“This is a safe space…”

Many organisations say, “We care about people’s psychological safety” but when it matters they are typically paying lip service rather than doing anything to create and maintain that safety.

Years back — long enough ago that it’s unlikely anyone can remember where I worked — I arrived at the office to find that my badge didn’t work and I couldn’t get into the building. It turned out my whole team was in the same boat. We all thought we’d been fired.

Hours later we learned that it was a fault with the building access system. I suppose that’s where Occam’s Razor should have taken me… but I honestly believed that leadership might have summarily fired all of us with no warning. The CEO said, “There’s no way we’d do that — you shouldn’t even think that’d be possible”, entirely oblivious to the fact that the hostile environment they’d fostered was exactly why we reached the conclusion we did.

At Facebook one of the many official pseudo-motivational posters says, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”. It’s a great question and in theory it can help people to move faster, take bigger risks and generally swing for the fences. However, if people really are afraid… well, a poster isn’t going to help much. It turns out that many of my colleagues at Facebook were afraid: afraid of being fired, afraid of being judged, afraid of not fitting in.

Similarly, it’s easy to create a poster imploring everyone to bring their authentic selves to work, but unless they genuinely believe there are unlikely to be any negative consequences it won’t make a difference.

Psychological safety is very valuable but it won’t be achieved without clear intent and sustained effort.