could have caused the disaster.
The investigation confirmed that the cause was the friction caused due to the damaged tiles on the wing. The same damage that Rodney Rocha and his team of engineers were trying to bring to the mission control’s attention.
Why did Rodney not speak up? Why was he not forceful? What could NASA have done to create an environment where Rodney, or anyone else on the team, could voice their concerns in an assertive way?
Psychological safety at work
The answer to the question is to create psychological safety at work. Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor, and researcher coined the term Psychological safety.
She defines it as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”
Can employees express their doubts, concerns, issues they know about? Or are they uncomfortable speaking up? Now think about your workplace.
Have you held back from expressing an opinion in a meeting? Or have you agreed to something you weren’t sure about, just because you didn’t feel comfortable in saying it?
Do you sometimes keep quiet even when you have questions but don’t want to look “dumb” in front of others?
This is what happened to Rodney Rocha. He did not feel safe to be more assertive and emphatically ask the manager to consider his concern and do the needful address.
Psychological safety at work was missing on the NASA team.
Boeing 737 Max problems & lack of psychological safety at work
Organizations frequently face the grave consequences of lack of psychological safety, as NASA did.Besides the loss of lives, there was severe damage to NASA’s reputation, and they had to halt the space program for two years.
Boeing 737 max aircraft tragedy is another example of such consequences of lack of PS at work. In March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner was grounded worldwide after 346 people died in two crashes. First, it was the Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018.
The second flight was the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019. There were 387 Boeing 737 aircraft at that time, which served 8,600 flights per week for 59 different airlines. All of them were grounded, causing severe damage to Boeing’s reputation worldwide.
The groundings became the longest ever of a U.S. airliner. Boeing also had to suspend the production of the 737 max aircraft indefinitely.
In November 2018, Boeing launched a new automated flight control system for the 737 max aircraft. Later in the post mortem done by FAA and NTSB, they found that employees had serious concerns about the automated flight control system.
They did not feel comfortable enough to voice theirs against the backdrop of a multibillion project’s delivery timeline pressures. Later in the interviews, the employees said they were afraid to speak up as they thought they might lose their job.
Whether that would really happen or not, it clearly shows that these employees did not feel PS at work.
Do these kinds of things happen at your workplace?
Now you may think that I would have reacted differently to these kinds of situations. Or you may think that this doesn’t happen on my team.
Let’s say you are working on a cross-functional team. Someone uses a jargon word during the team meeting. Some acronym, let’s say GSH! Everybody on the team agrees that GSH is very important.
Now you don’t have a clue what GSH means! Do you feel safe enough to make yourself vulnerable and ask in the team meeting – “I am sorry – I don’t know what GSH means.
Can any one of you explain it to me?.” Or would you just nod your head in agreement and make a mental note to check out later what GSH meant.
Or in a similar situation, the team is enthusiastic and gung-ho over a particular investment in new technology. Everyone agrees in unison while elaborating on the benefits and ROI of this technology. You have serious doubts about the benefits and ROI.
Do you feel comfortable disagreeing with the majority? They may be right, and you may end up looking like a jerk who is not a team player!
All too often, employees choose to keep quiet instead of speaking up. Why? Because of the interpersonal discomfort of looking incompetent, not a team player, or negative. And there is a cost to people not speaking up. Most of the time, these costs are not as dramatic as in NASA and Boeing.
These are small costs in losing a moment of learning or having a different perspective of exploring a new idea. Over time, these small costs add up. Learning, change, and innovation suffers.
What does psychological safety at work look like?
Can the members of the team members do the following without fear?
• Offer their ideas and opinions no matter how different from the team goals or consensus or superior’s ideas
• Express their concerns and doubts to superiors
• Admit openly that they don’t know about some things at work
• Ask for help openly and comfortably when needed
• Are willing to try new things and take risks even if it means making mistakes or failing
• Admit to mistakes immediately and openly so they can be rectified
• Feel comfortable being themselves without any fear or concerns of social stigma or other repercussions
Can team members do the above-mentioned things – without the fear of being socially labeled or humiliated as being incompetent, or the crazy one or not a team player?
If they can, there is a high degree of PS at work, or else there is a lack of PS on the teams.
Psychological safety at work is not these things!
One of the concerns that most leaders have is how I have PS and accountability on my teams? Doesn’t having one means sacrificing the other? Not really.
