Efficiency vs Resilience By Tom Geraghty Standardisation is often used as a way to increase organisational efficiency and scalability. Through reducing variation, we can standardise our tools, training, processes and more, enabling us to optimise systems and better achieve our desired […]
Psychological Safety
An Exploration of Dan Radecki’s S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Model Psychological safety is a deceptively simple idea: people feel able to speak up with questions, concerns, or mistakes without fear of embarrassment or reprisal. Amy Edmondson’s now-canonical definition captures this precisely, grounding decades […]
The Speaking up Myth By Jade Garratt In the world of psychological safety, we focus a lot, maybe even too much, on the speaking up side of the equation. How do we make sure people speak up with their ideas, […]
“what you love,” “what the world needs,” “what you can be paid for,” and “what you are good at”, the idea being that the intersection of all of these is where we find Ikigai.
Why Silence So Often Wins When someone chooses not to speak up at work, whether it’s to raise a concern, ask a question, or offer a dissenting view, it’s easy to assume they’ve rationally weighed the pros and cons and […]
Addressing Power through “Flattening” Organisations Steep power gradients are one of the most significant factors that contribute to reducing psychological safety. These steep differentials in perceived power have contributed to many disasters including the Tenerife Airport disaster in 1977, Chernobyl, […]
Work doesn’t have to suck By Jade Garratt The start of a new year seems like a good time to reflect on how work feels, and how we feel about work. For too many of us, going to work isn’t […]
Sometimes I Muck Up After lots of you asked for “Safe For Work” versions of our “Sometimes I F*ck Up” stickers, we’ve created these “Sometimes I Muck Up” stickers available in our online shop! Delivering Effective Feedback There are still a few […]
An Exploration of The 5 Pillars of Psychological Safety (TM: Gina Battye) Psychological safety is one of those concepts that’s deceptively simple. On the surface, it’s about whether people feel able to speak up without fear of negative consequences. But […]
Exploring The Psychological Safety Index (PSI) (Trademark: The Fearless Organisation) Psychological safety is one of those concepts that’s easy to grasp intuitively, but much harder to measure. We can usually sense when a team feels open, trusting, and collaborative – […]
By Jade Garratt How do you feel when you hear the words “You have a body“? And how do you feel when you hear it in a work context? You might find it confusing – a kind of “well, obviously”, or […]
Blametropism By Tom Geraghty, edited by Jade Garratt It’s a common fallacy that psychological safety means having a “blameless” culture. Just like so many misconceptions around psychological safety, that’s not actually the case. Sometimes we can’t avoid blame and, on […]
Typologies of Power In a few previous newsletters, we’ve gotten into power dynamics, power gradients, “power over” vs “power for” and “power to” (see Mary Parker Follett). Steep power gradients are the number one inhibitor of psychological safety, and addressing […]
The 2024 Psych Safety Book List In case you’ve managed to avoid the onslaught of marketing emails from companies trying to sell you every conceivable product, it’s Black Friday today! Instead of trying to sell to you, we thought we’d share […]
We’ve been rather busy this week, in the midst of this round of psychological safety online workshops, including fundamentals, practices, leadership, measurement, advanced, and workshop design and facilitation. With that in mind, we thought it would be a good time […]
Psychological Safety Doesn’t Mean Feeling Comfortable By Jade Garratt There are many misconceptions about psychological safety. One is that if we “achieve” psychological safety, it means that people will feel comfortable all the time. It’s understandable to see how that […]
The Chatham House Rule By Jade Garratt We always begin our workshops with a social contract. These are important because they make sure at the very beginning, that we’re on the same page in terms of our expectations of each […]
A team is only as safe as the least safe person When measuring the psychological safety in a team, we often are asked which measurement should be considered the “group measurement,” given that different individuals will likely experience rather different […]
The Andon Cord It’s been a busy week with workshops and talks, so this week we’re revisiting the Andon Cord. Probably my favourite real-world psychological safety practice, the Andon Cord is a brilliant approach to quality improvement. A fundamental part […]
Academic fraud, data and dishonesty When I was studying ecology at undergraduate level, I maybe naively believed that academic research and the peer review process was the most robust and rigorous way to discover, evaluate, and build knowledge. As work, […]
Being Approachable By Jade Garratt Most of us would probably like to think of ourselves as approachable at work. We might have bad moments, or bad days, but we will likely think that on the whole, we are approachable. Approachability […]
The Fundamental Attribution Error We address the Fundamental Attribution Error in most of our workshops, particularly our Feedback ones, because it’s such a common bias and it causes so many problems. Essentially, the Fundamental Attribution Error occurs when we attribute […]
The Definition Of Psychological Safety Psychological safety is defined as the belief, in a group, that we are safe to take interpersonal risks. It’s the belief that we are able to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns and mistakes, and […]
The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychological Safety I recently tried to work out how many people have attended one or more of our workshops on psychological safety, including our workshops for teams and organisations, our online workshops, and any we’ve […]
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