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How To Measure Psychological Safety
How To Measure Psychological Safety
Measurement
Ask your team to score agreement with the statements below (using a 1-5 or similar scale,
1 being low and 5 being high: this is called a “likert” scale).
1. On this team, I understand what is expected of me.
2. I feel my ideas are valued, and I feel safe in suggesting them.
3. If I make a mistake on this team, it is never held against me.
4. When something goes wrong, we work together to find the systemic causes.
5. I feel able to bring up problems and concerns.
6. Members of this team never reject others for being different and nobody is
left out.
7. It is safe for me to take an intelligent risk on this team.
8. It is easy for me to ask other members of this team for help.
9. Nobody on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my
efforts.
10. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued
and utilised.
This survey, adapted from Dr Amy Edmondson’s “The Fearless Organisation”, alongside
many other tools, is included in the psychological safety action pack which you can
download now and use with your teams. Again, you should consider whether all these
statements are appropriate for your team(s), and whether any changes should be made,
especially if English is not a native language of your team members. These are example
statements – you will want to modify and choose the ones most suitable to your language
and context. You may want to reduce the number of questions, especially for a first attempt,
as it will help increase your response rate, so pick the questions that matter most to you.
These statements are from Dr Edmondson’s original research. The key point is to ensure that
you use the language, statements, and practices that have most meaning for your teams and
context.
Repeat the survey after a period of time (the timescale is up to you) to evaluate any change in
the different areas psychological safety and to demonstrate to your team that you’re
committed to continuous improvement.
Metrics
A score of 50 per team member would represent the most psychologically safe team in the
world. This is somewhat unlikely. In reality, a score of 50 may highlight an issue where
people feel unable to answer truthfully, so investigate further if that is the case.
The lower the aggregate score for the team, the lower the general psychological safety.
However, the power of this survey is really in the detail.
Identify the statements with the lowest scores and the widest range of responses. These are
your areas that require action, and are where you can make the largest difference whether
you’re in charge of the team or not. It may be, for example, that there are new team members
who don’t feel as safe as the team members with a longer tenure.
Read the rationale for each statement below and consider what actions you can take or
behaviours you can encourage to raise the scores.
In Practice:
Use a survey tool such as Typeform, Surveymonkey, or the free Google forms service to
build your own survey.
See an example here in Google Forms: https://forms.gle/cpYafs4224nkqiaB7 – and feel free
to make a copy.
What do I do now?
After you’ve used the survey, you must take some actions to address any issues that have
arisen. If you ignore the results, you could inadvertently damage psychological safety and
make it more difficult to address in the future. Where your teams score low for any of the
questions, take a look below and see what actions you could take as a result.
1 – On this team, I understand what is expected of me.
It is essential that team members understand what is expected of them in terms of delivery
(speed, quality, cost, and other factors) and behaviour (everything from dress code and
punctuality to coding standards) to foster psychological safety. Ensure tasks are clear and
well defined, behaviour expectations are explicit, and negative behaviours are dealt with.
2 – I feel my ideas are valued, and I feel safe in suggesting
them.
It can be daunting to suggest an idea to other people, particularly if it’s not fully formed yet.
But some of the best outcomes result from suggesting ideas that aren’t quite ready. And the
more ideas we can play with, the better the outcomes for the team. A more diverse team will
generate more diverse ideas – but will require psychological safety in order to suggest them
in the first place.
3 – If I make a mistake on this team, it is never held
against me.
A psychologically safe team will never blame a member of the team for a genuine mistake if
their intentions were good. Indeed, by enabling mistakes to be made without a fear of blame,
you enable innovation and risk taking that can drive your organisation ahead of the
competition. Utilise systems thinking and DevOps approaches to prevent mistakes before
they happen or mitigate the impact of mistakes when they do.
4 – When something goes wrong, we work together to find
the systemic causes.
Related to the previous point but important enough to warrant its own question, a system of
discovering the root causes of mistakes and failures means that not only do team members
feel able to take risks without being blamed, but every single “failure” is an opportunity for
learning and improvement. By building psychological safety through these retrospective
exercises, everyone on the team gets to learn from mistakes, meaning mistakes are a gift, not
a threat. Look for all the causes of an incident or failure, not just the “root cause”. And don’t
forget to look for the causes of success too!
5 – I feel able to bring up problems and concerns.
In a psychologically safe team, all members of the team are able to bring up problems and
tough issues, ranging from personal struggles to concerns about other (even senior) members
of the team. This psychological safety is crucial for allowing both vulnerability to show when
you’re struggling and need help, and courage to raise difficult topics.
6 – Members of this team never reject others for being
different and nobody is left out.
Evidence shows that diversity in a team results in higher quality products and happier team
members, but diversity in itself is not enough: it is crucial that team members are all included
in decision making and delivering results. To facilitate psychological safety (and high
performance) every member of the team needs to be invested in the decisions made and the
outcomes generated. This is particularly crucial for remote and distributed teams, where it is
more difficult to see if a team member is becoming disengaged.
7 – It is safe for me to take a risk on this team.
Mistakes happen unintentionally, but risks are about taking actions that might not work, or
may have unintended consequences. Psychological safety provides the framework for
positive risk-taking, enabling innovation and ultimately, competitive advantage.
8 – It is easy for me to ask other members of this team for
help.
In psychologically unsafe teams, team members try to hide their perceived weaknesses or
vulnerabilities, which prevents them from asking for help. In a psychologically safe team,
members prioritise the team goals over individual goals. Helping others helps achieve the
team goal, and because team members feel safe to ask for that help, psychologically safe
teams achieve more of their goals than unsafe teams.
9 – Nobody on this team would deliberately act in a way
that undermines my efforts.
In an unsafe team, members compete with each other to achieve their individual goals, and
may even undermine other team members if it could benefit them or it is perceived that doing
so may elevate their “rank” within the team or organisation. In a psychologically safe team,
that counter-productive competition doesn’t exist, and the success of the team is more
important looking good in the eyes of others.
10 – Working with members of this team, my unique skills
and talents are valued and utilised.
We all bring our own unique experience, skills and knowledge to the teams that we’re in, but
we also bring our own prejudices and biases. In a psychologically safe team where members
are valued for being their true selves, biases are less likely to manifest. Indeed, team members
may feel safe enough to identify, raise, and discuss their own biases or those of other team
members. By doing so, we provide space for each individual to maximise their potential from
utilising their own unique skills and talents.
Regularly Measuring Psychological Safety
Be sure to regularly survey your teams’ agreement with these responses to determine if your
strategy is working and to identify trends and early warning signs of problems in the team.
By regularly measuring the degree of psychological safety on your team, you can begin to
build your own unique strategy for developing and maintaining it. For instance, this may
involve running more regular retrospectives or by workshopping the team’s values and
behaviours.
Measurement is only a small part of the process. Download a complete Psychological Safety
Action Pack full of workshops, tools, resources, and posters to help you measure, build, and
maintain Psychological Safety in your teams.
Remember to be patient: this is a journey, not a destination, and work on your own
psychological safety too. You can’t effectively help others if you don’t look after yourself.
When you’ve completed the survey, you can work on creating and maintaining psychological
safety in your workplace with these ten key behaviours and actions.