One of the more recent elements added to the EHS professions is the need for Psychological Safety to sustainably reduce serious injuries and fatalities (SIF) and improve EHS performance overall. In the book “The Fearless Organization”[1] Dr. Amy Edmunson describes the conditions that need to exist to ensure that “people feel they are able to share their knowledge.” According to the Armani’s, there are four specific areas of focus: SELF & RELATIONSHIP SAFETY where you are aware of and managing your propensities to identify your own vulnerabilities and those that form the relationships within your team; TEAM SAFETYwhere you adopt a safety lens and become sensitive to how situations, communications, activities, and behaviors may impact particular safety drivers in the team; and CULTURAL SAFETY where the team begins to identify psychological safety as a priority, implementing psychological safety across the population (advocacy, language, expectation and accountability).[2]
While these are great starting points, it is vital that organizations, from the C-Suite to the floor or field, understand HOW to create the conditions that develop psychological safety. How does the organization establish mechanisms that ensure people will want to speak up? There is a difference between demanding psychological safety and developing it.
| Demanded | Developed |
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In many organizations, psychological safety just became something else the workforce had to do. In other words, we expect you to speak up and tell the truth, and the quiet part (regardless of what you think may happen to you based on your previous experience). In other words, leaders asked the workforce to “trust” them related to psychological safety, without modifying their knowledge, language and behaviors to prove that they can and will create the conditions under which psychological safety thrives. The leaders must not just be educated in the elements required to create psychological safety; they have to live that knowledge and exhibit it through their language and behaviors.
One simple example and technique for changing leader knowledge, language, and behaviors to create better conditions for people to feel free speaking up and speaking out is to ask better questions. But it is not enough to tell leaders to ask better questions, you must give them the better questions to ask and the reasoning behind it.
So here is a test that any leader can do if they really want to try to develop psychological safety. The next time something happens in your organization (or at home for that matter), instead of asking someone WHY they did what they did, use the following framework called “TEDS”:
| Tell me… | Tell me what happened and how it happened (and then shut up and listen!) |
| Explain to me… | Explain to me the conditions under which this occurred |
| Describe to me… | Describe to me how this played out – how did we get here – tell me the story |
| Show me… | Show me where this happened, where it has happened before, and other places it could happen |
When you ask almost any human “why” they did something, they don’t hear the question “why?” In their brain they typically instead hear “…somebody messed up”, “…I think it was you”, “… we are looking for somebody to blame”, “…and you are it!” Logically, when you ask someone why they did something that you consider wrong, they become defensive. This limits their ability to answer the question “why” with reasonable certainty that the answer is the real reason. Not because they are lying to you, but because YOU created the condition for them to have self-doubt, and to try to protect themselves from what they think is coming, regardless of their answer. When you use the TEDS framework, you reduce the individuals’ need for self-protection because you are asking them to help with the solution instead of treating them like they are the problem.
Trying this one simple trick, well, really a change in leader knowledge (you now know a new technique and the reason for the technique), language (you are saying different things that will be noticed immediately by your workforce), and behaviors (you are no longer appearing to blame them before you have all of the necessary information), will show you immediate results in the path of developing psychological safety. And oh, by the way, in case you didn’t notice, you will probably get multiple answers to the question of why someone did something, without ever asking them why.
There are several other elements of leader knowledge, language, and behaviors that continue to develop psychological safety instead of just demanding it. Using the TEDS framework is a start to working on self and relationship safety, team safety, and cultural safety attributes that create the conditions for sustainable psychological safety in YOUR organization.
Rob Fisher is the President of Fisher Improvement Technologies and a pioneer in the practical application and integration of Human and Organizational Performance concepts and all aspects of Operational Excellence and EHS improvement. He has a globally recognized capability to make the science of errors practically applicable. He has been involved in developing multiple international industry standards for error reduction, incident analysis, and procedures. Rob is a sought-after executive mentor, speaker, and trainer who engages and educates both locally and internationally. Rob is the author of the best-selling book “Understanding Mental Models” and host of the popular “Essential Leadership Cycle Podcast”.
[1] Edmunson, A., The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, Wiley, 2018
[2] Psychological Safety: Models and Experiences, Fabio & Giulia Armani, https://www.infoq.com/articles/psychological-safety-models-experiences/
