Psychological Safety

Insights from Conflux

Conflux helps organizations to adopt and sustain proven, modern practices for delivering software rapidly and safely. 

Delivering software safely doesn’t just mean that teams feel confident to deploy into production in business hours, or that they can quickly rollback to a previous version of an application should a problem occur.

It also means creating an environment where teams can be creative and collaborative, to work together to solve problems and create new products and services to delight their customers. For such an environment to exist and thrive, psychological safety is a key ingredient.

What is psychological safety?

The term ‘psychological safety’ was coined by organizational behaviour scientist and Harvard professor, Dr Amy Edmondson. She described psychological safety as ‘the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes’. 

When people feel psychologically safe in their teams and workplaces they feel comfortable to be open and honest, and to participate and contribute wholeheartedly: they can ask questions when they don’t understand something, admit mistakes when something goes wrong, suggest ideas for improvements, challenge others’ ideas if they disagree, and raise concerns when something doesn’t feel quite right.

 

Group learning for psychological safety

Psychological safety is an essential ingredient for organizations operating in today’s fast-moving, complex, and volatile world. However, it is not something that just exists by a ‘happy accident’. Organizations must intentionally create an environment in which psychological safety can thrive, and that takes time and effort. Conflux can help your organization to build and grow its psychological safety awareness and capabilities through our ‘See-Do-Teach’ approach to group learning.

Featured
See-Do-Teach Program - Growing a culture of psychological safety
See-Do-Teach
Psychological Safety, P661a, See-Do-Teach
See-Do-Teach Program - Growing a culture of psychological safety
See-Do-Teach
Psychological Safety, P661a, See-Do-Teach

Building a culture of psychological safety in teams and across an organization is not something that just happens either by chance or possibly because the leadership wishes it. People need to be shown the way, and given the necessary time and space to learn what psychological safety is about, and to learn and practice the techniques and new ways of working.

See-Do-Teach
Psychological Safety, P661a, See-Do-Teach
Spotlight Session - Creating psychological safety in IT
Spotlight Session
Psychological Safety, See-Do-Teach, P641e
Spotlight Session - Creating psychological safety in IT
Spotlight Session
Psychological Safety, See-Do-Teach, P641e

Psychological safety is an essential requirement for organizations looking to achieve, navigate, and sustain a fast flow of change. But how do you go about creating psychological safety in your organization? And whose responsibility is it? How do you even begin a conversation about psychological safety if people don’t feel psychologically safe?

Spotlight Session
Psychological Safety, See-Do-Teach, P641e
 

Insights on psychological safety

Featured
Change the system, not the person. Why well-being needs to start with organizational change.
Trust, psychological safety
Change the system, not the person. Why well-being needs to start with organizational change.
Trust, psychological safety

Over the past decade, organizations have given increasing attention to employee well-being. Recognising the importance of fostering a healthy, happy and supported workforce, and the obvious benefits to business outcomes, employers are keen to emphasize how employee well-being is a key focus of their organization.

Yet over half of employees believe their employer is guilty of well-being washing and a recent research study by William Fleming Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre concludes that individual well-being interventions have little to no impact. Putting some possibly justifiable cynicism to one side for a moment, what could be causing this gap between intention and impact?

Trust, psychological safety
Addressing misconceptions on Psychological Safety to improve performance
Addressing misconceptions on Psychological Safety to improve performance

Psychological safety is a foundational requirement for organizations seeking fast flow and effective change. We have seen a couple of articles recently that suggest psychological safety could have a downside, so we decided to reflect on the issue.

An article in Fortune in 2023 suggested that performance is improved when everyone is ‘held accountable’ and implied that this was at odds with psychological safety. Another (Hive Learning) suggested that being ‘comfortable’ was the opposite of psychological safety, though it did acknowledge that you could be comfortable with either scenario.

In this article, we review the benefits of psychological safety, why these benefits occur, whether or not there is a downside, and what you should be ‘comfortable’ with.

The financial value of psychological safety in technology organizations
DORA
The financial value of psychological safety in technology organizations
DORA

The research from DORA shows that, for technology organizations, psychological safety is a double whammy. An absence of psychological safety will contribute to poor software delivery performance, deployment pain, and employee burnout. On the other hand, the presence of psychological safety will contribute to improved software delivery performance, organizational performance, and job satisfaction. It’s double or quits.

DORA
Our organizational OS needs an upgrade: why knowledge works needs a new approach
Our organizational OS needs an upgrade: why knowledge works needs a new approach

Organizations engaged in knowledge work must recognise that many of their current ways of working are the legacy of a bygone era and are no longer applicable or effective in today’s world. They need to adopt a new approach to how they do their work. Knowledge work requires teamwork and collaboration; it requires that people are engaged and switched on, able to use all their talents and creativity to solve hard and novel problems.

Using ideas from ‘Humble Inquiry’ to ask instead of tell
Using ideas from ‘Humble Inquiry’ to ask instead of tell

To make it possible for those who are lower down in the organizational hierarchy to feel psychologically safe to speak up when the situation demands that they do, or when asked to do so directly, we need to create good relationships between people - relationships that are built on openness and trust. Schein’s argument is that ‘humble inquiry’ is the method by which such relationships are forged. These relationships need to be created before they’re needed, we need to invest in them upfront so that they are ready when the situation arises.

Search our insights on psychological safety