SafetyInsights.org

I haven’t really summarised this one fully, but I found some of its findings pretty interesting.

Authors note that the vast majority of existing psychological safety literature “focuses on psychological safety’s beneficial impacts such as increased speaking up or learning behaviour”, and thus, “many team leaders may consider increasing psychological safety within their teams” (p26).

Essentially, they’re saying that most literature highlights the positive elements of psychological safety but rarely highlights the unintended consequences.

Namely, based on this study’s findings, psychological safety moderates the attitudes of physicians in their teams such that physicians with a positive attitude toward getting vaccinated were even more inclined to actually get vaccinated when they worked in a team which they perceived as psychologically safe.

However, interestingly, to quote the paper “In the same way, psychological safety also strengthened the effect of a negative attitude towards a desirable behavior: Physicians with a negative attitude toward getting vaccinated were even less inclined to get vaccinated when they worked in a team in which they felt psychologically safe” (p20).

Authors note that psychological safety (and specifically the individual’s perception of the climate) “enhances the effect of the individual’s attitude—regardless of whether that attitude is positive or negative” (p22).

They argue that “it is important to look at psychological safety as a climate variable which exerts contextual influence on individual behaviour” (p21).

Finally, authors argue that their findings support the contention that leaders must be cautious of the unintended and undesired effects of  interventions, language, practices etc. – where in a psychologically safe team, individuals may feel safer to act according to their own attitudes which may not be in alignment with the organisation’s goals, or according to the authors “outright detrimental” (p26).

Although the numerous benefits of psychological safety probably far outweigh the known “limitations”, this also supports another recent study I posted which found that higher psychological safety predisposes certain teams to higher unethical behaviour. Those authors argued that psychological safety, like any other concept, should be studied to evaluate its boundary conditions.

Stühlinger, M., Schmutz, J. B., Grote, G., Nicca, D., & Flury, D. (2021). Group & Organization Management

Link to study: https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601120983964

Link to the LinkedIn review: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/get-vaccinated-psychological-safety-catalyst-between-ben-hutchinson/