The Four Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation (My 3 Takeaways)
If we want to get the best out of our organizations, we have to get the best out of our people. And if we want to get the best out of people, we have to first look for the best inside of them.
According to a 14-year research study of thousands of workers by Christine Porath and Christine Pearson, half of those surveyed said they experienced rude treatment at work at least once per week, up from one-fourth in 1998.
Among those who had experienced such incivility, almost half said they had intentionally decreased their effort at work, two-thirds said their performance had declined, and more than three-fourths said their commitment to the organization had declined.
With half of workers experiencing incivility at work, these outcomes represent are very real, very significant costs for the organization, which highlights the need for psychological safety at work.
Timothy R. Clark, author of “The Four Stages of Psychological Safety,” provides an easily digestible guide for understanding and, more importantly, implementing a culture of psychological safety in any organization. Clark draws not only on his impressive research experience, but also his own personal experiences in consulting and manufacturing organizations, and even as a first-team Academic All-American college football player.
Clark argues that the foundational levels of psychological safety are a human right, not earned, but owed.
“Psychological safety is a postmaterialist need, but it is no less a human need than food or shelter. In fact, you could argue that psychological safety is simply the manifestation of the need for self-preservation in a social and emotional sense.” (2020, p. 3)
Clark articulates this definition, which also covers the four stages of psychological safety: “Psychological safety is a condition in which you feel (1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, and (4) safe to challenge the status quo-all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way,” (2020, p. 2).
Here are my three biggest takeaways.
Takeaway #1 - Learning is Essential to Leading
As human beings, we process information through emotional, intellectual, and social lenses at the same time. Learning, therefore, is a full contact activity.
But, it also is an activity fraught with emotional danger and potential risks. The idea that learning is a dispassionate, impersonal, and unemotional process is a perspective more supported by the politics of power than by the study of biology, neuroscience, and psychology.
The fear-sensitive part of our brains has the potential to override the entire system. In the absence of emotional engagement, therefore, intellectual engagement can grind to a halt.
In high learner safety cultures, there truly are no stupid questions.
“When learner safety exists, the leader creates a learning process with low social friction and low emotional expense. That requires levels of respect and permission that go beyond inclusion safety because the learning process itself introduces more risk, more vulnerability, and more potential exposure to social and emotional harm,” (Clark, 2020, p. 44).
In today’s highly complex, ultra-competitive environments, it is essential for workplaces to advance a meritocracy of ideas where the best ideas are brought to the table, considered, and implemented, which requires high degrees of learner safety.
“Leaders committed to safeguard learner safety understand that learning is where competitive advantage comes from, that it represents the highest form of enterprise risk management, and that the biggest risk a firm can take is to cease to learn,” (Clark, 2020, p. 61).
Takeaway #2 - The End of Industrial Revolution Management Styles
Contributor safety, the third stage of psychological safety, is the first stage where individuals are accepted as equal contributors on the team. In the contributor safety stage, individuals are no longer solely recipients of the first two stages of psychological safety, they also are invited to bring their best efforts and ideas to the proverbial table.
“The social unit grants the individual increased independence and ownership as he or she demonstrates the ability to contribute based not only on acquired knowledge and skills, but also on good work habits and disciplined follow-through-both know-how and reliability,” (Clark, 2020, p. 71).
In this stage, the goal of the leader is to create an environment where feedback and mistakes can be freely given and received. Clark refers to “red zones,” where contributor safety is limited, and “blue zones,” where such safety is unrestricted.
Whereas red zones are categorized by competition, compliance, fearfulness, silence, and stress, blue zones are recognizable by their collaboration, creativity, confidence, engagement, and resilience.
But such blue zones are no places for insecure managers, as it is the leader’s role to model the way in generously accepting feedback and graciously admitting mistakes.
“You can always lay down the law and point out that it’s part of the social contract of being a member of this family or this team or this pit crew or this SWAT team or this stage crew,” Clark warned, “If you pull that card, you’re resorting to compliance and confessing your inability to motivate and summon discretionary effort,” (2020, p. 83).
In what cannot be a surprise, it is this absence of contributor safety that correlates most strongly with toxic environments where abuse, bullying, and unethical behavior demonstrate individuals’ motivations for personal, rather than team-oriented, measures of success.
Takeaway #3 - Challenger Safety
Challenger safety is the highest degree of psychological safety, which not only allows, but encourages, individuals to challenge the status quo, which represents a risk to the individual, the team, and the organization.
“Challenger safety is a level of psychological safety so high that people feel empowered to challenge the status quo, leaving their comfort zones to put a creative or disruptive idea on the table, which by definition is a threat to the way things are done and therefore a risk to themselves personally,” (2020, p. 99).
In their 2019 book, “It’s the Manager,” Gallup’s Jim Clifton and Jim Harter declare, “Managers - through their strengths, their own engagement and how they work with their teams every day - account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.”
Clark’s research on challenger safety are no different. “In the end, inviting questions is the spigot that turns innovation on. Discouraging questions, and punishing those who ask them, turns the spigot off. Rather than protecting your team against groupthink, you’re reinforcing it. You’re conditioning your people not to think and not to challenge, and teams learn very quickly not to think and not to challenge. They learn very quickly how to ‘lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends’,” (2020, p. 111).
What does this look like in practice? In other words, how can you not just allow, but truly encourage, dissent and innovation?
In the chapter discussing the final stage of psychological safety, Clark provides examples of “tiger teams” at NASA and “red teams” in Silicon Valley technology companies as examples of structures and systems that foster high levels of dissent and innovation.
“A tiger team was ‘a team of undomesticated and uninhibited technical specialists, selected for their experience, energy, and imagination, and assigned to track down relentlessly every possible source of failure in a spacecraft subsystem,’” (2020, p. 119).
Clark also suggests designating individuals to play the role of the “devil’s advocate.”
“(Assigning dissent) provides the needed cover for candor that helps the team push through the layers of status quo bias and loss aversion that normally guard the current state,” Clark (2020, p. 120) says, “It also culturally elevates the role of dissent and makes it socially and politically acceptable.”
Bonus Takeaway: What can you do if your organization lacks psychological safety?
In the book’s conclusion, Clark describes the behavioral outcomes of paternalistic organizations, where there’s a strong deference to authority and hierarchies. In those organizations, rudeness, incivility, and abuse are common, and although immoral, these behaviors are not illegal, allowing those who are leaders in status alone to escape responsibility and scrutiny.
For those who find themselves in such situations, Clark (2020, p. 133) offers this suggestion: “If you’re being exploited, abused, or harassed, you’re being denied the respect and permission you’re entitled to as a human being. If that’s not going to change, give yourself inclusion safety. Sometimes that means standing alone, absorbing an economic loss, being misunderstood, or taking a hit to your reputation.”
To the insecure leaders, cruel pretenders, and exploiters, Clark says, "The moment we begin to devalue, objectify, or dehumanize each other, we forsake humanity. Don’t tell me you have a company to run or results to deliver. Don’t tell me you’re important. Don’t tell me this is high stakes, or you’re under pressure, or you have your triggers, or you’re prone to grown-up meltdowns. If you make any excuse for not extending psychological safety, you’re choosing to value something else more than human beings,” (2020, p. 136).
