Psychological Safety and Privilege

AKA: When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. 

Not everyone is a fan of psychological safety. Sometimes that’s because people don’t yet understand what it is. Sometimes it’s because they do understand what it is, and yet they’re still not fans. 

In my experience, objections to psychological safety tend to consist of either “we don’t want it”, or “we don’t need it”. Let’s dive into each of those in turn:

“We don’t want psychological safety”

There is a small but vocal minority who oppose psychological safety because they feel they stand to lose out in a culture where everyone has psychological safety. These people tend to be those who currently benefit from maintaining a status quo where they possess a greater share of voice. They may be in leadership and management positions or possess other forms of power and status in the group, through their position in a hierarchy, tenure, expertise, or gendered or cultural privilege. As a result, they may be predisposed to feel safe, even entitled, to speak without fear of humiliation, embarrassment or retribution. 

The flip side of this entitlement though can be the fear of others challenging the status quo. While others are not able to speak up, they feel the comfort of not being challenged and are able to avoid difficult conversations or acknowledging privilege. Ironically, it feels “safer” for some people to reject psychological safety entirely. It seems to me that it is fear itself that holds some people back from working towards greater psychological safety for everyone, not just for those with the privilege to feel safe already. 

In reality, those fears of losing out are unfounded. Whilst increasing psychological safety for all may lead to some initial discomfort for those accustomed to privilege, it can also allow for a much more meaningful, rewarding and developmental experience for everyone. Nobody has to lose out.

“We don’t need psychological safety”

It’s easy to think that other people are like us, and if we can speak up, they should be able to as well. But speaking up is undoubtedly easier for some people than others. Sometimes this about privilege, as discussed above. Sometimes it’s more of a personality thing; some people are extremely unconcerned by what others feel about them, how they may respond, or the consequences of their speech and actions. John Boyd, who I’ve discussed in previous newsletters, was, I suspect, this sort of character: unafraid, bold, and frequently outspoken. People didn’t always like him, yet he also gained the respect of many folks around him. It can be easy for someone with this sort of character to assume that it’s just as easy for others to be outspoken. 

Other times, people may feel that it did take a lot of courage for them to speak up, and therefore others should be courageous too – if they spoke up regardless of whether they were in a psychologically safe culture, why can’t others do the same? What happens here of course is that those who experience cultures of fear and succeed in them may well perpetuate those cultures; people tend to propagate the system they rose through. (Thanks Tim Ottinger for the phrase)

What the ‘be courageous’ stance fails to recognise is that speaking up almost always involves taking a risk – whether that’s interpersonal, job security, financial or reputational – and the stakes are higher for some than others. It is a privileged perspective to suggest that people should simply speak up despite a lack of psychological safety. We should instead create the conditions where everyone can be bold, not just the already outspoken folks.

It’s also a flawed idea from the perspective of organisational performance. Granted, we may justifiably expect people to demonstrate courage in speaking up with a safety concern, a commercial risk, or a major problem, but it’s unreasonable (and ineffective) for us to ask the same courage for smaller, less critical things such as half-formed ideas or small requests for help. If it’s hard for people to speak up about all the little things, they simply won’t. And all those small things add up. A culture of psychological safety fosters performance and improvement through an aggregation of all the small ideas, mistakes and questions that otherwise wouldn’t get mentioned. 

Psychological Safety and Equity

Fostering psychological safety in the workplace is primarily a values-driven endeavour. Psychological safety is, in many ways, fundamentally about equity. Equity in the ability and safety to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns and mistakes. When working to create psychological safety, we’re attempting to resolve any existing disparities in the safety of different people to speak up. A team is only as safe as the least safe person. 
 

So what do we do? There are 3 things to bear in mind here:

1. We can’t acknowledge privilege that we’re not aware of.
2. We cannot change without acknowledging our privilege.
3. The responsibility of having privilege is to use it to raise others up.

Therefore an important place to start is by building our own awareness of the varying forms and degrees of privilege that we all possess. This may be as simple as having conversations in your groups about privilege and intersectionality. If anyone says something that makes you think, ‘I’ve never had to worry about that,’ it’s a pretty good indicator that they’ve just highlighted a form of privilege that you didn’t realise you possessed. Acknowledging privilege doesn’t need to mean being ashamed of or guilty about who you are or where you came from. You can (and should) be proud of yourself, whilst acknowledging that not everyone has had the same opportunities or privileges. 

Intersectionality – what does it mean to have privilege?

By doing this, we’re better able to build a better understanding of why some people in a group may feel less safe than others, and create structures, practices and cultures that address those inequities. At the same time, we should be conscious of people who feel they may lose out if the status quo changes, and ensure that we bring them along for the ride, remembering that ultimately their stance is driven by fear too.

(Thanks to Shed for the inspiration for this week’s issue)

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

In the UK, a recent experiment for a 4-day working week came to an end. 4 Day Week Global, took place between June and December 2022, and involved 61 organisations across the UK, including non-profits and private firms. They implemented a 32-hour working week with no reduction in pay, and reported:

• Increased productivity
• Increased revenue (up 1.4% on average)
• Fewer sick days (down by 65%) and better wellbeing
• Less burnout (down by 71%)

Unsurprisingly, 92% of the firms are continuing with the four day week. The findings reflect similar studies such as this from Future Forum that show that flexibility fuels both company culture and productivity.
H/T Sharon O’Dea for this piece.

Here’s a good piece from Matti Kiviluoto on Agile principles and Scrum practices, in particular retrospectives, and making the point that while retrospectives are powerful tools to facilitate learning, the idea that they are only carried out at “regular intervals” is suboptimal. Ideally, we should address a learning opportunity (from failure *or* success) the moment it arises. This, of course is the premise behind the Andon Cord.

I love this piece from Aeon, by Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel, about the importance of maintenance: a principle and practice often held in secondary importance to innovation. 

Huge congrats to Minette Norman and Karolin Helbig on the release of their fab book (with great illustrations too!) “The Psychological Safety Playbook“. Check out what Minette has to say about it here, and buy a copy wherever you buy books from 🙂

From John Cutler – “Root Cause Paralysis” – I’m borrowing this!

One of my clients has these excellent little notepapers with prompts to reflect on your communication. I really like these little micro-nudges towards even more effective leadership.

Things to do and try:

This might be my favourite discovery of the week. 12 Principles for Prototyping a Feminist Business. From Sister, a business school and consultancy based on bringing feminist principles into business practices.

These 12 principles align very strongly with our approach (they even include “Consider everything an experiment” at number 7!), but I particularly love how the very first principle is “You have a body”. All too often, particularly in the world of virtual collaboration, we disregard our own physicality and that of others – by sitting or standing still for too long, or neglecting to take the time to nourish ourselves with healthy food and drink.
 

This week’s poem:

Going Down Hill On A Bicycle: A Boy’s Song. By Henry Charles Beeching, around 1880.

With lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:—
‘O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.

‘Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!’

Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?
’Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe’er,
Shall find wings waiting there.


As it’s issue 100, I thought I’d share one of my all-time favourite poems. I actually have the last two lines of this poem tattooed on my leg, as you can see below. I love how this poem, written back in 1880, describes the same effort and toil in climbing up a hill, and the same thrill in descending it, as I find on a bike over a century later. Sometimes the best rewards are those that you work hardest for.