Dear subscribers: for the past few weeks I’ve been agonizing over how to divide up my writing between my forthcoming book and this Substack, now that I have a book deal (yay!) allowing only 10% overlap between them. And as easy as it would be to keep indulging my annoyance at this (self-imposed and ultimately wonderful) problem, the truth is that it’s just the nudge I’ve been needing to experiment with new, more versatile ways of engaging my readers.
In that spirit, I hereby invite you to join me for the first-ever Building the Builders discussion thread. Worst case, you’ll connect with other thoughtful, ambitious builders around a topic that’s relevant to anyone trying to work effectively with others. Best case, you’ll have helped lay the earliest foundations for what will eventually become a new home for the most spirited, honest, emotionally invested, intellectually ambitious conversations on the internet.
The starting topic, which you’re welcome to riff on or stray from entirely, is the concept of “psychological safety”.
What emotions or associations does it bring up for you?
Where have you encountered it, and to what effect?
Do you think you’d get more or less of its intended benefit if it were re-branded from “psychological safety” to, say, “a shared commitment to bold truth-seeking”?
I’ll summarize my own emerging view in the 1st comment, but I’m mostly curious to hear from you all!
My own tentative take (which I could yet be talked out of): While I like and agree with basically all of Amy Edmondson's practical recommendations, I think conceptualizing them under the heading of "psychological safety" badly misses the mark. In my coaching work with founders, I've seen it go wrong for 2 main reasons:
1) It elevates the FEELING of safety over actual safety (else why the "psychological" qualifier?), which leads to softening or brushing aside of painful truths—ultimately putting everyone at greater rather than lesser existential risk.
2) “Safety” is too focused on downside rather than upside, in a context where capturing upside is the best motivation for taking interpersonal risks to begin with.
Some further context: According to Edmondson, “psychological safety” refers to a “felt permission for candor." This is something I'm 100% on board with, and that I relentlessly advocate for in my coaching work. Nary a day goes by that I don’t push one of my founder clients to consider what more they could be doing to roll out the red carpet for pushback and critical feedback from their team members. It’s good to have “hard conversations”, where everyone has emotional skin in the game, conflicting views get surfaced and debated, and painful feedback gets shared and non-defensively worked through. Such conversations are the stock and trade of every enduringly great organization. They are the building blocks out of which deep trust, understanding, and alignment get forged between team members.
But what I've observed in my coaching practice is that the concept “psychological safety“ blocks these things from happening at least as often as it enables them. In relatively good cases, it tends to soften and hedge feedback to a degree that makes it less candid. In worse cases, it’s weaponized against direct negative feedback as such, creating the very sorts of seething resentments and backstabbing office politics it purports to guard against.
Does this fit with what you all have seen? Am I missing some of the real benefits of the term? What would be an alternative term that captures what's right about "psychological safety", but without the conceptual baggage I'm on about (supposing I'm even right to be on about it)?
I think what you’re describing is a common misunderstanding of what psychological safety is. It is misunderstood as behaving in a way that doesn’t trigger others, which is exactly what leads to softening of brushing aside of difficult things. In my experience, the findings of Project Aristotle and its recommendations are very sound. However, I can see how people who don’t really understand the term try to create “psychological safety” by being “nice” to others and then wonder why they see “seething resentment and office politics” you’re talking about.
Could it be called something else? Maybe, but I’m not sure it’d change much.
One other thought. One way to describe "psychological safety" is an environment where people are psychologically mature enough not to act out their insecurities at the expense of others. That's exactly the kind of environment where you would expect hard conversation about uncomfortable truths to be possible, because people will be able to actually participate in them instead of becoming defensive.
I think I actually basically agree with you that Project Aristotle’s findings were sound, in that all the particular practices that Edmondson in fact recommends under the heading of “psychological safety” are good. But I think conceptualizing this set of good practices under the heading of “psychological safety” reflects a substantive (i.e., not merely semantic) misunderstanding of *why those practices work* and the principles underlying them, and this misunderstanding in turn is what leads to the misapplications of Edmondson original playbook in practice.
But yes, what you describe as “being psychological mature enough not to act out from insecurity” is much closer to accurately describing the principle. In fact I really like “psychological maturity” as a candidate term, at least at first blush.
I think it might be easier to say "We need to work on psychological safety since research shows that it improves performance" than "It looks like the root of our problems is that we're a psychologically immature team" :)
lol- fair enough! Do you think one of the other suggest terms, like “psychological trust” or “bold truth-seeking” or some combination of these, might go over better?
For example, a colleague might point out a flaw in my proposal in front of others, making me feel insecure. I might become afraid that others will think I'm inexperienced or even stupid. To "protect" myself from this, I might act out this insecurity by attacking the other person or doubling-down on explaining why my proposal is great.
A more mature response would be to notice that I'm feeling insecure, let the feeling be, and address the criticism of my colleague by acknowledging it, reflecting on it to see if it's valid and proposing a way forward that improves the proposal, thanks to the criticism.