They are two different aspects that are both important to instill in teams.
Psychological safety at work often is confused with certain qualities that are not conducive to high performance. Psychological does not mean the following.
1. Just being nice
Being polite and being nice at work is fine. But having PS means disagreeing with an idea or opinion without fear. It allows diverse perspectives and expertise to put on the table to take the best course of action.
2. Reducing performance standards
Amy Edmondson says that psychological safety does not mean reducing performance standards. Both of them are separate, and a leader can instill both in their teams.
3. Lack of accountability
A team can be accountable to one another and yet not have psychological safety. The opposite is also true. Accountability is a leader’s responsibility, and so is PS. Both are separate things.
The diagram below shows the four quadrants of psychological safety vs. accountability. The four quadrants are the apathy zone, anxiety zone, comfort zone, and learning zone. Ideally, the leader should work on PS and accountability to get the team into the learning zone.
Why do we need psychological safety at work?
20th-century standardization paradigm
Henry Ford is quoted as saying that – I wish people just brought their hands at work and left their brains home! He probably was right for the kind of work that happened at his assembly line in the earlier part of the 20th century.
Industrialization in the 20th century was all about standardization, focusing on the single best way to do things and get everyone to do it efficiently. Ideas and opinions of the employees were a distraction and a nuisance. They simply reduced the efficiency of standardized and repetitive assembly line work.
Knowledge work in the 21st century
Arguably the most insightful management consultant, Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” way back in 1959 in his book “The Landmarks of Tomorrow.” Way back then, Peter Drucker predicted information would change the way people would work in the future.
The value of work will not be derived from physical labor using their muscle power, but instead with the intellectual work using their mind power. He predicted that knowledge workers would be the most valuable assets of 21st-century organizations.
Today, a majority of the workforce is employed doing what Peter Drucker correctly coined as knowledge work. Engineers, architects, accountants, lawyers, physicians, computer programmers, web designers, finance professionals, technical writers, researchers are just a few of the knowledge work professions.
VUCA world of the 21st Century
Today, in the 21st century, we also live in a VUCA world. VUCA is a term coined by the US army to describe the Iraq and Afghanistan wars situation. VUCA is an acronym for Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Change is rapid. There are no standard solutions or defined processes.
We have to make decisions even when we don’t have all the information or all the answers. Business strategy and solving of problems are all a hypothesis – an experiment, if you will.
We need the collective intelligence of diverse teams with specialized expertise. Unlike Henry Ford in the early 20th century, we definitely need people to bring their brains to work and put them to good use!
They need to share their ideas, opinions, and expertise – to help solve problems in a continuously changing world. Find new ways of doing things – cheaper, better, faster than the competition. Change and innovate or face extinction. We need to utilize the talent of your team to the highest possible level. How do we do that?
Psychological safety is essential to survive and thrive in the 21st century.
In an environment that was fairly stable and the processes and outcomes are well defined – like Henry Ford’s assembly line, PS may not be essential.
It may still be good to have, but not essential for business performance. But in the VUCA world of the last two decades – as with NASA’s space shuttle launch or the Boeing 737 max production – PS is essential for change, growth, innovation, and performance.
What does it take for organizations to survive and thrive in a VUCA world? It is creating psychological safety at work teams to utilize the team’s collective intelligence to keep ahead of the rapid change.
Uncertainty and interdependence
Amy Edmondson’s research has shown that psychological safety is essential for high performance on teams when the teams’ problems involve uncertainty and interdependence. There are no set answers. There may be entirely new situations.
It may require inputs from multiple team members who have various specialized expertise. In most of the work done today in large organizations, uncertainty and interdependence are often present. And hence PS has become an essential element of team performance.
Read: Poor Leadership Behaviors & its Collateral Damage
Google’s quest to figure out what makes teams successful
Individual brilliance is great, but team cohesiveness is more important. Most of the work done today is in projects involving multiple people working in teams. Talent management’s primary focus has been on measuring and managing individual performance.
But it is not enough. Analyzing and improving individual performance does not translate into the performance of teams or workgroups.
Google spent 2 years and enormous amounts of resources studying over 180 teams to figure out the answer to the question – What makes teams successful? They found five factors that are essential to any high-performing team. The most important factor? It is “psychological safety at work.”
