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
Provan’s “safety of work” and “work of safety” are two different ways of thinking about occupational health and safety (OHS) in the workplace. While both are essential, understanding their differences and how they interconnect with modern theories like HOP and
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses the way in which aiming for zero defects can actually result in more defects, not fewer. Zero Defects. I’m currently reading “Boyd, the fighter pilot who
Tuckman’s Model We’ve recently covered team size, Dunbars number, and the effect that team sizes has on performance and psychological safety. In this issue, we’re going to take a little look at team longevity, the difference between short-lived and long-lived teams, and how the
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses some things to think about before measuring psychological safety. Measuring Psychological Safety I’ve had a lot of conversations recently about measuring psychological safety, and thought it’d be good to
It might be sometimes hard to tell whether people in a team feel psychologically safe, or how safe they feel. The more you hear these phrases, more psychologically safe they’re likely to be. Indicators of Psychological Safety in a Team
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses failure archetypes, human factors, more Elon Musk, stinky fish and more. Human Factors & Categorising Failure In the past couple of issues, we’ve spoken about failure – how
Psychological safety is “The belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking” (Edmondson, 1999) Also stated as “A belief that
Psychological safety is “The belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking” (Edmondson, 1999) Also stated as “A belief that
With companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Stripe and many others announcing redundancies and layoffs, it’s crucial to consider the impact that this has on both the people who are leaving companies, and the people staying. Making people redundant has an
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses dealing with learning from incidents, plus Elon Musk, share of voice, and Extreme Negative Feedback. We have some new stickers too! These glow in the dark,
Safety Guardrails, Mechanisms and Culture. In working with psychological safety, we often touch on “real” or physical safety and how the two are related. By “real” safety, I mean not only safety from the risk of injurious accidents but also all
Can a team be too psychologically safe? A question I get asked in many (maybe even most) workshops is “Can a team be too psychologically safe?” Or sometimes framed, “What’s the impact of a team being too safe?“ My short answer,
As much as Dunbar’s limits on group sizes might seem to be common sense, and reflected in many real world examples, Dunbar’s theories on group size boundaries have been deconstructed and shown to possess confidence intervals too large to be robust in the real world. That is, group size boundaries do exist, but may be anywhere from 30 to 250, depending on context, culture, and other factors.
Westrum’s Cultural Typologies Dr Ron Westrum wrote in the BMJ Quality & Safety Journal in 2004 about The Three Typologies of Organisational Culture. He was looking at how information flows through an organisation, and he considered that because information flow is influential and indicative of other aspects
Team Charters In a previous newsletter, we discussed “personal readmes” or “user manuals”. I’m a huge fan of personal readmes as a way to foster psychological safety and cohesion in a group. Through making explicit our own needs, desires, preferences and
The Andon Cord: Stopping The Line Being able to “stop the line” to prevent an issue getting worse, stop a defect passing downstream, suggest an idea for improvement when it can endow maximum benefit, or ask for help in the
Dr Richard Cook I was recently saddened to learn of the passing of Dr Richard Cook, and felt it appropriate that I dedicate this issue of the newsletter to Richard and his achievements. I was hoping that Richard may be able to
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses 1-1 meetings, diversity, experiments, scrum masters and design principles. 1-1 Meetings Every great manager I’ve ever met adhered to a strong and principled practice of regular
Non-Violent Communication Last week, in talking about the Yamas and Niyamas from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, I mentioned Non-Violent Communication (NVC), and I thought it’d be good to dive into it here a bit. I was first introduced to NVC a few years ago
Yogic Philosophy: Ahimsa and Satya You’ve probably realised by now that I love drawing together ideas from diverse fields and disciplines to examine what they can teach us about psychological safety. I’m also interested in how ideas that come from
Psychological safety, power, and Mary Parker Follett Power dynamics are closely intertwined with psychological safety. We’ve highlighted power types and addressing power gradients in other pieces, but I wanted to dive into it a bit more this week. Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), writer, social worker,
Whether organisations like to admit it or not, toxic work culture is still a major problem. A study from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that any workplace, which holds some form of toxicity and hostility, will likely see
Safety I & Safety II (Also known as Safety 1 and 2) For anyone familiar with the concepts of Resilience Engineering, you may have heard of the work of Erik Hollnagel, who states that “resilience engineering maintains that ‘things go