I agree. The term "psychological safety" focuses on the wrong thing.
"Obsession with Candor" better captures the relevant corporate virtue here than does "Psychological Safety". The former captures the idea of promoting unapologetic but respectful honesty no matter what one's rank is in the organizational hierarchy. It means encouraging everyone to be non-defensive in the face of unpleasant truths, even if such truths make one feel "unsafe".
I prefer a term such as "zone of value and respect". "Psychological safety" makes me think of avoiding offensive "triggers".
I first realized the importance of establishing an expectation of value and respect when I hired my first employee, Julia, many years ago. She was very good at her job, and I thought I had communicated my appreciation for the work she did. But one day, out of the blue (from my perspective) she quit. She told me that I had shown her no consideration at all, because not once during her time as an employee had I given her permission to go to lunch. I had assumed that when she was hungry she would go to lunch, but she had expected me to establish a daily schedule that included a time and duration for lunch.
I think if I had set aside a few minutes each day, or even each week, to sit down and talk, maybe to have lunch with Julia, and if I had shown her that I respected her, by asking for her opinion and listening respectfully, it could have been a long and successful collaboration. Ever since I learned that lesson, I have encouraged everyone I work with, including colleagues and clients, to approach communications with the expectation that they will be respected and listened to.
My co-founder lives in Berlin and I live in Vancouver. For the past two years, we have worked hard to get our startup off the ground, and we're very near having succeeded.
Psychological safety describes our covenant to make our remote company work. We understood from the outset that working together online would be an enormous challenge, and that the very success of this company is contingent on meeting these challenges. Mainly, we feared that we could diverge in our understanding of each other and drift apart, or that we would suffer from misunderstandings, incorrect assumptions or simple poor communication.
To avoid these pitfalls, we set up rules governing our exchanges. Articulating exactly what we think or feel may require courage, so we agreed to adopt a courageous/fearless attitude. We agreed to always respect the initial position that we presented to each other. In case of disagreement - which was common enough - we took the explicit position that the company interest had to be our focus. This shifted the argument from personal preferences to "what's best for the company". This approach has been helpful, though not always successful.
We established a culture of celebrating wins and positive developments. Our weekly review always begins with Celebrations. It works.
We realized that we still need to meet in person periodically. Twice a year, I fly to Berlin and we spend an intense week together, working, talking, eating, and generally re-aligning ourselves in every respect. It's never enough time, but it always feels good.
Generally, our commitment to full openness is understood to be critical to the success of our remote company. That's the reason why we embraced it fully from the outset and have done very well in two years.
A mature and insightful approach beautifully described, Andre. Whether we end up calling it “psychological safety” or something else (“fearless alignment”? “commitment to full openness”?), the approach is a commendable one.
A separate issue is that of individual fragility/resilience. Before starting my present venture, I had founded and run a company for 18 years. It was everything I wanted and I poured heart and soul into it. The business grew, flourished, peaked and declined. A series of misfortunes brought its demise and I fell into a two-year depression before letting go.
During those years, I experienced wonderful accomplishments and devastating setbacks, came close to bankruptcy twice, fought (and won) a lawsuit, hired and dismissed staff, held tough negotiations, etc. I understood perfectly well the amount of drive and energy, including "spiritual energy", needed to start a new company.
I had one early start with the present venture, but pulled back when I realized that I wasn't ready for it. It had taken so many beatings before, I wasn't ready to expose myself to much more. I still felt fragile inside. I only started in earnest when I felt strong enough to withstand the demands of a startup. Two years on, and many steep hills later, I feel that this was the right decision.
What media do you use for communication between you and your co-founder, Andre? I have been trying to figure out which aspects of meeting in person are most important. For some reason, I prefer meeting in virtual reality to video conferencing. I think it is because you can get up and walk around and look at various 3D objects. I wonder, if avatars could be made to accurately reflect gestures and facial expressions, would VR meetings be as effective as in-person, or are the sense of touch and smell important? I love being in different places, but I hate the process of traveling.
if you trust your skills, you're more likely to execute them and execute them confidently. You're more likely to express yourself.
if you trust your friends, you're more likely to share your views, and perhaps be critical about their behavior when necessary.
same goes at work. If you trust your team or your boss, you're more open to getting and giving feedback, dissenting views, confident performance etc etc.
on the flip side: If someone has lost trust in management or the leadership of the firm they will not feel it is worth their time to put in quality effort. they feel their opinion will fall on deaf ears.
Mo, I agree with you that trust is super important. You're going to have trust in your skills when you first meet with your team members but, it can take a while to develop trust. There are times when we want our teams to function well even before the team members have a chance to get to know each other more than superficially. Unlike trust, which takes a while to develop, we can establish ground rules from the beginning that we will: approach each other with respect, listen closely to each other, and be honest with each other. However, this does require trust to the extent that you know what you say will remain confidential.
