Member-only story
Expanding The Safety Ecosystem Model
It’s More Than A Notion
“Safety” as an ecosystem is a pervasive concept in the physical realm of human activity. In the literature, it is primarily applied to the protection of human life, health, and property. The universe of technical discussions and components of safety at tactical levels reflects a wide array of midrange approaches to safety in a variety of disciplines, while the sheer number and diversity of safety ecosystem depictions and models reveal a rich and robustly complex topic.
Yet, there’s still a ‘missing link’ in safety literature and discourse.
In recent decades, the term of art, “Psychological Safety,” emerged, then stuck the landing in the 1980s workplace when teams became the sweet spot domain. Small teams came into vogue as a preferred technology for business problem-solving, for reasons not well known, but timely. The entrenched art of Psychological Safety settled into a sense of comfort defined as “…being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career.” [end note 1] In psychologically safe teams, members are said to feel sufficiently accepted and respected such that they share the belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. [end note 2]
