39. Create psychological safety: the precondition for connection
Have you ever felt a sense of dread in the pit of your stomach about showing up to a meeting, a class, or a group? I have. It felt like walking into a dark cloud.
It turns out that “dark cloud” describes what it’s like to feel psychologically unsafe.
What? Connection Factoid
Just over a decade ago, Google embarked on a quest to identify what made some teams effective while others floundered. They analyzed a total of 180 high- and low-performing teams. They conducted hundreds of interviews and sorted through virtual piles of survey data, analyzing hundreds of different factors.
The results surprised them. A team’s success had little to do with the skills and expertise of individual group members or even finding a magical combination of the “right” people. In fact, the “who” of the team didn’t seem to matter. Neither did educational backgrounds, having shared interests, or whether or not group members were friends outside of work or coming together for the first time to work on a project.
After studying the data for more than a year, sifting through conflicting clues and hitting dead ends, they discovered that what did matter was the group’s culture, or the norms they established. One group norm in particular stood out as a key differentiator. The team’s ability to create an atmosphere of psychological safety.
According to Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, psychological safety is a sense of confidence that your voice and perspective are valued, and that you will not be embarrassed, rejected or punished for speaking up. It is characterized by a climate of “interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’
This type of environment encourages risk-taking and creates space for group members to be three-dimensional human beings, rather than leaving their personal lives and personalities at the door when they step into their professional roles.
In other words, it means creating an environment that cares about the people in it—and is foundational to building employee connection.
So What?
I once worked on a team where several coworkers independently described the environment the same way: like walking into a dark cloud. It was profoundly dysfunctional. I felt the need for constant vigilance. I stopped sharing ideas and speaking up in meetings. Eventually, I quit.
The people in that building weren’t incapable of connection. But it’s hard to build relationships in a dark cloud. Without psychological safety, employee connection (or any kind of connection) is nearly impossible.
Safety isn’t the same as comfort though. A safe group doesn’t avoid hard topics or require everyone to agree. It’s about having difficult conversations, not smoothing things over to keep the peace—which often protects the comfort of some at the expense of others. That’s silence, not safety.
Being truly inclusive means including ALL voices—especially the ones that are hard to hear.
Now What? Connection Practice: Create psychological safety
It is far easier to build safety and trust from the start rather than to try to re-establish it after it has been broken.
The list below describes the characteristics of a psychologically safe group. If you belong to a group, team, organization, or community—especially if you are in a position of leadership—think about how you can create these cultural norms. Edmondson breaks this into 3 steps: set the stage, or establish group norms, invite participation, and respond productively when people take a risk.
Here’s what psychologically safe groups look like:
Group members speak roughly the same amount – perhaps not in every meeting, but on balance.
Each voice/perspective is listened to and respected, including dissenting voices and differing perspectives.
Group members display higher than average levels of social sensitivity. They pick up on how others feel based on tone of voice, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues. They show empathy and caring.
Group members take emotional risks to share about their ideas and about themselves.
Group members share or alternate leadership roles and did not compete with other members for resources or recognition.
What about you? Please share your responses in the comments—I love hearing from you!
Think of a group where you felt safe speaking up and being yourself. What made the difference?