We meet predominantly through video calls, both formally (weekly review meetings) and informally (debrief after investor meeting or candidate interview). We use Slack for text conversations or simple comments, such as compiling items for the monthly newsletter. Finally, we meet in person 2-3 times/year for a reset. These are week-long get togethers and we have discovered that they are critical, allowing us to connect in a way that is both necessary and impossible to recreate otherwise.
Not too too much to add here, but I did pick up the primary source back in the day and remember finding it pretty underwhelming - here was the review I'd put up on my goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5591927086) a while ago:
"The Fearless Organization" is an interesting book, albeit somewhat perplexing in its structure and audience. Like many business books, it seems inflated, with the core information potentially condensed into a handful of pages supplemented by infographics.
The book's audience is unclear. Its tone is forceful in advocating for psychological safety in the workplace. However, it is unlikely to persuade those who don't already believe in the importance of psychological safety due to its assertive stance. The book seems to be targeted towards readers who already agree with its premise. Given this, it's questionable why a significant portion of the book is dedicated to providing further evidence supporting this viewpoint, especially since much of the data consists of cherry-picked examples from various organizations.
Unfortunately, the book lacks a robust empirical analysis to definitively establish the significance of workplace safety or psychological safety. Instead, it largely relies on observational studies. These studies are somewhat limited in their scope and depth of analysis, and they resemble the kind of research a graduate student might conduct, given that the primary study in the book was conducted at this level.
The section of the book that could have been most useful - how to incorporate psychological safety into company culture - unfortunately came across as rather cliché. It essentially provided two solutions: firstly, leaders should ask questions, a piece of advice that is undoubtedly valuable and worth echoing; secondly, leaders should give genuine recognition to employees who voice their opinions, thereby encouraging others to feel safe in expressing their viewpoints, particularly dissenting ones. While both recommendations are excellent, they seem fairly obvious for anyone seeking to foster psychological safety in their workplace.
Despite the initial enthusiasm to delve into this book, it proved somewhat disappointing due to the issues mentioned. There's much potential in discussing psychological safety in the workplace, but this book falls short in its execution.
I haven't read the NYT article and only briefly looked at the author's website, but my impression is not so good. It sounds like a derivative of servant leadership, which seems to be wildly popular but intentionally transfers decision making authority to people who haven't earned it. I suspect both intend to give equal merit to all ideas and that will discourage people that have principled ideas.
I tend to dislike the phrase 'psychological safety' (PS) because (absent a clear precise definition in the original reference which I have not read), one has to grope for its meaning. In a sense, who can be against safety of any kind? Further how is PS different from physical safety? And so on. In effect, in analyzing PS, in my view, you have to spend far too much time sorting through what the creator of the phrase should have dealt with originally. I think 'a shared commitment to bold truth-seeking' would be a clear improvement but again is that what PS's creator meant? To state the obvious, life by its nature entails myriad risks so if one is ambitious, one will have to take all kinds of calculated risks including almost undoubtedly feeling psychologically unsafe.
Yes! In the workplace context, there’s less time for trust-building and a lower standard for “being open”. In my experience as a project manager in software development, I’ve observed that exquisite teamwork demands explicit agreement to a set of values (requirements) and multiple iterations to develop skillful collaboration that becomes progressively trustworthy.
I'll be the first to stray a little from the term "psychological safety" to share a related contemplation that keeps coming up for me regarding encouragement vs critical feedaback. :)
It's the idea that encouragement is equally, if not more valuable than critical feedback in "startupland". I think encouraging a founder (or anyone for that matter) is a more productive input on their entrepreneurial path than critical feedback is. More dreams die as a result of lack of self esteem. While the validation of any idea should come from reality itself, social validation can be a source of powerful motivation to keep going. It's possible that my view of this is a total projection of my own negative experiences of strangers taking my business as an intellectual exercise to pick apart when I needed it least. But, I think there's something deeper to it that reflect's my own way of seeing the best in people, and highlighting that above all.
Dr. Gena seems to be leaning toward ambition and “taking interpersonal risks” to vault over reservations around trust. In my long years of experience in intimate relationships, the profoundly deep sense of intimacy I’ve experienced — even oneness in sexual intimacy — came from total acceptance of each other without reserving self-protections — as Byron Katie says, loving what-is.
That kind of trust has, for me and my current partner, resulted from an absence of agenda — an intention to discover what-is rather than to try to bypass instinctive reservations. It takes patience to be organic.
To get to that level of trust has meant encountering our long-conditioned trigger points — the ones that put us in a state of hyper-alertness for threats to our safety — and learning to accept those reactions as part of our journey together, as part of our unique chemistry as a couple. I’m talking about a chemistry and desire to connect with each other that defies belief.
So how about “organic trust”?
To some people, “truth-seeking” may imply covert interrogation or “radical honesty”. If truth-seeking includes honoring sensibilities and taking as much time as it takes to win the other person’s trust through “nonviolent” curiosity about oneself as well as about the other person.
Ooo, yes - I've also been thinking about the crucial role of trust in all of these dynamics, and I love "bold trust seeking" as a way to capture it!
