Is Psychological Safety Dead?

We may have killed Psychological Safety y’all and it may not return until the “new guard” takes over completely. This sadly, is not an overstatement or click-bait, but bitter observation. With the exception of isolated pockets in smart enterprises, Psychological Safety is by and large at the lowest I’ve ever seen it after 6 years of studying it.

People are the least open, the least collaborative, the least willing to risk position and limb to express their honest opinions and companies are suffering from this, but they aren't measuring anything that would reveal it. So how do I know? The hundreds of interviews a week we have with the teams that are not yet our clients shows it and, much more concerningly, even the data from the teams that are using our software shows an overall decline of all indicators now.

Are the teams using it and doing the Human Work regularly better off than their counterparts? Of course they are, the dialogue is open and they have a tool to actively work on the actual components of Psychological Safety - they can improve their communication, their EQ, their resilience, their flexibility, genuine engagement and so on but they are having to do a lot more work to maintain levels that are keeping their teams functional than before. I say “functional” and not “efficient” or “productive” because the last two are not really measured. Anywhere.

Ask whoever your preferred Silicon Valley giant may be, how they measure the last two or even a general “team performance” category and if you are to dig into their data you’ll have to concede it’s shambolic.

Why is that? The fear of real dialogue has enveloped this area of HR if we are to be honest. Genuine data and knowledge of how one’s employees truly feel and think, is no longer a North Star in most places. They may claim it is, and “WeDOCare Theatre” still has regularly scheduled performances,  but I’m here to tell you it’s not important to anyone to know the innermost feelings of their employees or keep them expressing themselves fearlessly.

In the tech industry in particular, after the hundreds of thousands of layoffs and the daily messages on social media of big names not finding gainful new challenges, the climate of fearful silence is well and truly generalised now.