A team only learns when no one has to fear speaking up about a mistake or a doubt.
A team can only learn from what is put on the table. Mistakes that no one reports and doubts that no one voices remain invisible to the team. It then works with an overly rosy picture of the situation.
The team principle in detail
Four steps through the principle: understand, check, connect, apply. Open any topic to read more.
The explanationWhether someone speaks up is decided by a quick inner calculation: What will it cost me if I say this now?
Whether someone speaks up is decided by a quick inner calculation: What will it cost me if I say this now?
- If embarrassment or punishment looms, people stay silent.
- “Safety” here means exactly that: no fear of being shamed or punished for speaking up.
- It is a climate shared by the whole group, not a trait of any one individual.
Read closelyWhat the principle says – and what it doesn’t
More safety goes hand in hand with more learning behavior – seeking feedback, admitting mistakes, asking questions. This matters above all in knowledge work, development work and high-risk work.
- Strictly speaking
- The “only” is an overstatement. What has been shown is a clear correlation, not a necessary condition. More precisely: a team barely learns as long as people hold back mistakes and doubts out of fear.
- Safety is not harmony, not niceness and not job security. Open criticism is part of it.
- Safety alone is not enough. Without high standards and accountability, it can make people complacent – and it is value-neutral: it makes speaking up easier, not automatically doing the right thing.
The signs3 signs that the principle is at work · 3 that it is missing
- Mistakes are reported early, by the people involved themselves.
- Lower-ranking members also ask questions and raise concerns.
- An objection is met with a response to the issue, not to the person.
- In meetings there is silence; in the hallway there is talk.
- Bad news arrives late or sugar-coated.
- People who don’t understand something don’t ask.
The research6 sources: 3 primary studies, 2 critiques, 1 meta-analysis · 1996–2019 · with research limitations
- low
- moderate
- high
High – for the link between safety, learning behavior and performance; not for the “only.”
- 1996Amy C. Edmondson
Nursing teams in two hospitals differ systematically – not only in the number of medication errors, but in whether errors are detected, reported and used for learning.
- 1999Amy C. Edmondson
51 work teams at a furniture manufacturer: psychological safety is linked to learning behavior (seeking feedback, admitting mistakes); learning behavior mediates the link with team performance.
- 2006Ingrid M. Nembhard & Amy C. Edmondson
23 neonatal intensive care units: those of higher professional status feel safer. Inclusive leadership (“leader inclusiveness”) offsets the status gap; safety predicts involvement in improvement work.
- 2011Matthew J. Pearsall & Aleksander P. J. Ellis
126 teams: among members with a utilitarian orientation, high psychological safety increases the tendency toward unethical team behavior. Safety is value-neutral.
- 2019Hong Deng et al.
Two pathways: a safety climate fosters learning and voice by reducing the fear of mistakes, but at the same time lowers work motivation.
- The “only” is a sweeping claim that research does not support: what has been shown are moderate to strong correlations, mostly from cross-sectional and survey data.
- Safety alone is not enough; without high standards and accountability it can lower effort and, under certain conditions, even facilitate unethical behavior.
- How strong the effects are depends on study design and national culture.
Read more: what the research shows
The technical term is psychological safety: the shared belief that one can take interpersonal risks in the team without being harmed. In work teams at a furniture manufacturer, Amy C. Edmondson found that psychological safety is linked to learning behavior and that this learning behavior mediates the link with team performance. Her earlier study in two hospitals showed that nursing teams differ in whether mistakes are detected, reported and used for learning. The meta-analysis by M. Lance Frazier, Stav Fainshmidt, Ryan L. Klinger, Amir Pezeshkan and Veselina Vracheva confirms the link with task performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Ingrid M. Nembhard and Amy C. Edmondson showed that inclusive leadership offsets status differences.
The originFrom team research · not from John C. Maxwell
- 1996OriginFrom team research
Earliest source: Amy C. Edmondson
- 2001For comparison
John C. Maxwell’s The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork has no separate law for it; the closest is “The Law of Communication.”
The related team principles10 Communication · 14 Conflict · 15 Dissent · 12 Reliability
Safety is a prerequisite for “Communication”, “Conflict” and “Dissent”.
It must be distinguished from “Reliability”, which refers to trust in the individual.
It stands in tension with “Effort” and “Scoreboard”: safety without high standards breeds complacency.
The action steps5 steps: Invite input explicitly.
- Invite input explicitly. Ask for concerns and dissenting views – and ask those lowest in rank first. Inclusive leadership offsets status differences.
- Respond to the issue, not to the messenger. How you react to the first piece of bad news decides whether a second one comes.
- Name your own mistakes and open questions first.
- Build safety in as a procedure, for example with a regular after-action review: What went wrong, and what do we learn from it?
- Keep standards high. Safety and clear expectations belong together.
The questions for your team3 questions for your team conversation: When did someone on our team last bring up their own mistake unprompted – and what happened next?
- When did someone on our team last bring up their own mistake unprompted – and what happened next?
- What gets said in our hallways but not in our meetings?
- Who rarely speaks up, and what would make it easier for that person?
Take time for one question at your next team meeting. Talk about it openly and note down what you take away from it.
The picture to rememberThe dots keep their light hidden until a protective circle forms.
- The dots keep their light hidden until a protective circle forms.
- Then the lights rise into the center, and the center grows bright.
What the Team Principle of Safety looks like in practice
Google’s Search for the Perfect Team
In “Project Aristotle,” Google spent about two years studying 180 of its own teams, conducted more than 200 interviews and analyzed more than 250 attributes. Working in the same location, seniority or team size had no significant effect – psychological safety came first.
A Group Without Power
In Pixar’s Braintrust, directors, writers and lead storyboard artists regularly watch one another’s unfinished films and give very candid feedback. The ground rule, according to Edwin Catmull: the group has no authority, and the director in charge does not have to act on the notes.
The Doubt That Never Got Through
On January 16, 2003, a piece of foam strikes the left wing of the space shuttle Columbia; engineers make three attempts to request images of the damage, but the request never gets through, and a warning email is never sent. Sixteen days later the shuttle breaks apart on reentry, and all seven crew members die.
