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Psychological Safety Is Critical for High-Performing Teams
Metadata
- Author: Stack Overflow Blog
- Full Title: Psychological Safety Is Critical for High-Performing Teams
- Category: #articles
- Document Tags: mental-health productivity work
- URL: https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/01/27/psychological-safety-is-critical-for-high-performing-teams/
- Archive: https://web-archive.alecodes.page/bookmarks?bf=1&search=&title=Psychological%20Safety%20Is%20Critical%20for%20High-Performing%20Teams
[!tldr] Psychological safety is crucial for high-performing teams. It refers to creating a work environment where employees feel safe to speak up, share ideas, and discuss failures without fear of punishment or humiliation. When teams feel psychologically safe, they are more willing to take risks, collaborate, and put in discretionary effort. Evaluating the level of psychological safety in an organization can be done by assessing factors such as tolerance for mistakes, micro-moments of learning, space for reflection and review, encouragement of risk-taking, and diversity of thought. Creating a psychologically safe workplace requires ongoing effort and a combination of factors including company values, leadership qualities, and supportive technology.
Highlights
According to Amy Edmondson, “psychological safety in the workplace is the belief that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. It is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.” View Highlight)
When employees feel psychologically safe, they’re willing to take more risks, share ideas, and speak their truth. There is an unspoken agreement that employees will not feel punished or embarrassed when speaking up, whether it’s exposing one’s ignorance by asking questions or offering a new solution or idea to a problem. Trust is created through interpersonal connections and reinforced through an open and transparent environment. View Highlight)
By having a psychologically safe environment, employees perceive risk as a good thing, and there is an understanding that employees won’t be seen as ignorant, incompetent, or invalid. View Highlight)
Risk-taking and learning from mistakes so the team doesn’t repeat them again are behaviors of high-performing teams. View Highlight)
There is a tolerance for mistakes View Highlight)
Micro-moments of learning occur regularly View Highlight)
Space is created for reflection and review View Highlight)
Risk-taking is encouraged View Highlight)
There is a diversity of thought View Highlight)