What's actually needed in a workplace context is for everyone on the team to trust each other to 1) be operating in good faith, with a genuine shared intent to figure out what's true or what's best for the team as a whole, and 2) have decent enough judgment and intellectual chops that their thought process does in fact yield valuable insight at least some of the time, enough to be worth inviting them to "speak up" and freely share what's on their mind even when they seem to be way off-track (and might actually be). This kind of trust is everyone's responsibility to build and maintain (and, when necessary, work to restore). I think this loosely maps on to what you said about "honoring sensibilities and taking as much time as it take" (so long as you still see mutual value—be it the value of profound intimacy and connection, or of being able to build something great together—in doing so).
Do you offer criteria for detecting conflicting interests and deficits in collaborative-communication skills?
I rely on the principles and practices of nonviolent communication (which I call “collaborative conversation”).
I’m building an app that uses algorithms trained in “generative emotional intelligence” to support evolution in self-awareness and emotional intelligence skills with practice. Its current focus is on significant-other relationships. I want to create expert-system content for application in work settings and relationships.
Dr. Gena, would you consider a collaboration with me and my small team of experts in GenEI to adapt the app to work settings and relationships?
If this sounds like something interesting to discuss, please call or text me at 206-818-2558 or e-mail me at Daniel.Webb@ReturnToLove.app.
Psychological Safety, the label adds a spotlight that almost makes it a forced cultural shift in the organisation.
However, safety that is understood to be present through actionable ways without the labels makes it an easier digest to let loose and voice out your ideas, agreements or disagreements.
Personally, I think, the word attributes to something personal and if felt that way translates into the larger organisations climate
I've not experienced it as an employee, but from what I've noticed from managers or senior professionals letting employees know that they can speak up, it doesn't work that way because unless understood by the employees internally it's usually just considered to be one of those fancy organisational talks. 😅
And if it's exercised, most cases it backfires because the managers themselves aren't open to the change or its used as a way to point out a negative in the employee "we are open to feedback but you aren't exercising it"
And this disparity in what the organisation wants to stand for and where it is really is becomes evident.
I'm not sure if this has been touched on already, but the term "safety" in social contexts usually implies a dichotomy between it and freedom. I think I agree that a commitment to pursuing the truth is the best way to promote a marketplace of ideas which facilitates upward mobility.
My impression was that "psychological safety" referred to the difference between a workplace where you can actually have a conversation with your boss, and a workplace where the only socially appropriate communication is "yes i'll do that", "i'm done," and "i'm not done yet".
Invariably, I do better at workplaces where:
*I have any evidence that somebody likes me, wants me around, or hired me because they think I'd be good at the job
*I am allowed/supposed to have ideas and take initiative
*I have the sense that I'm entitled to have an "actual human conversation" (not sure how to phrase this, but like, not limited to one-word compliance responses. a conversation with the implicit assumption that I am an adult human being who is allowed to have self-respect and be present in the same space as the person I'm talking to.)
I am *so much* smarter, more productive, and more motivated when I have that degree of psychological safety. It's a lot more basic and normal than the sort of "nobody's allowed to criticize" over-coddling it sounds like you're imagining.
I think I first heard the term from a friend at Google who was able to tell her manager something -- I forget if it was a request to work from home, or a disagreement with the engineering strategy, or something -- and I realized "that sounds AMAZING and I could never dream of saying anything like that, that would totally be out of bounds for the dynamic I'm in"...and that was a job I got fired from. My next work environments were much better, and they were *all* situations where my boss had "real" one-on-one conversations with me that made it clear I was allowed to talk to them "like a person".
Critical feedback is part of that actually! I was over thirty years old before I got a boss giving me "mentorship" (like "you need to speak louder", or explaining social dynamics in executive contexts) that *wasn't* in the context of "you're underperforming overall" but rather "you're good and I'm giving you advice to help you get better." (where that's credible rather than lip service). It actually feels completely different from the sort of "scary criticism" where you wonder whether you're being globally rejected/fired/hated/etc.
Yes, totally agree that that’s intended meaning and that’s an essential element of healthy workplace culture. My objection is to calling that “safety” as opposed to, e.g., “epistemic trust”, “valuing of honest and collaborative inquiry,” etc. What I’ve seen happen with the term “psychological safety” is that it often gets co-opted in service of precisely the kinds of walk-on-eggshells norms that make it stupidly hard to do the whole stack of things you described. And I don’t think this co-opting is an accident, since the term “psychological safety” misconceptualizes the essential nature and purpose of the healthy kind of work environment.
A key reason why it’s so hard to take initiative, have an actual human conversation, etc in so many workplaces is precisely because someone finds it *psychologically threatening*, and their need to not feel that way gets prioritized over the actual, objective value of what you have to contribute.
it might not have been a total coincidence that my worst experience on this front was also "founder literally gave a supervillain speech about how the business plan was to lobby to make all our competitors illegal" and "the only older employee with industry experience got fired for disagreeing with the founder" and "the company went out of business quickly".
