MYTHS ABOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

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While I was working in law firms, I had no idea about what psychological safety was. I hadn't even heard the word; neither had I heard anyone in the firms talk about psychological safety. I was so engrossed in my own little world of work and deliverables that it never occurred to me that group dynamics and everyday communications could have such a big impact on us at work. Now, having studied organisational behaviour and read so much more about psychological safety, I understand its value and importance and I wish I had known this sooner so I could have done some things differently. So, I wanted to share some basic things about psychological safety including the myths people believe in so you can make your own assessment about your teams and especially the leaders and partners can think about creating it within their teams.

Psychological safety in teams means creating a work environment where the team members feel safe and comfortable to speak up without fear. Amy Edmondson, the psychologist who discovered this concept defines it as “a belief that that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for inter-personal risk taking.” It has become a very popular concept over many years and an essential ingredient for team effectiveness. However, with its popularity, the concept seems to have been diluted and confused with many other concepts. So, in this piece, I will be talking about some myths that people believe about psychological safety so we can have a better understanding of psychological safety.  

Psychological safety is a belief that that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for inter-personal risk taking - Amy Edmondson

Myth 1 | Psychological safety means creating a safe space

Psychological safety is about creating a space where people feel comfortable to share and express their views or ask questions. However, it is not to be equated with a safe space which is referred to in therapy or counselling or coaching. Creating a psychologically safe space does not mean that everyone is free to say anything that comes to their mind without any consequences. It means that if you have an idea or an opinion or any concern about the work product that you believe needs to be considered or re-considered, then you feel comfortable to state that without worrying about the fact that merely speaking up will get you fired or you will be made fun of or insulted or result in any other negative consequences for you. This would mean even others in the team will feel comfortable to provide feedback or criticism on your ideas as well.  

Myth 2 – Building psychological safety means being nice

Psychological safety involves team members feeling comfortable to have uncomfortable and difficult conversations. It’s not about being nice to each other and avoiding conflict to keep peace. When you are nice to others, you don’t state your opinion, you find something good to say or praise or even lie so that you don’t make the other person feel bad and no one is angry and everything is peaceful. This doesn’t help the work product or the team grow. Psychological safety is about voicing out your opinion even if it may be different from anyone else’s opinion or sharing a mistake to learn from it. Instead of trying to people please and saying yes to everything the other person says, people in psychologically safe spaces think for themselves and share their concerns irrespective of the hierarchy. They know that speaking up will not make their team members think they are stupid or incompetent but instead they will challenge each other to think differently, come up with better solutions and avoid the same mistakes. It creates an environment of resolving conflict by discussion. If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of any conflict, you know that is not ‘nice’.  

Myth 3 – Psychological safety means lowering expectations on performance and no accountability

Research shows that team psychological safety results in increased learning behaviour in team members leading to better team performance

Some believe that creating psychological safety in teams means there is no accountability for people and there are lower performance standards. Perhaps this is related to the assumption of everything psychological being clubbed as a mental health issue. To the contrary, research shows that team psychological safety results in increased learning behaviour in team members leading to better team performance. As a team member, you are absolutely accountable for the things you say. You will be responsible for your ideas and comments and may have to justify them and face the consequences for the mistakes you may make. People are aware that what they say can have an impact on their performance feedback and they may lose their job due to the market conditions or lack of competence. Psychological safety just allows you the freedom to share with your team without interpersonal fear i.e. the fear that you will be ridiculed or embarrassed or punished for merely for speaking up. Without psychological safety, people don’t raise concerns even when they see the problem. If you’ve ever been in a situation where during a discussion, you thought about an issue or a solution but never shared it because “not my problem” or “if I say anything I will be asked to do the extra work on this”, then you know exactly how speaking up would have helped the overall work. With psychological safety, everyone is responsible to do better and has the responsibility to speak up when something needs to be fixed or has been missed in order to achieve more challenging goals and learn. Especially in work environments where there are high standards, psychological safety reduces fear and anxiety to create learning and high performance zone. Thus, building psychological safety at work can improve both team communication and team performance if your work involves uncertainty and inter-dependence which would be the case for many sectors including knowledge work, especially in today's VUCA environment.

Myth 4 – Psychological safety is not needed for people who have extroversion as a personality trait

It is often assumed that people don’t speak up because they feel shy to speak in front of others or they lack confidence in themselves and have low self-efficacy or they’re introverts and that is just their personality. This assumption implies that psychological safety is not needed for people who are extroverts and to build psychological safety you need to challenge people to become more extroverts. Research shows that psychological safety has no relation with extroversion or introversion but only relates to the work environment. In an environment where people feel safe to speak up, people will speak up irrespective of their personality.

Myth 5 – Psychological safety means consensus decision making

Psychological safety is about listening to your team members and allowing them to share their concerns and reservations to pre-empt things that may go wrong so as to arrive at a good decision. It doesn’t mean that you need to get everyone on board and get their approval to make a decision. The final decision still lies with the leader. What psychological safety does is it allows the team to have a discussion on the different viewpoints and concerns that the team members may have. Instead of excluding them from the process altogether, psychological safety allows them to contribute when they feel it is important to do so. Without this, as highlighted earlier, team members will stay quiet even when they can see the problem or issue or don’t agree with a way forward, which may result in a bad outcome even when it could have been avoided if someone said something.

Myth 6 – Psychological safety means sharing your emotions with other people at work

While you may choose to share your emotions with people at work who are close to you, psychological safety is not about talking about your feelings with your team members and sharing your personal life with them. It means being vulnerable about the things that you need to work on for your professional growth as well as the team’s professional growth. Accepting mistakes and sharing them is a part of showing that vulnerability which can lead to better learning for all team members. Sometimes, to create a good image at work, we think that we need to show that we don’t make mistakes so we try to hide them or try to justify them or blame others for them. We don’t want to look incompetent. However, research shows that high performing teams actually report more mistakes than low performing teams; they acknowledge them and learn from them.   

As a bonus, here’s a few signs to look out for if you want to assess whether your team has psychological safety or not.

Signs your team has psychological safety at work

• Team members share their mistakes with each other, discuss them and learn from them.

• Team members have an open communication where they freely share their concerns and opinions and highlight potential problems

• Team members challenge ideas not people

• Team members admit when they don’t know something and are comfortable asking other team members for help

• Team members respect each other and trust that others will listen to them.

Signs your team does not have psychological safety

• There is silence any time the team is asked for suggestions and no one ever asks any questions.

• Making a mistake is unacceptable and held against you. When someone makes a mistake, it is never discussed or the focus is on who to blame instead of what caused it and what can be done better in the future.

• ‘I don’t know’ is not an acceptable answer. You are expected to know the answers.  

• When something goes wrong, people say that I knew this was going to happen but I didn’t want to say anything because I wasn't sure or didn't want to dampen the spirit.

• When a leader asks the team for their suggestions but goes on to speak for 70% of the time.

• Fear is used as a motivator.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Edmondson, A.C. (2019) The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken.

https://amycedmondson.com/psychological-safety/

Building a psychologically safe workplace | Amy Edmondson - Ted Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoLuui9gX8