Use cases / Software company

Client case

Deepler Culture · Culture

Making psychological safety in teams visible

A fast-growing software company wanted a culture in which teams dare to share mistakes and hold each other accountable. But how safe did employees really feel? With Deepler Culture, the company mapped psychological safety per team, next to the culture leadership had in mind.

Sector

IT

Target group

All teams

Solution

Deepler Culture

Application

Psychological safety

In brief

The question

Do teams dare to share mistakes and hold each other accountable?

The insight

Big differences between teams, even within the same department.

The result

Teams discuss what safety means for them.

The question: how safe do teams really feel?

The company grew fast, and with growth came new teams and new managers. The management team noticed that problems sometimes surfaced late. The question was whether employees felt safe enough to report mistakes and give criticism.

The approach: a culture survey with safety as a tension field

The culture survey looked at opposites that belong to psychological safety, such as hiding mistakes versus sharing mistakes, and keeping harmony versus holding each other accountable. Employees indicated where their team stands now and where they want to go. The management team indicated its ambition on the same opposites.

Culture as a tension field

Opposites instead of one score

Current and desired

Where is the team, where does it want to go?

Ambition of the MT

Next to the experience of the teams

The insight: safety differs per team

At organisation level the picture looked positive. Per team the results varied widely, even within the same department. In some teams mistakes were discussed openly, in others they were preferably kept hidden. The difference was often related to how the manager responded to bad news.

The result: safety open for discussion per team

Every team discussed its own culture map, with the question of what is needed to share mistakes sooner. Managers gained insight into the effect of their response to bad news. The management team uses the results to let the culture grow consciously with the company.
  • Psychological safety visible per team
  • A conversation about behaviour, not about a number
  • Managers aware of their role

Working on psychological safety: three lessons

What this company learned about safety in teams:

Look per team

An average hides the teams where it pinches.

Discuss behaviour

What do we do when something goes wrong? That is the core.

Start with the manager

The response to bad news determines whether people share it.
Read more about measuring organisational culture, or see how a housing association makes culture change measurable.
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Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions about psychological safety

The shared feeling in a team that you can report a mistake, ask a question or give criticism without risk.

With questions about concrete behaviour in the team, such as sharing mistakes and holding each other accountable. By comparing the current and desired situation, you see where a team wants to go.

Because psychological safety differs greatly per team. An average at organisation level can hide the teams where it pinches.

Large. How a manager responds to mistakes and bad news determines whether employees share them next time.

Yes. Results per team are only shown with sufficient response, so nobody can be identified.

Read more

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