Looking backwards A Timeline of Psychological Safety:
1999 - Amy Edmondson (Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams) is credited with popularizing the term to mean an absence of interpersonal fear. She defines Team psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.
1965 - Edgar Schein and Warren Bennis (Personal and Organizational Change via Group Methods) introduce the importance of psychological safety as group phenomenon that reduces a person’s anxiety about being accepted and worthwhile. Providing an atmosphere where one can take chances without fear and with sufficient protection.
1952 - Carl Rodgers (Toward a Theory of Creativity) elaborated the role of psychological safety with three associated processes:
Accepting the individual as of unconditional worth.
Providing a climate in which external evaluation is absent.
Understanding empathically. It is this which provides the ultimate in psychological safety, when added to the other two.
To foster a shared belief that risk-taking is safe requires unconditional acceptance, non-judgement, and most importantly empathetic understanding. This is true as much for one-on-one interaction as it is for group learning and team performance.
My specialty is taking clients out of the confines of the office as we walk in the woods to grapple with life's hard questions.
For the leadership journey - The Nature of Leadership
For navigating midlife transitions - Walking the Forest Path
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