This concept of psychological safety has been especially popularized by Google after they revealed results of a research they conducted internally on high-preforming teams.
They have identified five dynamics that consistently differentiated top-performing teams from those at the bottom. One of them was psychological safety.
Google wrote that psychological safety is represented by “the team being able to take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed”.
They state that psychological safety is the most important piece of any effective team. It allows team members to take risks even if they may lead to mistakes or failure because they believe it will not diminish them in front of their colleagues. Team members feel safe when they are vulnerable or show weakness, such as admitting mistakes, asking questions, asking for help, or suggesting new ideas.
However, the idea of psychological safety has been studied and documented even before Google started the “psychological safety trend” with their research.
William A.Khan, an organizational psychologist at Boston University’s School of Management, wrote a paper in 1990 called “Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work“.
He wrote that psychological safety is “being able to show and employ oneself without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career.” As part of his research, he discovered that people felt safe in situations in which they trusted that they would not suffer for their personal engagement.
He continues: “…relationships, families, groups, and organizations create contexts in which people feel more or less safe in taking the risks of self-expression and engaging the processes of change. In the two
studies, situations promoting trust were predictable, consistent, clear, and nonthreatening; people were able to understand the boundaries between what was allowed and disallowed and the potential consequences of their behaviors. When situations were unclear, inconsistent, unpredictable, or threatening, personal engagement was deemed too risky or unsafe.”
