“For knowledge work to flourish, the workplace must be one where people feel able to share their knowledge! This means sharing concerns, questions, mistakes, and half-formed ideas. In most workplaces today, people are holding back far too often – reluctant to say or ask something that might somehow make them look bad. To complicate matters, as companies become increasingly global and complex, more and more of the work is team-based. Today’s employees, at all levels, spend 50% more time collaborating than they did 20 years ago. Hiring talented individuals is not enough. They have to be able to work well together.”

― Amy C. Edmondson,
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

Understanding Psychological Safety

Psychological Safety is a shared belief that the team / workspace is safe for interpersonal risk taking.   

The term “team psychological safety” was by Amy Edmondson in the 1990s to describe workspaces that encouraged and expected employees to speak up without the fear of retribution, or any other adverse consequence. 

To break it down for ease of understanding, it is a belief held by colleagues and leaders that:   

• One would be heard in a discussion,   

• The perspective one has to offer would be valued   

• One will not be interrupted while talking, and  

• That one need not feel afraid when asking a question or sharing an observation that may not conform or align with the dominant discourse of the group 

It is a safety net, one that provides relief in the face of the anxieties one might experience when speaking up, challenging the status quo or even contributing a risky idea that might be on the wilder side of things. 

Stages Of Psychological Safety At Work 

There are four stages of psychological safety:  

1. Inclusion safety: Where one feels safe to be oneself, feel valued and accepted for who they are and that their opinions matter and are included regardless of title and position. 

2. Learner safety: When one feels safe to exchange in the learning process by asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, experimenting, making mistakes and looking for new opportunities. 

3. Contributor / Collaborator Safety: When one feels safe to use one’s skills and abilities to make a meaningful contribution, engage in an unconstrained way, maintain open dialogue and foster constructive debate and have mutual access to people and resources. 

4. Challenger Safety: Where one feels safe to speak up and challenge the status quo when there’s an opportunity to change or improve, express ideas, identify changes and expose problems. 

As we delve into these concepts, we must keep in mind that psychological safety is not merely always being in agreement or not experiencing conflict; rather it is about fostering a space to support healthy dissent and create the conditions for ideas and folx to thrive at work. 

Importance Of Psychological Safety At Work: 

As leaders and custodians of workplace culture, it becomes important to ponder – why is talking about psychological safety at work even important? 

The research out there indicates that persons in psychologically safe teams may experience: 

• Feeling more engaged and motivated 

• Better decision making  

• Being part of a culture of continuous learning 

All of these may be achieved from being able to openly share about their learnings and mistakes, learn from one another, and feel like their voices and contributions matter – without any looming dread of direct adverse impact. 

This can go a long way to support employees to function better within their roles, building connectedness, resilience, improving group performance and productivity, while enabling the enhancement of organisational cognitive wealth. 

How Can Organizations Use Psychological Safety? 

Psychological safety has been used by organizations, like Google, in service of learning more about their employees. Google had conducted a study, called Project Aristotle, where they studied group dynamics and what makes a team efficient. The study confirmed that psychological safety was the top factor in bringing people together to work towards a common goal.  

When organizations can affirm the curiosity as well as the (healthy) rebellion or challenge to the status quo that employees might bring to the table, it can foster a lively work environment rife with possibilities to evolve, ideate and grow. 

Inclusive leaders are mindful of their nonverbal and demonstrative behaviours while interacting with team members – asking for each person’s opinion, urging people to bring their unique perspective and not encourage groupthink, applauding those challenging status quo, recognizing new and wild ideas etc. All these are markers of a psychologically safe space at the workplace and focus on growth as an organization. 

How Do We Build Psychological Safety At Work? 

One of the biggest takeaways from our research, understanding and experience of psychological safety is that employees must feel a sense of belonging at work. This is a difficult task because group dynamics usually dictates whether an employee feels welcome at work or not. One can’t corral a group of people and demand that they make everyone feel at home, creating catalysts for such an environment begins with a top-down approach and must be a dedicated decision with appropriate resources allocated in service of creating a psychologically safe culture. 

Edmondson points out that psychological safety is more important in spaces where employees need to use their discretion. New recent research by Edmondson and Bresman, indicates that on teams with high psychological safety, expertise diversity was positively associated with performance. 

We also need to keep in mind that when it comes to psychological safety, leadership styles and buy in, as well as management practices (formal and informal) matter. Leading with authenticity is efficient and impactful when it comes to creating psychologically safe environments.  

Organizations have a specific role to play while co-creating the framework to support psychological safety at work. We have listed what we have found helpful in doing so below: 

1. Make Psychological safety an explicit priority through training and awareness programs– This shows that there is a commitment to upholding psychological safety and that employees are valued 

2. Embrace vulnerability – When we are leading the charge in being vulnerable, we are exhibiting to folx that the group or team or organization is safe for risk-taking for showing up authentically etc. 

3. Establish norms for how failure is handled – Failure is an integral part of growth. Failure gives us an opportunity to learn something new. Meeting failure with empathy can be the difference between a new innovation and an old mechanism. 

4. Promote respect – Respect is the foundation upon which trust is built. Respect should be afforded to everyone regardless of position or stature in the company. 

5. Support your leadership team with space to grow and develop their soft skills through training and mentorship programs 

6. Create space for new ideas, invest in training and development and team building (even wild ones – Google, Apple and Facebook all started as wild ideas. Intentionally making space for wild new ideas could create fertile ground for growth within the organization. 

The journey to co-creating psychological safety goes beyond mailers and one- time workshops. It is an endeavour in practice, mindful and intentional leadership and shifting existing perceptions and expectations of the workplace. We can expect some non-linear shifts along the way. 

Psychological safety is a complex state of being. It requires patience and vulnerability along with the insight to be able to anticipate employee needs. But the rewards are great and the benefits multi-fold. It leads to higher retention, more innovation, collaboration, new skills being utilized and of course, employee satisfaction which leads to higher productivity. Our hope is to kindle the flames of psychological safety, so that the future of your organization shines bright and stable. 

Work with us to create spaces of psychological safety at your organization! Reach out on connect@equilibrioadvisory.org to know more. 

Written by Sanjla Perumal and Rosanna Rodrigues, reviewed by Samriti Makkar Midha