Psychological Safety: Artificial Intelligence

Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses artificial intelligence and psychological safety.

Psychological safety and safety culture workshops

In the New Year, we’re running two new workshops! The first is a 2-hour Intermediate Psychological Safety Workshop on Thursday 19th January at 3pm UK time, and on Tuesday 24th January at 3pm we’re running an Advanced Psychological Safety Workshop. 

In the intermediate session, we cover the essentials of safety culture, safety theory, examples of good practice from different industries, and facilitation practices as well as team and leadership practices. This is for you if you’re interested in psychological safety and you’d like chance to learn more in a friendly environment.

In the advanced session, we dive further into the theory and look also at sociotechnical systems, sociological research methods, organisational dynamics and resilience engineering. This is for you if you have already done a workshop with us, or have a good working knowledge of psychological safety and want to deepen your understanding.

Both sessions are intended to draw on the expertise of the attendees as well as the course material. It’s going to be a lot of fun!

Prices based upon affordability. Both sessions are available to book online now.
 

I can’t believe it’s nearly the end of 2022! In order to make 2023 even better, I’d love to get your feedback and input on the psychological safety newsletter: what you liked and what you’d like to see more of. And by completing this survey, you’re also in with a chance of winning some psych safety swag! 

Click here – it’ll only take a couple of minutes!

Artificial Intelligence and Psychological Safety (Guest Post)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence by machines. It has the ability to learn, reason, and take action in a way that is similar to human beings. AI has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives, from healthcare to transportation. However, as with any new technology, there are also concerns about its potential impact on society.

One of the key concerns around AI is its impact on psychological safety. Psychological safety is the feeling that individuals have that they can speak up and express their opinions without fear of negative consequences. This is particularly important in the workplace, where employees need to feel safe to speak up about issues or concerns they may have.

AI can potentially impact psychological safety in several ways. For example, the use of AI in decision-making can create a sense of uncertainty among employees. If they feel that their job performance is being evaluated by a machine, they may be less likely to speak up about their concerns. This can lead to a decrease in psychological safety and a decrease in morale among employees.

Additionally, the use of AI in the workplace can also lead to the replacement of human workers. This can create feelings of insecurity among employees and can lead to a decrease in psychological safety. If employees are worried about losing their jobs to machines, they may be less likely to speak up about their concerns.

In order to ensure that AI does not negatively impact psychological safety, it is important for organizations to consider the potential consequences of using AI in the workplace. They should also take steps to communicate with employees about how AI is being used and how it may impact their jobs. Additionally, organizations should provide support to employees who may be affected by the use of AI, such as through training and development opportunities.

In conclusion, AI has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives. However, it is important to consider the potential impact of AI on psychological safety. By taking steps to address these concerns, organizations can ensure that the use of AI does not negatively impact the well-being and psychological safety of their employees.

The above post was written by a guest contributor, but not by a human. This was actually written by the AI system at Chat GPT in response to the request “Write an article about artificial intelligence and psychological safety“. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, and is a prototype artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. The chatbot is a large language model which was fine-tuned by humans interacting with it and “training” it. Chat GPT is “stateful”, which means it remembers previous prompts and answers, making it conversational and able to build on, or correct, previous interactions.

Whilst requests get parsed through a moderator API to filter inappropriate requests, it does suffer from a degree of algorithmic bias, sometimes assuming that (for example), the term “CEO” likely refers to a white man. It’s also currently limited to knowledge existing prior to 2021.

Impressively though, it can generate grocery lists for meals, explain complex grammar rules, write bedtime stories for (or even about) your children, help you prepare for an interview, develop software, or simply write your emails for you.

Whilst not always correct in its responses, ChatGPT’s ability to write academic essays and papers is causing both excitement and alarm in the education sector. I tested by asking it to write a short essay that I’ve previously written for my Masters in Global Health with the instruction: “Write about improving health system service delivery in Mexico via the Oportunidades programme” and it generated a 1000 word essay that I reckon would at the very least get a passing grade.

