3 mistakes to avoid when it comes to psychological safety at work

When you think of Psychological Safety, what comes to mind? There’s a widespread misconception that it simply means allowing your team to take risks, make mistakes, speak up, and express opinions without fear of judgment.

This is not what psychological safety is, and this misconception leads organizations to struggle with accurately measuring it.

In reality, psychological safety is a much broader and deeper concept than just interpersonal risk-taking and a speak up culture. It is a multi-dimensional aspect of workplace culture that is often underestimated. Yet, it is crucial for creating an environment where individuals and teams can truly thrive.

Psychological safety affects every single person on the planet and impacts every part of daily life. Psychological safety encompasses an individual’s subjective experience of safety, comfort, and confidence within a specific context. It refers to how safe and at ease you feel in different settings, whether that is a physical space, an environment, a situation, or when interacting with people.  

To create healthy workplace cultures and a thriving business, where individuals genuinely enjoy their work, you need to invest and commit to creating and nurturing a psychologically safe workplace. A healthy workplace culture, inclusion, diversity, equity, and belonging all originate from a foundation of psychological safety.

What does this mean? It means investing in your people. Don’t assume everyone has the skills they need to thrive in the workplace; skills like intrapersonal awareness, effective communication, understanding team dynamics, collaboration and participation, decision-making, feedback, self-reflection, a growth mindset, creativity, and problem-solving. Without adequate resources, training, and a supportive environment to practice these skills, individuals may hesitate or struggle to contribute confidently.

To cultivate genuine psychological safety, organizations must prioritize creating supportive environments where individuals feel confident and empowered to bring their Authentic Self to work. This includes equipping individuals with the necessary skills and resources for effective communication, establishing safe spaces for dialogue, and cultivating a culture that values healthy conflict resolution.

At the Psychological Safety Institute, we frequently hear organizations say “We can’t accurately measure psychological safety.” The main reason they struggle is that they mistakenly equate psychological safety with a speak up culture, and attempt to measure only that.

When we delve into the methods they use and their experiences with these, it is clear that besides misunderstanding what psychological safety actually is, many organizations also use ineffective methods to measure it. While some adopt a qualitative approach through observations and interviews, most rely on quantitative methods. This includes employee engagement surveys, well-being surveys, exit data, retention figures, performance management data, performance evaluations, 360-degree feedback, and turnover/profit metrics. These approaches fail to provide a comprehensive understanding of the true level of psychological safety within their organization.

Frustrated, organizations decide to try something different. They ask a few questions to attempt to gain some insight. Sounds like a solid plan, doesn’t it? In theory, yes. However, the challenge arises from the fact that these questions are targeted toward interpersonal risk-taking and speak up cultures. Often sourced through generic searches online, these questions may have been originally developed for application in unrelated industries or used for entirely different purposes than intended.

There are various tools, checklists, and overarching guidelines available to give you a snapshot of where you are in terms of your organization’s psychological safety landscape. But again, these focus on interpersonal risk-taking and speak up cultures, providing only a narrow view of one aspect of psychological safety. The guidelines in the public domain tend to offer ambiguous information, focus on abstract concepts like building trust or respect, and lack practical, actionable steps that organizations can take to significantly improve psychological safety in the workplace, across all its dimensions.

Here are three common mistakes organizations make when measuring psychological safety and how to avoid them.

1. Measuring the wrong thing

This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what psychological safety actually is. Many organizations mistakenly equate psychological safety with a speak up culture.

Educate yourself and your organization on the true scope of psychological safety. Understand that it encompasses a broader spectrum, including individuals’ subjective experiences of safety, comfort and confidence in various contexts.

2. Using non-aligned questions

The questions being asked are often not tailored to their business or industry, leading to data that is not very useful.

These questions typically focus on whether employees feel safe making mistakes or speaking up. They rarely address critical aspects such as whether employees feel they can bring their Authentic Self to work, how their thoughts and emotions impact communication dynamics and interactions with colleagues, the nuances of team dynamics, or any of the other factors that contribute to an individual’s level of safety in the workplace.

Tagging these questions onto unrelated surveys signals to employees that their safety is not a high priority. These tagged-on questions tend to focus on the symptoms of an unhealthy work culture, rather than addressing and analyzing the root causes. It is no wonder that organizations are failing to get the insights they crave and urgently need.

Avoid focusing solely on the symptoms of an unhealthy work culture. Instead, analyze and address the root causes. Develop tailored, targeted questions that identify pockets of toxicity across the five different levels of culture (PSI Culture Framework) within your organization. This approach provides actionable insights into the nuances of individual experiences and team dynamics.

3. Developing interventions without clear direction or focus

Based on the insufficient data they have managed to collect, organizations often flounder without actionable insights. While the data and anecdotes highlight issues, they usually lack the necessary depth to be actionable. The precise nature of the problem, its underlying causes and the appropriate actions to take remain unclear. Flailing around in the dark without any other insight available to them, organizations decide to do something, anything, to attempt to address the issue. As a result, organizations may implement well-meaning but ineffective interventions that don’t address the root causes. This approach rarely effectively addresses the actual problem. How could it?

Adopt a holistic approach to understanding and measuring psychological safety and identifying toxic hotspots within your organization. Collect comprehensive, detailed data that reveals the precise nature of problems and their underlying causes. This enables the development of clear, focused interventions that effectively address the root causes.

Understanding the true scope of psychological safety and accurately measuring it is essential for cultivating a healthy, thriving, and inclusive workplace. By recognizing its multi-dimensional nature and implementing tailored, actionable strategies, organizations can identify and address potential toxic hotspots within their workplace culture. Avoiding these common pitfalls and adopting a comprehensive approach will lead to meaningful strides in creating environments where everyone can thrive.

This is an edited extract from The Authentic Organization: How to Create a Psychologically Safe Workplace, by Gina Battye, published by Wiley, June 2024, and available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

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