The role of psychological safety
Hijacking this important concept will have disastrous consequences.
When Maurice “Mo” Cheeks retired from playing basketball in 1993, he was the NBA’s all-time leader in steals and fifth overall in assists. He subsequently served as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons, and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018. But arguably the most memorable moment of his 30+ professional career had little to do with basketball and everything to do with a simple gesture of humanity and grace.
Eighth-grade student Natalie Gilbert had won a contest to sing the national anthem before a Dallas-Portland playoff game on April 25, 2003. She was recovering from the flu and was nervous, as any 13-year-old singing before a large crowd would be. A few seconds into it, she stumbled on the lyrics, dug her head into the microphone and began desperately looking around the arena for help. Suddenly Cheeks appeared besides Natalie, put his arm around her and began to feed her the lines. They sang the rest of the anthem together and inspired the crowd to join in, culminating with a standing ovation.
The iconic duet performance was a perfect representation of what leadership scholar Amy Edmonson would call a “small moment of learning”. According to Edmonson, psychological safety entails a shared belief that no one will be punished or humiliated for taking risks or making mistakes. When this is absent in an organization, school or even a sports arena, members will tend not to speak up, question the status quo, suggest new ideas, nor call bullshit when needed. Conversely, a climate of openness and tolerance will free people up to not fear each other.
In the above scenario, Cheeks not only offered Natalie encouragement but also modeled risk-taking by singing along with his scratchy voice (he later admitted being unsure whether he’d remember the lyrics himself). It’s worth noting that at no point did he suggest she could walk away from her commitment. Quite the contrary. He made sure that she completed the task at hand, by challenging her on the spot and helping her focus on what she had set out to do. In other words, a hug alone would have perhaps been comforting but wouldn’t have helped Natalie achieve her goal (upper-left quadrant on the graph below); on the other hand, no intervention at all would have left her drowning in her own anxiety, fearing the biggest humiliation of her life (bottom-right quadrant). Instead, Cheeks nudged her kindly toward the “learning zone”.
Contrast psychological safety with “safetyism”, a concept that Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt introduced in their book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Among other things, the authors explore the link between paranoid parenting and the loss of free play, and the rise in depression and anxiety among teenagers. They also raise concerns about the increasing oversensitivity of college students to words, as exemplified by their demands for “trigger warnings”, “safe spaces”, and formal apologies (oftentimes on behalf of faculty and admin staff) for “microaggressions” - all of it in the name of emotional well-being, i.e. protection from “psychological harm”.
This picture of presumed fragility now seems to run deep throughout American institutions, well beyond the academic environment. Amongst the most alarming symptoms are the constant policing of speech, the stress-reduction strategies when discussing historical events or scientific discoveries, and the often vindictive punishment of individuals who bring up topics that may be considered as “problematic”.
A national survey by the Cato Institute (in collaboration with YouGov) found that self‐censorship is significantly on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of its citizens say the political (and politically correct) climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. Amazingly, the cohort of ‘Strong Liberals’ shows the greatest increase in self-censorship from 2017 to 2020. Perhaps more concerning still, nearly a third (32%) of employed Americans say they personally are worried about missing out on career opportunities or losing their job if their political opinions became known.
This widespread phenomenon is poised to bring about disastrous outcomes, not just in terms of societal wellbeing but also in terms of creativity, innovation and productive output. In sum, a knowledge economy can hardly succeed amidst a climate of suppression and intimidation. As Edmonson has pointed out, what good does having great talent do if no one is able to speak their mind?