Psychological Safety – Devil in the Detail

Psychological Safety – Devil in the Detail

Psychological safety has been discussed in philosophical and psychological circles for over 60 years, and much like Utopia, it is still considered a construct, an aspiration to aim for.

In the modern workplace, psychological safety is widely considered an essential component of a healthy and productive work environment. Many organizations are now talking up a culture of openness and trust that fosters psychological safety, allowing employees to feel valued and free to express themselves, leading to increased creativity, innovation, and productivity.

However, talk is cheap, but achieving psychological safety will require more than lofty rhetoric and platitudes; the devil is in the detail. We think it will need practical actions, such as changing the behavioral structure of companies to be more democratic in how we interact and treat each other during difficult conversations.

Many organizations are currently run by individuals who are rigid in their thinking, use dogmatic language, and try to bully or browbeat others into submission, to the detriment of sharing radically creative ideas. By implementing more democratic protocols and procedures, we think we can create the checks and balances needed to protect us from hierarchical power structures in organizations.

SpatzAI: Our proposed changes in the workplace to achieve psychological safety include using a toolkit that holds all participants, from the CEO to the janitor, to account for any misbehavior and, when necessary, to use an open peer-review network to finally expose any stubborn recalcitrants.

We are looking for teams within organizations to trail the Spatz app and network who are willing to have their behavior managed and monitored.

PS Stubborn recalcitrants welcome 🙂