Psychological Safety Part 3: What are the 4 Types?

“Psychological safety isn't the goal!!! It's a means to the goal. The goal is excellence and commitment to high-quality care”

-Dr. Amy Edmondson

In part one of this 4-part series, we outlined why psychological safety matters to an organization, as well as the undesired impact of non psychologically safe workplaces.

In part two of this series, we reviewed the 6 key benefits of a psychologically safe workplace including enhanced engagement, creation of inclusion and belonging, unleashing of creativity and innovation, improved employee wellbeing, higher retention rates, and boosted performance. 

Today, in part III, we dive deeper to better understand the types of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is a term first coined by Amy C Edmondson, a professor of leadership at Harvard University, who has written several books linking leadership, team development and workplace culture including, “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.”

Psychological safety has been shown to be a significant factor in predicting the performance of teams in healthcare delivery, high-tech, and other cognitively and emotionally challenging and uncertain environments.  According to a 2017 Gallup poll, 3 out of 10 employees strongly agreed that their opinions don’t count at work.

According to Dr. Edmondson, people must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions out of left field, and brainstorm out loud in order to create a culture that truly innovates. And according to McKinsey & Company, “psychological safety is a precursor to adaptive, innovative performance.”

How does psychological safety relate to performance standards?

Psychological safety and performance standards interact on a grid (www.AmyEdmondson.com):

Apathy Zone = Low safety, Low standards

People show up to work but aren’t emotionally connected to their outcomes. They might be prone to procrastination, are typically disengaged, and don’t exert unnecessary effort. They may subscribe to what is now being coined as "quiet quitting.”

Comfort Zone = High safety, Low standards

People generally enjoy working with each other, but they’re not challenged by the work they do. They don’t seek stretch assignments, harder tasks or to innovate ways of doing things.

Anxiety Zone = Low safety, High standards

The all too familiar zone. Here employees feel unable to speak up. They simultaneously are buried under a mountain of work that feels insurmountable. Experiencing mental and physical malaise is common.

Learning Zone = High safety, High standards

The work is challenging, complex and satisfying. People collaborate and learn from each other, and the organization is able to navigate through change and excel in an uncertain environment.

You need to be asking yourself what percent of your organization you believe is operating in the Learning Zone? If you could shift even 10% of your workforce to the Learning Zone, what impact might that have on your outcomes?

There are 4 types of psychological safety. 

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety according to Timothy Clark are as follows: (Clark Timothy R. 2020. : Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation (version First edition First ed. Oakland CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers)

LEARNER SAFETY: 
We want to feel safe learning. Every role requires learning new knowledge and tasks.

Learner safety is the need to feel safe taking risks to learn and grow, as well as permission to make mistakes during the learning process. It also includes feeling safe to ask questions, to give and receive feedback, and to experiment. Team members at this stage will provide feedback to each other, and ask for feedback themselves.

Strengths-based learner safety is created by asking permission to learn and make mistakes from the self and others. This process will be related to your unique strengths. For example: Do you have strengths that need to ask questions to learn? If so, give yourself permission to ask questions. And be sure to frame this need for others and ask their permission to ask questions. This might sound like, “In a learning environment, it helps me to ask questions as they occur. Is it ok for me to ask questions that come up during this process?” If this will be seen as disruptive in a large group, then ask for permission to write your questions down as they occur and schedule a follow-up session to address any that were not answered. 

Other strengths may need practice time, time to process new information, or permission to learn through activation, as examples. Think about what you need to feel safe when learning and ask permission from yourself and others to allow your process. For example, do you sometimes need permission to make mistakes during a learning curve? Seek permission to take mistakes from supervisors and/or colleagues. Be sure to ask for what you need to feel safe to learn. 

John Gray and Barbara Annis reveal gender-based communication bias in business. In their book, Work With Me: The Blind Spots Between Men and Women in Business, research shows that the vast majority of men report that women ask too many questions at work. And men can interpret questions as challenges when women most often ask questions for clarity (before responding or to show concern or gain consensus). They go on to reveal that “Often a woman asks a question of her male boss and gets yelled at or marginalized because it is perceived as a threat. That contributes to the female employee not feeling safe, and no longer asking questions which means she might feel uncertain how to perform a role, as asking questions is not safe.”

Another interesting leadership topic is how to address mistakes. All too often, leaders do not give themselves permission to make or admit mistakes. This may lead to a downward spiral of employees feeling unsafe to admit mistakes as well, and for leaders to believe that they are immune from human error.  

This reinforces our recommendation that psychological safety is increased when we define the purpose of our communication and to define our needs in a learning environment, such as the need to ask questions, to make mistakes, or to be heard. This might sound like, “I need additional clarity on one of the points you made. Is it ok if I ask a clarifying question?” or “I’m not challenging your position. I’m simply confused as to one particular piece of information. May I ask a question for clarity before I lend my perspective?” 

For more on this topic read the article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/04/26/8-blind-spotsbetween- the-sexes-at-work/?sh=11dfd665314d

CONTRIBUTOR SAFETY: 
We all crave contribution. We all need to feel safe offering our value.

Contributor safety means feeling safe to contribute your unique strengths without fear of negative feedback. It also includes being able to participate as a productive team member, contributing ideas and suggestions, voicing detected threats and risks, and valuing each individual's talents and abilities without fear.

