Talk to Magie

Imagine a workplace where every team members look forward to showing up, try their hardest, and feel empowered to raise concerns or take risks without worrying about criticism, judgment, or retribution for mistakes. It's a workplace where innovation and trying new ideas, despite the very real risk of failure, are core values that are championed consistently.

This is the essence of psychological safety—a critical ingredient for innovation, collaboration, and team success.

Creating psychological safety is critical for innovation and success, but if often misunderstood as protecting workers’ mental health or physical safety; both often go in hand-in-hand with psychological safety, muddling the relationship further.

That's why in this blog post, I want to dive into the concept of psychological safety, how teams that feel safe to make mistakes benefit, the four stages of psychological safety that every workplace can find truth within, and practical strategies for improving psychological safety within your own teams.

What is Psychological Safety at Work?

Team psychological safety refers to a workplace where employees feel comfortable sharing ideas and taking risks without fear of judgment or being reprimanded for making mistakes. Coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, team psychological safety is the belief that one can express themselves freely without risking punishment or humiliation. It is a shared belief that the team is "safe" and allows for interpersonal risk-taking.

According to a recent interview with Dr. Edmondson published in the Harvard Business Review, she came across an intriguing phenomenon while researching the relationship between making mistakes and self-reported measures of teamwork. Her original expectation was that teams with better teamwork would make fewer mistakes; however, her data showed the opposite: more cohesive teams tended to make more -- or rather, felt better reporting -- mistakes (more on this later!).

When we apply this concept of psychological safety to the workplace, we tend to think of workplaces where employees feel most secure in being able to perform their duties and express themselves as working environments with high psychological safety.

On the contrary, a workplace where teams feel constant pressure to perform perfectly, work unreasonably long hours, or feel unable to voice their opinions would be considered a low psychological safety work environment.

The Benefits of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety in the workplace confers many benefits as it makes employees feel safe speaking up and making mistakes, which can increase their satisfaction, innovation, and performance. It can lead to improved decision-making, since team members feel safe when speaking up or voicing opinions, especially when raising concerns.

It’s critical for managing dynamic teams, which have fluid membership and may gather in the moment across industries, functions, time zones, and languages. These diverse experiences are wonderful strengths, and teams that change and grow benefit from having high psychological safety as their teammates can foster a sense of belongingness more quickly. Without psychological safety, diverse teams can underperform compared to their homogenous counterparts.

A psychologically safe workplace fosters creativity, innovation, and employee commitment, leading to improved performance and retention.

Understanding the 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

To fully understand and implement psychological safety, it’s helpful to consider the four stages defined by organizational anthropologist Dr. Timothy R. Clark. These stages of psychological safety are: inclusion, learner, contributor, and challenger. These stages build a baseline of trust across a company and provide a framework for understanding how human psychological needs factor into our workplace culture, especially as it pertains to creating a safe workplace where employees feel able to challenge ideas and take appropriate risks.

Inclusion Safety

Inclusion safety focuses on fostering a sense of belonging regardless of factors like gender, race, religion, and age. It's the main foundation of further psychological safety because it hits at a very real, human need: belongingness. If we do not feel that we "belong" at work, it can open the door to interpersonal conflict, doubt, and low cohesion.

Creating an environment where everyone feels included without feeling pressure to conform is foundational to building trust.

Learner Safety

In this stage, we all become students. Learner safety provides employees with the space to ask questions, make mistakes and learn from them without fear of embarrassment. Employees should be able to ask questions, give and receive feedback, and get things wrong without negative consequences.

Learner safety is critical for creating a culture of continuous learning, growth, curiosity and improvement, all incredibly important aspects of innovation.

Contributor Safety

Team members feel safe to contribute their skills, ideas, and efforts to the team. This stage emphasizes trust in individuals’ abilities and respect for their input even if you disagree with their contributions. Contributor safety occurs when employees feel they can contribute their skills without fear of negative judgment.

Greater autonomy and employee engagement are created when employees feel safe to participate in dialogue, and are encouraged to actively listen to their teammates.

Challenger Safety

Perhaps the pinnacle of a psychologically safe workplace, challenger safety enables employees to challenge each other’s ideas, propose new ways of thinking and question the status quo. This stage emboldens employees to innovate, generate new ideas, and push the organization forward.

I find that challenger safety is the most important stage because it signifies a workplace that prioritizes mutual respect even when teams disagree. To demonstrate grace, confidence, and respect while challenging possibly long-held protocols or ways of doing things is a sign of a team member that truly feels that they can trust other members, and that their opinions matter.

Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace

1. Lead with empathy, safety and vulnerability

Leaders set the tone and lead by example, and if it's apparent that management makes an effort to lead with understanding, team members will follow suit. Showing empathy and vulnerability allows you to create space for authenticity and genuine connection.

  • Share your own challenges and mistakes. Show your team that it’s okay to be imperfect, and that mistakes played a major role in your journey towards leadership.
  • Actively listen to team members, validating their feelings and perspectives without judgment. Your team members should feel safe telling you all kinds of news, especially if it's negative. We can only grow if we know what needs fixing.
  • Approach conflicts with understanding rather than defensiveness.

2. Normalize mistakes as learning opportunities

Fear of failure stifles creativity and growth, a major setback many workplaces simply should not abide by. Transform your workplace into a learning environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth, reappraising setbacks as really just figuring out another way something does not work.

  • Acknowledge errors without assigning blame, even if the mistake presents a setback.
  • Discuss lessons learned and how to improve in the future, focusing on what can be done to avoid the same mistake down the road.
  • Celebrate resilience and problem-solving efforts, even if the efforts do not immediately fix the problem. There is always wisdom in knowing what doesn't work.

3. Encourage open communication

An open dialogue is essential for psychological safety. Team members should feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, and providing feedback in all of its respectful forms.

  • Ask for input regularly during meetings.
  • Create anonymous feedback channels for hesitant contributors.
  • Use inclusive language that values all voices.

4. Recognize and celebrate contributions

Everyone wants to feel like their work matters, and specific recognition fosters a sense of belonging and reinforces future positive behaviors. These do not have to be large, party-scale displays of appreciation at every meeting -- even small acknowledgements of others are powerful motivators.

  • Acknowledge team members’ efforts in meetings or emails, being specific about what we stellar.
  • Celebrate milestones and small wins together as a group, emphasizing how a team effort makes the dream possible.
  • Highlight individual strengths and unique contributions when they happen, especially if they were instrumental in solving a problem.

Conclusion

Psychological safety is the foundation of high-performing, innovative teams, and we become stronger workplaces when we embrace safety. Fostering empathy, encouraging open communication, and embracing mistakes as learning opportunities gives leaders wonderful tools through which we can create an environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute their best.

Start small, be intentional, and remember: a psychologically safe team isn’t just more productive—it’s a team where people genuinely thrive.

Stay Connected With Magie

Join thousands of other industry professionals, and keep up with the latest in public speaking.

Subscribe Sidebar

"*" indicates required fields

Name*
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Categories