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 whatever we want – we can speak our mind without regard for consequence. Well, that’s not the case. Let’s dive into why.

This particular misunderstanding is that psychological safety means it’s ok to say whatever you want – we should be free to openly give ideas, opinions, and provide feedback in a completely unfiltered way. The opposite of this misunderstanding exists too – the perception that we have to be extra careful about what we say, lest we offend someone or make them feel “unsafe”. Of course, neither are accurate or useful framings of psychological safety.

Just as we discussed a while back in the Yogic Philosophy (Ahimsa and Satya) issue, it’s generally wise to prioritise non-violence (i.e. kindness) over complete honesty. What’s the utility of the whole truth if its effect is only to harm? Just as we might tell our auntie that she baked a delicious birthday cake for us when in fact it was so dry that we had to down a whole pot of tea in order to manage a slice, it’s important to consider when that complete honesty is actually useful or kind.

“If what you want to say is neither true, nor good or kind, nor useful or necessary, don’t say anything at all.”

Aside: This quote is often attributed to Socrates, but it didn’t feel particularly Socratic, so we asked our placement student Bea Poyton, to investigate. It seems to have been attributed to Socrates around 2003, but the first trace we can find in print was in 1845 by Rev. Charles B. Tayler in “Lady Mary, or Not of the World”, again in 1936 in The Liguorian, and later in 1955 by Amy Carmichael, in “Edges of His Ways”. So – not Socrates.

It’s a good framing though, and is to say that anything we speak should ideally meet all the criteria before we say it, though sometimes only one may suffice (for example, shouting at someone to stop them stepping in front of a speeding truck).

We should also WAIT. 

That is, we should consider “Why Am I Talking?” This might sound antithetical for psychological safety – surely we should be able to speak up without having to think too hard about what we can say or not say, but here’s the kick:

Psychological safety primarily regards our perception about the consequences for us of speaking up. That doesn’t mean that we can disregard the consequences for others. 

Psychological safety doesn’t mean freedom to say whatever you want, regardless of impact. It doesn’t mean zero consequences for causing interpersonal harm. It doesn’t mean believing that “I must always be safe to express my (potentially harmful) views.” 

This stance, that psychological safety means it’s ok to say whatever you want without fear of consequence, is actually very damaging to psychological safety – particularly for those who suffer as a result of harmful, bigoted or exclusionary language. 

There is a Buddhist quote about the “five keys to right speech”:

“It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good-will.”

— Anguttara Nikaya 5.198

That seems a potentially useful guide to address some common “wrong speech” examples:

Spoken at the right time:

If someone is about to go on stage and deliver the talk of their career in front of a huge conference audience, telling them:
“You have some tissue stuck to your shoe.” GOOD! They can sort it before they go on stage. Phew!
“That shirt colour really doesn’t suit you.” BAD! Too late. They’ll only lose confidence and be thinking about how (apparently) awful they look.

And of course, if we’re unsure whether it’s a good time, we can ask. Maybe they’re in the middle of something, maybe they’re not feeling great, they’re going through some personal stuff that you didn’t know about, or they’ve just had some bad news. We won’t know these things unless we check in with them.

Spoken in truth:

Coming back to our shirt colour example, we need to remember that there is a difference between our opinion and some “objective truth”. If we have been asked for our honest opinion, then maybe then it’s important to tell them that we don’t think the colour suits them. But if they haven’t asked, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it’s necessary or helpful to share our highly subjective opinion. We are not omniscient gods with access to objective truth: all that we consider to be true is in fact varying shades of misunderstanding.

Spoken affectionately, beneficially and with a mind of good-will:

This is where we really challenge ourselves to think not only about how we communicate, but why we are doing it. Are we trying to help them? Are we working to help make the world a better place? Or is it possible that we’re feeling hurt ourselves and lashing out, are we feeding our ego, or trying to place ourselves in a position of power or authority relative to the other person, as can sometimes be the case with poorly delivered feedback? 

Sometimes it’s absolutely right and justified to speak with conviction, even anger, when a wrong has been, or may be, committed. Sometimes it’s even right to speak with the clear intent of making the recipients uncomfortable, particularly if speaking truth to power. And there are times when, as Brene Brown puts it, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” But taking a pause just long enough to interrogate our own motives, and how we say something, not just what we say, can give us time to reflect about whether what we’re doing is actually in service, or damaging, to an environment of psychological safety. 