My own tentative take (which I could yet be talked out of): While I like and agree with basically all of Amy Edmondson's practical recommendations, I think conceptualizing them under the heading of "psychological safety" badly misses the mark. In my coaching work with founders, I've seen it go wrong for 2 main reasons:
1) It elevates the FEELING of safety over actual safety (else why the "psychological" qualifier?), which leads to softening or brushing aside of painful truths—ultimately putting everyone at greater rather than lesser existential risk.
2) “Safety” is too focused on downside rather than upside, in a context where capturing upside is the best motivation for taking interpersonal risks to begin with.
Some further context: According to Edmondson, “psychological safety” refers to a “felt permission for candor." This is something I'm 100% on board with, and that I relentlessly advocate for in my coaching work. Nary a day goes by that I don’t push one of my founder clients to consider what more they could be doing to roll out the red carpet for pushback and critical feedback from their team members. It’s good to have “hard conversations”, where everyone has emotional skin in the game, conflicting views get surfaced and debated, and painful feedback gets shared and non-defensively worked through. Such conversations are the stock and trade of every enduringly great organization. They are the building blocks out of which deep trust, understanding, and alignment get forged between team members.
But what I've observed in my coaching practice is that the concept “psychological safety“ blocks these things from happening at least as often as it enables them. In relatively good cases, it tends to soften and hedge feedback to a degree that makes it less candid. In worse cases, it’s weaponized against direct negative feedback as such, creating the very sorts of seething resentments and backstabbing office politics it purports to guard against.
Does this fit with what you all have seen? Am I missing some of the real benefits of the term? What would be an alternative term that captures what's right about "psychological safety", but without the conceptual baggage I'm on about (supposing I'm even right to be on about it)?
I think what you’re describing is a common misunderstanding of what psychological safety is. It is misunderstood as behaving in a way that doesn’t trigger others, which is exactly what leads to softening of brushing aside of difficult things. In my experience, the findings of Project Aristotle and its recommendations are very sound. However, I can see how people who don’t really understand the term try to create “psychological safety” by being “nice” to others and then wonder why they see “seething resentment and office politics” you’re talking about.
Could it be called something else? Maybe, but I’m not sure it’d change much.
One other thought. One way to describe "psychological safety" is an environment where people are psychologically mature enough not to act out their insecurities at the expense of others. That's exactly the kind of environment where you would expect hard conversation about uncomfortable truths to be possible, because people will be able to actually participate in them instead of becoming defensive.
I think I actually basically agree with you that Project Aristotle’s findings were sound, in that all the particular practices that Edmondson in fact recommends under the heading of “psychological safety” are good. But I think conceptualizing this set of good practices under the heading of “psychological safety” reflects a substantive (i.e., not merely semantic) misunderstanding of *why those practices work* and the principles underlying them, and this misunderstanding in turn is what leads to the misapplications of Edmondson original playbook in practice.
But yes, what you describe as “being psychological mature enough not to act out from insecurity” is much closer to accurately describing the principle. In fact I really like “psychological maturity” as a candidate term, at least at first blush.
I think it might be easier to say "We need to work on psychological safety since research shows that it improves performance" than "It looks like the root of our problems is that we're a psychologically immature team" :)
lol- fair enough! Do you think one of the other suggest terms, like “psychological trust” or “bold truth-seeking” or some combination of these, might go over better?
No, I’d keep it as is. Those who will misunderstand it, will do so anyway
I am not sure I understand what you mean by acting out insecurities. Could you please give an example of what this would look like?
For example, a colleague might point out a flaw in my proposal in front of others, making me feel insecure. I might become afraid that others will think I'm inexperienced or even stupid. To "protect" myself from this, I might act out this insecurity by attacking the other person or doubling-down on explaining why my proposal is great.
A more mature response would be to notice that I'm feeling insecure, let the feeling be, and address the criticism of my colleague by acknowledging it, reflecting on it to see if it's valid and proposing a way forward that improves the proposal, thanks to the criticism.
I agree. The term "psychological safety" focuses on the wrong thing.
"Obsession with Candor" better captures the relevant corporate virtue here than does "Psychological Safety". The former captures the idea of promoting unapologetic but respectful honesty no matter what one's rank is in the organizational hierarchy. It means encouraging everyone to be non-defensive in the face of unpleasant truths, even if such truths make one feel "unsafe".
I prefer a term such as "zone of value and respect". "Psychological safety" makes me think of avoiding offensive "triggers".
I first realized the importance of establishing an expectation of value and respect when I hired my first employee, Julia, many years ago. She was very good at her job, and I thought I had communicated my appreciation for the work she did. But one day, out of the blue (from my perspective) she quit. She told me that I had shown her no consideration at all, because not once during her time as an employee had I given her permission to go to lunch. I had assumed that when she was hungry she would go to lunch, but she had expected me to establish a daily schedule that included a time and duration for lunch.
