Master's Degree!

Tue, 27 May 2008 10:02:58 -0700

I've just graduated from Sonoma State University's Master's program in Organization Development. My culminating paper is a case study of psychological safety in an interdisciplinary healthcare team.

In Organization Development we are familiar with the idea that behaviors such as sharing information, articulating differing opinions, asking for help or feedback, talking about errors and accidents, and experimenting are a prerequisite for team learning—even more than for individual learning. It is through these behaviors that a team can improve their collective understanding of a situation, or discover unintended consequences of their actions.

These behaviors involve risks such as loss of face, alienation within the group, and more concrete losses such as promotions, pay, and work assignments. Individuals have tacit beliefs about the riskiness of these learning behaviors. The feeling of threat that these behaviors evoke is specific to the group context, not solely to the individual: the culture of the group molds individual beliefs about risk. When people expect that these risky behaviors may be punished, they limit themselves in a way that inhibits learning. A belief that the team is a safe environment for interpersonal risk-taking is called psychological safety.

Psychological safety allows disagreement to be voiced. Divergent ideas—if they generate communication among colleagues—support the development of shared cognition, allowing the group to act in coordinated fashion, because they are all working to solve the same problem.

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Master's Degree!