Your quick psychological safety checklist

Psychological safety in the workplace can mean many different things, depending on whom you listen to.

It’s not a new concept, but generally, you’ll find that psychological safety is about the absence of fear in the workplace. For Timothy R. Clark, psychological safety is when people feel:

• Included
• Safe to learn
• Safe to contribute
• Safe to challenge the status quo

Source: The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety by Timothy R. Clark, p. 2.

And they feel all these things without “[…] fear of being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way.”

Why would you want psychological safety?

For workplaces, having psychological safety brings a host of benefits.

And one of the most significant benefits is that it helps to reduce risk throughout the business while also increasing innovation.

When people can speak up about risks and freely discuss ideas, you can avoid waste and support innovation.

(Our ebook, Why is psychological safety critical to managing software risk? goes into this in more detail.)

Psychological safety is critical for Agile

It’s also worth noting that key parts of Agile and Lean-Agile focus on transparency and learning. The paper “On the Dynamics of Structure, Power, and Interaction in Innovative Processes” argues that Agile’s transparency in its processes builds psychological safety in teams as a default.

But does it?

You could have Agile processes that, in theory, support transparency. But rituals like “standups” and retrospectives won’t be effective without psychological safety. Why? Because people will share the minimum of what they need to and not necessarily enough to offer a complete picture, ask for help, or say when things are going wrong.

So, how do you know if your workplace has psychological safety?

Psychological safety checklist

Do you know the level of psychological safety at your place of work? Try answering the following questions.

Source: Based on The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety by Timothy R. Clark.

Suppose your answers lean more towards “neutral” and “strongly disagree”. In that case, you should consider whether your workplace has psychological safety.

Improving psychological safety

There are steps you can take to begin to improve psychological safety in the workplace.

In a TEDx talk, Amy Edmondson (a leading psychological safety expert) offered three steps teams can take:

1. Shape work as a learning problem instead of an execution problem.
2. Recognise that everyone is fallible.
3. Always be curious, asking many questions.

And remember, you’re building an environment where fear isn’t the norm.

For more ways to learn about psychological safety, check out The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety by Timothy R. Clark and our free ebook on the topic.

How psychological safety impacts risk on software projects

Reducing fear in the workplace enables empowerment, drives innovation, and reduces business risk.

If you’d like to learn more about psychological safety and how it can impact your software projects, download your copy of this free ebook today.

Why is psychological safety critical to managing software risk? will help you:

• Learn about all stages of psychological safety.
• See how psychological safety impacts risk in teams and whole organisations.