I think if I had set aside a few minutes each day, or even each week, to sit down and talk, maybe to have lunch with Julia, and if I had shown her that I respected her, by asking for her opinion and listening respectfully, it could have been a long and successful collaboration. Ever since I learned that lesson, I have encouraged everyone I work with, including colleagues and clients, to approach communications with the expectation that they will be respected and listened to.
My co-founder lives in Berlin and I live in Vancouver. For the past two years, we have worked hard to get our startup off the ground, and we're very near having succeeded.
Psychological safety describes our covenant to make our remote company work. We understood from the outset that working together online would be an enormous challenge, and that the very success of this company is contingent on meeting these challenges. Mainly, we feared that we could diverge in our understanding of each other and drift apart, or that we would suffer from misunderstandings, incorrect assumptions or simple poor communication.
To avoid these pitfalls, we set up rules governing our exchanges. Articulating exactly what we think or feel may require courage, so we agreed to adopt a courageous/fearless attitude. We agreed to always respect the initial position that we presented to each other. In case of disagreement - which was common enough - we took the explicit position that the company interest had to be our focus. This shifted the argument from personal preferences to "what's best for the company". This approach has been helpful, though not always successful.
We established a culture of celebrating wins and positive developments. Our weekly review always begins with Celebrations. It works.
We realized that we still need to meet in person periodically. Twice a year, I fly to Berlin and we spend an intense week together, working, talking, eating, and generally re-aligning ourselves in every respect. It's never enough time, but it always feels good.
Generally, our commitment to full openness is understood to be critical to the success of our remote company. That's the reason why we embraced it fully from the outset and have done very well in two years.
A mature and insightful approach beautifully described, Andre. Whether we end up calling it “psychological safety” or something else (“fearless alignment”? “commitment to full openness”?), the approach is a commendable one.
A separate issue is that of individual fragility/resilience. Before starting my present venture, I had founded and run a company for 18 years. It was everything I wanted and I poured heart and soul into it. The business grew, flourished, peaked and declined. A series of misfortunes brought its demise and I fell into a two-year depression before letting go.
During those years, I experienced wonderful accomplishments and devastating setbacks, came close to bankruptcy twice, fought (and won) a lawsuit, hired and dismissed staff, held tough negotiations, etc. I understood perfectly well the amount of drive and energy, including "spiritual energy", needed to start a new company.
I had one early start with the present venture, but pulled back when I realized that I wasn't ready for it. It had taken so many beatings before, I wasn't ready to expose myself to much more. I still felt fragile inside. I only started in earnest when I felt strong enough to withstand the demands of a startup. Two years on, and many steep hills later, I feel that this was the right decision.
What media do you use for communication between you and your co-founder, Andre? I have been trying to figure out which aspects of meeting in person are most important. For some reason, I prefer meeting in virtual reality to video conferencing. I think it is because you can get up and walk around and look at various 3D objects. I wonder, if avatars could be made to accurately reflect gestures and facial expressions, would VR meetings be as effective as in-person, or are the sense of touch and smell important? I love being in different places, but I hate the process of traveling.
I feel like psychological safety is just academese, or coporatese lingo for "Trust". Trust itself, is of course a loaded term.
Kyla Scanlon wrote about how agency is a function of trust: https://kyla.substack.com/i/144442198/agency-as-a-function-of-trust
my take is like so:
if you trust your skills, you're more likely to execute them and execute them confidently. You're more likely to express yourself.
if you trust your friends, you're more likely to share your views, and perhaps be critical about their behavior when necessary.
same goes at work. If you trust your team or your boss, you're more open to getting and giving feedback, dissenting views, confident performance etc etc.
on the flip side: If someone has lost trust in management or the leadership of the firm they will not feel it is worth their time to put in quality effort. they feel their opinion will fall on deaf ears.
Mo, I agree with you that trust is super important. You're going to have trust in your skills when you first meet with your team members but, it can take a while to develop trust. There are times when we want our teams to function well even before the team members have a chance to get to know each other more than superficially. Unlike trust, which takes a while to develop, we can establish ground rules from the beginning that we will: approach each other with respect, listen closely to each other, and be honest with each other. However, this does require trust to the extent that you know what you say will remain confidential.
We meet predominantly through video calls, both formally (weekly review meetings) and informally (debrief after investor meeting or candidate interview). We use Slack for text conversations or simple comments, such as compiling items for the monthly newsletter. Finally, we meet in person 2-3 times/year for a reset. These are week-long get togethers and we have discovered that they are critical, allowing us to connect in a way that is both necessary and impossible to recreate otherwise.
Not too too much to add here, but I did pick up the primary source back in the day and remember finding it pretty underwhelming - here was the review I'd put up on my goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5591927086) a while ago:
"The Fearless Organization" is an interesting book, albeit somewhat perplexing in its structure and audience. Like many business books, it seems inflated, with the core information potentially condensed into a handful of pages supplemented by infographics.
