Can Workplaces Have Too Much Psychological Safety?

Can workplaces have “too much” psychological safety?

I believe that a robust critique of the concept itself and practices related to psychological safety is essential to continued improvement in, and of, our field. However, every now and then the idea that a team can be “too” psychologically safe rears up again, which I believe is not typically founded in robust evidence or practice, nor addressed through an intersectional or moral lens. It’s not that I don’t believe it’s possible that a team could be “too safe” in some particular edge cases (for example, if a team culture becomes excessively conflict-averse due to poor leadership rather than high psychological safety itself), or that there may be boundary conditions or nonlinear effects to psychological safety, but to date, I’ve seen no convincing evidence that suggests that is true, only misinterpretations either of the concept of psychological safety, or of survey data itself. 

A few months ago a paper titled “The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance”, was published, which in my opinion contained a number of these misinterpretations and misconceptions, and there are now it seems articles being written off the back it which further perpetuate these, such as this one: https://hbr.org/2024/01/can-workplaces-have-too-much-psychological-safety. 

I’ve decided to summarise some of my concerns about the points it raises, because left unchallenged I believe these articles risk doing a lot of damage to our collective understanding of the value and importance of psychological safety. In my opinion, this article is flawed and concerning, for a number of main reasons:

1. It misrepresents what psychological safety actually is.
2. It assumes that mistakes only occur when people are taking risks or innovating.
3. It conflates psychological safety with low performance standards and accountability.
4. It implies that performance is the sole reason to foster psychological safety.

Finally, the paper risks being misinterpreted in ways detrimental to organisational cultures. Managers, who may be already wary of fostering open environments due to perceived organisational pressures, could leverage these findings to justify minimal (or reducing) investment in psychological safety. The authors inadequately caution readers about the ethical risks of misinterpretation or misuse of their findings.

Let’s explore each of these in a bit more detail:

The article misrepresents what psychological safety is in a number of ways, but one in particular is that it frames it as “a concept focused on situations where we want to encourage taking actions that involve some risk of failure, such as learning a new procedure or brainstorming new ideas.” This is simply not true. If anything, psychological safety is more typically understood and applied in routine situations where failure *could* occur, but we really don’t want it to, such as when piloting a plane full of passengers. Here, often the ‘risk’ we want people to feel safe enough to take is an interpersonal one, not an innovative one – they may well need to take an interpersonal risk to highlight a concern to those higher up the organisational hierarchy. This premise, that we need to create environments where people feel safe to take interpersonal risks even in the presence of steep power gradients, is the basis of Crew Resource Management (CRM), the most successful safety programme mankind has ever created. At no point in CRM training are crews told to ensure that there’s still a bit of interpersonal fear.

Misunderstanding the way psychological safety works in practice

This article assumes that in “most jobs most of the time… we want people to follow rules, conform to standards, and not take risks”. Aside from the fact this seems out of step with modern work, it also misses the point that even in the most routine of tasks there is scope for human mistakes (thanks to community member Phil Bush for this line). It goes as far as to assert that high psychological safety “in jobs consisting of routines, or standardized tasks… hurt[s] the performance of such jobs“, which again seems like a misunderstanding of the way psychological safety works in practice. Deming, Paul O’Neill and others pointed this out 40 years ago: even in highly standardised and routine production line roles (and nursing, as featured in the article), we need people to feel safe enough to admit mistakes, highlight quality issues, suggest ideas for improvement, and propose ways to improve physical safety. 

It’s crucial to make the point that psychological safety is not about lowering standards, avoiding conflict, or coddling people. It’s not ruinous empathy or a space where anything goes. It’s not taking unwarranted risks, or not following procedure.

High accountability and high psychological safety go hand in hand

There is a worrying conflation in the article of psychological safety with having low performance standards or accountability for basic failures or negligence, which of course isn’t the case. High accountability and high psychological safety can go hand in hand, indeed they have to. However, achieving this balance can indeed be challenging, but that difficulty is not an acceptable excuse to avoid the moral imperative to foster psychological safety.

Psychological safety is fundamentally about raising standards, not lowering them. As David Morrison says, “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”. However, the article seems to conclude that this is too ‘difficult’:

“…although collective accountability can serve as a safeguard against the dangers from very high levels of psychological safety, achieving a high level of the former is difficult. It is a simpler option to not have a very high level of the latter.”

What this seems to imply is that “it’s easier to have lower psychological safety than it is to have high standards.” The lack of a moral imperative here is highly concerning. If we do what’s easy, rather than what’s right or effective, we’re following a dangerous path to dysfunction. What worries me most is that certain types of leaders and managers that read articles like this may very well use them, intentionally or otherwise, as a way to justify lazy or harmful practices, and perpetuate a toxic workplace culture. 

Where do we draw the line?

Putting all this aside, from a practical point of view, if we were to accept the premise that a team can be “too” safe, where do we draw the line? Where do we get to the point when we can say “Ok, we want you to feel psychologically safe, but not too much!“. And who feels the impact of that limitation? The neurotypical, physically able, well-educated, English-speaking white man in the team, or neurodiverse people, under-represented folks, people of colour, people with a history of trauma, and those who are striving for a career beyond the constraints of their socioeconomic backgrounds? I think we know who loses out first if we impose limits on psychological safety.

If one were to assert that there is such a thing as “too much” psychological safety, we should ask in return: “Who exactly on this team do you want to feel less safe, and what are you happy with them not speaking up about?“

Team performance isn’t the only reason that we foster psychological safety

Which leads me onto my final point, that this sort of “teams can be too safe” article completely misses the point that team performance isn’t the only reason that we foster psychological safety. We also do it because we want people to feel fulfilled in their jobs, we don’t want people to leave a team because they don’t feel included, we want people to experience less unnecessary stress and have greater mental wellbeing, we want to foster greater diversity and inclusion. Ultimately, we foster psychological safety because it’s fundamentally the right thing to do. 

