#103 – Psychological Safety

According to William A. Kahn’s article Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work from 1990, Psychological Safety is defined as ‘being able to show and employ oneself without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career’.

Ask your colleagues, maybe through an anonymous assessment, how high the psychological safety is in your organization. If (i.e., when) you have data that it’s too low, seek to make working agreements with managers and teams where, e.g., experiments and blameless post-mortems are part of them. It’s all about creating a culture of promoting healthy conflicts and celebration of mistakes (and learning from them), among other things. Also, help your managers in demanding more psychological safety from their superiors, so it’ll be much easier for your managers to create it for you.