The Psychological Safety Staircase
Five steps to build capability, deliver better and strengthen each other
Better results, greater wellbeing and stronger learning come from how the work is set up, and from whether you actually use each other’s experience, knowledge and attention.
Most teams go wrong by skipping steps 1 and 2 and going straight to dialogue, involvement and feedback. It is like building a house without a foundation.
The Task Effect
Psychological safety changes with the task and with who is in the room. Change the task and safety changes. Change one person, or let someone arrive late, and the conversation changes immediately. The Task Effect is why the Psychological Safety Staircase starts with what we are doing and who we are doing it with, before it turns to how we behave.
A tool for collaboration
The Psychological Safety Staircase is a working tool. You use it to see where you are, to agree on what to do next, and to check afterwards whether it worked. It is for anyone who works with other people, and it fits almost anything you do together: a project group, a management team, a shift, a board, a merger, a cross-functional task force.
It does two things at once. It shows you where you are standing, and it tells you what to take first, because the early steps are the conditions for the later ones. A clear task gives the dialogue something to be about. Dialogue gives feedback somewhere to land. Take the steps in order and you reach the cause.
It combines two things that are usually treated separately. Structure: how the work is set up, who does what, how you decide. Behaviour: how you respond to each other when something difficult is said. Neither works without the other.
The leader’s tool kit for building psychological safety is written for the leader. It is written for everyone in the collaboration, because everyone shapes the safety and the results of the people they work with.
This is also where creativity comes from. A new idea is a half-finished idea, and putting it forward means being wrong in front of someone whose opinion matters to you. What a team dares to say half-finished decides what it ends up building.
Most teams treat symptoms. It builds the foundation the rest of the work rests on.
What the Psychological Safety Staircase leads to
- Better results
- Greater wellbeing
- Stronger learning
These are the three fruits on the tree at the top of the staircase. Steps 1 to 4 are the work of tending the tree. Step 5 is where the fruit is picked, shared and used.
The Psychological Safety Staircase is built on more than 15,000 responses about psychological safety from over 170 measurements in organisations, collected in practice since 2014, and on Amy Edmondson’s research. Christian Ørsted is the Danish editor of The Fearless Organization and wrote its foreword. More on the relationship to Edmondson’s work.
The data shows a clear pattern: 47 per cent of teams are helpful but silent. Helping each other scores 5.7 out of 7. Talking openly about what is difficult scores 4.9. This is not a courage problem. It is a task problem. People do not know what the difficult thing is that they are supposed to say out loud, because the task was never defined clearly enough.
That is why it begins with the task. When people can see what the work actually is, they can also see what there is to say about it. All five steps are below, and between them stand the five checks that show whether you are ready for the next one. Click a step to open its three tools, or click in the staircase to jump straight to it.
1Define the task›
Aim: make it clear what has to be done, and why.
Psychological safety does not start with psychology. It starts with the task. Before dialogue makes any sense, everyone has to see the same picture of what you are in this together for, and why.
1A Describe The situation as it is
A shared understanding of where you actually are, so you see the same picture and can act on it together. Not as we hope it is, and honest about both the good and the difficult. Headlines are not enough. A practical opener: start the meeting with what do you see, and let the picture build before anyone starts arguing. This also covers what kind of work it is: routine, complex or new. When the complexity is acknowledged from the start, people stop assuming they are the ones who cannot cope. It has to be described precisely enough that you can see what to do about it.
1B Explain The purpose and the meaning
Why the task matters and what it makes a difference to. The because that gives the work direction. This matters most when the news is bad: an honest explanation restores credibility and turns powerlessness into something the group can act on.
1C Specify The standard and the requirements
What done well means here: criteria and requirements everyone can hold the work up against.
Task check · from step 1 to step 2
Does the task describe reality as it looks to the people who have to do it?
Not as we hope it is, and not as it looks from the top. You can hear the difference: recognition sounds like that is exactly it, not you are right. The first is recognition. The second is deference. If no, go back to the description. The task is not shared yet.
2Set the frame›
Aim: create clarity and support for acting.
The frame is not what is written on the poster. It is what is actually done and tolerated. A good frame is understood, it is held to, and it supports getting the work done, sharing what you know and working together. Almost everyone has been handed the responsibility without being allowed to decide anything. A frame is only agreed when responsibility and mandate travel together.
2A Clarify Who is involved, and what they are responsible for
Internally and externally. Who does what, including when things go wrong, and how much each person may decide alone. It is the mandate, not the job title, that makes it safe to act. It is often the external people whose role nobody has clarified.
2B Choose The way of working and the approach
Decision processes and deliverables: how you work, decide and deliver together. The way of working has to fit the kind of work you described in step 1. Routine work and new work should not be set up the same way.
2C Review The norms that already apply
The norms are there already, even when nobody has talked about them, and they slip if nobody looks. The useful question is what you have actually tolerated since you agreed. This also covers agreeing which mistakes you can expect in this kind of work, and what you do about them.
Frame check · from step 2 to step 3
Can you hear that the frame landed?
Ask for it back, and let the team play the task and the frame back to you in their own words. What comes back is what landed. Listen especially for whether each person can say what they are allowed to decide. If they cannot, responsibility has been handed over without a mandate. If you hear something other than what you said, the briefing needs doing again. Back to steps 1 and 2.