Your perspective.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this, and would encourage you to head over to the psychological safety community for further discussion about it. On Monday 8th January, we’re going to have a little Psych Safety Open Lean Coffee, at 2pm UK time (9am Eastern Time), and everyone’s welcome. We can talk about this topic, your new year’s resolutions, or what’s hot on Netflix right now – that’s the beauty of Lean Coffee! No registration necessary, simply join us here at 2pm: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85767844177 

Addendum:

My opinion on the definition of psychological safety: just as Jessica Davies alludes to in her article below, we have enough challenges with getting people on board to the concept, without the epistemological drift of rejecting the accepted definition of psychological safety as “the belief that one can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation, and a belief that the group is safe for interpersonal risk taking”. This paper’s redefinition of psychological safety as being safe to take unwarranted risks (not just interpersonal ones) and that team members are not held accountable for mistakes is either unintentional (begging the question of how the original paper got through peer review) or intentional. My concern is that this redefinition approach, whether intentional or not, sets up a straw man that allows the rest of the conclusions to appear valid, when they are not. 

To quote the author in a separate piece “…if we are going to make up our definitions, then we should be clear that what we are saying does not have research or evidence behind it.”

That’s not to say definitions can’t evolve and develop (they absolutely should, if necessary), but it’s important for our field to maintain a consistent and well understood definition if only to avoid the semantic diffusion that terms such as DevOps or Radical Candour suffered. If we are to redefine psychological safety, it should be via a general consensus of the whole community, not via an edict from an ivory tower. 

The original paper is, of course, behind a paywall, because (and I’m aware I’m being facetious here) we wouldn’t want people subject to the conclusions to actually be able to examine the methods and data behind these findings, would we? In all seriousness, I do believe that if we are to publish papers about people at work then those very people should have access to that research. The paper link is here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2023.104255

Final note: this article frames nursing as a job “consisting of routines, or standardized tasks”. I know many nurses, and this is a misconception verging on offensive. Nursing requires degree-level education, and as with any work involving people, requires creative problem solving and dealing with a great deal of complexity. Nursing is a challenging, complex, difficult and unpredictable job, and nurses are under-appreciated heroes.  

Further Reading:

The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance, Liat Eldor, Michal Hodor, Peter Cappelli, 2023

Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, Amy Edmondson, 1999.

Paul O’Neill safety leadership at Alcoa

Lt. General David Morrison “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept” Drive out fear: Of failure, of embarrassment, of not knowing what to do. By Col. Hans Ritschard of the U.S. Air Force

Zoom link for Monday Lean Coffee: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85767844177 


Related articles:

What is psychological safety?

Can a Team be Too Safe?

Psychological Safety and High Performing Teams

Deming’s 14 Points

Aviation and CRM

Verbally speaking up at work

Psychological Safety and Privilege

Psychological Safety, Diversity and Inclusion

Burnout and Psychological Safety

Psychological Safety at Work

Highly relevant to the piece above, here’s a great article by Jessica Davies at Worklife, on why a misunderstanding of psychological safety is hurting teams’ performance. “The language used to describe this workplace philosophy is holding back many executives from buying into it. Words like “psychological” and “safety” can get dismissed as being “soft” and appear alien to the “hard language” of executives – especially the more cynical executives.“

More dieselgate, and this time it’s trucks! This time with Cummins Inc, who allegedly installed defeat devices on the engines of hundreds of thousands of 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup trucks, according to the Department of Justice. And here’s an interesting discussion on the topic over at ycombinator.

We covered the impact of Ofsted inspections (education inspections in UK schools) in a previous newsletter. Headteacher Ruth Perry took her own life in January 2023, in part as a result of an Ofsted inspection that downgraded her school from outstanding to inadequate. Sir Martyn Oliver, who has taken over the organisation, has said Ofsted had to ensure high standards but admitted it could also be “far more empathetic”. Ofsted reports result in “one word judgements” for schools, which don’t reflect the complex environments that schools operate in, and the UK government has made it clear it has no plans to change the approach, whilst Labour has already said it would move to a report card system, listing strengths and areas for improvement. I believe the system has to change: whilst as practitioners we can adopt behaviours and practices that foster greater psychological safety in the staffroom as well as the classroom, we do not work in a vacuum; the way that we are inspected, measured and rewarded or punished ultimately drives our culture, practice and wellbeing. 

I love this piece by Suzie Lewis about the power of gratitude and acknowledgement. “When team members and their contributions are recognised and appreciated, it can lead to a variety of positive outcomes, at individual, team and organisational level.“

The fabulous folks at Stimpunks maintain a fantastic glossary for everything around neurodiversity, from Intersectionality to Spoon Theory. They state, “The shift from the pathology paradigm to the neurodiversity paradigm calls for a radical shift in language, because the appropriate language for discussing medical problems is quite different from the appropriate language for discussing diversity. Reframing is social change.“

This entry on neuronormativity is powerful and helpful. I feel I’ve been hunting for this word for a while now. “Neurormativity is a set of norms, standards, expectations and ideals that centre a particular way of functioning as the right way to function. It is the assumption that there is a correct way to exist in this world; a correct way to think, feel, communicate, play, behave and more.” 

Stickers!

There are three ways that you can get your hands on some of our psychological safety stickers!

1. Buy some at our online shop
2. Attend a workshop
3. Promote psychsafety.com on social media and send us your postal address!

This week’s poem:

Be soft.
Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let the pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.
Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

Iain Thomas, in “I Wrote This For You: 2007 – 2017“



This was suggested by a reader in our recent survey, and apologies, I don’t know your name, but thank you!