Further Links:

Yogic Philosophy (Ahimsa and Satya)
What Psychological Safety is Not
Weaponisation of Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety, Diversity & Inclusion
Civility Saves Lives
The Buddha on Right Speech – ancient wisdom for modern times
Greta Thunberg: ‘How dare you?’
Tony Benn’s speech against the war in Iraq
Julia Gillard misogyny speech
James Baldwin: I Am Not Your Negro
Roberto Ferraro

Psychological Safety in the World

Things are not going well for Boeing right now. On Thursday 7 March a tyre detached from the landing gear on a United Airlines Boeing 777 shortly after takeoff from San Francisco International Airport on Thursday, smashing up a car in a staff parking lot, and tearing through a fence. The following day a United Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 rolled into soft ground just after landing at Houston George Bush Airport, because the left main landing gear collapsed. I feel compelled to point out that because Boeing is in the news, more of these stories are going to come out, and they’ll be amplified by the press and social media, while in fact these things happen fairly regularly – and the fact that nobody was injured in these events shows how safe aviation actually is. One perspective is that an aircraft can lose a wheel, and landing gear can be damaged by a heavy landing, and nobody is harmed as a result, is actually pretty impressive.

Arguably more concerning is that on 9 March, John Barnett, who worked for Boeing for more than 30 years before retiring in 2017 was found dead by a self-inflicted wound, in a parking lot in the US. In the days before his death, he’d been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against Boeing.

This piece by John Oliver (video not available outside the US so I’m sharing The Guardian write up) is excellent, showing how concerning it is for a US company that used to be synonymous with safety and craftsmanship to be suffering these safety and culture issues, when they used to be known for their culture of engineering excellence. “If you truly are too big to fail, that should mean that you are big enough to spend the time and resources required to fix the culture that you have destroyed.”

Dare Obasanjo reflects here on Microsoft’s transformation under Satya Nadella’s leadership. Obasanjo, who worked at Microsoft from 2002 to 2019, acknowledges the company’s “Lost Decade” where it failed to produce compelling products in new spaces and credits Nadella with changing Microsoft’s culture, emphasising a “growth mindset” over a “fixed mindset”. Key to this turnaround was abandoning the “strategy tax” that hindered product integration and adoption of open-source software. I really like this little meeting room sign encouraging people to reflect on their mindset in the space:

This is a good piece on perfectionist managers, from HR Grapevine. “…people just don’t even want to try hard, because you’re going to change it and fix it. It’s never going to be good enough”. I’ve had “perfectionist” bosses before, and I completely agree – if your work is going to be ripped apart and criticised anyway, eventually you’re going to stop trying so hard. What’s the point in going the extra mile if it’s only going to be criticised anyway?

This week, British MP Diane Abbott was the victim of racial abuse, and in a subsequent parliamentary debate about the the incident, Diane stood up a total of 46 times for the opportunity to speak, and was denied on every occasion. Whatever our politics, I believe we should strive for a world where everyone has the opportunity to speak up, and recognise that systemic and historic factors mean that it is often far easier to do so for some than others. Indeed, many people are simply prevented from speaking up at all, and that is unacceptable. 

The new book “Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence,” edited by Jamie J. Hagen, Samuel Ritholtz, and Andrew Delatolla, seeks to integrate a queer dimension into conflict studies amidst the growing politicisation of LGBTIQ+ people. This book responds to a need for queer methodologies to better understand conflict, aligning with feminist principles to narrate LGBTIQ+ people’s stories as both victims and agents of change within political violence contexts. Elements of this book are open access and available here.

Ramadan started this Monday, 11th March, and there are somethings that we can do as colleagues, peers and managers of Muslim team members to help foster an inclusive environment and maintain psychological safety. 

• Recognise diversity within the Muslim community. Muslims come from many different backgrounds, which influence their Ramadan observances differently. Practices and the decision to fast may vary among individuals.
• Adjust schedules and events to respect fasting practices where necessary. Avoid late afternoon or evening meetings, and consider the challenges of fasting when distributing tasks. Accommodations like quiet prayer rooms, flexibility with deadlines, and additional breaks help to support people observing Ramadan.
• If possible, offer adjustable working hours or shift swaps to accommodate fasting and prayer times. 

Finally, thanks so much for these kind words from Sam Squire of Rainbows Hospice for Children and Young People, who I’m really happy to be working with. I’m really chuffed that Sam, like me, is excited to have found the psychological safety rabbit hole to dive into!

This week’s poem:

Dolor, by Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.


Many years after the publication of this thirteen-lined genius of a poem, Roethke reflected on its meaning:

This poem is an exposition of one of the modern hells: the institution that overwhelms the individual man. The “order,” the trivia of the institution, is, in human terms, a disorder, and as such, must be resisted. It’s truly a sign of psychic health that the young are already aware of this. How far-reaching all this is, how subtle its ramifications, how disastrous to the human psyche—to worship bigness, the firm, the university; numbers, even, let me say, the organised team effort. The human problem is to find out what one really is: whether one exists, whether existence is possible. But how? “Am I but nothing, leaning toward a thing?”