Safety, Stat!
When should Safety intervene on site when it’s not our business? Should we just support our teams by sticking to fixing hazards and unsafe behaviors? Here’s what I mean… Not long ago, a director lamented, “I want that lead-man to
psychological safety
The Strange Confidence of 360 Degree Feedback
The Strange Confidence of 360 Degree Feedback 360 degree feedback promises that it will offer truth in all directions. It will illuminate blind spots, reveal the development areas people couldn’t see before and unlock potential they didn’t know they had.
Reading the air: high and low context communication in teams
Reading the air: high and low context communication in teams Picture the scene: you’re in a meeting with your new team. You ask what you think is a reasonable question, and knowing glances are exchanged across the room. A couple
Who gets to decide if psychological safety matters?
Who gets to decide if psychological safety matters? Is scepticism about psychological safety a luxury position? What the LinkedIn discourse reveals about who has positive or negative opinions on psychological safety, and why it might matter more than we think.
Accountability
Many organisations “hold people accountable” by imposing negative consequences for failure. The organisations that actually handle failure best are the ones that make it safe to give an honest account – they foster account-ability. They are not the same thing. They are, in fact, complete opposites.
Qualitative Measurement of Psychological Safety
Qualitative Measurement of Psychological Safety What the survey can’t tell you A few months back, I was preparing for a workshop with a client, and they shared, anonymised, their staff engagement survey data. We both sat on our respective screens,
The Psych Safety Knowledge Map
The Psych Safety Knowledge Map We’re super excited to announce that explore.psychsafety.com is now generally available! For a long time now, we’ve been thinking about a way to make our nearly 300 psychsafety.com articles more easily accessible and searchable in an
The Calculus of Voice
The Calculus of Voice “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor The voice calculus mechanism
Contracting and recontracting
Contracting and recontracting A lot of relationship friction comes from faulty assumptions: two (or more) people each operating on their own mental model of what was agreed, who’s responsible for what, and what counts as acceptable, without ever actually comparing
Learning from Error, or Punishing It?
The cases of Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba and RaDonda Vaught Content note: this article discusses the deaths of patients, including a child. Co-created and edited by Jade Garratt and Bea Poyton. Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba is a British paediatrician. RaDonda Vaught is
The “Utility” of Psychological Safety
The Futility of Utility If we want to make the argument for psychological safety in most organisations, we often need to speak the language of value. There is genuinely strong evidence that psychological safety is associated with better team performance,
Psychological Flexibility
A while ago I read a post in a parenting forum that struck me for a few reasons. It was by a mum who had taken her daughter to the library, and had watched while her young daughter very politely
“Fake it till you make it”
Why “Fake It Till You Make It” Doesn’t Work for Psychological Safety I remember early in a new job – one I was excited about and keen to make my mark in – I made a decision to be honest
The SANE Effect
The SANE Effect Spend any time on LinkedIn or other social media, and you may well come across posts and articles mentioning neuroscience or brain science, using neuro- as a prefix to invent terms like “neuroleadership”, or including images of
Learning Teams
Learning Teams Often, when we’re trying to improve how work gets done, we start with principles. We agree what we believe in, or are working towards, at a high level, and then figure out how those ideas translate into day-to-day
The Tenerife Disaster of 1977: “We’re Going”
Tenerife, the power gradient, and the calculus of voice On 27 March 1977, two Boeing 747s collided on a runway in the Canary Islands, and 583 people died. It was the worst disaster in the history of civil aviation, and
ST.R.E.A.M: Status Rules Everything Around Me
ST.R.E.A.M: Status Rules Everything Around Me In the classic hip hop track C.R.E.A.M., the great Wu-Tang tell us “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”. Whilst it might sound like the song is glorifying money, it’s actually a commentary on how economic
Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset When American psychologist Carol Dweck published her book “Mindset” in 2006 it made waves in the education world and beyond. Drawing on her work developing mindset theory, it offered a shift in perspective: instead of assuming that someone’s
The Streetlight Effect
The Streetlight Effect Measuring the really important stuff is hard. How do we measure inclusion, or safety, or happiness? We can probably all agree that these things matter, but when it comes to measuring them, where do we start? In
The “Fist of Five”
The problem with the “Fist to Five” for psychological safety. Often, with good intent, we find facilitators and teams adopting a practice called “Fist of Five”, where, at the start of a meeting or workshop, participants are asked to hold
Psychological Bravery
The trope of “psychological bravery” crops up a lot. But what does it mean? Typically, “psychological bravery” is an attempt to reframe: instead of focusing on creating psychologically safe environments, we should simply encourage individuals to be braver. In other
Psych Safety Book List 2025
Psych Safety Book List 2025 You know we love a good book, and we love sharing them even more, and this year we’ve been treated to some brilliant recommendations from members of the Psych Safety community. Thank you for keeping our
Plan Continuation Bias
Plan Continuation Bias, or “Get-There-Itis” I got pretty sick this week. I was wiped out with a nasty bout of tonsillitis – high temperature, exhausted and felt awful. The doctor put me on strong antibiotics, painkillers, and told me, in
Whistleblowing and Psychological Safety
Whistleblowing and Psychological Safety: Not the Same Thing By Jade Garratt When we explain our work to people who’ve never heard of psychological safety, they sometimes say, “Oh, like whistleblowing?” It’s an understandable mix-up – both involve speaking up about things
How Childhood Socioeconomic Status Shapes Psychological Safety and Career Risk-Taking at Work
How comparatively well-off we feel as children affects our later appetite for interpersonal risk taking in the workplace. Authors: Tom Geraghty & Jade Garratt, Psychsafety.com In our work and experience with teams and organisations all over the world, we always suspected
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