Part 2: Different people, different safety

Continuing our reflections on the last five years. In part one, we explored the name psychological safety itself, and here in part two, we get into diversity, myths, the proliferation of bad advice, and an increasing focus on power dynamics.

Psychological safety looks different for everyone. This is a point we find ourselves making very often, and it might sound terribly obvious, but it’s actually rarely acknowledged in the mainstream discourse and academic literature. 

This deficiency makes sense (but is still not a good thing!) for two reasons – one is that the majority of research and study on psychological safety has been carried out in Western, white-collar, neurotypical contexts. The other reason is that carrying out research that addresses the complexity of neurodiversity, multiple contexts and cross-cultural differences, is, frankly, very difficult. The peer-review system encourages narrow lenses where neat conclusions can be drawn from tightly focused studies, so the work of addressing this complexity falls more at practitioners’ feet. That’s us, folks!

We know that the way psychological safety emerges and manifests is shaped by many factors including, but not limited to the whole substrate of past experiences, national culture, neurodiversity, socioeconomic background, gender, race, physical ability and speech differences.

However we can’t know, from the outside, whether someone feels psychologically safe. Directly asking someone how psychologically safe they feel is fraught with issues – not least because the question itself is subject to psychological safety: if someone doesn’t feel psychologically safe with us, then chances are they won’t feel safe enough to be honest about that. If we try to ask groups how they feel, or share results openly, consensus bias also plays a huge part – people are likely to shift their response closer to what they observe other members of the team saying. And many of the so-called indicators or proxies of psychological safety (talk time, eye contact, fluency of speech, lack of a stammer, etc) are at best misleading and often just plain wrong. Other proxies, such as asking people to rate agreement with statements like “It’s safe to take a risk or propose a weird idea with this team” are highly contextual and subject to interpretation. Not many airline pilots would consider “weird ideas” as something useful to raise during flight operations. 

Measuring psychological safety can be powerful, but only if done very well, and with great power comes great responsibility.

And in this space, where knowing how people actually feel is tricky, myths persist. One example, which continues to circulate stubbornly in some pockets of research and social media, is the myth that we should strive for sustained eye contact to increase trust. 

Unfortunately, the terrible advice doesn’t stop at eye contact. A lot of misleading material has been shared suggesting that stuttering and stammering is an indicator of low psychological safety. As someone with a stammer, I have a particular disdain for this line of reasoning, and in fact, it’s so far from the truth that it’s verging on offensive. Someone who stutters isn’t necessarily feeling unsafe to speak. In fact, if someone is stuttering, stammering or ticcing in a workplace setting, it may well be because they feel safe to do so and don’t feel pressure to suppress or mask their speech difference. The alternative, of course, would be to not speak at all.

If we really want to work on psychological safety, if we really want people to feel able to speak up in the way that works for them, then just as we would never try to “fix” someone’s accent, we also need to refrain from pathologising speech differences and trying to “fix” them. Fix systems, not people.

Ultimately, the same behavioural cues can mean radically different things in different contexts. That makes knowing whether people are feeling psychologically safe very very difficult, but also makes our work very, very interesting!

Fundamentally, if we don’t acknowledge and respect these multitudes of differences, we risk designing environments, processes, tools and structures that are only safe for the already privileged: white, Western, heterosexual, neurotypical, able-bodied, and economically secure. Psychological safety is not one-size-fits-all. It looks radically different for different people and arguably the best thing we can do is to let go of ‘knowing’ what it looks like, and get a lot more curious about how it might feel for different people.

Looking back over the past few years, this has perhaps been one of our most important lessons: that working on psychological safety is never about applying a fixed model, but about listening, noticing and remaining open. It’s less about having the answers, and more about making space for the answers to emerge from those around us.

Power

Power, and its equitable distribution, is at the heart of psychological safety, and it’s something we’ve begun to address far more explicitly, from the start of working with organisations. 

In our workshops, we talk about these four main types of power (simplified from Galbraith, and French and Raven, among others):

• Formal power (role, rank and authority)
• Informal power (popularity and relationships)
• Demographic power (social identity and privilege)
• Expert power (skills & knowledge that are relevant to the context)

Imbalances of power between group members create power gradients, and those gradients affect who speaks, who stays silent, and who gets listened to. 

