SafetyInsights.org

Are there limits to the benefits of psychological safety? Yes and even *lower* performance in some instances according to a new study.

A 2022 study soon to be posted surveyed 170,000 teachers from 545 schools over a 3 year period (wow!), assessing the role of psychological safety, felt accountability and other factors on school performance.

This study was interesting since, besides the huge longitudinal sample, it evaluated a different sector: schools.

Here, teachers are said to rely less on teamwork than other areas studied in the domain of psychological safety (healthcare and the like).

Key findings:

·        “psychological safety is not on its own, nor necessarily,“helpful”with regards to organizational performance over time”

·        Rather, “the best conditions for fostering organizational performance occurred when psychological safety was relatively low and felt accountability was relatively high”

·        When PS is considered on its own “all else held constant, psychological safety had a negative effect on performance over time”

·        Best performance over time wasn’t when both PS and felt accountability were high or even balanced, but the best performing schools were those “with relatively low psychological safety and relatively high felt accountability”

Indeed, while one may expect schools with higher employee perceived psychological safety to have a better chance of achieving annual education targets, they found the opposite. Schools with higher perceived PS performed worse.

In contrast, schools with higher felt accountability had a higher likelihood of achieving their annual targets.

In sum, managers need to be thoughtful about how “psychological safety might also have a dark side if it is not well managed”.

Managers should thoughtfully open up the inquiry space for open dialogue but also recognise “possible tripwires that could emerge”.

Authors: Higgins, M. C., Dobrow, S. R., Weiner, J. M., & Liu, H. (2022). Academy of Management Discoveries, 8(1), 77-102.

Study link: https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2018.0242

LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benhutchinson2_are-there-limits-to-the-benefits-of-psychological-activity-7139005027595022337–A-s?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop