Vertical Growth

11Creating a container of team psychological safety

‘Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.’

Booker T. Washington

Harvard organisational behavioural scientist Amy Edmondson first introduced the construct of ‘team psychological safety’, which she defined as a ‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking’. It's a shared assumption that others on the team will not embarrass, reject or punish you for speaking up or sharing honest mistakes, which requires an environment in which vulnerability is rewarded rather than punished.

Over the course of two years, Google performed a large-scale study to determine what makes teams effective. They found that the highest-performing teams have one thing in common: team psychological safety.

Team psychological safety is not to be confused with a lack of accountability. In fact, accountability for behaviour that damages psychological safety needs to be very strong, while performance accountability also needs to be strong.

In his book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation, Timothy Clark identifies the four stages as follows:

1. Inclusion safety. Team members feel safe to be themselves and are accepted for who they are. In our The Mindful Leader: Vertical Growth program we work hard at helping each individual to safely reveal their authentic selves more fully to one another, from ...