Case Studies
Psychological Safety and Your Organization
Well-functioning teams are essential to successful organizations. Paul Santagata, head of industry at Google, shared that Google’s massive two-year study on team performance revealed that the highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety, the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. He also stated that “There’s no team without trust.”
So, if trust and psychological safety walk hand in hand, then the pressing concern for most organizations needs to be whether they have either, or both, and if not how to create them.
Strategia Analytic’s DnA® Assessment provides that information.
We show you where either, or both, are having their greatest effect—beneficial or detrimental—and which factors within your organization are major contributors to those effects. And then to make the information useful we provide you with a tailored-to-your-organization map that gives you options for determining where you can put your efforts to magnify or reduce the effects that matter to you.
For example, a small family-owned company sought our assistance in making a smooth transition to the new CEO. The staff and leadership took our 15-minute DnA® Assessment. We focused on the expressed concerns of the company leaders: clarifying values and expectations with the staff. A follow-up Assessment, roughly six months later, showed significant progress in the areas of concern. However, interactions between leadership personnel made it clear that other issues remained.
Identifying Trust & Psychological Safety
When we looked at data corresponding to trust there appeared to be an acceptable level of trust, evidenced by such markers as the nature of employee-supervisor relationships, loyalty to company, and rhetoric matching reality.
However, a look at the psychological safety data was illuminating. In the first assessment the company as a whole appeared to have no issues in this area. A different picture emerged when assessing distinct areas. Just looking at one aspect of the Psychological Safety analysis, what we call Appropriate Autonomy the below figure shows:
Staff experienced feeling Valued. In fact, the same result was obtained when the data from staff and leadership was combined.
However, a look at Leadership alone revealed a very different picture:
While a portion of the Leadership experienced feeling Valued, equal portions experienced feeling Devalued or Cautious.
In fact, analysis of all six aspects revealed that for staff and leadership combined, or staff alone, the results showed identical pictures—leadership matched on but two of the six.
Data clearly showed that the staff experienced the organization as having a high level of psychological safety, whereas the executives experienced a significant lack of safety. The high scores from the staff were masking the lower ones from the executives and painting a false picture of the company as a whole.
Furthermore, a look at the data from the second assessment showed the staff were experiencing even greater psychological safety and the executives even less. The former were again masking the latter so that overall the company data showed a high level of psychological safety. Clearly there were issues at the executive level that would need to be addressed.
Identifying Trust & Psychological Safety
As might be expected, these are not easy issues to address, especially when leadership has to consider addressing their own area versus focusing on making changes in the staff environment. Fortunately, our approach gives them tailored insights to specific contributing factors, allows them to consider which factors they wish to focus on initially, and then provides a map for doing so. A map which identifies barriers to desired outcomes, and collateral detrimental effects of making any changes so those can be minimized.
Without our DnA® Assessment of Psychological Safety this company would have had no insight into the contributing factors to now apparent issues—issues they did not expect since the implementation of their initial interventions had been so successful. With the new information provided they could address these previously unseen factors.