What do we mean by “psychological safety”?

Holding retrospective meetings is of course not enough to build a successful approach to improvement.  The value comes not from the meetings alone, but from the continuous improvement which results from holding the meetings.  Central to successful retrospectives is applying improvement, which occurs through team empowerment.  The team must feel able both to propose change and to implement change. Takeuchi and Nonaka refer to this as “self-transcendence”.

In 2012, Google set out to answer the question of what makes teams successful.  They termed this “Project Aristotle“.  They already had some ideas of factors they really expected to make a difference. There were obvious factors such as colocation, extroversion, seniority, team size and so on.  The plan had been to identify how these affected team success.  Google could then build better teams using these factors. 

To their surprise, they found team success didn’t correlate well with any of the expected factors. Successful teams were all different and had different values on all of these measurements.

The key factor which was common to effective teams they referred to as “Psychological Safety”.  Psychological safety proved to have more impact on the success of a team than any other factor. It was the best predictor of team success.

Psychological safety proved to have more impact on the success of a team than any other factor

Whenever we are learning from past experience, this is often uncomfortable.  Learning typically involves admitting a past error.  At a minimum it involves admitting that knowledge is missing, or that change is needed. 

• Google had realised that the key success of the team came from its ability to learn and grow. 
• To grow, the team needed to understand its weaknesses. 
• This relies on each individual feeling safe taking risks without the fear of being ridiculed or punished.

Psychological safety is core to self-managing teams being successful.  It is also the key difference between the team management approach of technology companies such as Google and the traditional ideas of Scientific Management.  

Power and fear

In traditional management, power lies primarily with the manager.  This asymmetric power relationship creates fear in the team.  This is almost inevitable in an asymmetric relationship, but is increased by the environment of Scientific Management. Directive leadership, little consultation, arbitrary control of reward and punishment, low feedback and acknowledgement are typical of traditional management style.

Similar conclusions on the damaging effect of a lack of psychological safety come from the work of W.E. Deming.  In his books, Deming proposed key principles for management to follow.  He was very focussed on the importance of data in making decisions. 

Learning from the past is the key to improving in the future, which is the purpose behind retrospectives.  We can only learn from the past if we collect data and metrics which show what happened. However, Deming was well aware that data is not inviolable.  Teams choose which data they show and what they conceal.  A climate of fear will prevent people from highlighting problems and therefore from being effective at improvement. They will never reach the level of self-transcendence.

I have worked at one organisation in particular where the fear level in middle management was such that change and improvement was virtually impossible. Honest discussion of what had happened had been replaced with concealment and blame. When managers are too scared to admit something went wrong and find the root cause, the organisation suffers.

In his book “Out of the Crisis”, Deming proposed key principles for management to follow.  Psychological safety is one of these top principles.  He summarises this with the powerful phrase “Drive out fear”.  Any management approach based on fear will prevent the self-management that we need to promote.

This fear, in turn, prevents the team members from proposing change.  Many organizations cannot get past the traditional power structures.  As a result they never achieve psychological safety and cannot improve and scale. 

By contrast, teams with a high level of psychological safety, as Google discovered, are more productive but also happier places to work.  And that leads to more enthusiasm and better retention.

Good practices

A key role of management in an Agile environment is to ensure the level of psychological safety.  Self-managing teams require that the teams have the confidence to self-manage. Self-transcendence in a team requires a team that can propose and carry through change. Lowest viable level decision making cannot function without a team confident to take decisions.

You must make it safe to ask the tough questions and to tell the truth at all times, even when the truth hurts

Kent Beck

Every time that a manager is directive, critical and behaves in an intimidating fashion, this impacts psychological safety.  Focus feedback on development and learning, not on blame. When communicating you should respect and consider the individuals receiving the message.

If things are not going well, you should focus on the actions to take, and not on the people to blame. This is a message which also aligns with the Prime Directive for Retrospectives.

This can be challenging as it goes against your natural instincts. It is also probably not how you have observed managers in the past behaving. That does not mean it is impossible.