The Definition Of Psychological Safety Psychological safety is defined as the belief, in a group, that we are safe to take interpersonal risks. It’s the belief that we are able to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns and mistakes, and […]
The Definition Of Psychological Safety Psychological safety is defined as the belief, in a group, that we are safe to take interpersonal risks. It’s the belief that we are able to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns and mistakes, and […]
The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychological Safety I recently tried to work out how many people have attended one or more of our workshops on psychological safety, including our workshops for teams and organisations, our online workshops, and any we’ve […]
Experiments, bets and probes One of our mottos at PsychSafety is “everything is an experiment”. The outcome of work shouldn’t just be getting the thing done, it should be learning how to do it better next time. Experiments don’t mean […]
The Johari Window By Jade Garratt, Director of Education Like many, I was first introduced to the Johari Window in leadership development training. It was presented as a tool to understand yourself, and it was used to demonstrate how feedback […]
The Pac-Man rule One of the main reasons to go to a conference, event or meetup is to meet people and have interesting conversations. I’ve found myself at day-long conferences where I’ve not attended a single talk, and instead found […]
Ten Ways to Foster Psychological Safety in the Workplace We’ve been reflecting on our last few years of experience delivering psychological safety workshops, training and consultancy in organisations around the world. Based on all those wonderful experiences, working with industries […]
Psychological Safety and Safeguarding Article by Jade Garratt Imagine suspecting, or even knowing, that something is terribly wrong, but feeling unable to speak up about your concerns. This feeling can be all too real in environments where safeguarding is essential, […]
Non-Violent Communication (or “Giraffe Language”) I saw this great post by Robin Weinick on LinkedIn about her bowl of tiny giraffes, and it reminded me to share a photo of our own “Speak Up Giraffe”! This giraffe is passed around […]
Hard to Say I’m Sorry: Apologies in the Workplace Guest post by Jonathan Cohen, MD It shouldn’t be a surprise that good apologies are not the norm. There are several reasons for this. Most of us have not undergone formal […]
Types of Silence The authors of this literature review “Silence in organizations and psychological safety” from 2015, describe a number of group dynamics that can lead to silence, and more interestingly, describe a few different types of silence, drawn from […]
Icebreakers If you’re anything like me, when you see “icebreakers” on an agenda or schedule for a meeting, you immediately become a little anxious. Ice breakers are intended to make us feel more comfortable and at ease, increasing the overall […]
In the real world, psychological safety is political. There are some who say that psychological safety isn’t political. We think it is. What does “political” mean? At its broadest level, politics determine the ways people in groups make decisions. This […]
How psychological safety captured the world’s attention Project Aristotle was a project undertaken by Google to understand what makes teams successful. The project aimed to identify patterns and behaviours within teams that led to high performance. Starting in 2012, Google […]
I can say whatever I want! When I met up with Amy Edmondson recently in Boston (yes, this is a humblebrag and I’m owning it!) we discussed one of the prevalent misconceptions around psychological safety: that it means we can say […]
A few issues ago, we covered various kinds of retrospective – the practice of looking back and learning from work, as well as some of the conditions and requirements for effective retrospectives. One of those points was about the “weak […]
Team performance isn’t the only reason that we foster psychological safety. We also do it because we want people to feel fulfilled in their jobs, we don’t want people to leave a team because they don’t feel included, we want people to experience less unnecessary stress and have greater mental wellbeing, we want to foster greater diversity and inclusion. Ultimately, we foster psychological safety because it’s fundamentally the right thing to do.
Psychological Safety in 2023 Thanks so much for all your support, feedback, encouragement, ideas, insights and collaboration over 2023! It’s genuinely a privilege to be able to do this work, and I appreciate every single one of you. I recently […]
The Theory of Constraints (ToC) A long time ago, I read a book that profoundly changed the way I think about work. That book was The Goal, written by Eli Goldratt in 1984, The story revolves around Alex Rogo, a […]
Learning From Work In the spirit of looking back and learning, I thought it’d be nice to dive into a few different practices of learning from the work we do. In this issue, we’re going to have a look at […]
Stutters and Stammers I’ve written previously about my experience growing up with dyspraxia, which I was diagnosed with at an early age. My dyspraxia made it difficult for me to pronounce and articulate certain sounds (called phonemes), and meant that I […]
Reason’s theory holds that most accidents can be traced to one or more of four levels of failure:
Organisational influences,
Unsafe supervision,
Preconditions for unsafe acts, and
The unsafe acts themselves.
Employment Protections and Psychological Safety You may recall back in issue 121, we released a small survey on employment rights, protections and policies. It was a preliminary, pilot study intended to see if there was anything worth investigating further in […]
Psychological Safety Behaviours: The Big List Psychological safety is a belief that the group is safe for interpersonal risk taking (Edmondson, 1999). There are many ways we can help to foster these environments, but it’s important to remember that we […]
Interpersonal vs. Intrapersonal Dynamics in Psychological Safety: Balancing Self and Others in Organisational Contexts In the organisational behaviour and dynamics, understanding the interplay between interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics is crucial for fostering a culture of psychological safety. While these terms […]