The Biggest Risk in Talking about Psychological Safety
After Project Aristotle at Google and The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondsun put psychological safety front and centre in conversations about effectiveness, the inevitable happened. Leaders looked to operationalize this wisdom.
It’s Not About What You Do
Corporate values statements were rewritten. Promotion criteria were revised. Recruitment materials were rewritten with copy celebrating the open culture demonstrated by the new values and promotion criteria.
And then, in too many cases, organizations went back to business as usual.
Having made things worse in the long run.
Psychological safety requires active maintenance and day-to-day care. Talking the talk without walking the walk creates actively harmful environments where people are punished for acting like it is not safe AND for acting like it is safe.
It’s About The Quality of Relationships
Have you ever noticed that people you believe have your best interest at heart can talk to you in ways you would never tolerate from people you think are trying to get something from you?
People feel the same way about institutions and leaders. If the trust isn’t there to begin with, it doesn’t matter what policies you put in place. You have to be more interested in meeting shared goals in ways that respect the inherent worth and dignity of everyone involved than in having others meet your needs.
People will be skeptical of moves you make in this direction and they are correct to be. At first, it will be impossible for them to determine whether you are sincere or not. Narcissists and sociopaths manipulate people through the semblance of empathy. Distinguishing genuine caring from the manipulative use of a display of empathy is difficult and essential in assessing psychological safety.
Assume Your Body Will Betray You
People who have been disappointed or betrayed by someone they trusted (in other words, all adults) have learned to pay more attention to the microexpressions that flit across people’s faces before they can assert conscious control of emotional expressions.
And they have learned that people who don’t display emotions are hiding emotions. If someone suspects that you are hiding something from them, their internal threat assessment systems will engage.
No matter how skilled you think you are at containing your emotions, people will see through you. Maybe not everybody, but enough people to be a problem.
The Solution: Integrity (not Authenticity)
Authenticity is about being yourself. Integrity is about being whole.
When people talk about being authentic, they frequently mean being true to who they feel they are or who they want to be. The positions a subjective experience of oneself as the criteria for success.
Integrity, on the other hand, is best judged from the outside. When you are in integrity with yourself, you are whole and all the various parts of your personality are working in harmony towards your goals.
Most of us are out of integrity from time to time.
“Put simply, people consistently act inconsistently, unaware of the contradiction between their espoused theory and their theory-in-use, between the way they think they are acting and the way they really act.”1
Chris Argyris
What is Integrity in Practice?
Being in integrity consists of honouring the expectations you create in others.
Individuals and organizations create expectations by explicit and implicit commitments, including:
What you said
What you know
What is expected unless you have explicitly stated that you will not do what is expected
What you say is so
What you say you stand for
The moral, ethical, and legal standards of the groups you are a part of unless (a) you have explicitly stated that you will not follow them and (b) you are willing to bear the cost of not following them
An organization’s commitments are made by the persons authorized to do so by the organization and by its actions, agreements, contracts, and communications with customers, employees, and suppliers of all types.
What Does is Mean to Honour A Commitment?
To honour a commitment is not the same as to fulfill a commitment.
Sometimes, you will not or cannot fulfill a commitment. In these cases, honouring the commitment means that as soon as you know you will not fulfill the terms of the commitment, you clearly communicate that you will not and clean up any mess caused for those who were counting on you.
The Danger in Talking About Psychological Safety
Once you start talking about creating psychological safety in an organization, it is very easy to create an expectation in your employees that you will do the work necessary to create psychological safety.
At that point, for an organization to be in integrity, it must either (a) do the work to assure that its employees have a subjective experience that it is safe to show up, ask questions, and challenge the status quo in order to make improvements, or (b) counter that expectation with an explict statement that the organization is not committed to creating psychological safety and help those who have counted on the provision of psychological safety.
If you aren’t willing to see it through to completion, it is better not to start.
Teaching Smart People How to Learn, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991.