A team is only as safe as the least safe person When measuring the psychological safety in a team, we often are asked which measurement should be considered the “group measurement,” given that dif...
The Andon Cord It’s been a busy week with workshops and talks, so this week we’re revisiting the Andon Cord Probably my favourite real-world psychological safety practice, the Andon Cord i...
Being Approachable By Jade Garratt Most of us would probably like to think of ourselves as approachable at work We might have bad moments, or bad days, but we will likely think that on the whole, we a...
The Fundamental Attribution Error We address the Fundamental Attribution Error in most of our workshops, particularly our Feedback ones, because it’s such a common bias and it causes so many problem...
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...
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 org...
Can you see the cat This image is a meme from 1879 (yes, memes were a thing 140+ years ago!) used by the “Georgist” movement Henry George was an economist who examined the apparent paradox of how ...
It’s no good having a great culture if you’ve gone out of business Psychological safety is the foundational factor in ensuring teams and organisations are as high performing as possible It...
How to foster psychological safety with your own manager By Jade Garratt Psychological safety isn’t only the responsibility of those in leadership positions We believe that if you have the power to ...
By Jade Garratt, Bea Poyton and Tom Geraghty In our leadership workshops, we often talk about failures of psychological safety – what happens when, in an absence of psychological safety, c...
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 be...
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 yourse...
(DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) We’ve recently seen more and more people (almost always white, straight men) jumping on the “DEI didn’t work” bandwagon, ...
By Jade Garratt When was the last time someone told you something you already knew How did it make you feel Edgar Schein opens his book “Humble Inquiry” with a story about his own experiences of t...
Psychological Safety and Neurodiversity The field of psychological safety often focuses on neurotypical contexts Psychological safety is defined as a shared belief that a group is safe for interperson...
Goodhart’s Law, Campbell’s Law, and the Cobra Effect We’ve mentioned Goodhart’s Law a few times in previous newsletters about measuring psychological safety, alongside its siblings, Campbell...
How psychological safety emerges and changes over time in the workplace Given that psychological safety itself is a relatively young field, there’s not a huge amount of published research that addre...
The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion One of the (many) barriers to speaking up is the knowledge or perception that your voice doesn’t carry as much weight as someone else’s This can be particul...
The Interrelationship between Psychological Safety And Wellbeing When we talk about psychological safety in our workshops and sessions, the concept of wellbeing almost always comes up This makes sense...
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 attend...
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 organisa...
We love to measure stuff, don’t we Maybe it’s human nature, but we seem to have a strong desire to make the intangible tangible, and we tend (or at least many of us do) to believe in the rob...
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...
The online Psychological Safety Community has been live since early 2021, and currently has around 800 members It’s completely free to join, and we have some great conversations there A lot of newsl...
Psychological Safety and DevOps Practices This is a special edition article by Balázs Szakmáry Developing software of any real complexity is a task that goes well beyond one person and one computer ...
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 “...
The increase in awareness and popularity of psychological safety I thought it would be interesting to look at the frequency of the search term “psychological safety” over time, and map certain eve...
Leadership and Empathy One of the most powerful capabilities that leaders and managers can possess is empathy Arguably, the same could be said for anyone – we can best understand and help others...
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 interes...
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 ...