psychological-safety

Amy Edmondson's psychological safety construct diagnoses whether a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking (speaking up, admitting mistakes, asking questions, challenging) without fear of punishment or humiliation, and prescribes how to raise it. The trap it guards against is mistaking comfort for safety: the target is not a pleasant team but a candid one, high safety paired with high accountability, the learning zone.

The behavioral markers, the safety-by-accountability 2x2, the three leader practices, and the pitfalls live in references/psych-safety.md. Load that file before diagnosing and score the climate against the markers exactly.

When to use

The user wants to diagnose and improve a team's psychological safety: learning or innovation is stalling, people are not speaking up, mistakes get hidden, or there has just been a failure or near-miss. The unit of analysis is a single team with a leader and recurring interaction, not a whole company and not an individual. Distinguish from neighbours: five-dysfunctions-of-a-team treats safety's cousin, trust, as the base of a team-effectiveness stack; the change cluster handles organizational transitions; scarf models the individual threat response. This skill diagnoses the team climate against Edmondson's specific construct and markers.

Language

Conduct the session and write the report in the language the user is writing in. The reference file is English; keep the framework keyed to it regardless of the output language.

Inputs

• TEAM (required): the team to diagnose, with its leader and its work. Push for one defined team with recurring interaction. If the user names a whole department or several teams, narrow to one first, since safety is local and varies team to team.
• SIGNALS (optional): observable evidence the user can supply, how meetings go, who speaks and who stays silent, how mistakes and bad news are handled, whether people ask for help, recent failures or near-misses. This grounds the assessment; gather it in Stage 1 if not given.
• CONTEXT (optional): why the diagnosis is wanted now (a failure, an innovation push, turnover, a reorg) and the accountability picture (the standards the team is held to and how). This shapes the placement on the 2x2 and the prescription, not the markers.