Trust and Psychological Safety: We need both
Judy Riege
Helping Leaders Take it "Next Level" || Your Greatest Fan and Biggest Challenger || Committed to Life Long Leadership Learning || Expert in Emotional Intelligence || Nurtures Wisdom Systems || Creator of Solutions
Last week I got into a conversation with a client about the difference between trust and psychological safety. They asked, "Can we just call it all Trust?”? My answer was “No, we can not.? They are inextricably linked.”
Trust is between two people. ? Psychological Safety is fostered in groups.?
The decades of work by Harvard Professor, Amy Edmondson has firmly established psychological safety is a critical driver of high-quality decision making, healthy group dynamics and interpersonal connection, greater innovation, and more effective results delivery.? In short - psychological safety is the foundation for high performance and healthy cultures in teams, organizations, and systems.
I’m hoping there is value for you in knowing the difference.??
Definition of Trust: "Choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions" - Charles Feltman
Definition of Distrust: "A general assessment that what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation)" - Charles Feltman
Psychological safety — "the belief that one can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation" - Amy Edmonson
??Our #1 job as leaders is to build, foster and sustain trust and safety in our organizations.? It matters now, more than ever, as we navigate hybrid work and come back together.
Not paying attention to the small things we do often can evaporate trust and psychological safety in a micro-moment.? Truth be told - beyond the workplace? - we also need both to grow healthy families, lasting friendships and relationships, strong schools, sports programming, and strong communities.
Be well. Laugh often.? Lead on.
Judy
Senior Portfolio Manager & Wealth Advisor
2 年Great job Judy
Damage Prevention, Land Management, Stakeholder Relations
2 年Thank you for providing the distinction between the two terms. I now realize that in my work to build ‘trust’ on the teams I have led, that I more correctly have been working to build ‘psychological safety’. The interesting dynamic is that we need trust between individual team members in order to build psychological safety within the collective team. I love this post, Judy!
Empowering busy leaders and teams to level up performance & adaptive capacity to do great work together, better | Facilitator | Adaptability Quotient & Executive Coach | Author of "Lead Conversations that Count"
2 年Thanks for this great summary of a very important distinction, Judy Riege! I always love me a good 2x2 matrix :)