What is Psychological Safety? Updated

I have spoken to many organizations about Psychological Safety at Work over the past few years. This topic is one of the most popular and requested every year! Psychological Safety needs to be built and maintained continuously while providing HUGE results for organizations that are strong in this area. Check out a short clip in this YouTube Video below:

What Psychological safety is NOT

It's not a personality factor. It's not something we can do a 360-degree leadership assessment on. It's not about being friendly with everyone. It's also not about the lowering of our performance standards.

What is psychological safety?

Amy Edmondson, Harvard University Professor is credited with developing the theory of psychological safety as described in her book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. I frequently recommend this book to many leaders and employees as it is excellent!

According to Edmondson, psychological safety is “shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”

When a team has a high level of psychological safety, they feel that it's safe to to make a mistake and that they won't be embarrassed, ostracized, rejected, or punished because they made a mistake or suggested something. An organization can promote a culture of psychological safety, however psychological safety is specifically focused on a team at work. It's really about you and your direct reports or fellow team members that really has the biggest impact on how safe you feel at your job when you show up.

What steps have you taken to increase Psychological Safety with your Team at Work? Comment below.

Learn more about supporting psychological safety for LGBTQ+ Employees in my blog:
Five Ways to support a Culture of Safety for LGBTQ+ Employees at Work

Sarah Scala hosts workshops and speaking engagements on pyschological safety for teams and organizations of various sizes. Learn more about business facilitated workshops here.