Psychological Safety in Work Teams: Is it Group Trust?

 

In her 1999 article, Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, Amy Edmonson introduces the construct of team psychological safety, which she defines as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”  She defines interpersonal risk-taking as, “a sense of confidence that others will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up.”  What differs psychological safety from trust, as it is defined in the literature, is that the former is an inter-group phenomenon, and the latter is (in the literature) interpersonal.   But the definitions and mechanisms described are quite similar. 

 

Rousseau et al. (1998) argue most scholars can agree on a fundamental definition of trust. They noted that "confident expectations" and a "willingness to be vulnerable" are critical components of most definitions of trust (Morrow, Hansen, Pearson, 2004). Consistent with this view, Morrow, Hansen, Pearson (2004) defined trust as the extent to which one believes that others will not act to exploit one's vulnerabilities (Barney and Hansen, 1994; Mayer et al., 1995; McAllister, 1995). 

 

McAllister (1995), for example, explores the nature and functioning of relationships of interpersonal trust among managers and professionals in organizations, the factors influencing trust's development, and shows a positive effect on performance when trust was present in these relationships in an empirical study.  Building on that and other research, Morrow, Hansen, Pearson (2004) argue that trust evolves from a pattern of careful, rational thinking (cognitive-based), coupled with an examination of one's feelings, instincts and intuition (affect-based). 

 

Similarly, Edmonson (1999) writes that a group “will conclude that making a mistake does not lead to rejection when they have had a team experience in which appreciation and interest are expressed in response to discussion of their own and others’ mistakes.” Such shared experiences, occurring over time, create the tacit belief that that the team is a psychologically safe place. The phenomenon Edmonson (1999) describes as psychological safety could arguably be called “group trust,” which would be a development in the trust literature, but it may also be more than that. 

 

Edmonson (1999) observes that psychological safety leads to improved performance through enhanced learning, not necessarily through the combination of individual trust and/or affect.  In her research, learning behavior mediates between team psychological safety and team performance.

 

Her results support an integrative perspective in which context support/team leader coaching and shared beliefs together shape team performance outcomes.  As the group feels more confident to share information, more information is exchanged and therefore all collective information is more likely to be shared.

 

Edmonson (1999) Psychological Safety Model:

Cognitive reminders to encourage sharing context/coaching ->  Multiple experiences of sharing without consequence -> Psychological safety -> Willingness to share -> Inter-group learning -> Improved performance

 

Trust literatures generally describe the benefits of cognitive trust as increased voluntary collaboration and affective trust as increased information sharing (McAllister,1995). (Note also that trust in economics literatures has also been found through empirical studies to reduce transaction costs by avoiding costly negotiations and contracting (Dyer, 1997; Sako, 1992)).

 

McAllister (1995), Morrow, Hansen, Pearson (2004) Trust Model:

Interactions and cues with other agent provide data, which are processed and the output is:

 

1) Careful, rational thought about the competence of the other and structures in place to protect the self-> Cognitive-based trust -> Trust the evaluated person and actively engage in collaborative work and seek knowledge from him/her

 

2) An examination of one's feelings, instincts and intuitions about the interactions -> Affect-based trust -> Open sharing of sensitive personal information, knowledge sharing, idea sharing

 

Edmonson’s psychological safety model, it could be argued, describes a method for the creation of affective trust, which therefore encourages information sharing, which then leads to increased group performance.  Through that analogy, one may argue that missing from her model is the cognitive-based trust mechanisms.  However, this may be a feature of interpersonal trust which is not able to be generalized when moving from micro to meso trust.  It would be interesting to observe groups that employ psychological safety pre and post employment.  Will there be increases in levels of cognitive trust, which would manifest itself in increased collaboration, in addition to the increased information sharing?

 

Based on Edmonson’s work, the UVAHS could benefit from employing psychological safety into its groups.  We would like to propose a grounded study in which we and observe and report on current group interaction, introduce Edmonson’s psychological safety methods, and observe to see if improvements occur and (if they do) whether the improvements come from increased learning through affect, and if we are able to observe any improvements in cognitive trust as well.  If we observe measures of both cognitive and affective in a collective “group trust” we may bring the field one step closer to solving the mystery of local versus generalized trust as posed by Kramer and Cook (2004) – why do people generally trust their doctor, but not doctors in general?  Or, in the context of one of the health system’s problems, “Why do doctors trust their department, but not the health system in general?”