When does Psychological Safety succeed?
Ravi Kiran Muddha
HSEQ Professional | PAT Expert | Pharmaceutical, Medical Devices, Engineering, Food & Environmental Analysis Sectors
When does Psychological Safety succeed?
Psychological Safety has become a buzz word in the recent times especially with Amy C Edmondson's book "Fearless Organizations" and one of the Google study called "Project Aristotle."
One of the misunderstanding of the term "psychological safety" which most people have is that one can speak anything. There is a thin line between ignorance and arrogance. Whenever the question "Why?" is asked. Is it asked because of ignorance or because of arrogance.
A small example would bring better clarity to this. Let us say a child asks a question "Why?", then there is ignorance along with innocence and there is a curiosity to explore, know and learn from the answer. A young lad just transforming into an adult may put the same question "Why?" to argue and fight over his/her point and generally it could be more with arrogance rather than ignorance. It all depends upon how matured the individual is.
Psychological safety works very well when individuals in a team are matured enough and understands this thin line between ignorance and arrogance. Do they want to explore, understand, learn and collaborate with each other or do they want to argue baselessly and prove only their point of view.
In the ancient texts of Bharat, there is a concept called "tarka traya ???? ????." The word tarka ???? can vaguely be translated as discussion and the word traya ???? is three. So, there are three types of discussions that can happen in a group or even with in our own mind (the mind chatter). These three types of discussions are 1. tarka ????, 2. kutarka ?????? and 3. vitarka ???????. The first type of tarka ???? is a kind of discussion based on dry stupid knowledge. No one knows anything about what they are discussing, but want to achieve something. The second type of discussions is kutarka ??????, where one individual will argue to any extent to prove his or her point based upon vested interests (not at all healthy). The third type of discussion is vitarka ??????? which is based upon breakthrough logic and generally result in innovation and positive outcomes. In this discussions the team members would be interested in the final outcome that meets the organization's objectives rather than individual's objectives.
A psychological safe environment persists and succeeds when people adopt the concept of vitarka - a healthy and productive discussion rather than dry tarka ???? or kutarka ??????.