Measuring PS: What Most L&D Leaders Don't Realize

Culture is the way we interact. How do we measure culture? By measuring the way we interact.

Psychological safety is a cultural initiative that was made to be measured. In fact, it’s the best indicator of cultural health in your organization. Let’s talk about how to measure it effectively.

What is psychological safety

People feel and perform their best at work when they feel safe to be their authentic selves. Too often, employees are punished for making mistakes, challenging the status quo, learning, and offering feedback. They’re punished for engaging in the very catalysts of engagement and innovation.

The simplest definition of psychological safety we can offer is a “culture of rewarded vulnerability.” Cultures that reward acts of vulnerability are cultures that engage in inclusive behavior, accelerate learning, increase contribution, and stimulate innovation. These traits will become competitive advantages for your organization, but only when they’re approached with consistency and determination. Healthy human interaction means high psychological safety; unhealthy interaction means low psychological safety.

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is built in four progressive stages, and we call this framework The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™. Just like humans need water, food, and shelter to survive, teams that want to innovate need four things in order to thrive.

They need to feel (1) included and safe to (2) learn, (3) contribute, and (4) challenge the status quo. Teams progress through these stages as they intentionally create cultures of rewarded vulnerability across the 4 stages.

Stage	Definition of respect	Definition of permission	Social exchange
1. Inclusion Safety	Respect for the individual’s innate need to be included, accepted, and gain a sense of belonging	Permission for the individual to interact and be their true and authentic self	Inclusion in exchange for human status and the absence of harm
2. Learner Safety	Respect for the individual’s innate need to learn, grow, and develop mastery	Permission for the individual to engage in the learning process and make mistakes	Encouragement in exchange for engagement
3. Contributor Safety	Respect for the individual’s innate need for autonomy, contribution, and recognition	Permission for the individual to work with appropriate autonomy and independence	Autonomy with guidance in exchange for performance and results
4. Challenger Safety	Respect for the individual’s innate need to innovate and improve the status quo	Permission for the individual to make challenges to the status quo in good faith	Air cover in exchange for candor

Every effective psychological safety assessment has these 5 things

1. A valid, quantitative instrument. You don’t need 579 questions to get actionable data, you just need 16 of the right ones. While qualitative data can give you context into your team’s interactions, quantitative data is undeniable. You need high-quality, actionable data in order to face the facts and plan effective intervention.

2. Space for qualitative feedback. Open response questions allow you to collect detailed, contextual feedback on how your teams are interacting. This qualitative data is great for action planning and team debriefs, where toxic behavior needs to be named before it can be fixed.

3. Org-wide reports, team-level data. When you survey your organization at the team level, you’ll have the info you need to make pinpoint-accurate decisions based on pockets of toxicity instead of swinging the whole ship based on average responses.

4. Demographic data capability. While we know that the #1 factor that influences team performance is the leader or manager of the team, including demographic data can help you identify unique cultural trends in your organization. For multinational, multicultural organizations, data about age, tenure, geography, gender, and position can help you see your blind spots.

5. Built-in forward momentum. The right assessment will help you measurably improve inclusion, learning, performance, and candor. Studies show that psychological safety is the #1 variable in team performance. We’ve found two keys to success: the right data to back you up, and a practical and actionable framework to follow.

The rest of the guide walks through a PSindex™ team report so you can see what those criteria look like in practice: the 4 Stages score with blue, neutral, and red zone scoring, results by stage with strengths and opportunities, item-level results with verbatim responses, organizational heatmap reporting with benchmarks and demographics, and org chart reporting with built-in action planning.