Notes from - 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

Notes from: 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

4 Stages

• Inclusion Safety - feel included
• Safety to learn, make oneself vulnerable, and make mistakes - feel safe to learn
• Provide contributor safety - feel safe to contribute
• Democratize innovation by fostering challenger safety - feel safe to challenge status quo

Introduction Source

• It’s simple: an inclusive environment doesn’t just happen – it takes effort.
• requires that the team leader or coach provide psychological safety

Chapter 1: To create inclusion safety, make sure team members feel unconditionally included from the very beginning. Source

• inclusion safety, is a prerequisite for everything else.
• acknowledgment that everyone deserves respect and therefore deserves to be included
• on: Why do you choose to include some people and not other
• le. We tell ourselves that our differences are a reason for conflict, not celebra
• t’s a way of compensating for things we’re insecure a
• on. Think about who you include and exclude. Now ask yourself why? What biases or prejudices might be at play h
• ep, ask a close friend or acquaintance about your unconscious bias
• the next stage of psychological safety: the safety to learn, make oneself vulnerable, and make mistakes in the pro

Chapter 2: To provide learner safety, create an environment where failure isn’t just accepted – it’s rewarded. Source

• because the all-too-authoritarian manager might criticize them
• Learner safety consists of two powerful levers. First, minimize the feeling that being wrong is bad. And second, minimize the expectation that feedback only happens as punishment.
• he sees the students as humans, recognizes the immense risk they take by entering the calculus classroom in the first place, and then rewards it
• is failure punished or rewarded? Do you encourage employees to make mistakes, or are errors a cause for shame? 

Chapter 3: To provide contributor safety, get to know your team, limit your tell-to-ask ratio, and help colleagues think beyond their roles. Source

• get the opportunity to put their learnings into practice. And for that, you need contributor safety. 

• If you consistently deliver results, you’ll be trusted to do your thing.
• First, get to know your team’s strengths and weaknesses.
• You need to be able to discern whether to trust someone’s abilities or not.
• here’s really no need for you to be the one to provide the questions and the answers. Instead, let your colleagues figure it out. Listen first. And if they seem stuck or are missing something, well, that’s what learner safety is for! They can ask for help, and you can gladly provide it – by talking last.
• share the bigger picture and let your team collaborate.
• help colleagues think strategically outside of their own roles. A

Chapter 4: Democratize innovation by fostering challenger safety. Source

• last stage is challenger safety,
• Each unknown can be a source of stress – so try to eliminate as many unknowns for your team members to make it less stressful to voice criticism.
• concrete steps you can take to encourage challenging the status quo
• encourage dissent from the beginning – assign it! Charge a few people, or everyone, with finding problems in projects, initiatives, or other topics
• Make sure that less-experienced and less-senior members have a chance to train higher-status employees so they can practice interacting outside of the traditional hierarchy.
• some of your employees might be neurodivergent. This means that they have variations in learning, mood, or attention
• perceiving these variations so that you can recognize which members need what type of safety when
• ensure everyone feels safe to voice constructive criticism without the terror of negative consequences

Chapter 5: Final summary Source

• Cultivate learner safety by encouraging and rewarding people for making mistakes and asking questions (remember the calculus teacher!). Get to know your colleagues. Decide what type of contributor safety they need to participate, and when it’s a good idea to provide it. And, finally, remember: innovation won’t happen by sticking with the status quo – you need challenger safety.

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