The book's audience is unclear. Its tone is forceful in advocating for psychological safety in the workplace. However, it is unlikely to persuade those who don't already believe in the importance of psychological safety due to its assertive stance. The book seems to be targeted towards readers who already agree with its premise. Given this, it's questionable why a significant portion of the book is dedicated to providing further evidence supporting this viewpoint, especially since much of the data consists of cherry-picked examples from various organizations.
Unfortunately, the book lacks a robust empirical analysis to definitively establish the significance of workplace safety or psychological safety. Instead, it largely relies on observational studies. These studies are somewhat limited in their scope and depth of analysis, and they resemble the kind of research a graduate student might conduct, given that the primary study in the book was conducted at this level.
The section of the book that could have been most useful - how to incorporate psychological safety into company culture - unfortunately came across as rather cliché. It essentially provided two solutions: firstly, leaders should ask questions, a piece of advice that is undoubtedly valuable and worth echoing; secondly, leaders should give genuine recognition to employees who voice their opinions, thereby encouraging others to feel safe in expressing their viewpoints, particularly dissenting ones. While both recommendations are excellent, they seem fairly obvious for anyone seeking to foster psychological safety in their workplace.
Despite the initial enthusiasm to delve into this book, it proved somewhat disappointing due to the issues mentioned. There's much potential in discussing psychological safety in the workplace, but this book falls short in its execution.
I haven't read the NYT article and only briefly looked at the author's website, but my impression is not so good. It sounds like a derivative of servant leadership, which seems to be wildly popular but intentionally transfers decision making authority to people who haven't earned it. I suspect both intend to give equal merit to all ideas and that will discourage people that have principled ideas.
I tend to dislike the phrase 'psychological safety' (PS) because (absent a clear precise definition in the original reference which I have not read), one has to grope for its meaning. In a sense, who can be against safety of any kind? Further how is PS different from physical safety? And so on. In effect, in analyzing PS, in my view, you have to spend far too much time sorting through what the creator of the phrase should have dealt with originally. I think 'a shared commitment to bold truth-seeking' would be a clear improvement but again is that what PS's creator meant? To state the obvious, life by its nature entails myriad risks so if one is ambitious, one will have to take all kinds of calculated risks including almost undoubtedly feeling psychologically unsafe.
Yes! In the workplace context, there’s less time for trust-building and a lower standard for “being open”. In my experience as a project manager in software development, I’ve observed that exquisite teamwork demands explicit agreement to a set of values (requirements) and multiple iterations to develop skillful collaboration that becomes progressively trustworthy.
And no clothing must be removed, so there’s that.
I'll be the first to stray a little from the term "psychological safety" to share a related contemplation that keeps coming up for me regarding encouragement vs critical feedaback. :)
It's the idea that encouragement is equally, if not more valuable than critical feedback in "startupland". I think encouraging a founder (or anyone for that matter) is a more productive input on their entrepreneurial path than critical feedback is. More dreams die as a result of lack of self esteem. While the validation of any idea should come from reality itself, social validation can be a source of powerful motivation to keep going. It's possible that my view of this is a total projection of my own negative experiences of strangers taking my business as an intellectual exercise to pick apart when I needed it least. But, I think there's something deeper to it that reflect's my own way of seeing the best in people, and highlighting that above all.
- What prompted my thinking on this was was a story Jordan Peterson told about talking to a fellow thought partner on research projects. "He was 100% committed to the fostering of his students' flourishing." "Enthusiasm is a form of incentive and reward and keeps the conversation flourishing." "Enthusiasm triggers dopamine and there triggers that psychological system to grow." Timestamped here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CdZPa267XkAdIV0Lxy11S?si=qlv32qDpQyK8ys5SZdUHgA&t=5119&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A1Zw2DKjelPnuEYpydFlhgN
Dr. Gena seems to be leaning toward ambition and “taking interpersonal risks” to vault over reservations around trust. In my long years of experience in intimate relationships, the profoundly deep sense of intimacy I’ve experienced — even oneness in sexual intimacy — came from total acceptance of each other without reserving self-protections — as Byron Katie says, loving what-is.
That kind of trust has, for me and my current partner, resulted from an absence of agenda — an intention to discover what-is rather than to try to bypass instinctive reservations. It takes patience to be organic.
To get to that level of trust has meant encountering our long-conditioned trigger points — the ones that put us in a state of hyper-alertness for threats to our safety — and learning to accept those reactions as part of our journey together, as part of our unique chemistry as a couple. I’m talking about a chemistry and desire to connect with each other that defies belief.
So how about “organic trust”?
To some people, “truth-seeking” may imply covert interrogation or “radical honesty”. If truth-seeking includes honoring sensibilities and taking as much time as it takes to win the other person’s trust through “nonviolent” curiosity about oneself as well as about the other person.
So how about bold “trust seeking”?
Ooo, yes - I've also been thinking about the crucial role of trust in all of these dynamics, and I love "bold trust seeking" as a way to capture it!
