Viewpoint
A survey on mood or psychological safety intervenes in Safe to, and that is why it is not the number that matters but what happens afterwards. Whoever asks and changes nothing teaches people that speaking up is pointless, and an average also hides which prerequisite of ownership is missing in which team.
Many organizations survey their employees regularly, and the results end up as bars and percentages in a presentation that nobody opens a few weeks later. From the perspective of ownership this is not a side issue, because every survey intervenes in Safe to, that is, in the question of whether people can afford to be honest. It sends a message, and the message is that the answers will have consequences.
If these consequences fail to appear, the message becomes a lesson, and people learn more from it than from any culture initiative. They learn that honesty is asked for and then fizzles out, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. Whoever asks people for their assessment also takes an advance that has to be repaid, preferably quickly and visibly, before disappointment becomes a habit.
Those who ask and do nothing teach that speaking up does not pay off.
Imagine a team that is asked whether it dares to admit mistakes, raise objections and try new things. The people answer honestly, some hesitantly because they do not know who sees the answers, and afterwards nothing happens, no conversation, no change, not even feedback on what came out of it.
The next time they answer differently, more cautiously or more agreeably or not at all, because they have learned that openness means effort and brings no return. This is the same weighing as in the meeting, only applied to the survey itself, and the organization thereby loses the source from which it could have learned. The damage does not stay limited to the survey, because whoever has experienced that honest answers remain without effect transfers this to feedback conversations and retrospectives, until Want to also fades alongside Safe to.
In the newsletter from PsychSafety I read an example: Two teams of six people each answer a question on a scale from one to five. In the first team three people choose the lowest and three the highest level, in the second all six choose the middle. Both teams arrive at 3.0 arithmetically, and yet everyday life in these teams could hardly be more different.
In the first team there are people who dare and others who do not, and the question is what distinguishes the one group from the other, for example different experiences with the manager. In the second team a uniform, moderate experience has emerged that raises entirely different questions, namely whether Safe to has been dampened overall there and by what. The mean answers both cases with the same number and thus says almost nothing about either. Whoever looks only at the number would treat both teams the same although they need completely different things.
A number has the property of ending attention. As soon as a value lies above the threshold that was set, the topic counts as done, and the energy flows to the next project, although nobody knows which of the three prerequisites of ownership hides behind the value. A metric that turns green creates calm, and calm is a scarce good in organizations that nobody disturbs without need.
In the same newsletter I read another example: Two organizations that differ in size, industry and country reach an average of 3.4 and of 4.7, and one might think that the one with the higher value is the safer one. But this cannot be said, because work and context differ, the questions mean something different and the distributions behind the numbers can be almost anything. Worse still, a leadership that sees the high value might lean back or even increase the pressure because people are apparently stable, and thereby aggravate exactly the conditions that were supposed to be measured. The Safe to that the number supposedly proves is then the first thing to be used up.
More useful than a grade is a finding that explains which of the three prerequisites is missing for whom, that is, whether it comes down to Want to, Able to or Safe to and what the range of answers says about it. Even more useful is it when the finding turns into a proposal for what could be tried next, as an experiment that is tested and not as a rule that is worked through.
Such a plan turns the survey into the first step of a change instead of the end point of a data collection. It shows respondents that their answers move something, and thereby answers exactly the question they will ask themselves next time. A proposal that arises from the finding itself also appears more credible than an off-the-shelf catalog of measures, because it shows that someone has really read the answers.
Most surveys look for deficiencies, which is understandable but delivers only half the truth. Equally important is the question of when speaking up succeeds in a team and what makes that possible, because what works can be continued, and what is not named erodes unnoticed while attention lies elsewhere.
A team in which people speak up usually does something specific for it, a habit, a process or an attitude of the manager. When this becomes visible, it can be protected before it is lost through time pressure or a change at the top.
This also changes the tone of the evaluation. When strengths become visible alongside weaknesses, teams feel less judged and more understood, and they handle the results differently, namely as an invitation to develop further instead of a verdict.
Then there is the question of anonymity. Whoever wants honest answers has to make sure that nobody can be traced back, and this requires a minimum group size, because in a team of three every answer can be assigned to a person. In such cases a conversation is more honest than a questionnaire with the promise of an anonymity that does not exist.
Surveys on culture or psychological safety almost always touch Safe to. They ask whether people speak up, admit mistakes or dare something new, and they thereby intervene in the experience that shapes Safe to. If this intervention is taken seriously, it can strengthen trust, and if it is merely ticked off, it weakens it.
It is worth looking at the sequence. First Safe to has to carry far enough for honest answers to be given, then the organization has to show that it does something with the honesty, and only after that can ownership grow, because people experience that their assessment changes the work. A survey without consequences interrupts this sequence at the very first step, and everything that follows builds on ground that does not hold.
Before you plan the next survey, it is therefore worth looking at your own prerequisites.
This sounds strict but is meant to relieve. Nobody has to change everything a survey brings to light, and nobody has to fulfill every wish. It is enough to choose one or two things, tackle them and tell the respondents what is happening, including what you deliberately do not do and why.
A simple rule helps here, set before the survey and clarifying three things, namely what happens with the answers, when the results are reported back and who is responsible for it. This commitment can be small as long as it is kept, because reliability counts for more than scope.
Whoever is not prepared for this should not ask. The silence that an unanswered survey leaves behind is deeper than the silence before it, and it lasts longer.
The Assessment compares your organization with others and delivers concrete recommendations, not just a diagnosis.
Start the Assessment