Psychological safety

Psychological safety is a key element of emotional wellbeing. It is a prerequisite for high performance, especially in a professional context. Teams that wish to perform at a high level on a consistent basis need to create an environment in which individual members can bring their whole selves.

This is often referred to as belonging or wholehearted living.

SCARF theory

David Rock’s work on Neuroleadership provides a number of useful tools and frameworks for deconstructing psychological safety in a social setting. One I have found particular instructive, from his book Your Brain At Work, is SCARF theory. I’ll provide a brief summary below but here is a short talk for those who’d prefer that:

The key takeaway is that we are wired to be social creatures. A large portion of the resources of our brains are therefore devoted to understanding any given social situation we find ourselves in. We feel social threats (e.g. being embarrassed or ostracised) as strongly as we feel physical threats (e.g. being confronted with a deadly weapon) since our brain treats the two as equal.

Our brain is programmed to detect five key aspects of social interaction. In each case - and depending on how it judges the nature of the interaction - the brain will trigger a response to the source: either a threat response (‘away’) or a reward response (‘toward’). The five aspects are what make up the SCARF acronym:

The more of these aspects that are triggered in a particular interaction, the greater the strength of the reaction one can expect. The same is true whether the reaction is negative or positive. The key to effective communication and positive social interaction is to take account of how one’s words and actions will affect the perceptions of others’ answers to the five questions above.