Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is the ability to show and employ oneself without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status, or career (Kahn 1990, p. 708).[1] It can be defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.[2] In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety

• Point 8 of W. Edwards Deming's 14 Points For Management, written in 1982, of "Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company" [5] highlights a similar growing realisation, in contrast to previous Taylorist management approaches, that the creation of environments where it is interpersonally safe to raise concerns is of crucial importance to realising high quality business outcomes.

see Google Project Aristotle

• https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html
• https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/

If a product team lacks Agility, Context, and Team Agency, I think safety will be shallow/fragile.

May'2025, Cat Hicks: Across several studies with software teams I have become convinced that studying Belonging is way more actionable and pragmatic and important than we assume. For too long imho, this industry has been stuck on an abstract notion of Psychological Safety and not challenged itself to start asking well, what outcomes would we expect to see if we were getting psych safety right? Nuanced types of belonging is one such outcome.

cf congruence