The Psychological Safety Dance & The Position of F- You
“Psychological safety” has been a popular phrase in management parlance of recent years.
Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected.
It is the opposite of being near the Roy family in Succession. It is fine as far as it goes. I think it is better to be in a workplace where you can trust people and where you will not be humiliated. Some people have said that giving people too much psychological safety means that they may use that too much to their advantage. This may be a valid concern but management consists of trade-offs. Surveillance-heavy or intimidating cultures have their own costs so the answer is likely: pick the least worst option.
Two things that aren’t talked about much in relation to psychological safety are money and power (back to the Roys again, it would seem). No one that you have power over will ever be fully honest with you. Why would they? They need to manage your fears and anxieties, desires and moods. They are not a saint. But neither are you. They will tell you what you want to hear and not tell you what you don’t want to hear. You may tell them that you don’t want that but the moment you let slip annoyance about anything they will know that your words are not wholly true. Sellers will lie to you. Your employees will lie to you. Because they cannot afford to trust you. Deal with it.
Paradoxically, the only people you can truly rely on for honesty are those that have no incentive to lie to you. The people who do not give a f-. Now you can’t rely on them to deliver anything for you either - because you have no power over them. But you might get the truth out of them.
Which begs the question for the average manager. Do you want the truth or do you want people to do what you say? Because you cannot have both. No one said that this job was easy. Or if they did, they were lying (people do that). I don’t think that this paradox is resolvable through some clever checklist or nifty piece of rhetoric. This is a fundamental predicament of management that must be imperfectly lived through.
As an employee:
Understand what the limits and boundaries are for psychological safety - with a focus on how managers act, not what they say. People say all kinds of things.
Seek your own material safety (savings, minimal debt, John Goodman’s advice is pretty spot on).
If an environment is psychologically unsafe then seek to leave it unless you get a kick out of that sort of thing. If you do, perhaps see a therapist to understand why you get a kick out of it. I realize that exit is not an option for many people but do what you gotta do.
For managers:
Understand that there is a limit to the candor you can expect from those over whom you exercise power.
Be clear about what your boundaries actually are and stick to them. Remember that people will judge you on your worst behaviour not your best.
Seek out feedback from people who owe you nothing.
I think there's a third way, between either supining oneself to those in power or operating from a place of psychological safety/F-u. And that is engagement. Purpose-driven, engaged employess will operate from a place of commitment to do the best that they possibly can and always strive to do the right thing, regardless of power dynamics or feelings of safety. This is why companies have been so fixated on employee engagement for the last few decades and more recently, at least among some of the more enlightened ones, have been seeking ways to become more purpose driven.