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Key points
- Psychological safety is proven to be a key factor in driving successful teams.
- Despite its popularity as a term, real psychological safety in teams is often poor.
- Effective leaders here must start by appreciating everybody in their team literally thinks differently.
Today, many people are familiar with the concept of psychological safety, a concept first coined in 1999 by HBS professor Amy Edmondson, and something core to being an effective leader.
Her definition is worth re-quoting as a reminder: Psychological safety, she said, is “A belief that no one will be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”
What really put psychological safety on the map was a study by Google, under the title of Project Aristotle, that found that psychological safety was the most important factor in the success of Google’s teams. When team members felt safe to be vulnerable amongst each other, and take risks, good things happened—and without these factors, the researchers concluded, team productivity could never be optimal. “Even the extremely smart, high-powered employees at Google,” said Edmondson, writing in her book The Fearless Organization, “needed a psychologically safe work environment to contribute the talents they had to offer.”
More than a decade on from Project Aristotle, the term psychological safety has wide currency. Indeed, it is often used by organizations as something that they either are striving to create or believe they already have, along with ubiquitous variants on "We are somewhere where everybody can bring their full self to work.” There’s an assumption with both, perhaps, that simply by using these terms, their reality can be somehow willed into existence.
Sadly, though, psychological safety, along with other aspects of what we can more broadly call “comfort at work” is often severely lacking. A recent report by McKinsey found, for example, that just over a quarter (26 percent) of leaders typically create psychological safety for their teams. In an age where productivity—both national and corporate—is under the microscope, it is striking to realise that the vast majority of teams are often missing what is proven to be the #1 ingredient to team success.
Embracing Neurodiversity
At Uptimize, we provide neurodiversity training that enables organizations to embrace team performance through embracing neurodiversity—the fact that we are all wired differently. Part of our work focuses on helping organizations recognize and unleash the potential of neurodivergent talent, for whom the absence of psychological safety is often particularly felt (and remember, perhaps 20 percent of people may be neurodivergent in some way). Many have described, in our focus group interviews, how they have experienced low levels of psychological safety, regardless of their employers’ promises.
One, Chris Wall, interviewed for my book A Hidden Force, described without any hint of arrogance how his brain generates “80-99” ideas for every one idea generated by one of his neurotypical coworkers—something you’d think would be an extraordinary asset in an age where innovation is king. Yet, Wall, sadly, has often found that his ideas are not welcomed, and are instead either ignored or dismissed, by managers or colleagues more interested in keeping things simple, following process, or keeping credit for themselves.
Other neurodivergent professionals talk of how their honest and well-meaning feedback or comments can not only be ignored but can be used against them. One of our subject matter experts at Uptimize, for instance, has a story of how he was fired from a tech company for his blunt honesty about a senior leader whose approach he was uncomfortable with—something that should have led to disciplinary action for the leader in question, but instead saw him fired!
Most notably, perhaps, and back to the buzzphrase of "everybody being their full self at work," is the ongoing reluctance of many neurodivergent employees to share their neurodivergence at work. A study by Uptimize and the CIPD, earlier this year, for example, found that nearly half (45 percent) of neurodivergent professionals would not feel comfortable asking for support or adjustments at work. No surprise, perhaps, when the same study found that a third of neurotypical employees and managers did not really know what neurodiversity means.
Lofty Perceptions vs. Reality on the Ground
But problems with psychological safety are often endemic and experienced by everybody, and go beyond a lack of neuroinclusion. A whopping 50 percent of workers, for example, say they can’t be the "real me" at work. Specifically when it comes to the sharing of ideas openly—something so critical for the positive impact behind true psychological safety—nearly half (46 percent) of workers do not believe their organization values different views, approaches, and attitudes. Strikingly, too, and something senior leaders should note, is how the reality on the ground is often very different from leaders’ lofty perceptions: Only 48 percent of employees believe their employer as a whole is empathetic, for example, as compared to 68 percent of CEOs.
This all matters, again, because it leads to suboptimal teams: the bedrock of any organization. High psychological safety is proven to drive, for example, 57 percent more collaboration among employees. It provides an opportunity to engage and leverage different thinkers. It’s also a demonstrated major retention driver, doubling retention rates for nonminority employees and increasing them by as much as four or five times for minority employees. In this context, low psychological safety is not something that should ever be tolerated. Simply put, it limits productivity and innovation by curtailing individual contributions and the potential of a team’s output.
The latter, though, as we’ve seen, remains the reality for three-quarters of all teams. Why this is happening is its own topic—though, in brief, we can certainly point the finger at outdated leadership models and the absence of suitable management training. In the words of Boston Consulting Group, “Psychological safety can flourish only if it’s driven by leaders” yet both individual experiences and wider data show that many leaders are not currently achieving this within their own team context.
Much needs to change to see this situation reversed and for high psychological safety to be a widespread norm and not simply aspirational puff. Central to this, based on our experiences and research, is the importance of understanding neurodiversity in the workplace. Specifically, it’s about equipping managers to be truly effective leaders through empathizing with and leveraging the different brains they lead, and recognizing that those brains (the one tool each employee brings with them to work every day) function differently from their own.
Learning to be open, vulnerable, and positive about such differences can drive a quick turnaround— and a team environment that truly capitalizes on its members' abilities and potential.
