May 28th, 2025
“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found, but made; and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.” — Peter Ellyard
In my previous article I talked about continuous improvement, and how powerful that mindset can be. A prerequisite to it, though, is psychological safety. In the words of Dr. Amy Edmondson, a pioneer in the topic, psychological safety is “the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking”.
In my own career I had never heard the term or understood the value until relatively recently. I was focused on continuous improvement as something my team should value and pursue, but my behaviors weren’t conducive to people sharing their ideas or acknowledging mistakes.
One specific example I recall drove home the consequences of focusing on continuous improvement while ignoring the foundational work needed to make it possible. I was responsible for a department and system that provided near-instant automated underwriting decisions. It supported thousands of rules and had robust, automated testing that enabled a fast release cycle (multiple releases per week). At the end of one sprint things hadn’t gone well and we’d missed some sprint goals. That alone was unusual, but this was the third consecutive sprint that had happened and I knew something was wrong.
Some investigation revealed that there was a problem with the automated regression – significant portions were having to be manually re-run and analyzed. I reacted with anger (not all that uncommon for me when receiving bad news at the time). “How did this happen?” “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” “Why haven’t we stopped to fix it?” The team was reluctant to answer, and I didn’t get the full story until my scrum master sat me down to have a heart-to-heart.
The root cause was a change made a few sprints ago that took a while to discover. Nobody told me because the team knew I’d be upset, and nobody wanted to deal with that, and they didn’t stop to fix it because that would have forced the other two conversations they wanted to avoid. Needless to say, I was upset and frustrated. We couldn’t have continuous improvement if people weren’t willing to discuss what needed to be improved. And any system that’s not moving forward will slowly degrade as technical debt mounts.
Not long after that I read “The Fearless Organization”, by Dr. Edmondson. It introduced me to the topic of psychological safety, and a lightbulb went off. To quote Taylor Swift “it’s me … I’m the problem, it’s me”. I had created an environment in which people would rather suffer with broken processes than upset me. They shouldn’t need to choose between broken processes and upsetting me. If I’d created a psychologically safe environment, they wouldn’t have to.
Dr. Edmondson puts forth the following approach to accomplishing this.
Set The Stage
As a leader, be explicit about the kind of environment you’re striving to create, why psychological safety is essential to success, and what’s at risk if it’s missing. I had skipped this step entirely, stressing the desire for continuous improvement without focusing on creating a culture in which it would thrive, or explaining the long term value to our technology stack – and ultimately our business.
Invite Participation
Make sure people are not just given the opportunity to share their feedback, but encouraged to do so. This we did a good job of – working in two-week sprints and gathering the team together at the end of each sprint to discuss what went well that we should continue, and what went poorly that we needed to change. However, without the next step, inviting participation will only get you a superficial level of participation. Tough topics may still go unvoiced.
Respond Productively
Once a team has taken the step of participating, responses to that participation need to be appreciative, respectful, and offer a path forward. This doesn’t mean agreeing with every idea offered up. Some feedback may be impractical, off-base or otherwise “bad”. How you deal with them is critical, though. Be thankful they were offered and use them as teaching opportunities in a respectful or productive way.
It probably took about a year for me to change my ways, and for my team to believe that I was serious about everyone (including me) fostering and participating in a culture of psychological safety and continuous improvement. It made a big difference not only to team morale but to team productivity as well. When we got to the point that bad news could be shared quickly and responses were collaborative and productive rather than focused on assigning blame our pace increased significantly.
If you are interested in creating a future for your team in which ideas and collaboration can thrive and think your path to it can be shortened by learning from the mistakes I’ve already made, I’d love to help. Email me at al@melecoaching.com. It will transform your team, and it will change you as a leader.
The details of establishing a culture of psychological safety are more complicated than just these three steps above, but they’re a great starting point. In my next blog post I’ll explore how failures fit into this model and how to help a team understand when failure can be a learning experience and when it should be avoided.
Tell Me More (Additional Reading)
- “The Fearless Organization” (Edmondson)
- “Brave New Work” (Dignan)
- “Choosing Courage” (Detert)