What's actually needed in a workplace context is for everyone on the team to trust each other to 1) be operating in good faith, with a genuine shared intent to figure out what's true or what's best for the team as a whole, and 2) have decent enough judgment and intellectual chops that their thought process does in fact yield valuable insight at least some of the time, enough to be worth inviting them to "speak up" and freely share what's on their mind even when they seem to be way off-track (and might actually be). This kind of trust is everyone's responsibility to build and maintain (and, when necessary, work to restore). I think this loosely maps on to what you said about "honoring sensibilities and taking as much time as it take" (so long as you still see mutual value—be it the value of profound intimacy and connection, or of being able to build something great together—in doing so).
Do you offer criteria for detecting conflicting interests and deficits in collaborative-communication skills?
I rely on the principles and practices of nonviolent communication (which I call “collaborative conversation”).
I’m building an app that uses algorithms trained in “generative emotional intelligence” to support evolution in self-awareness and emotional intelligence skills with practice. Its current focus is on significant-other relationships. I want to create expert-system content for application in work settings and relationships.
Dr. Gena, would you consider a collaboration with me and my small team of experts in GenEI to adapt the app to work settings and relationships?
If this sounds like something interesting to discuss, please call or text me at 206-818-2558 or e-mail me at Daniel.Webb@ReturnToLove.app.
Psychological Safety, the label adds a spotlight that almost makes it a forced cultural shift in the organisation.
However, safety that is understood to be present through actionable ways without the labels makes it an easier digest to let loose and voice out your ideas, agreements or disagreements.
Personally, I think, the word attributes to something personal and if felt that way translates into the larger organisations climate
I've not experienced it as an employee, but from what I've noticed from managers or senior professionals letting employees know that they can speak up, it doesn't work that way because unless understood by the employees internally it's usually just considered to be one of those fancy organisational talks. 😅
And if it's exercised, most cases it backfires because the managers themselves aren't open to the change or its used as a way to point out a negative in the employee "we are open to feedback but you aren't exercising it"
And this disparity in what the organisation wants to stand for and where it is really is becomes evident.
So, what you've said above is true. :)
This is a way to find the "negative Nancies", but how do you handle them ?
I'm not sure if this has been touched on already, but the term "safety" in social contexts usually implies a dichotomy between it and freedom. I think I agree that a commitment to pursuing the truth is the best way to promote a marketplace of ideas which facilitates upward mobility.
My impression was that "psychological safety" referred to the difference between a workplace where you can actually have a conversation with your boss, and a workplace where the only socially appropriate communication is "yes i'll do that", "i'm done," and "i'm not done yet".
Invariably, I do better at workplaces where:
*I have any evidence that somebody likes me, wants me around, or hired me because they think I'd be good at the job
*I am allowed/supposed to have ideas and take initiative
*I have the sense that I'm entitled to have an "actual human conversation" (not sure how to phrase this, but like, not limited to one-word compliance responses. a conversation with the implicit assumption that I am an adult human being who is allowed to have self-respect and be present in the same space as the person I'm talking to.)
I am *so much* smarter, more productive, and more motivated when I have that degree of psychological safety. It's a lot more basic and normal than the sort of "nobody's allowed to criticize" over-coddling it sounds like you're imagining.
I think I first heard the term from a friend at Google who was able to tell her manager something -- I forget if it was a request to work from home, or a disagreement with the engineering strategy, or something -- and I realized "that sounds AMAZING and I could never dream of saying anything like that, that would totally be out of bounds for the dynamic I'm in"...and that was a job I got fired from. My next work environments were much better, and they were *all* situations where my boss had "real" one-on-one conversations with me that made it clear I was allowed to talk to them "like a person".
Critical feedback is part of that actually! I was over thirty years old before I got a boss giving me "mentorship" (like "you need to speak louder", or explaining social dynamics in executive contexts) that *wasn't* in the context of "you're underperforming overall" but rather "you're good and I'm giving you advice to help you get better." (where that's credible rather than lip service). It actually feels completely different from the sort of "scary criticism" where you wonder whether you're being globally rejected/fired/hated/etc.
Yes, totally agree that that’s intended meaning and that’s an essential element of healthy workplace culture. My objection is to calling that “safety” as opposed to, e.g., “epistemic trust”, “valuing of honest and collaborative inquiry,” etc. What I’ve seen happen with the term “psychological safety” is that it often gets co-opted in service of precisely the kinds of walk-on-eggshells norms that make it stupidly hard to do the whole stack of things you described. And I don’t think this co-opting is an accident, since the term “psychological safety” misconceptualizes the essential nature and purpose of the healthy kind of work environment.
A key reason why it’s so hard to take initiative, have an actual human conversation, etc in so many workplaces is precisely because someone finds it *psychologically threatening*, and their need to not feel that way gets prioritized over the actual, objective value of what you have to contribute.
...oh.
it might not have been a total coincidence that my worst experience on this front was also "founder literally gave a supervillain speech about how the business plan was to lobby to make all our competitors illegal" and "the only older employee with industry experience got fired for disagreeing with the founder" and "the company went out of business quickly".
Yikes!! Whew, would love to download that full story over a soothing tea at some point 🫖