A freshen up on psychological safety
Many moons have passed since I was introduced to the term psychologically safety and I realized that a freshen up was needed, clarity on what we mean when talking about building a psychologically safe workplace.
Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. - Amy Edmondson
I found this great TedX talk by Professor Amy Edmondson that coined the term back in 1999.
My main takeaways on building psychological safety are:
- Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem. We have never been in this situation before, or for long, and we need everyone’s brains and voices in the game.
- Acknowledge your own fallibility. Say simple things like “I might miss something, I need to hear from you…“.
- Model curiosity. Ask a lot of questions.