Can You Have Too Much Psychological Safety?

The Leader Factor

In today's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior discuss a question brought up in a recent Harvard Business Review article, which is, can you have too much psychological safety? The article suggested that excessive amounts of psychological safety could undermine accountability and performance. Tim and Junior share their perspective, pushing back on some of the misconceptions about what psychological safety really is and what it really means.

Defining psychological safety (01:35) Most of the debate around the question of whether you can have too much psychological safety stems around your definition of the term. Tim and Junior share theirs: Psychological safety is an environment of rewarded vulnerability that considers four stages and categories of behavior, we have inclusion, learning, contribution, and challenging.

The leader's role in creating psychological safety (14:03) Most environments create accountability by necessity. For industries in highly regulated environments, it's the leader's job to define culturally and operationally the upper control limit, the lower control limit, and the center line. Everybody needs to understand the tolerances, constraints, regulations, and limitations and work within that.

Psychological safety does not imply rogue behavior (34:10) Even though psychological safety gives employees permission to innovate and challenge the status quo, this doesn't mean that people are free to ignore policy and procedure to do what they want when they want. Oftentimes, we're talking about incremental and derivative innovation, looking for a 1% improvement, and making marginal gains.

Important Links
HBR: Can Workplaces Have Too Much Psychological Safety?
The Complete Guide to Psychological Safety