3Invite participation›
Aim: get the relevant knowledge and perspectives into the open.
Participation is mostly about the quality of the relationships, not just about asking questions. This is where courses and team days usually begin. It works, but only on top of the foundation from steps 1 and 2.
3A Design The rhythm, the length and the form
Participation is something you come back to, not something you handle in one go: at the start, at the end, as fixed check-ins in the weekly meeting, and whenever the situation calls for it. The form has to fit the work: a short stand-up in one place, a long project meeting in another, on Teams where people are spread out and in person where you can. The length has to fit too: too long wastes time, too short and you do not get where you need to. Timing decides the effect, and the right move at the wrong moment disrupts the work instead of helping it. That applies inside the meeting as well, from the opening (what are we here to talk about, and how is everyone) through the exploring part to the close (what happens now, and when do we meet again).
3B Seek out What you do not know, and the perspectives that are missing
Including from the people already in the room. It takes going after it. An open door is not enough, because it puts the work on whoever has to knock. Be actively curious within the frame you agreed in step 2. That goes for good news and bad, for ideas and objections alike. The questions have to open the room rather than confirm what you already believed. And it has to be alive. Dull meetings make people less present, and then what you need does not come out.
3C Balance Who gets the floor, and in what form
Turn-taking and short contributions, so participation is not decided by who speaks first or loudest. Contributions do not have to be spoken or immediate. But the form has consequences: an email thread produces rabbit holes, digressions, entrenchment and too many people on cc, and online the chat is a real channel for contribution, not a side channel.
Participation check · from step 3 to step 4
Does what matters come out, and are you any wiser for it?
Are the decisions better, and can you act on them? It is not enough that something difficult gets said, and it is not enough that everyone has spoken. If no, the invitation is not real yet, or the meeting has been designed so that people talk without anyone learning anything. Back to the design and to the frame.
4Respond constructively›
Aim: acknowledge and build on what is constructive, and address what is difficult.
This is where it most often goes wrong. A destructive response shuts things down faster than people think, and it is the response to the difficult thing that decides whether anyone says it again.
4A Acknowledge And build on it
The contribution has to be met, so it is obvious it was heard. Destigmatise mistakes, and build on what gets brought in.
4B Address Problems with dignity and respect
Undramatic, expected and dignified. Watch the micro-behaviour. That is what people read.
4C Repair And protect the relationships
The kintsugi principle: relationships that have been properly repaired are stronger than those never put to the test.
Response check · from step 4 to step 5
Was it acknowledged, addressed and repaired?
The response has to make the collaboration more robust, not settle the account. Acknowledgement without addressing is politeness. Addressing without repair leaves a bill that gets paid later. If no, it is the response that needs practising.
5Get better together›
Aim: you can do more next time, and you can sustain it.
This is where you harvest. The fruit tree at the top of the staircase carries better results, greater wellbeing and stronger learning. The first four steps are the work of tending the tree. Step 5 is where the fruit is picked, shared and used, and where the tree stands stronger for the next season.
5A Make visible Progress, results and learning
When the work is complex, you cannot see your own progress unless you make it visible. Teresa Amabile’s research on the progress principle shows that small wins are the single strongest factor in a good working day. Sharing and witnessing progress also means you learn from each other’s experience and not only your own. At the same time it builds understanding outside the team and commitment inside it.
5B Embed What you learned
Learning that stays only with the people who did the work disappears unless it is shared. Embedding happens in two ways. One is turning what you learned into something you do differently next time. The other is connecting people to those who know something they need, across teams and out to customers, citizens and partners. That is how capability spreads. Gartner surveyed more than 9,000 leaders and employees: the leaders who connect lifted their people’s performance by 26 per cent.
5C Protect Your ability to keep going
As a team, as an organisation and as people. Capacity is built in relationships and structures, and having the energy and the appetite to continue is what makes results hold over time.
Effect check · from step 5 back to step 1
Can you do more now than you could before, and what is the situation now?
Can you set up a new collaboration faster than last time, including with people you have not worked with before? This round has moved something, and the task looks different from when you started. That is why the Psychological Safety Staircase begins again at step 1, with a new description of where you are. If you cannot do more than before, the capacity sat in that particular constellation, not in you. It is self-correcting: if momentum drops, go back to the task and the frame.
The model is built on more than 15,000 responses about psychological safety from over 170 measurements, collected in practice since 2014.
On the relationship to Amy Edmondson’s work
Amy Edmondson pioneered the research on psychological safety, and the three-part leader’s tool kit in The Fearless Organization is the best known account of what a leader can do to increase it.
The Psychological Safety Staircase builds on that work and can be used alongside the tool kit. It is written for everyone in the collaboration, leaders and teams alike. Each of the five steps holds three tools, and between the steps stands a check. The steps are taken in order, so a team builds the foundation from the ground up rather than reacting to symptoms as they appear. The checks can be used in the team to see where it stands, and what could be stronger.
Want to work through the Psychological Safety Staircase?
The Psychological Safety Staircase is the core of the keynote and the workshop Psychological Safety in Practice, and it can be combined with a measurement of your own team. Call +45 70 27 47 40, or write to cor@christianorsted.com.