What Is Psychological Safety?
Chances are, you've heard the term "psychological safety."
It's hard to avoid these days. Everybody's talking about it as a key concept in the workplace—especially for leaders.
But talking about it isn't the same as understanding it. In all of the play it's getting, its meaning has gotten a little...fuzzy.
Here's what you need to know in order to truly understand psychological safety and what it means for you at work.
The concept was originally elevated by Dr. Amy Edmondson, who connected an existing term "psychological safety" with team performance while she was pursuing her PhD in the 1990's. Edmondson is a team scholar, now at Harvard Business School, who studies what makes teams effective. In her PhD research, she examined the qualities that made certain teams great in a healthcare setting, and others, well, not.
A key finding was that the best teams made more mistakes, not less. That's because they reported mistakes more often, rather than hiding them, and thus learned from those experiences in order to get better.
She found that it's a team's ability to learn and improve that leads to great results, great retention, and a great work experience.
And the key ingredient to that learning is team psychological safety.
The concept reached the public eye in 2012, when Google embarked on Project Artistotle, its own exploration into the secret sauce of the most successful teams in the company. What they found shocked them: it wasn't who was on a team, but rather how the team worked together that made all the difference.
Since then—particularly the past three years—the definitions of psychological safety have ballooned to become an umbrella for being comfortable at work: having job security, being vulnerable and open with each other about your personal lives, and working in a trigger-free environment or a safe and laid back space.
Let us be clear—the qualities on that list might be good, bad, or in between, but they are not team psychological safety.
So what exactly do we mean when we talk about team psychological safety? Edmondson defines it as "felt permission for candor."
In other words, team psychological safety is a team environment where members feel that it's okay to speak up, ask questions, share ideas, express concerns, and admit mistakes without fear of negative consequences.
It's about recognizing that you and I are imperfect humans who will sometimes have wild ideas that won't work, say the wrong thing, or mess up—and accepting that fallibility as a natural, unavoidable part of doing great work, together.
Team psychological safety is not an individual skill—it's not about your knowledge or ability. You can't get better at it on your own.
Rather, it's about team climate—the work environment we create together through our behaviors, norms, and habits.
Great teams:
- Ask each other questions - "What are we not seeing here?"
- Listen to understand, not to be right
- Clarify terms - "What do we mean when we say 'success'?"
- Understand that making mistakes is part of innovating and improving
- Welcome debate and disagreement in the name of doing something great, together
- Take risks and have each others' backs
- Forgive each other
- Ask each other for help
- Practice open communication
- Recognize and appreciate the value that each person brings
Great teams do not:
- Blame and shame each other when things go wrong
- Practice "niceness" over honesty
- Hold things against each other
- Deliberately work against each other
- Intentionally say harmful things
- Expect perfection at every turn
Our team norms affect how we show up. Too often, we are in protection-mode, not wanting to overstep, say the wrong thing, challenge hierarchy, or open ourselves up to the possibility of getting shot down.
And when we hold back, we don't share our ideas or bring up potential threats. We prioritize self-preservation over team learning. We miss opportunities to do great things, together.
When Edmondson began her research in the 90's, the biggest threat to team psychological safety was hierarchy. If you're my boss, I don't want to disagree with you, rock the boat, or float an idea that might outshine yours.
While that's still a concern to overcome, our workplaces are less formal and more direct on the whole.
Today, the threats to team psychological safety look a little different, especially because its meaning is misunderstood.
It's not about being comfortable at work, expecting that nothing will be said that will upset you.
When topics are off the table and un-discussible, we tiptoe in our team meetings, afraid of misspeaking and therefore not speaking up at all. Instead, we have the meeting after the meeting, privately, with people we think will agree with us.
Our teams need to have the built trust to disagree about the direction of the project without feeling like we're personally at odds.
We need to be able to speak up with the language we have and be open to learning that there may be more precise or inclusive language that we can use moving forward.
We need to be open to calling each other in rather than calling each other out.
Building an environment with team psychological safety is anything but easy or straightforward. It gets to the very heart of what makes us human. It is a constant practice of clarity, compassion, and care. And that has everything to do with the tone set by leadership.
As a leader, here's what you can do to foster this type of work environment:
Model a learning mindset. Share when you mess up or when you change your mind. Tell a story about a time when you screwed up, and what you learned. Show that it's okay to not be perfect, and that you don't expect that from your team.
Ask questions before stating your opinion. As the group leader, your voice holds power. Directly elicit perspectives and input from your team members before sharing your own—they'll be more likely to speak up and share their great ideas.
When the team encounters failure (when, not if!), ask, "What did we learn?" Shifting the focus from blame and shame to curiosity and learning helps the team to improve and innovate.
Foster a safer space. That's safe-er, not safe space because we can never guarantee a space that is safe for all. But as leaders, we can educate ourselves on inclusive leadership practices that make it safer for our team to show up as who they truly are—and continue our learning as those practices evolve.
Ask for and reward feedback. Start by giving it to yourself ("I should do this differently next time") to show that it's safe to share that kind of information with you, and thank team members directly when they offer their perspective.
Address team norm violations when they happen. Do not let behaviors in conflict with these norms persist. When you do, it sends a signal that the behavior is acceptable and the team members go into self-protection mode. Clearly state, "This is how we do things here, and that kind of comment erodes trust and is therefore not okay."
Recognize the value of each team members' voice. Affirm their skills and express gratitude for their unique perspective. It's a simple thing to say, "I'm so glad you shared that, Kim, because you are our expert on Y and I never would have thought to ask that question."
When teams have psychological safety, members are engaged, plugged in, and feel like what they do really matters. Diverse perspectives come to the surface, which leads to better decisions all around. Teams take risks, innovate, shift strategies, and learn to do things better and better.
Now that's a team I want to be a part of.
Want more info on team psychological safety? Here are the resources I synthesized for this article:
The Greg McKeown Podcast: Psychological Safety in Today's Workplace with Dr. Amy Edmondson Part 1 & Part 2, 3/2 and 3/9/23
What Is Psychological Safety? from Amy Gallo at Harvard Business Review, 2/15/23
What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team from Charles Duhigg at the New York Times, 2/28/16
We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown
Psychological safety: the art of encouraging teams to be open from Andrew Hill at the Financial Times, 2/11/23
