What is Psychological Safety? Vs How is it Achieved?

Read any posts on psychological safety on Linkedin, and guarantee you will find the authors talking about what it is and, lately, what it is not. How we achieve it seems to have been forgotten, mainly as it usually only consists of cliches and platitudes aimed at managers, that are so easily misinterpreted or misconstrued by them. Such as “nurturing a climate of trust,” “showing vulnerability,” “being curious,” “fostering a culture of respect”, “admit your mistakes”, “modeling how to be respectful and willingness to take risks,” etc. etc. I could go on.

But instead of asking, “What is psychological safety?” maybe a better question to understand it better would be, “How is psychological safety achieved?”

“Psychological safety is an atmosphere where one can take chances……….without fear and with
sufficient protection.”

^{[EDGAR SCHEIN & WARREN BENNIS 1965 – PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY – WIKIPEDIA]}

So, my answer to how psychological safety is achieved is by sufficiently protecting team members, in real-time from any reprisals when they speak up. What type of reprisals?

Browbeating, using unfair dogmatic naysaying, for starters, but they can escalate to being shouted down, verbally abused, physically threatened, or even losing your job.

“Dude!! That will never work!!!!”

Browbeating using dogmatic and unfair naysaying

We believe that fair naysaying is fine, like the following…..

“Des, I appreciate you contribution, mate, however…
I just don’t think your idea will work due to…..”

Fair naysaying

So, when team member’s speak up with bold and challenging ideas, how do we protect them from misbehaving, fellow team members, and management? By providing them with the following toolkit:

• An intervention procedure and 3-step messaging app to address, document and course-correct any unfair behavior during disagreements.
• A platform for their peers to oversee and contribute, when necessary, to any unresolved conflicts arising from their initial spats or disputes.
• A team charter where everyone buys into being held accountable for any behavior deemed unfair by the team.
• Providing the organization and investors with the spat, dispute, and conflict resolution data and the Spatz AI to help assess how healthy their teams are doing based on their behavior performance LLM data.

That is WHAT psychological safety would look like to us—actional steps provided to teams for protection with objective, quantifiable results. 

Welcome to the 21st century age of psychological safety and SpatzAI, dare to fly