Psychological safety is about being part of a team and knowing that you can share ideas and information without fear. Psychological safety isn’t the avoidance of conflict, rather it is knowing that we can share information inside a team instead of focusing on protecting ourselves.
It comes from the work of Amy Edmondson, who drew on earlier material from Edgar Schein. Amy used a a survey to test a team’s level of safety:
- If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you.
- Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
- People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.
- It is safe to take a risk on this team.
- It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.
- No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
- Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.
People answer on a scale of Strongly Agree -> Strongly Disagree. Once the survey has been run, the team can use the data to help themselves see how they might evolve.
Timothy Clark – 2020 – has extended the concept to four levels: included; safe environment to learn; safe to contribute; safe to challenge the status quo.
Resource Links:
- Engineering a Culture of Psychological Safety
- The Epic Guide to Psychological Safety
- High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It.
- I Feel Unsafe Here! How to Embrace Conflict
- The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
- Of Course Psychological Safety…But How?
- The (Psychological) Safety Dance
- The Psychological Safety Game
- Psychological Safety – a report on how one company uses the concept
- Psychological Safety Made Simple — An Intro Guide
- What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
- Why psychological safety matters and what to do about it
- Why Psychological Safety Improves The Effectiveness Of Your Team – What it is and what it isn’t, what the science says, and how high psychological safety probably results in more conflicts
See Also:
*Thank you for visiting the World's Largest Opinionated Agile Reference Library. This content is created and the links are curated through the lens of Agile Pain Relief Consulting's view of what is effective in the practice of Scrum and Agile. We don't accept submissions and emails to that effect are marked as spam. Book listings may use affiliate links that could result in a small commission received by us if you purchase, but they do not affect the price at all. From experience, this won't amount to anything more than a cup of coffee in a year.« Back to Glossary Index
