Psychological safety, by design

Safety is not softness. It is the precondition for the honest disagreement that good decisions require — and it can be engineered.

Psychological safety is the shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks — to ask the naive question, admit the mistake, challenge the senior person in the room. It is the single strongest predictor of high-performing teams, and it is far more designable than most leaders assume.

Safety is built in small, repeated moments

It is built in how a leader responds the first time someone brings bad news, in whether questions are met with curiosity or defensiveness, in who gets interrupted and who gets the floor. These moments are frequent, observable, and coachable.

Safety is not the absence of tension. It is the presence of trust strong enough to hold it.”

M Pillai's avatar

By M Pillai

Fluently speak the language of the soul. Often reconfiguring to new forms, states of being and styles. My multitudes have multitudes, at this point. Equal parts wild woman and luminous wolf, I don't need a reason to howl at the moon. Seek everyday magic and find it in the mundane, the middling, the misty, the margins. Sometimes, we need a canvas to paint on. Mine are dried leaves and tree barks and the backs of dogs ears. Dipping into the dew, I write about the greatest powers on earth: love, empathy, compassion and equanimity in the hope that one day I will be drenched in them.

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