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 perc...
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 [&hell...
Sometimes I Muck Up After lots of you asked for “Safe For Work” versions of our “Sometimes I Fck Up” stickers, we’ve created these “Sometimes I Muck Up...
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 “wel...
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 safe...
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 gra...
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...
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 a...
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...
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 ...
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 dif...
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 i...
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 a...
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 problem...
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...
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 org...
Can you see the cat This image is a meme from 1879 (yes, memes were a thing 140+ years ago!) used by the “Georgist” movement Henry George was an economist who examined the apparent paradox of how ...
It’s no good having a great culture if you’ve gone out of business Psychological safety is the foundational factor in ensuring teams and organisations are as high performing as possible It...
How to foster psychological safety with your own manager By Jade Garratt Psychological safety isn’t only the responsibility of those in leadership positions We believe that if you have the power to ...
By Jade Garratt, Bea Poyton and Tom Geraghty In our leadership workshops, we often talk about failures of psychological safety – what happens when, in an absence of psychological safety, c...
Experiments, bets and probes One of our mottos at PsychSafety is “everything is an experiment” The outcome of work shouldn’t just be getting the thing done, it should be learning how to do it be...
The Johari Window By Jade Garratt, Director of Education Like many, I was first introduced to the Johari Window in leadership development training It was presented as a tool to understand yourse...
(DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) We’ve recently seen more and more people (almost always white, straight men) jumping on the “DEI didn’t work” bandwagon, ...
By Jade Garratt When was the last time someone told you something you already knew How did it make you feel Edgar Schein opens his book “Humble Inquiry” with a story about his own experiences of t...
Psychological Safety and Neurodiversity The field of psychological safety often focuses on neurotypical contexts Psychological safety is defined as a shared belief that a group is safe for interperson...
Goodhart’s Law, Campbell’s Law, and the Cobra Effect We’ve mentioned Goodhart’s Law a few times in previous newsletters about measuring psychological safety, alongside its siblings, Campbell...
How psychological safety emerges and changes over time in the workplace Given that psychological safety itself is a relatively young field, there’s not a huge amount of published research that addre...
The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion One of the (many) barriers to speaking up is the knowledge or perception that your voice doesn’t carry as much weight as someone else’s This can be particul...
The Interrelationship between Psychological Safety And Wellbeing When we talk about psychological safety in our workshops and sessions, the concept of wellbeing almost always comes up This makes sense...
