What is psychological safety? #934
Description
From a [Slack Conversation}(https://x-cellians.slack.com/archives/C01TVBPV4G6/p1725253706037699), which turned into a LinkedIn comment.
I should probably write down my own definition. And then talk about ways I try to live up to it, and where I sometimes fall short.
I don't necessarily disagree with the points, but I think framing psychological safety as what it's not doesn't help build the shared mental model of what it can be. I think maybe finding examples of what it is might be better first.
This might be a US-centric framing, for sure, but I often think about psychological safety as a form of freedoms (which I mean as a lack of constraints).
Rephrasing the Westrum points around generative culture, I'd say psychological safety is:
- Freedom to seek information
- Freedom to contribute to a shared reality
- Freedom to collaborate
- Freedom to learn from being wrong, as an individual and a group
- Freedom to present new ideas
Psychological safety is the removal of the organizational constraints we sometimes put around people and teams which costs us their best work.