Psychological safety is a culture of rewarded vulnerability.

This 52-page ebook traces where the idea came from, defines it, and walks through The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™ one stage at a time. The second half gives a chapter each to early adopters, individuals, teams, managers, and leaders, with a short tool in every one.

What’s inside

• A timeline of the idea. From Kierkegaard in 1844 through Maslow, Rogers, Schein and Bennis, Kahn, Edmondson and Google’s Project Aristotle to Clark’s 4 Stages in 2020.
• The definition and the neuroscience. Psychological safety defined as a culture of rewarded vulnerability, with a threat-detection diagram showing why punished vulnerability triggers a fear response and rewarded vulnerability a performance response.
• Blue zone and red zone lists. Eight common ways vulnerability gets rewarded and eight ways it gets punished.
• The Ladder of Vulnerability. 20 workplace acts ranked by the risk people feel, from giving an incorrect answer (5.6) to connecting with your team (2.7), from LeaderFactor’s survey of employees in 834 organizations.
• Two self-checks. A 12-question self-assessment of common breaches of psychological safety (have any happened to you in the last 24 hours?) and a list of seven things psychological safety is not.
• The 4 Stages, stage by stage. The table of respect, permission and social exchange, then for each stage what it looks like when you have it, when you don’t, and questions to ask yourself, with short pieces on bonding vs bridging, the three levels of accountability, and intellectual vs social friction.
• Playbooks by role. Four barriers early adopters hit and a recommendation for each, a seven-question personal-impact check, the L.I.V.E. model and seven ways to reboot a silent team, five steps for managers, and ten ways CEOs can create psychological safety.
• What to do with a toxic leader. The difference between an actively toxic leader and a passively complicit one, and why only the second is usually coachable (the research puts the first at 5%).