Normal Accidents Charles Perrow is regarded as a pivotal figure in the theory of why and how things fail He served as a sociology professor at Yale and Stanford and was primarily focused on the influe...
Psychological Safety in Teaching The way incidents are managed in a system extends far beyond the individuals directly involved, impacting everyone within that system This is illustrated in this recen...
Statistical Process Control and Understanding Variation In a chat with a great client this week, we got talking about different approaches to measurement and metrics I introduced the concept of Statis...
Psychological Safety is not the goal Now, this might seem an odd thing to say for someone who makes a living by helping people understand and foster psychological safety, but it’s true...
Burnout and psychological safety Burnout has many causes, both systemic and individual, but we know that low psychological safety at work can make it far more likely When we’re unable to ask for...
Employment Rights and Psychological Safety Thanks so much to newsletter reader Andrea Notch for pointing me at Mona Chalabi’s illustrations of statistical ideas and topics – while I was ha...
Data Visualisation In the psychsafetycom measurement workshop we cover a lot: research ethics, quantitative/qualitative approaches, longitudinal vs cross-sectional studies, formulating resea...
Psychological Safety vs Psychosocial Safety: Why the Distinction Matters In Australia, psychosocial safety is not just good practice: it is a legal requirement Since April 2022, changes to the Work He...
Local Rationality “People do reasonable things given their goals, knowledge, understanding of the situation and focus of attention at a particular moment” We do things that make sense to u...
Psychological safety and Buddhist Philosophy We’re in Barcelona this week for workshops and meetings, and we decided to visit La Sagrada Familia again It’s an incredible building, and although con...
A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water “What are [...
Welcome to The State of Psychological Safety Survey 2023 – the annual survey of The Psychological Safety Newsletter This is your chance to join thousands of voices, share your experiences, and ...
Understanding and Implementing the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) This week we’re having a look at the new NHS Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) Whilst this is c...
Causes of Disaster at Chernobyl: The Absence of Psychological Safety (See below for the complete article) In 1986, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Ukrainian SSR (the territory of modern Uk...
Everest, and psychological safety in the mountains Thanks so much to a client of mine, the excellent Paul Verrico at Eversheds Sutherland, I was lucky enough to attend the 70th anniversary of the...
If we think about how we can apply sociotechnical theory in practice, we realise that organisational change or technological change will fail if we focus on one component (social or technical) in isol...
High Performing Teams & Psychological Safety at Work: Psychological safety is the foundation for team performance, whether we’re oriented towards consistent quality, innovation, adaptation, ...
What is “Safe to Fail” Recently, I failed a motorbike test This might sound like a mistake, but I fully expected to fail In the UK, you must pass multiple tests before you’re allowed...
Psychological Safety Behaviours: The Big List (Updated Oct 2025) Psychological safety is a belief that the group is safe for interpersonal risk taking (Edmondson, 1999) There are many ways we can help...
https://youtube/QhwHGfws1-c Or Leadership vs Management Leadership and management are not the same thing But they’re not mutually exclusive either In order to be a truly effective leader, we must al...
Psychological Safety: Speaking Up at Work Imagine an objectively psychologically safe workplace environment People are praised, rewarded, and incentivised to speak up with ideas, questions, conce...
Bullying at work If you’re in the UK, or even if not, you may have heard the news on Friday that Dominic Raab resigned from his post as Deputy Prime Minister as a result of multiple ac...
The recent resignation of Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister of Great Britain, has put the issue of psychological safety in the workplace under the spotlight Mr Raab resigned following an investi...
Checklists I read Atul Gawande’s “Better” some time around 2008 and absolutely loved it, so when he published “The Checklist Manifesto” in 2009, I grabbed a copy immediately The Ch...
Psychological Safety in the Workplace I once had a boss who, with great intentions, built a system for everyone in the organisation to provide each other with anonymous feedback, digita...
Read more about Goodhart’s Law, Campbell’s Law and The Cobra Effect here...
Psychological Safety, Aviation Disasters and Crew Resource Management This week I’ve been reading “Confronting Mistakes” by Jan Hagen This is a fantastic book, focusing on the human...
Welcome to the Psychological Safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing You’re amazing Having tried switching to a biweekly pattern, I’m now experimenting with alternating short-form and...
Providing constructive feedback is one powerful way you can help people excel, achieve their goals and be happier in their work Done well, it can create psychological safety and help teams and o...
Psychological Safety #101 What does Cognitive Load have to do with Psychological Safety Psychological safety helps to reduce our cognitive load by allowing us to ask for help and worry less about the ...