How to create psychological safety at work
Amy Edmondson suggests three types of actions leaders can take to improve the psychological safety of their teams.
1. Setting the stage
Leaders have to define the context. The vision and direction. But it needs to go a step further. Define the purpose, a cause greater than themselves, to make a difference.
Once that is done, the next step is to communicate clearly the business environment of uncertainty, complexity, and interdependence. If leaders don’t point out uncertainty and complexity clearly, people may conclude that they are supposed to know everything about their jobs.
If they don’t, people will conclude that they may be branded as simply incompetent if they make mistakes and may need to face the consequences.
A leader’s job is to make it safe for people to fail. This is not about the failures caused by incompetency or not following a standard protocol (when it exists). That is not the kind of failure a leader should tolerate.
On the other hand, when there is a need to experiment and try new things – failure should not only be tolerated and accepted, it should be celebrated! It is also OK not to know all the answers! It is OK to experiment! And it is OK to fail! Or else, there may be no change, no growth, and no innovation.
Read: Alan Mulally’s most successful business turnarounds of all time at Ford Motor Company
2.Inviting engagement
Leaders often mistake the silence of a team member for their agreement. Often it is not the case. People don’t like to speak up due to social discomfort or lack of psychological safety. Or there are just a couple of vocal team members expressing their opinion.
The leader’s job is to invite opinions and ideas from everyone on the team, especially the silent team members. When everyone on the team agrees with the leader without having any opinions of their own, it is a sign for the leader to invite engagement. The leaders should watch their body language while listening to diverse opinions. It should not give away the leader’s like or dislike for a particular idea.
Asking questions is one of the best ways to invite engagement. The leader may ask any of the following questions, or a semantic version of these, to invite engagement.
- I don’t know a whole lot about it….. You have a lot of experience here. What do you think about this?
- What do I not know about here?
- What am I missing? What have we not considered yet?
- You have a lot of experience in …… What do you think we should do?
- You haven’t spoken on… What are your thoughts?
- There is a lot of uncertainty about ….. So whatever we do is a hypothesis. We won’t know it until we try?
3. Responding productively
As a leader, what do you do when a team member completely disagrees with your ideas or opinions? Do you dismiss the team member? Do you override her opinions? Or do you ask more questions and more inputs to understand where they are coming from? Do you treat them respectfully? Do you get visibly annoyed or upset?
Listen to all ideas, acknowledge and thank the person. Continuously ask questions like – what do you think? What do we not know about…? Etc. Acknowledge risks inherent in ambiguity and uncertainty. Reinforce that failure is OK when the team is experimenting and learning new ways of doing things.
The following diagram from Amy Edmondson’s book gives a nice summary of the 3 steps to create psychological safety.
Image source – Fearless Organization book by Dr. Amy Edmondson
Watch: Leader’s Role in Creating a Psychologically Safe Workplace
How to measure psychological safety at work
Do members on your team feel safe psychologically? Measuring PS is simple and easy. Amy Edmondson has 7 questions you can ask your team to gauge the level of PS at work in your team.
For each of the 7 questions, each team member rates their perception of the team on a Likert scale of 1 to 7. Note that the item numbers 1,3 and 5 are expressed negatively and are hence denoted with an (R). You can also use a Likert scale of 1 to 5.
1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you. (R)
2. Members of this team can bring up problems and tough issues.
3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different. (R)
4. It is safe to take a risk on this team.
5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help. (R)
6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.
This simple 7 question tool has proven quite accurate in predicting teams’ psychological safety – as per Amy Edmondson’s research.
Complimentary Psychological Safety Assessment
Do you know the level of psychological safety on your team? We are happy to offer you a complimentary psychological safety team assessment for your first team. Schedule a quick conversation to find out more.
In Conclusion
To solve today’s VUCA world’s problems, organizations need to use all team members’ collective intelligence, expertise, and collaboration. A leader’s job is to create a culture where people can share their ideas, opinions, and concerns openly and freely. In other words, a leader’s job is to create psychological safety at work. When it is lacking, people leave, performance suffers, and growth and change stall. When you have it, continuous sharing of ideas, experimentation, and learning happen on teams, which allows the company to change, innovate, and thrive in the VUCA world.
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References – The Fearless Orgnization – Book by Amy Edmondson