120+ behaviors that build psychological safety, stage by stage.

Psychological safety changes when behavior changes. This guide lists 120+ specific behaviors across The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™, each marked as a team, individual, or manager behavior, with the top five for every stage starred. Before the lists, it gives you the stage definitions and a seven-day method for practicing one behavior at a time.

What’s inside

• The 4 Stages table. One page defines each stage by the respect and permission it requires and names its social exchange, from inclusion in exchange for human status to air cover in exchange for candor.
• The L.I.V.E. model. A four-step routine (look, identify, validate, encourage) for noticing an act of vulnerability on your team and rewarding it in the moment.
• A seven-day practice loop. The guide tells you to choose one behavior, decide how you’ll model it and reward it in others, write the plan down, run it for seven days, then pick the next one.
• A primer for each stage. Every stage opens with a one-page explanation of what that kind of safety is and what teams lose without it.
• Top 5 behaviors per stage. The highest-leverage behaviors are starred and listed up front, such as “listen and pause” for inclusion safety and “weigh in last” for challenger safety.
• 120+ behaviors, tagged by role. Each behavior is a short imperative with a paragraph explaining how to do it and a marker showing whether it’s a team, individual, or manager behavior.