Psychological Safety

This is closely related to Trust.

The formal definition of psychological safety is the shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.

Here’s a comparison with vulnerability and another definition that might make more sense:

• Vulnerability: “I share, and give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re trustworthy”
• Psychological safety: “I share, and you give me the benefit of the doubt - by culture, you will not judge me”.

Taking a risk by asking questions, showing weakness etc could cause someone to have less trust in me. Providing the benefit of the doubt here refers to continuing to trust.

For example, showing weakness and admitting a mistake could immediately cause someone to doubt my competence and therefore, put less trust in me. If there is a culture of psychological safety, this is treated as a learning experience and I would work to avoid repeating that mistake.

However, there is a balance to keep when extending the grace of benefit of the doubt. If someone is truly not performing and needs to be let go in a high stakes role, you can part ways and do so without destroying the other person. “I can treat you as a friend, but I no longer trust your competence which is a critical part of what we’re doing…”.

Safety Reveals Suffering

There is suffering when things aren’t the way they should be.

Safety reveals suffering, but safety cannot heal suffering. Hence, psychological safety is a means to an end (and not an end in and of itself) - the system is more agile or the team performs better.

This is because safety helps with diagnosis but not with intervention. E.g for conversation between friends, lots of things are discussed because there is a lot of safety, but people don’t know what to do.

Safety And Competence

Psychological Safety must be matched with skill. Once something is in the system that the system does not know how to handle, that causes safety to plummet.

When doing systems intervention, remember to also diagnose how much competence there is in the system. Without competence, safety is premature.

The more competence in the system, the more issues start showing up, which might overwhelm the system.

This is also increasingly complex because other systems like friendship systems, family systems etc fail to catch units like unresolved trauma, ambitions or dreams which then shows up onto the work system. It is worth seeing if a unit of work can be taken care of in these other systems first.

Misc notes:

• The lack of psychological safety is often associated with underlings in an organization. But many leaders also do not feel safe in the very systems that they are supposed to lead.
• A tool like the staff climate survey can only be used in a culture which supports it. Leaders brace themselves for the results of these surveys in many organizations.