Psychological safety is not silver bullet for team performance

Safety is only really a benefit for team performance when it occurs in the right context. Photo by Headway on Unsplash

While it is true that research and lived experience support the importance of psychological safety, it’s useful to keep these two things in mind:

• there are limits to when psychological safety is beneficial

• psychological safety is an enabler, not a goal in itself.

Research tells us that psychological safety has limited benefits in some team settings – especially when there is little task interdependence. This makes sense. If members don’t need to rely on each other, share information or collaborate to get the work done, it stands to reason that the safety that they experience won’t shift the needle on the work that they do.

Another easy trap to fall into is that safety is its own goal. It’s not. It’s a very important element because it allows teams to be better at serving their purpose, but it’s not an end in itself. It’s a bit like buying something that is on sale just because it’s on sale and not because we need it. We can lull ourselves into believing that we saved $50 on a shirt, when in actual fact we just spent $50 on a shirt that we didn’t need. In the same way that it’s only a saving if we were already intending on spending the cash, safety is only really a benefit for team performance when it occurs in the right context.

Here are a couple of questions for you to consider this week:

1. What impact would maintaining or improving a high level of psychological safety make to your teams?

2. Could you shift your way of working to better leverage your teams' psychological safety?