Psychological safety makes teams more effective, because only then do people dare to say what they think, ask what they don't know and admit what went wrong. Without that safety, ideas, doubts and mistakes stay hidden, and the whole team pays the price. How safe do employees feel in your organisation? Paul van Heeringen, managing partner at IMPACT on the Job, uses striking examples to explain what this form of safety means and how to build it as a team.

No knot in your stomach, relaxed in the moment, without judging the situation or the behaviour of others, with attention for what is in front of you and happening around you. That is psychological safety according to Paul. He is very firm about the importance of the subject. "After defining your purpose, this is the theme you need to work on within your organisation, if you want engaged employees and high(er) team performance."

What the research says

Paul is not alone in this. Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, who put the concept on the map, describes psychological safety as a shared belief within a team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks. Think of asking a question, reporting a mistake or voicing a dissenting opinion. Edmondson, 1999

Google came to the same conclusion when it studied 180 of its own teams. Of the five factors that distinguished effective teams, psychological safety came first, ahead of dependability, structure, meaning and impact. Google re:Work

Vulnerability is strength

Without psychological safety, team members don't dare to take risks or show vulnerability. "They don't say things that might sound stupid and don't do things that feel risky, let alone dare to make mistakes," says Paul. "And that while radical openness and experimenting with new behaviour are exactly what create strength and the best possible room for top performance, cooperation and growth."

A continuous process

It is a myth to think that your organisation is or can be 100% psychologically safe, Paul stresses. "Your brain scans for threats 24/7, both physical and social. Fire is dangerous, but our brain also experiences being excluded from the group as a threat." It is always about perception. "What is threatening for one person doesn't have to be for another."

"Apart from the fact that you don't know what makes each of your colleagues feel attacked, you also can't tiptoe around all day taking everyone into account. That is simply not doable. So accept that there will always be situations in which employees and colleagues feel psychologically unsafe and threatened. The solution lies precisely in how you deal with that as a team."

Think of SCARF

You can foster psychological safety by taking each other's triggers into account. "Whether you instinctively experience something as threatening is determined in your subconscious on the basis of five elements," Paul explains. David Rock described those elements in his SCARF model:

  • Status: how valued do you feel by others?
  • Certainty: do certainty and predictability matter a lot to you?
  • Autonomy: do you want to make choices yourself as much as possible?
  • Relatedness: do you feel that you belong?
  • Fairness: do you feel that you and others are treated fairly?

"If, in your perception, someone gives you more status, more certainty, more autonomy, the feeling that you really belong or the feeling that you are treated fairly, that triggers a good feeling. It motivates and gives energy," Paul explains. "If someone threatens you, in your eyes, on one of these points, that leads to stress, tension and a freeze, fight or flight response." Rock, SCARF

When your system turns red

"For me, for example, status is very important. Any remark that questions my status even slightly will switch my system 'on' in a negative way. Then I shoot unconsciously and lightning-fast into flight or fight mode, and before you know it I am having a blazing row with a colleague." At such a moment you no longer think clearly. It happens instinctively, so preventing it is almost impossible. That is why it is valuable, as a manager and as colleagues, to know how to deal with such a situation.

The red button

So how do you make more room for the undercurrent, alongside the focus on what is said? Paul and his colleagues do it in three steps:

  1. Awareness. "By explaining that your behaviour is largely determined in your subconscious, that you can be triggered on five elements and that your remarks or behaviour can therefore make or break others, you already create much more understanding for each other."
  2. The red button. "During a team session, we introduce a red button that anyone may press as soon as they feel unsafe. By labelling the feeling of unsafety and making it something you can talk about, you encourage that awareness and take the sting out of it."
  3. Smart behavioural routines. "Together with the team, we develop routines that prevent the negative side of the SCARF triggers and strengthen the positive side."

There is no single truth

The pitfall in talking about unsafety is that the other person starts defending themselves. Excuses such as 'that's not how it was meant' are not very productive, according to Paul. "It's not about whether it is so, but about how it feels for that person at that moment. When my business partner asks me on the golf course whether he can give me a tip, I know he has my best interests at heart. Still, all my hackles rise, because my system starts flashing red and shouting 'status loss'. That says a lot about my perception and my triggers and nothing about his intention."

The manager as role model

The manager has a leading role in this process, Paul believes. "Of course, as colleagues you have to take your own responsibility for how you treat each other. But a manager can help enormously by setting a good example and keeping attention on this subject. It is very logical for employees' focus to shift quickly back to sales targets, so it is up to the manager to keep psychological safety on the radar."

Prof. Dr. Bas Kodden (Nyenrode Business University) goes a step further. According to him, safety in teams rarely disappears through one big incident, but through a series of moments when a leader should have stepped in and didn't: in the face of exclusion, cynicism or gossip. Safety also doesn't mean that anything goes. It calls for clear boundaries, which a leader names as soon as they are crossed. In his view, responsible leadership is therefore not avoiding tension, but stepping in calmly and concretely when things get uncomfortable. Nyenrode

Kodden works this out in his book Teamveiligheid: hoe leiders veiligheid maken of breken (Team safety: how leaders make or break it), in which he also introduces the Responsible Leadership Scale to make that leadership behaviour measurable. Managementboek

Challenge: psychological safety

Whether and how someone responds to a situation, remark or behaviour is therefore determined by their trigger system. That is why Paul has an important tip: "Read the book Your Brain at Work by David Rock. Then give it to someone else in your team and talk to each other about the subject. Learn together how our brain works and what you can do together to deal with it smartly. Be curious about yourself and each other."

Start with these three questions at your next team meeting:

  • What are my own triggers?
  • How do we make sure that together we are radically open about what we think and feel?
  • What role does SCARF play within our team?

"If you manage that, and perhaps can even laugh together about each other's triggers, you become an incredibly effective team."

Want to know how executives themselves look at this subject? Then also read how top executives think about psychological safety.

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