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In my book Black Box Thinking, I write about the tragic case of Elaine Bromiley, who went to a local hospital for a routine operation and tragically died. The significant aspect of the case is that the nurses in the operating theatre had an idea about how to save her life but didn’t communicate it to the senior surgeons because they felt they were not supposed to “speak up”.

A picture of a sign post with two signs, one says "Speak Up" the other says "Silent"

Team dynamic 1: steep hierarchy

After all, they were the junior people in the room. The surgeons were in charge. The nurses felt that it might be inappropriate, perhaps even professionally unacceptable, to make suggestions in such august company. What if the surgeons were offended by their “interference”? What if they had already decided against the proposed solution for reasons they (the nurses) hadn’t considered?

If this sounds like an idiosyncratic case, consider that it is now regarded as a seminal moment in healthcare; the moment that insiders realised that “steep hierarchies” in teams can undermine (and sometimes destroy) communication. In aviation, a number of crashes in the 1970s occurred due to the same cultural problem, not least United Airlines 173 where the engineer didn’t communicate dwindling fuel reserves to the all powerful captain.

But this problem isn’t just about safety critical contexts. In any team dealing with a complex, rapidly changing environment, an egotistical boss can be a major impediment to good decision making, not to mention innovation. Team members don’t say what they think; they say what they think the leader wants to hear. Or, worse, they hardly say anything at all. This means that the leader is deprived of ideas, information and insights necessary to make wise judgements.

Illustration of arms encircling a brain

What is psychological safety

This is also why psychological safety (a term coined by the brilliant psychologist Amy Edmondson) is so consistently correlated with high performing teams. It effectively denotes a team where people fearlessly share ideas and debate them as a way of reaching rapid, high quality judgments. It requires leaders to show the humility to listen well, not because they are “outsourcing” their role as leader but precisely because they lead better when they have access to feedback and insight.

Team dynamic 2: "niceness"

But psychological safety isn’t just undermined by domineering leaders; it is also wrecked by leaders – and other team members – who are “too nice” to each other. I used to be a professional table tennis player (a long time ago) and I want you to imagine for a moment that I had a slightly wonky topspin technique. I want you to also imagine that as I reach the end of my career, my coach says to me: “your topspin technique was defective, but I never mentioned it because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings”.

Is this an instance of good coaching or bad coaching? I hope you’ll agree that this is very much the latter. If a coach thinks that a player can improve their technique, they have an absolute responsibility to say so. It gives the player access to crucial information; they may disagree with the coach; they may go and look at a video to probe what they are saying, but this is healthy, too. To prioritise a harmonious relationship over critical (but respectful) feedback torpedoes improvement.

And this is true beyond sport. Again and again, I see organisations that have conflated “nice” teams with high performing teams. It is, of course, important that we are considerate to each other; that we criticise ideas rather than people; but it is also vital to be able to listen to honest feedback without taking it personally. This is the other side of psychological safety: the safety to challenge, to discuss, to probe, so we can make great decisions that benefit us all.

Why is psychological safety important

I am quite passionate about this issue because in a world of complexity, almost all high value work is conducted in teams. It is why healthy collaboration is central to any company that wants to make a positive difference to customers and the wider world. It is also why culture – the psychological environment in which people work – is mission-critical.

Illustration of business persons working together to align two parts of an arrow in yellow and grey

Measure psychological safety with our psychometric assessments

Mindset Advantage

Mindset Advantage is our cutting-edge psychometric (accredited by the British Psychological Society) that provides key information about attitudes and behaviours. It provides a deep dive into our unconscious beliefs: how we respond to feedback, how we collaborate, how well we learn from mistakes, how quick we are to blame others, and more. I take Mindset Advantage every six months as a kind of personal MOT: each personal report offers tips and tools about how to improve on all these dimensions. I’d also recommend using Mindset Advantage across a team or organisation for a broader read-out of the culture along with evidence-based recommendations.

Collective Advantage

I’d also like to share Collective Advantage with you, a complementary psychometric we have developed that measures psychological safety. We have road tested it with our friends at Amazon (a company I much admire and which has pioneered fresh approaches to collaboration). As we begin using the product more widely, I hope this will not only be positive for my team, but also a fillip to the cause of teamwork more generally.

With that in mind, let me finish with one of my favourite quotes, from Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.