Does your boss say things that you disagree with, but you are too afraid to say so?  Do you work in a culture where you fear admitting mistakes? Do people blame others for their mistakes? Are people comfortable sharing different views openly? It is understandable that people naturally learn to decrease interpersonal risk (e.g. looking ignorant or incompetent), rejection and ridicule. People just don’t want to feel these uncomfortable emotions.  They achieve this by not asking questions, admitting to mistakes or making suggestions. While at work, however, this restrained self-disclosure can lead to lower productivity and innovation, delays in reporting errors and decreased collaboration. Amy Edmondson has conducted over 25 years of research into the concept called ‘Psychological Safety’, which is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. When psychological safety is fostered by leaders, and employees feel their opinions are counted, a fearless organisation is developed. The fearless organization is one in which interpersonal fear is minimized so that team and organizational performance can be maximized in a knowledge-intensive world. 

Why is this important? 

Research on the importance of psychological safety within an organisation is extremely powerful. In 2012, Google launched Project Aristotle, which studied 180 teams across the globe to answer the question – what makes an effective team? They found that team effectiveness was less about the individual members, their background, personality or skills and more about how the team works together. Specifically, team effectiveness required five elements; psychological safety, clear goals, dependable colleagues, meaningful work and the belief their work has impact. Out of the five elements, psychological safety was deemed the most important and underpinned the other items, accounting for a huge 34% of team performance alone.   

Crucial and sometimes life-threatening accidents can occur when there is not a culture of psychological safety.  For example, in a busy maternity ward at a hospital in the northeastern US, twins were being born prematurely and a team from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was called to help.  Whilst the babies were born without incident, they should have been administered prophylactic surfactant as soon as possible after birth to help promote lung development (given they were only 27 weeks).  The therapist noticed the neonatologist had not issued this order. She considered reminding him of this however remembered how he had publicly berated a nurse last week for questioning one of his orders.  This is a fictional example from Amy Edmondson’s book, however, it is derived from field research into numerous hospitals and no doubt this type of scenario is common and does lead to some serious issues occurring.  

High levels of psychological safety significantly reduce the severity and number of errors like this from occurring.  In addition, it allows members of a team to feel comfortable expressing ideas, sharing concerns and mistakes, asking naïve questions and believing that their voice is welcomed and valued. Team members respect each other’s competence and do not fear being rejected by colleagues for being themselves. For the organisation, this leads to the sharing of innovative ideas, improvements in team creativity, increased employee engagement, efficient coordination across groups and business units and prompt reporting of errors. 

Myths about Psychological Safety 

Psychological safety is not about ‘being nice’, nor is it about an environment that is free from conflict, a licence to whine, permission to slack off, over sharing, or a guarantee that all your ideas will be applauded.  Does creating a psychologically safe environment mean sacrificing accountability?  No! Psychological safety and accountability lie on a continuum.  If you have high psychological safety but low accountability you will experience a culture of ‘comfort’.  If you observe low psychological safety and high accountability you will know there is a highly anxious and fearful culture. Where an organisation is low on both psychological safety and accountability, there will be a high level of apathy and low performance.  The aim is to have both high psychological safety and accountability, which leads to a ‘learning culture’ that drive high performance.  People need to be a little bit uncomfortable to learn, grow and develop and yet they also need to feel safe to experiment and try new things.   

How can leaders create a culture of psychological safety? 

Creating psychological safety is easier said than done.  It requires a leader to work deliberately over many months and often a few years.  Amy Edmondson talks about 3 things a leader needs to do.  The first of these she calls ‘Frame the Work’.  A leader needs to encourage failures but not just any type of failure – ‘intelligent failures’.  This compares to ‘preventable failures’ which is where we know how to do something and we didn’t; and ‘complex failures’ where complex factors combine in novel ways to produce failures (note that we can learn from these failures but we don’t want to make them too often).  ‘Intelligent failures’ are failures that result because we have conducted a logical experiment into a new area, particularly where a business encounters a new problem.  This is like a maze that you have not encountered previously and so you need to explore different possible pathways to the end.   

The second tool a leader can utilise is to proactively invite engagement from others.  To do this they should focus on modelling humility and candour in the way they operate.  They need to keep an open mindset in a similar way to that described by Carol Dweck when she talks about having a ‘Growth Mindset’ rather than a ‘Fixed Mindset’.  Perhaps the most powerful thing a leader can do to invite engagement is to ask great questions.  There are two types of questions leaders can ask: questions to deepen the conversation and questions to broaden the discussion.  For example, to deepen the conversation, leaders could ask a question like: “I’m curious about what you’ve just said, could you tell us all more about why you have said that?”  A question to broaden the discussion could be: “That’s a fascinating point, what do others think of that?” 

A third tactic that leaders can employ is all about ‘responding productively’.  This means that when a team member shares their vulnerability, or makes a mistake and owns up to it, or makes an intelligent failure, or tells you about something that is not working well, a leader should show appreciation by saying something like: “thank you for that clear line of sight; what can I do to help?”.  A leader should also find ways to celebrate ‘intelligent failures’ and to embrace people who openly share their views of mistakes or things that are not working.   

What could a fearless organisation look like?   

If we take the example above in relation to premature twins, it is not hard to demonstrate a better scenario when there is a high level of psychological safety.  Imagine a different NICU, thousands of miles away, another respiratory therapist confronts the same situation: a neonatologist who forgets to order surfactant, this time for a baby boy of 28 weeks’ gestational age. Without hesitation, without even becoming aware of it as a decision, she stops the neonatologist to remind him. He quickly agrees that the baby should receive surfactant and calls the pharmacy to request it. He ends the conversation by thanking her for “watching out for me and the patient.” Shortly thereafter, as she is administering the surfactant to the boy, she thinks to herself that the NICU could ensure that all babies who need surfactant receive it by instituting a protocol. During a break, she seeks out her manager to make this suggestion.  What a difference high psychological safety can make! 

What will you do now? 

Clearly creating a culture of high psychological safety is important for many reasons and building a fearless organisation is a goal that we would encourage all leaders to strive for, however, it is not easy and requires deliberate and conscious effort over a sustained period to truly succeed. If this is something that you are keen to do, and you feel that challenge may be too difficult to do it alone, Steople is able to help to facilitate your journey towards a culture of high psychological safety.     

Contact your local Steople office to learn more about psychological safety and how we can help you.