Like A Ripple Becomes a Wave

How Psychological Safety Scales

Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

To begin in the middle, because we always begin where we are.

Psychological safety isn’t the buzzword it was when I last wrote. It lost some of its precision and usefulness as a term as it became popularized. But the fundamental concept continues to hold true. Groups of people are more effective at innovative knowledge work when people feel safe enough to be courageous in their relationships and are willing to take the risks that arise when they disagree with others.

I have been thinking about reviving this body of work on psychological safety for some time and debating how I wanted to structure the process. I started this newsletter as a “between gigs” project. A corporate coaching engagement had ended and the next one hadn’t started yet. Several of the people I had been coaching within the organization said that what I had taught them about creating psychological safety went so far beyond what they had learned from other sources that they would support anything I did in that arena going forward.

It became harder to justify the time writing Psychological Safety at Scale after my next engagement started. I was writing good things but not capturing the deeper truths I share in my coaching engagements. What I was writing wasn’t capturing what I knew was necessary to spread psychological safety. Having decided to write short, tactical articles, I had deprived myself of the opportunity to delve into the contextual elements that make the difference between effective attempts to increase psychological safety and those that inadvertently make things worse.

I knew I was in danger of becoming part of the landscape of useless, sound-bite content creation that pervades the modern digital economy.

About this time, I was chatting over drinks with a senior engineering leader. I mentioned that I wrote a Substack called Psychological Safety at Scale. He started talking about his challenges trying to create a healthy culture of innovation in his then-current start-up environment. He is someone who I had observed resisting the approach to building culture that I have found effective for years, so I wasn’t surprised when he exploded with “Psychological safety doesn’t scale!”

But I was surprised by my response.

His outburst stopped me in my tracks.

This colleague was exactly the kind of person I was hoping to help become more effective, and I had completely failed to address his real challenge in the newsletter. In my work, I had never explicitly talked about how psychological safety scales.

I knew from experience that this leader was using “doesn’t scale” to mean “can’t be rolled out as a program that I tell my reports to implement.” And he was absolutely right. Creating psychological safety at scale is not a project that can be rolled out and pushed through.

In that moment, I judged that my colleague would not be receptive to a deeper discussion, so we moved on to other topics, but my brain was hooked.

How could I reshape my work to address the challenges of creating psychological safety effectively? How would I have to shake up my approach to avoid recreating the sense of futility my colleague was experiencing?

Writer’s block hit at the same time that other work picked up, and I stopped producing this newsletter. I refunded paid subscriptions and went into idea incubation mode. I developed several related training programs and undertook additional teacher training for myself in related disciplines. I revisited previous trainings from other industries and fields of study that I knew had become implicit in the way I work to become more conscious of my own approach. And I wrestled with how to transmit my wisdom in ways that could be received.

I’m still not sure what form my work will take from here. It won’t be a regular, weekly article here. But, I want to share a little about what I left out of my earlier work here. It may include some audio or video posts in addition to writing. It may include invitations to live conversations or experiences.

What I know about how psychological safety scales is that it requires a mix of inner work and outer work. It is rarely created or maintained at the level of abstraction where it is observed. It ripples through relationships and emerges when the conditions are right. It can be cultivated but not commanded. It must be tended and nurtured. It is physiological and political, moral and procedural, courageous and joy-filled.

Creating psychological safety in places without it is demanding and important work. And it cannot be done alone.

Psychological safety at scale comes from many people doing many small things like ripples in water combining to form waves. It can’t be rolled out, but it can be enabled to roll through.

I am reviving my work in this area in the spirit of an improvisational, collaborative public art project. If you want to play with me, consider this your invitation.

If you have questions, requests, or thoughts about what might be valuable in this arena or how you might like to engage, please reach out and join me.