I Disagree! Psychological Safety *IS* Hygiene

At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us about a demo at [email protected] ?

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Everybody reading me knows how big of a fan I am of Amy Edmondson’s work and how I incessantly repeat that everyone should read her as the history of Psychological Safety and high performance in teams reads like this: initial academic research -> Amy Edmondson -> Google’s Aristotle Project and entering the DevOps culture thanks to Gene Kim and the DORA reports -> the collective consciousness of the business world.?

Not only is Amy’s work the only reason we are all here and have any hope to have high performing organisations, but on a personal level, I often say that the day she took the first look at the Dashboard we had created at PeopleNotTech and was appreciative was one of the best days of my life.?

This amazing article entitled “Psychological Safety is Not a Hygiene Factor” she co-authored with Per Hugander is remarkable in many ways but I will disagree some points it makes in this article.

https://www-psychologytoday-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-fearless-organization/202109/psychological-safety-is-not-hygiene-factor?amp

One of the things people pick up on the most in this article is the way it brilliantly outlines that there are multiple combinations of behaviours and there is a dangerous “quiet zone” area where the lack of Psychological Safety is not as flagrant as to be fully toxic and therefore highly obvious, but equally that doesn’t mean that PS is present in spades as it should be, which is just as problematic as it impedes innovation and collaboration as per this scale.?

Where I object is first to call this continuum “levels” as Per did, just as in my book, I have been vehemently vocal about my criticism of the “stages” that others have coined, because both terms suggest a progression and a scale when Psychological Safety is an ever-changing and fluctuating dynamic that swings rapidly between the two ends of the continuum affected by a multitude of factors both internal to the team and external from the organisation or current events.?

The speed of change when it comes to Psychological Safety is stupendously high, we have to be honest and admit that PS can never be “once and done” and can not be “brought to the highest phase” and left to magically carry on perpetuating at that level but instead, it is indeed fragile and in need of constant work. Each and every one of the hundreds of teams we’ve worked with started out with some degree of blindness to this grey area, an overinflated image of the amount of initial PS they had and they all showed the speed of change in their levels through their ever-changing data.?

No good relationships exist in virtue of inertia. AKA left to its own devices. Any worthwhile human dynamic requires regular tending and hard, intentional work. Friendships do, marriages do, we know this and have accepted it in society, no one would argue against the need to invest attention, time and emotions into building those human relationships.?The same goes for teams and of their behaviours, the key ones of which is the courage and authenticity of Psychological Safety.

And it is to do that work and because there are no magical phases or stages (or even levels IMO) that we need to eternally measure Psychological Safety in a way that allows us to tweak the behaviours that we need in real-time and with the most efficiency.?

This is why, when we meet organisations smart enough to know they absolutely need Psychological Safety -whether they want it as fundamental or to step up their game- we are insistent they do nothing that doesn’t include a team-level live barometer of the state of Psychological Safety and that they must have software -like yours- to help them measure or at least be prepared to ask themselves “manually” with enough frequency and care.?

All of that said, the scale serves as an amazing reminder that having Psychological Safety is non-binary, there are multiple middles, grey zones that lull some organisations into a false sense of security regarding their performance when really they stand no chance of winning.?

If we add to that the perception bias we at PeopleNotTech spoke about multiple times, where the self-reporting of Psychological Safety levels is through the roof and people presume they have much more than they really do, it becomes really important that we remind organisations that there’s no sense in relaxing the quest for PS when there’s lack of dialogue in the middle zone that Per and Amy outlined above. ?

One conceptual difference -which perchance Per and I could hash out in a call we have scheduled later tonight in fact!- is the very title of that article - how Psychological Safety is not a hygiene factor:

“Psychological safety is not a hygiene factor—defined as something that must be present for a work environment to qualify as adequate, such as a paycheck, benefits, employee physical safety, freedom from harassment, and so forth. Elucidated by?Frederick Herzberg, building on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, hygiene factors don’t create a competitive advantage for a company. They merely satisfy basic expectations that free people up to focus on doing a good job. Creating psychological safety, in contrast, constitutes a high standard, an ambition that allows an organization to be truly excellent and capable of transformation.”

While the latter is 110% true, I don’t “hear” the opposition. Why can’t something be cornerstone or fundamental and still be a competitive advantage? And why shouldn’t having an environment where we can be at our most honest, involved and best self be as basal as having a paycheck??

In the context of the juxtaposition above, where the choice is between basic level and high performance I see the reaction both Amy and Per would have had, but I need us to reconsider definitions when it comes to Psychological Safety as the more we are able to influence and increase it in lieu of passively observing it, the more it will quickly become a standard that employees ought to expect. ?

I put it to us all that there will never be teams that have successfully managed to alter their behaviours and dynamics to grow their Psychological Safety and have enjoyed those moments of magic thanks to it, that would ever forget it existed or be any more willing to work in an environment with no paycheck than one with no Psychological Safety. It should be audited and public, at the very least it should appear on Glassdoor or such “Beware, this place has low PS?and huge amounts of HumanDebt?, don’t come over”.

I further put it to us that in the face of the Great Resignation, when Psychological Safety has the power to increase employee retention by 30% it is actually hygiene-level that we have it. That without it, not only will enterprises not grow, they will possibly not last.?

Lastly, here’s another point where we disagree: “Despite such organizational cultures being relatively rare, we do not mean to imply that creating them requires heroics or miracles.”

I find that’s not the case. Heroics are necessary. Every place that actively works on Psychological Safety can always trace it back to extreme acts of courage from some Superheroes willing to put their political capital on the line to help their teams have a shot at high performance.?

But I believe the spirit of that phrase to be “It is not impossible to create more PS” which is ever so true. We too meet more and more organisations who are truly ready to make their people central and work on their people practice, reduce their HumanDebt and grow their teams’ levels of Psychological Safety every day so it’s a lot more common and a fair bit less “miraculous” by the day. ?

We’re on the same team Amy, Per and myself - the team that dedicated their every breath to shaking the business world to see and care about Psycholohgival Safety - for their own good. While I’m bound to forget someone, on this same team, all of our amazing ones working in PeopleNotTech and our clients, in particular, Ffion Jones but also Tom Gerathy, James Simon, Karen Ferris, Chris Wolff, it’s a team I feel safe enough to disagree with, as I did here. One where it matters that we are all bold heard and truly collaborative.?

Do you know who else in our team? You who are reading this. There’s not one subscriber to my newsletter who doesn’t dearly wish Psychological Safety for themselves and their teams. It may seem far and elusive at times, but as long as we stay on the team it will be within reach with enough of the human work on the behaviours once again. As long as we keep on disagreeing and creating. As long as we keep on measuring. As long as we keep on caring and doing the work.?

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are:?Understand,?Measure?and?Improve

Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at?www.peoplenottech.com?or reach out at?[email protected]?and let's help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" go to this Amazon link