Contributor safety is created when someone feels safe to contribute, or share, their unique strengths perspective. Because no one shares any one perspective, it is important to frame the value of your perspective or you risk being misunderstood, criticized or even bullied. Ironically, the more unique your value is, the more likely it risks being misunderstood, dismissed or worse. For example, the extremely valuable risk assessment Talent Themes such as the CliftonStrengths® of Command®, Analytical®, Deliberative®, Strategic®, or Context®, Restorative®. These are commonly mis-labeled as “disruptive” and “negative” and sometimes even as “rudeness” “paranoia” or “sabotage.” 

The value-added insights that rare perspectives lend will be dismissed or attacked when the value is misunderstood. In these examples, valuable risk assessment is misperceived as negativity or worse. This is why it is critical to discover your strengths, learn to articulate them, and proactively frame their value when contributing your perspective to supervisors or teammates. It is equally important for leaders and team members to seek clarity when faced with a perspective they do not understand or are missing the value of.

Just the opposite, if you frame the value of your perspective first, your insights will be appreciated and heeded, creating psychological safety. And even better, the same supervisor or team that dismissed or attacked your perspectives in the past will now actively seek out your perspective as having unique value. 

Interdependence is the process of a team learning the authentic value of every other team member and each member actively seeking out those valuable perspectives. Teaching leaders and teams how to practice interdependence is what we specialize in.

Let’s explore an example: If someone has the CliftonStrength® of Positivity®, they have a gift for seeing how to stay engaged and solution-focused during a crisis. However, their solutions or ideas in a crisis are often ignored or labeled as “Pollyanna" or “unrealistic.” The assumption is that they don’t see the crises realistically or are not taking it seriously. And yet the truth is that someone with this perspective sees the crises just as realistically and seriously as everyone else, they simply rely on their gift of staying solution-oriented instead of getting stuck complaining or focusing on negativity. In other words, yes, they know the sky is falling but instead of repeatedly saying, “The sky is falling!” they focus on what to do about it, often with a side of comic relief to stay engaged. Once a supervisor or team knows the value of this contribution, they stop dismissing this individual and start leaning into their value-add, in this case staying solution-oriented in crises. 

The bottom line is that discovering, articulating and framing your strength contributions for your coworkers and supervisors and teammates creates more psychological safety by decreasing the opportunity for misunderstandings of intent.

CHALLENGER SAFETY: 
We have unique perspective and value and need to feel safe challenging different viewpoints

Challenger safety means feeling safe challenging the status quo or speaking up when seeing a path to positive change or improvement. It also includes challenging the way the team works, presenting new ways of working, trying new behaviors, and challenging the ideas of co-workers and senior members. 

In our opinion, this is the most powerful “stage” of psychological safety, as it allows new ideas to surface, it fosters learning while tolerating mistakes and potentially prevents serious pitfalls.

Challenger safety is created by framing intent and seeking permission. Challenger safety often involves risk assessment. Everyone assesses risk in different ways and some people rarely focus on risk at all. In fact, they might interpret most risk assessments as paranoid or negative. Some risk assessment gifts are quite rare and it is common for only one person on a team to have a certain risk assessment ability. An assessment like the Gallup CliftonStrenths® assessment will reveal if you have certain risk assessment gifts such as Analytical®, Strategic®, Context®, Deliberative®, Restorative®, or others. 

Knowing you have a valuable risk assessment perspective allows you to frame this before speaking up and asking permission to share. Once a supervisor or team is aware that one person has a unique and valuable tool for risk assessment, they will not see this perspective as a challenge and start actively seeking its value. 

A second point to remember is from the Learner Safety point above: If you are asking a question and the question is not a challenge, be sure to frame it as such before asking. If you are using questions to challenge or voice a concern, it is important to understand the approved process to do so safely.

For example, if you see something that requires challenge or alert to a concern, should you voice this at a large meeting? Or would your company prefer you first speak in private to a supervisor or your HR representative? Your challenge or concern may be otherwise appreciated, but if presented in a different setting, it may turn against you. So be sure to ask, “What is the preferred process to voice a concern or present an alternative to the status quo that might be more productive?” 

For HR departments and supervisors, proactively giving permission for employees to challenge or question within appropriate parameters will increase challenger psychological safety. Other strengths that may have great value in challenging the status quo are gifts of strategy, efficiency, and team member placement, as examples.

Bottom line: What are you intending? Are you questioning for clarity? Or challenging the status quo? Know your intent and communicate that intent and seek the appropriate process to share. We suggest you define your strengths perspectives, communicate your value and intent, ask permission for your needs, and communicate within agreed upon processes. 

What are the repercussions you see if an organization has a lack of psychological safety? How do you imagine a lack of psychological safety is impacting your workplace?

Going back to the question we asked in Part 1 of this series:

Does your organization have a problem with Psychological Safety? Do your employees feel safe to contribute? To challenge you? To learn without fear? Are you harnessing the full potential of the talents in your organization?

Unless leaders and employees know their strengths, have learned to communicate interdependently, and are intentionally practicing the four types of psychological safety, the answer to these questions is likely to be “no.”

For more on Psychological Safety, we suggest these 2 articles: https://www.betterup.com/blog/why-psychologicalsafety-at-work-matters?hs_amp=true  

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-andorganizational-performance/our-insights/psychological-safety-and-the-critical-role-of-leadershipdevelopment

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