The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy C. Edmondson book has been out for a couple of years, and the idea of psychological safety has emerged as a critical element of enabling change and growth in organizations. I enjoyed Edmondson discussion of how psychological safety plays a key role in learning, innovation and growth - and lack of it plays a role in limiting these elements. She also provides a high level structure to create and grow psychological safety in an organization. This definitely feels like an academic’s book. The story Edmondson tells references her research and that of many others who have explored the topic of psychological safety.
But what is it? I’ve heard and seen a variety of descriptions that have to do with personal comfort to speak one’s mind. One I particularly like is the idea that one doesn’t burn a lot of energy trying to “look good” in front of their colleagues. Edmondson uses this description:
I have defined psychological safety as the belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. The concept refers to the experience of feeling able to speak up with relevant ideas, questions, or concerns. Psychological safety is present when colleagues trust and respect each other and feel able - even obligated - to be candid. (page 8)
The first section describes many scenarios and examples with low psychological safety, and I have to say some of them were very familiar - and uncomfortable. Who hasn’t raised their hand or kept their ideas and opinions to themselves when unsure of the response of others? Or even worse when sure of the response, and that it will be negative or otherwise feel retaliatory. Edmondson framed the effects of psychological safety as an unbalanced pair - stay quiet on the one hand, or speak up on the other. Speaking up requires more energy regardless, though in a safe environment that energy is not much more than baseline. But staying quiet requires no energy, and for many (particularly in unsafe environments) it just feels “easier” - even in scenarios where speaking up is the logically right thing to do. Logic doesn’t play very well when fear is sitting on your shoulder. “Without psychological safety, micro-assessments of interpersonal risk tend to crowd out proper responses.” (p. 134)
There is an important aspect here that psychological safety is a feeling or sense held by individuals. Yes, the organizational or team leaders can influence this feeling, but it is still an individual element. This means that the same person is going to have varying levels of psychological safety depending on who they are around. And depending on what is happening for them.
How does psychological safety affect learning and improvement? It has almost no effect on “book learning” or, as Edmondson termed it learn-what. One can read and study to learn in almost any environment. It is the learning how (learn-how) that requires psychological safety because this is usually the environment of learning from others and sharing one’s own knowledge and ideas. And that works best in safe environments. This about the phrase “safe to fail” that is used in some circles. The idea isn’t that we necessarily want failure - but when it happens, celebrate and use it as a means to learn something! Compare that to a statement like “we will do it right first time” - How much safety is there for learning and experimenting under that environment?
Wrapping up the book, Edmondson provides some guidance to creating a psychologically safe environment geared toward leaders (leaders at any level). Set the stage. Invite participation. Respond productively. Setting the stage has to do with describing where we are going, what are the stakes of success (and failure). It’s also about setting expectations on how to handle failure and uncertainty. It can give people in the organization a language around being open with each other. Inviting participation has a lot to do with setting an example for the rest of the team - Edmondson uses the term situational humility to show sometimes that you don’t know everything and that is okay. It’s why we have organizations. Inviting participation is also about asking good questions, like “Was everything as safe as you would like it to have been this week with your patients?” instead of “Did you keep your patients safe?” One opens up for potential thought and reflection, while the other closes down responses where the only possible answer is “yes.” And responding productively has to do with what one does with the participation - it is all about continuous learning from experiments and “failures” (maybe even reframing them as “opportunities to learn”).
A question I have on reading the book: Edmondson described discovering the idea of psychological safety in the context of teams - some teams in the same company had high psychological safety and some had low psychological safety. But is was the results that really highlighted the difference. The question for me was that the discussion shifted from specific examples of high/low psychological safety into creating the environment where people could feel psychologically safe that seemed to be focused on the organizational leadership. But how does the organizational setup reflect back down to the teams - the interpersonal situations where psychological safety really comes to play? I get that the leaders set the stage for the organization, but it seemed there was a loop missing back to team dynamics.
As I mentioned at the top, the topic and idea of psychological safety has been showing up in many things I’ve been reading and watching over the past few years. As is typical for me, that means that I see the idea more and more as well. In workshops and business conversations, if there is no response to a question or other invitation to participate, what could that mean about the participants level of psychological safety? Even in some of the fun fiction I read, I can see characters hiding their thoughts for fear of how others might respond.