Have you ever felt when working on a team assignment that you would like to ask a question like “what are we doing?,” but are concerned this may make you sound like you are disengaged or unprepared. After all, it might feel safer to just “play along” without getting clarification. Unfortunately, this means that you are going to be a less effective team member, and your team won’t benefit from your contributions. Teaming benefits from a focus on your sense of psychological safety, a concept coined by Amy Edmondson that describes a shared belief held by team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.
When?
The midpoint of your team’s working together on this task.
Why?
To assess how comfortable each team member is in speaking up.
How Long?
5-20 minutes as a team
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson puts it this way: “Psychological safety means an absence of interpersonal fear. When psychological safety is present, people are able to speak up with work-relevant content.” Thus, psychological safety can be defined as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”
What to Do:
To measure the psychological safety of your team, we suggest you have all your team members take this brief quiz based on questions developed by Amy Edmondson (opens in a new tab). This 3-step-exercise gives you a sense where you have space to improve the psychological safety climate and where you are already doing well as a team.
Step 1
Each team member should complete this 7-question quiz.
You will be prompted to make a copy in order to use the template; you must be signed in to a Google account.
Download a PDF version to use offline.
Step 2
Have each team member add their results to this spreadsheet.
You will be prompted to make a copy in order to use the template; you must be signed in to a Google account.
Download an Excel document for use offline.
Step 3
Discuss the results and for those questions that are highlighted in red, and list actions how you could increase psychological safety by improving those dimensions.
Additional Resources
Developing a psychologically safe team culture will require seeking and sharing feedback and navigating conflict. More ideas on these two critical skills can be found here.