Psychological Type – A Catalyst for Propelling Team Trust and Psychological Safety in Organizations

About Psychological Safety

Psychological Safety – describes an organizational culture wherein people can speak up without fear of retribution. Amy Edmondson, renowned author, social science researcher and Harvard professor, defined the term as, “the belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” Tim Clark, Founder of LeaderFactor, and the creator of the 4 Levels of Psychological Safety, says it’s “an environment of rewarded vulnerability.”

Decades of social science research have shown that psychological safety is vital for high-performing teams. It’s paramount for morale and engagement, learning and knowledge sharing, performance, reporting errors or mistakes, and contributing ideas for improvement. In a well-known two-year study of what constitutes a high-performing team, Google discovered that psychological safety was the most important factor, a necessary component for all other markers of success.

Organizations that don’t create space for their team members to be themselves – to be different ask questions without fear of looking dumb, make mistakes without embarrassment, ask for help without retribution, take risks, and contribute their strengths – suffer the consequences. An atmosphere of fear and retribution forces self-protection and silence, leading to individual pain and fatal organizational errors (see The Fearless Organization for examples of large corporate failures).

My Personal Experience

As a young consultant, I was assigned the exceptionally challenging task of reviewing a client’s work processes and preparing recommendations for improvement. When I approached a colleague to collaborate and brainstorm ideas, she told me she couldn’t discuss the project; our director wanted me to “prove myself.”

Feeling inadequate and paralyzed, I confronted my boss and asked why he prevented my peers from talking with me about the project. I expressed my trepidation for speaking up to him about the issue, as I feared it would be held against me in my performance evaluation. He thanked me, promised it wouldn’t, and, much to my surprise, reassigned the project to another consultant. As predicted, it showed up in my yearly review – apparently, I was not an “independent thinker.”  And so the story goes, I left for greener pastures.

What if my director had understood the value of collaboration, brainstorming ideas, and my need to discuss things with others to find the best solutions?

My (unknowing) experiment of being vulnerable in an unsafe environment didn’t work. I became more cautious about speaking up at work.

Herein lies the dilemma: For a psychologically safe culture to take hold, individuals first need to feel psychologically safe;  interpersonal trust must first be intact at the team level. It is up to each team member to create that trust, which takes a lot of work, sustained energy, and a structured and measured approach.

Enter – Psychological Type

Psychological Type – is a dynamic theory of personality created by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theory explains how people naturally focus their psychological energy or awareness; it is about how we see the world and how that colors our behavior.

Applying the theory provides teams with increased self- and other awareness, fostering a deeper sense of safety to be oneself. The awareness that Type brings naturally propels a safer environment throughout the organization.

Here’s how:

Beyond the Obvious

Type shows us that differences between people are real and observable. This may sound like a blinding glimpse of the obvious. We know that other people are different from us, and we all accept and honor differences, right? Don’t we wish!

In fact, in just 0.07 seconds, our brain senses whether or not to trust someone, and we are more likely to trust someone who is more like us than not (see Conversational Intelligence by the late Judith Glaser). We constantly, often unconsciously, compare ourselves to others. When we sense a difference, uncertainty and fear sends our primitive brains into high gear, quickly pulling the emergency brake. We make assumptions about the other that lead to negative judgments.

Challenging Assumptions 

When teams are exposed to Psychological Type as a framework for understanding behavior, team members are challenged to alter their assumptions about each other. Negative judgments fall away, paving the path to more connection. Understanding the Dominant Function of one’s Type is especially helpful in this regard. (Click here for definitions of the Eight Dominant Functions.)

From Flighty to an Appreciation for Creative Contributions

For example, a team member labeled as flighty selects a preference for Extraverted Intuition in a workshop. Her natural communication style—contextual jumping topics to connect the dots—now makes sense to her teammates. It comes directly from how she sees the world, through a continual stream of possibilities and making connections between things others may not see. She becomes someone who can be counted on to contribute passionately to creative brainstorming sessions.

From Slow to an Appreciation for Accurate Data

Or the team member thought to be slow to catch on and express thoughts before a workshop. Some teammates assumed his silence to indicate hoarding data for competitive advantage. His teammates came to see that his Dominant Function of Introverted Sensing, an internal mental process that methodically compares past experiences to the current situation, was at work. His teammates gave him space to think about and gather data before a meeting, and they began to listen more intently to the data he presented.

Understanding Psychological Type can help teams reframe behavior that seemed suspect or laden with negative judgment as simply a function of people using different Mental Functions. This opening up—through increasing self and other awareness at a measured pace—goes a long way to creating environments where people feel safe to be themselves. It’s a robust foundation for integrating psychological safety throughout the organization.

To learn more about how Psychological Type lays the foundation for Psychological Safety and what it can bring to your organization, contact me at cindy@thepeopleskillsgroup.com.