Because power is multi-dimensional, we almost certainly possess power that we are not aware of. In particular in our work with organisations, we observe people overlooking or underestimating the power that they possess beyond the formal. 

Formal, hierarchical, status-based power is only one form of power in the workplace – but it is the most visible. Someone may have a hierarchically junior role, yet because they’ve been in the organisation for a long time, are well-known, respected and popular – and as a straight-presenting white man, they resemble most of the senior leadership team – they carry considerable informal and demographic power in many work contexts.

Of course, simply making people aware of power doesn’t shift the actual asymmetrical structures that cause harm, but recognising limiting structures is the first step in changing them. Through our work, we may be able to employ small, local interventions that shift the disposition of the larger organisation over time – such as using people’s names instead of their levels or pay grades to identify them in collaborative settings. It’s better practice to introduce ourselves by what we do, rather than our rank, status, or grade. “Hi, I’m Jane, and I’m looking after the patient’s anaesthesia today.” is better than “Good morning, I’m the Chief Consultant Anaesthetist in this hospital.” It’s a lot easier to speak up to Jane than the Chief Consultant. 

It’s worth noting that we’re not trying to reduce power overall – instead we’re working to distribute it in a more equitable manner, and if possible, actually increase the amount of power that we collectively hold. Power can, and should, be used for good!

When we talk more openly and explicitly about power, we can also challenge some popular but naive ideas about organisational design and power.

One that we sometimes see (and this is one that I’ve experienced myself), is organisations moving to “flat” structures, then finding they actually struggle more with team performance and collaboration. Flat structures can sometimes be even worse for psychological safety than traditional hierarchies, because that “flattening” replaces visible formal power with hidden informal power. The deep, choppy, unpredictable waters of informal power can be much harder to navigate for those with less power to begin with. Informal, invisible power tends also to be much less accountable than defined formal power, making those environments potentially even more toxic and dangerous for many working within them. 

“…structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and …is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not).” 
Jo Freeman 

If we’re going to work on power dynamics, we need to do so intelligently, carefully, and with awareness of the full spectrum of power, and we want to be doing the work with people, not to people.

To be continued! 
Part three dives into dissent, non-determinism, and the danger of targets, KPIs, diagnostics and benchmarks.

Introducing the Trainer Toolkit

We’re excited to share something brand new: the Psychological Safety Trainer Toolkit!

This incredible digital resource has already had a fantastic reception from our Train the Trainer course graduates and our Psych Safety community – and now we’re opening it up to newsletter readers too!

The Trainer Toolkit is designed to make it easier for you to deliver impactful, practical psychological safety sessions, whether you’re working with your own team or with clients.

Inside, you’ll find:

• 11 exclusive training videos, walking you through the key ideas and practices
• Guidance on marketing psychological safety training to colleagues or clients
• Advice on tailoring sessions to different contexts and audiences
• Principles of good design and facilitation to support your delivery
• Templates, fresh ideas and practical resources to use with teams
• A ready-made slide deck to support your sessions
• It also comes with a commercial licence, so you can use it both in-house and externally.

Get the Trainer Toolkit here 

We hope the Trainer Toolkit helps you gain more clients and deliver more value to existing clients – and we can’t wait to hear how you use it.

Psychological Safety in Practice

Obstacles to psychological safety
Inspired by our research on the barriers to speaking up, Roberto Ferraro has nailed it again with this wonderful illustration of the three top obstacles to psychological safety. 

The Dynamics of Failure Sharing in Organisations

Thanks to Amy for sharing Jonas Dahl’s new doctoral research “The Dynamics of Failure Sharing”, which explores why people often stay silent about their mistakes at work, and what helps them speak up. His findings show that shame tends to suppress failure sharing, while guilt can actually encourage it, especially when supported by growth mindsets, self-compassion, and psychologically safe environments. Organisational norms and values play a decisive role too. Jonas’ work highlights how psychological and organisational factors intertwine. I tried to pull together Jonas’ insights into this graphic – I hope it makes some sense!

Stop trying to change your manager

I love this piece by Wes Kao. There is, and always will be a “structural dynamic” (i.e. a power gradient) between you and your manager. They make the excellent point that “If you expect “fairness” to win out, you will always feel slighted if it doesn’t.” So relax, be realistic about the leverage you have, stop blaming yourself when decisions don’t go your way, and simply make the most of your time together.