The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

Preface

This book puts forward a theory of human interaction. Let me give you the context. Several years ago, my wife, Tracey, and I returned to the United States from England as I neared the completion of a PhD in social science at Oxford University. The ramen budget was gone. I would get a job, work for a year, finish my dissertation, teach at a university, and live happily ever after. That was the plan.

Here’s what actually happened. I stepped out of the ivory tower into the gritty, sweaty megaton realm of a steel plant. Constructed by US Steel Corporation during World War II, Geneva Steel was the last fully integrated steel mill west of the Mississippi River, a hulking mass of machinery spread across 1,700 acres, the industrial equivalent ...