By Jade Garratt Have you ever found yourself reacting to something a colleague said as if you were a child being told off by their parents, even though you’re both adults and peers Or ever said some...
Comfort vs Need by Tom Geraghty What do we do when the things that help some people in the team feel psychologically safer don’t work for everyone Perhaps one person says they need time away from th...
“Sociological” Safety By Tom Geraghty The term psychological safety has been in use since Carl Rogers’ work in the 1950s and was applied to organisational contexts by Schein and Bennis (...
Self-Organised Criticality (SOC) During my ecology degree, whilst studying ecosystem and habitat change, I learned about Self-Organised Criticality (SOC), and I was fascinated by how it explained the ...
by Jade Garratt At Psych Safety, our focus has always been on psychological safety in the workplace – helping teams and organisations become more inclusive, equitable, and high-performing throug...
The Organisational Fabric of Psychological Safety (AKA psychological safety is more than just a team phenomenon) By Tom Geraghty When we talk about psychological safety, the definition we usually use ...
All Feedback Is Subjective By Jade Garratt All Feedback Is Subjective … And Why That Matters for Psychological Safety “No person in the world is so privileged as to have access to a ‘g...
Psychological Safety and Micromanagement By Jade Garratt Those who have followed our work at Psych Safety for a while will know that we believe exploring not just what to do – the behaviours and...
Rewetting Organisations by Tom Geraghty Rewetting Organisations: allowing the system to self-organise by creating the underlying conditions for improvement When I was studying ecology at university, o...
Spectra of Participation by Jade Garratt Engagement and participation are terms we often throw around to mean “getting people’s take on issues that affect them” But not all participation is crea...
Psychological Safety in Practice Team Learning in the Field: An Organizing Framework and Avenues for Future Research This excellent paper from Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey affirms ...
All Models Are Wrong, and Some Are Useful By Tom Geraghty This is one of my favourite, and most often used, aphorisms It’s attributed to George Box, a British statistician, from a 1976 paper on Scie...
By Jade Garratt In our experience, the most effective lever for increasing psychological safety within a team is flattening the power gradient – the gap between those with the most power and tho...
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, tra...
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 i...
“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 ...
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...
Types 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 gradient...
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...
