Psychological Safety

Thanks to Amy Edmonson, the focus on psychological safety has increased in recent years. Google confirmed in 2012 through their project Aristotle that it was the most important attribute for effective teams. Amid rising awareness of the well-being of athletes, a 2015 report appeared in the UK on the elite sports culture of winning at all costs. It also reported that psychological safety is an important element. It's a rather clinical-sounding term, but how do we best define psychological safety?

It is the shared belief in a team that everyone feels accepted and respected and that they can take certain risks to learn without any concern of negative interpersonal consequences. In sports, gastronomy, first aid, etc. it is evident that the concept is becoming more important in high performance environments. In this they strive to solve problems together, such as how to win that one championship or, in the artistic context, how they can display that one performance together so spectacularly.

In the two-star restaurant Noma, chef René Redzepi lets all chefs de partie openly share their ideas to make more creative and better choices for the menu. In this example of a high performance team, people feel comfortable making mistakes and they all have a shared willingness and desire to learn from failure. In a sporting context, it is more about taking tactical or technical risks during a training or competition without this risk being penalized or being called back when it fails. It is unlikely that one will not experience meaningful development if one is not allowed to be innovative or creative. People will then be more likely to avoid these types of risks.

Psychological safety is therefore often about team dynamics where a stronger level of trust is created. It is therefore a characteristic that is equally variable throughout the continuous creation process of a culture and climate. There are many factors that ensure this, such as in teams where people come and go or even the climate, opponents, injuries, etc. in certain situations.

Top coaches and leaders always seek the right balance between challenge and support to pursue the ambition of sustainable success and well-being. They can always adapt situationally to stay on the right flow. They sense perfectly when more challenge is needed or when it feels unproductive to encourage even more risk taking and it's okay to make mistakes.