Team Psychological Safety & Individual Experience: Why The Team Can Feel Different to Each Individual

Public speaking is one of the most commonly named fears. Presenting on stage, in front of an audience, and speaking out in a meeting are certainly not the same, but both require being on display and being visible to a room. At the core, both trigger a fear of being negatively evaluated or rejected. Whether it is an audience full of strangers or a team meeting of ten people, some would rather wear an invisibility cloak than be seen.

You have probably experienced a situation where you hesitated to state your opinion, for fear of sounding ridiculous or not being good enough, even when your opinion was very much valued. This can appear in group settings, but also individually. If the fear were only about the group, a safer team climate could solve it.

Psychological safety is one of the most influential ideas in organizational research. There is extensive literature on how to build safe teams, but we have spent less time asking what an individual needs in order to feel safe. Psychological safety describes the whole group. What we have considered far less is why the same room feels different to each individual in it.

What is psychological safety?

By definition, psychological safety is “the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking” (Edmondson, 2018). Amy Edmondson’s research with 51 work teams in a manufacturing company shows that psychological safety fosters learning behavior such as asking for feedback, asking for help, talking openly about errors, and sharing information. People are more likely to offer ideas, admit mistakes, and ask for help or provide feedback in these groups. This matters especially in work environments where safety is crucial, such as the healthcare and aviation industries.

In 1965, Edgar Schein was one of the first to explore the concept of psychological safety at work. Schein stated that people have a tendency to fear novelty and learning and labeled this fear of trying something new as learning anxiety.

By creating a safer environment for new learning, this threat can be reduced. This matters because even the idea of a threat reduces mental flexibility and, with that, learning behavior. Establishing a learning culture starts with inviting counterarguments, celebrating failure, recognizing achievements, and most of all, modeling vulnerability as a leader.

However, even if the team establishes psychological safety and removes the risk of negative evaluation, it cannot remove the person’s own expectations towards it. Internal beliefs like self-doubt and past experiences shape what we expect from others, and these expectations were formed long before the team existed.

Where individual expectation comes from

It is more complex than anticipated to separate the past from the present. We tend to act with past learned behaviors in daily situations, and without much awareness, bring our personal life into work. What we now perceive as threats can be mostly embedded from our early experiences at home, school, or social settings. Detert and Edmondson (2011) call these implicit voice theories: beliefs about the risk of speaking up that develop during an individual's life, through both direct experience and learning, and are used unconsciously.

This means that at some point in life, we learned to respond that way due to a negative or positive experience. Usually, bad experiences like being bullied as a kid, being judged by peers or being told by a teacher that you have no talent tend to shape our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us more than the good events do. Over time, people develop a protective layer to keep themselves safe from difficult experiences and to avoid repeating them. This layer takes many forms. For instance, the child who was bullied for how they looked may learn not to make themselves visible later in life.

The same idea appears in Bowlby’s attachment theory (1973), which proposes that in adulthood, individuals possess a dominant attachment pattern that tends to remain relatively stable. It arises from early experiences with attachment figures such as parents and teachers, and influences emotional regulation, seeking or avoiding close relationships, and other behaviors throughout the life span. Later researchers organised it along two dimensions: attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance.

You probably know both types of people. One agrees and says yes to everything even though they would like to disagree. These are anxiously attached; they hold a negative self-concept and fear rejection, which leads to overdependence on others and a need for constant approval. On the other side are those who never ask for help, become overwhelmed with making any commitment, and withdraw from the situation. These are avoidantly attached; they hold a negative view of others, feel that people are unreliable when needed, and are uncomfortable with closeness. Securely attached individuals have a healthier self-concept and read others as more trustworthy, which makes them less afraid of making mistakes or being judged for saying something wrong.

We interpret others through what we already expect, and those expectations shape what we see. In a study, anxiously attached individuals rated their leaders as transformational (inspiring and motivating) even when those leaders did not show any of the relevant characteristics (Hansbrough, 2012). Avoidantly attached team members can resist leadership, based on their prior experiences with unsupportive relationships (Keller, 2003).

This suggests that Edmondson’s psychological safety theory and Bowlby’s attachment theory describe similar mechanisms on different levels. One explores it at a team level, and one at an individual level.

How we relate to groups

We also form attachments to groups. Someone may feel like a valued member of one team and an outsider in another. Group anxiety looks much like attachment anxiety: keeping issues to yourself and thinking of yourself as a weaker member of the group than you really are. Group avoidance is the opposite, identifying less with the team and playing by your own rules rather than the group's.

Closeness in a group helps the people who worry about being accepted; it reduces the anxiety they came in with. For the people who prefer distance, the same closeness makes things worse (Rom and Mikulincer, 2003). Cohesive groups require their members to share more, spend more time together, and get closer, and that is precisely what an avoidant person is reluctant to do. Hence, a team dinner might be experienced as relaxing for one person and as a difficult task for another.

Having a mix of different people within a team can be an advantage and is positively linked to how well the team gets its work done. For instance, anxiously attached individuals tend to be more alert to potential problems and more open to self-development, while avoidant individuals are more willing to question the norms.

What this means in practice

There are practical methods to build better relationships in a diverse team, and to establish safety at both the individual and the team level.

• For leaders, creating safety is not only about the team level but also the individual level, by paying attention to what each person brings to the table and being aware of other perspectives as well. For instance, asking the quiet one directly, in front of everyone, is well-intentioned but often the least effective. Building more than one route into a conversation, such as written channels or spontaneous informal meetings, can work better.

• Modelling vulnerability in the team by speaking out, stating mistakes or asking questions will show others that it is a safe place to do the same. This also fosters a learning culture by reframing mistakes as learning opportunities. In some cases, it might take more time to establish the safe feeling, patience and consistency are important.

• On the individual level, it helps to recognize that internal beliefs and attachment patterns are not fixed, and that a different outlook can be developed. Starting with knowing your own development areas and working on them is important. Step out of the comfort zone by starting small with the things you want to change. This can be as simple as voicing your opinion in daily life or speaking in a closed group.

Creating psychological safety is about the team level as much as the individual level, whether in the office, on the operation front, or any other group. Even when there are standard expectations, people inevitably bring their past experiences with them. A team can have psychological safety, but the one person experiencing it differently is definitely worth noticing.

References

Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. Basic Books.

Detert, J. R., & Edmondson, A. C. (2011). Implicit voice theories: Taken-for-granted rules of self-censorship at work. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 461–488.

Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Wiley.

Hansbrough, T. K. (2012). The construction of a transformational leader: Follower attachment and leadership perceptions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(6), 1533–1549.

Keller, T. (2003). Parental images as a guide to leadership sense-making: An attachment perspective on implicit leadership theories. The Leadership Quarterly, 14(2), 141–160.

Rom, E., & Mikulincer, M. (2003). Attachment theory and group processes: The association between attachment style and group-related representations, goals, memories, and functioning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6), 1220–1235.

Schein, E. H., & Bennis, W. G. (1965). Personal and organizational change through group methods: The laboratory approach. Wiley.

Yip, J., Ehrhardt, K., Black, H., & Walker, D. O. (2018). Attachment theory at work: A review and directions for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(2), 185–198.