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Psychological safety has become a popular buzzword in all kinds of organizations, and I think it’s thanks to Amy Edmondson’s pioneering research where she showed that if people don’t have a sense that they can speak up without fear, if they can’t be candid without worrying that they’re going to get punished, then they have a really hard time reaching their potential.
We know in hospitals, for example, that when people lack psychological safety, they hide their mistakes, and then everyone else is more likely to repeat them. Whereas when they have psychological safety, they can freely admit their errors, study what caused them, and then rethink their routines to prevent them. We know in tech companies, when people have psychological safety, they let their ideas fly. When they lack it, they bite their tongues. So given the importance of psychological safety, how do you create it as a leader?
I studied this recently with Constantinos Coutifaris, and we found that what a lot of leaders do is not always enough. What most leaders do is they ask for feedback and constructive criticism. If you see something, say something. The problem with that is people don’t know whether you really mean it. Are you going to take my view seriously, or are you going to bite my head off? Or are you too busy and distracted to even pay attention to it? I’m not sure. I’m not going to take the risk. I’m going to stay silent.
What we found is often more effective is for leaders to go an extra step where they actually criticize themselves out loud. That might be sharing your own 360 from your board if you’re a CEO so that people can see what you’re working on. It might be calling a meeting with your team and saying, “Here are some of the things I’m trying to improve at, and if you have thoughts in these areas or in any others, I would really value those.” And what we found was when leaders were randomly assigned to have that conversation where they were candid about how they were falling short of their own potential and how they could reach it, psychological safety spiked in their teams, and it lasted for at least a year.
When you tell people what you’re bad at and what you’re trying to get better at, you are not just claiming you’re open to feedback, you are actually proving that you can take it, right? You are sending a message that, I can handle the truth. The fundamental message for leaders here is that the people who work for you, they already know what you’re bad at, right? You can’t hide it from them, so you might as well get credit for having the self-awareness to see it and the humility and integrity to admit it out loud.