Psychological Safety vs a “Safe Space”

Psychological Safety vs a “Safe Space”

This tweet from Amy Edmondson asks a really important question: what’s the difference between “psychological safety” and a “safe space”? As Amy says, and as in my experience, the two are often conflated, but they’re certainly not the same thing. There are some great responses here, with some fantastic insights from folks, and Morgan Ahlström (@Morgsterious) points out that a safe space suggests an absence of criticism, whilst psychological safety fundamentally enables productive challenging. 

I think it’s worth considering some examples and contexts. We want to foster psychological safety in productive work organisations, sports teams, safety critical environments, and in other groups. In these environments, we want to be challenged so that we can better ourselves, allow good ideas to flourish, bad ideas to get canned, mistakes to be surfaced, and concerns addressed.

Conversely, a safe place is usually one of refuge, of shelter. For example, we may intentionally create “exclusive” safe spaces for those who have experienced trauma (exclusive because only certain groups are allowed to be present – such as a group for domestic abuse survivors). In safe spaces, we don’t want to be challenged, we want to be comforted and sheltered, and with good reason: we want to heal. Psychological safety may well exist in these places, but the social contract of the space is different – and the intent and purpose of the space is very different.  

A safe space is not a “weak” or “fragile” place. It’s an important, powerful, and strong place.

This tweet (it’ll always be Twitter to me) from Adam Grant caught my eye. In it, Adam states that “safe spaces treat people as fragile“, which I don’t think is correct or helpful. For example, an AA meeting, a domestic abuse survivors group, or a PTSD group for war veterans are “safe spaces”, and I certainly wouldn’t call the people in those spaces fragile. Many “safe spaces” comprise very resilient and strong people, and using “safe space” as a pejorative term only serves to harm those who need them most.

I don’t think Adam intended to cause harm – after all, we all make mistaks – I think it’s simply unfortunate wording, but essential to point out. For those people with large influence and for whom many people take as experts, it’s really important to communicate true and helpful information, and demonstrate the humility to acknowledge when we get it wrong.

There are also some excellent points made in this LinkedIn thread, by people far more eloquent than myself.