Does psychological safety get results?

I’ve recently been studying psychological safety (Edmondson). I can imagine a lot of business leaders hearing about this and thinking “bah, business is about money, not feelings”.

Whilst how we feel at work is important, Edmondson’s model isn’t just about this. It posits that when staff can learn without fear of failure, contribute without fear of rejection, and challenge norms, we create a high performing team that can innovate.

I think Edmondson’s four levels of psychological safety are a great structure with which to empower staff. But why should we empower staff? Well, taking the opposite, here’s what I’ve seen with staff that are not empowered:

• Responsibility and accountability are eroded,

• Independent problem solving is reduced,

• Decisions are taken by committees, not appropriate individuals, and take a long time to reach,

• Every issue is escalated to managerial or director level, creating huge inefficiencies,

• In the long term, staff become deskilled, because they no longer problem solve and do not learn.

That’s a lot of problems. For me, the last one is where it becomes really dangerous. Your company IS the people that perform the everyday work. If they are not learning, problem solving, responsible and accountable, the organisation will grind slower and slower.

The argument for psychological safety is then:

• Staff learn new skills,

• Staff learn to independently problem solve,

• Processes run more efficiently, as decisions are made at the appropriate level and time,

• Managers and directors are freed to work on value-added activities,

• The organisation challenges and innovates.

And maybe this is pure opinion, but I think this creates a workplace that has happy staff, and retains high performers.

So, using this framework, how can we empower our teams?

• Inclusion: work on belonging and work group identification. Make sure you’re not excluding people from particular conversations. Do you have a small “go to” group to get things done? Try going outside it next time.

• Learner: make it clear that no question is silly. Ask the daft questions that make you feel silly as a manager. Include this in team meetings, 1:1s and day-to-day interactions. Foster a culture of asking for help and confirming understanding. MOST importantly, do not penalise mistakes. Focus on the process of learning from mistakes.

• Contributor: this follows naturally from learner safety, but team members can need some encouragement to step outside their comfort zone. Set up meetings to brainstorm solutions, where anything goes. The goal here is for team members to feel comfortable suggesting ideas, even if they don’t go anywhere.

• Challenger: you’re looking for team members to challenge others’ (and your) ideas. Note that this is not in a negative, critical way. This should be constructive criticism, which challenges assumptions and drives creative thinking for the whole group. Do not try to implement this step without clear achievement of inclusion, learner and contributor safety, as it will likely produce a negative experience that will set you back.

Outside of Edmondson’s framework, there are some other actions that can help:

• Clear training procedures that define what authorities are granted on completion of training stages,

• Clear delegation of responsibilities (from directors, through managers to team members),

• Standard financial instructions, defining who can spend what and how, under normal operating conditions.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

As you can see, I think psychological safety does deliver high performing teams.