A few years back Google published research on what made their teams thrive. By far the most important attribute was Psychological Safety.

Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive. In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.

Source

I’ve always been a fan of being #LovinglyCritical and making my work environments safe for people. But it is so validating to see such comprehensive data and rigor to show this is in fact the best path!

If you don’t have psychological safety

If you don’t have psychological safety, then people are afraid to speak up. If people don’t speak up, then their leaders and teammates miss out on critical information. The Challenger space shuttle disaster was caused in no small part by a lack of psychological safety that prevented people who knew there was danger from speaking up sufficiently to get the warning into the right person’s ears. The Apollo 13 rescue mission succeeded because the teams there had psychological safety that freed them to really think outside the box and find ways to bring the astronauts home – against all the odds.

Psychological Safety is more than being nice

Psychological safety is not just about being nice. It’s also about saying the things that need to be said.

Interview with Alexander Osterwalder

And then he goes on to give the best definition I’ve heard for what I call being #LovinglyCritical

if you love your team members and want to create great work, you will tell them when they screwed up or were doing something wrong. Because you appreciate them, you want them to grow. It’s a sign of love if you care this way. We usually don’t say “love” in business, but that’s it. “Brutal honesty, kindly delivered.”

Interview with Alexander Osterwalder

How to Build Psychological Safety

Combining Google’s research and Osterwalder’s experience, we get a straightforward list of actions to increase psychological safety in your workplace:

1. Start with Robert Sutton’s “No asshole” rule: Avoid lousy behavior by not hiring the wrong people and focusing on hiring the right people.
2. Lead by example, making sure to…
   • Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem.
   • Acknowledge your own fallibility.
   • Model curiosity and ask lots of questions.
3. Update your incentive systems, formal and informal, to reward #LovinglyCritical feedback and behaviors that reinforce Psychological Safety.