Psychological Safety:
The Psychological Safety movement has been getting some legs over the last 5 years since a few articles came out as a result of Google’s research into what makes a successful team at Google. “Psychological safety is being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career. It can be defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research”
- Rework – The five keys to a successful Google team
- New York Times – What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
- HBR – High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It
Just Culture:
Recently, after learning about Psychological Safety I also discovered another movement in the workplace called Just Culture. “Just Culture is a concept related to systems thinking which emphasizes that mistakes are generally a product of faulty organizational cultures, rather than solely brought about by the person or persons directly involved. In a just culture, after an incident, the question asked is, “What went wrong?” rather than “Who caused the problem?”
- Just Culture: A Foundation for Balanced Accountability and Patient Safety
- HBR – Building a Culture of Transparency in Health Care
Social Just Culture:
But it seems to me that there needs to be a cross pollination of both cultures to create a Social Just Culture. Where as a Just Culture encourages teams to own up to mistakes by not blaming or punishing them, “A Social Just Culture encourages teams to expose, confront and acknowledge offensive or misbehavior, in real-time, rather than suppress it and later end up backbiting the offender.”
A Social Just Culture allows us to face our disagreements and know that we have a just process in place to address situations when either one of us becomes emotional during our disagreement. It is way way for us to clean up any mess that can and WILL occur when we disagree.
Object123 is our proposal for a Social Just Cultural tool in the workplace.
Object123 