The interesting question here is whether such a tool should be considered cheating, or research. There are already tools to detect AI text available, but are fallible to minor tweaks to text, and can sometimes flag “real” writing as fake.  If a student asks ChatGPT to write about a subject, and then writes their own essay, drawing on what they learned from the ChatGPT tool, is that cheating? Should we consider the ability to reference ChatGPT as a source? Other tools are valid for use in assessments, including spellcheck, grammatical tools, and plagiarism detectors, so what about AI language models?
Could the emergence of ChatGPT and similar tools catalyse a reversion back to exams as the primary method of assessment for students? How long will it take academia and schools to realise there’s a potential problem? And if a chatbot can write a decent essay, in less time than the average student, is that really what we should be testing students on anyway? Maybe, instead of exams, we should be assessing skills which have greater ‘real world’ value and longevity, such as problem solving, collaboration and communication?

What do you think about technologies like Chat GPT? How is it going to change our work, lives, and relationships?

This newsletter is sponsored by Conflux

Conflux is the leading business consultancy worldwide helping organizations to navigate fast flow in software. We help organizations to adopt and sustain proven, modern practices for delivering software rapidly and safely.

‘The Fearless Organization’ by Amy Edmondson is considered by many to be essential reading on the topic of psychological safety. In this article, Sophie Weston, Principal at Conflux, has put together some key takeaways from the book.

Psychological Safety in the Workplace

This is a powerful piece by Dr. Carey Yazeed, a behavioural scientist who specialises in work culture and work trauma. It addresses head-on the uneven intersectional distribution of being able to be “courageous” in speaking up and standing up for oneself in the workplace – we are not all provided the “same space, cover or protection” to do so – especially Black and Brown women. 

Here’s a great new study from Eve Purdy and others, on “Psychological safety and emergency department team performance: A mixed-methods study“, showing that a key foundation for psychological safety in this context was familiarity with colleagues, and also showed that nurses suffered from particularly low psychological safety –  a point that resonates here in the UK with the largest nurses’ strike in history this week.

This Week I Learned (TWIL) that incidents at Spotify have songs assigned to them! Here’s the “sounds of glorious failure” by Clint Byrum at Spotify. I love this idea. Only the really big incidents warranted a theme tune, and they were chosen to fit the incident, such as a certificate expiration outage with the theme tune of “Signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours.” by Stevie Wonder.
 

In a workshop this week, after learning more about psychological safety, a client of mine came up with the idea of Giraffes vs Pugs. Giraffes stick their long neck out and model psychological safety for others in the team, whilst Pugs (sorry pugs!) don’t really have a neck to stick out at all. I’m not really sure where the metaphor goes from here, but I like the imagery!

 
Giraffe photo by Sian Cooper on Unsplash
Pug photo by Colin Horn on Unsplash
 

Eri Hirose, for her MA in Service Design at the London College of Communication, has completed this excellent service design project that aims to help people in creative organisations foster an environment of psychological safety. Embrace Being Human At Work.
 

Things to do and try:

I had a lovely conversation with Dr Lyn Williams this week about psychological safety in teams and organisations, in healthcare in particular, and the World Cafe principles came up in conversation, so I thought it’d be a good idea to share them. Here is this classic World Café Etiquette graphic illustration, created by visual graphics professional Avril Orloff.

This week’s poem:

“Psychological Safety” by Chat GPT, 9 December 2022

In a safe space, I can be free
To express myself and be me
No judgments, no fear, no shame
A place where I can be the same
I can open up and share my thoughts
Without the worry of being caught
In a trap of criticism or doubt
Here, my voice won’t be drowned out
I can speak my truth and feel heard
And find support in every word
I can take risks and make mistakes
Without the fear of being forsaken
In this space, I am accepted
And my emotions are respected
I can be vulnerable and authentic
And feel a sense of psychological safety
This is a place where I can grow
And let my true self show
Where I can heal and be at peace
In a world that often brings me unease
So thank you, dear psychological safety
For giving me the space to be
Authentic, vulnerable, and free
In a world that can be so unkind.