How has ‘psychological safety’, which you identified as a concept in 1999, evolved over the years?
I initially conceived of psychological safety as a sense of what I labelled ‘low interpersonal threat’—which I had detected as a palpable difference in the climate across work groups in a hospital. I had stumbled into this difference, without looking for it, in my first study at graduate school. Here is how it happened. As a first-year doctoral student, I was asked to join an interdisciplinary research team studying medical error in hospitals. I had long been interested in the idea of learning from mistakes at work—as a crucial competency for building a learning organisation. My role in the study team was to examine the relationship between survey measures of teamwork and medical error rates. I hypothesised, of course, that better teams would make fewer errors.
When all the error and survey data was compiled, the results provided an unexpected, and at first unwelcome, surprise. The correlation was the opposite of what I had predicted. Better teams had higher, not lower, error rates. Then a provocative question occurred to me: What if better teams had a climate of openness that made it easier to report and discuss error? This would mean that good teams do not make more mistakes, they report more.
I had to hire a research assistant to go out and study these patient care teams carefully, without preconceptions. He did not know which units had higher error rates, nor which ones scored better on the team survey. In research terms, he was ‘blind’ to both the hypothesis and the previously collected data.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Trust is a must
Trust a belief in the abilities, integrity, values, and character of any organisation is one of the most important management principles.
Listen To Your Customers
A good customer experience management strategy will not just help retain existing customers but also attract new ones.
The hand that feeds
Providing free meals to employees is an effective way to increase engagement and boost productivity.
Survival secrets
Thrive at the workplace with these simple adaptations.
Plan backwards
Pioneer in the venture capital and private equity fields and co-founder of four transformational private equity firms, Bryan C Cressey opines that we have been taught backwards in many important ways, people can work an entire career without seeing these roadblocks to their achievements, and if you recognise and bust these five myths, you will become far more successful.
For a sweet deal
Negotiation is a discovery process for both sides; better interactions will lead all parties to what they want.
Humanise. Optimise. Digitise
Engaging employees in critical to the survival of an organisation, since the future of business is (still) people.
Beyond the call of duty
A servant leadership model can serve the purpose best when dealing with a distributed workforce.
Workplace courage
Leaders need to build courage in order to enhance their self-reliance and contribution to the team.
Focused on reality
Are you a sales manager or a true sales leader? The difference, David Mattson, CEO, Sandler® and author, Scaling Sales Success: 16 Key Principles For Sales Leaders, maintains, comes down to whether you can see beyond five classic myths that we often tell ourselves about selling.
