One-on-Ones

Psychological safety meeting template

Get your team member's perspective on the level of psychological safety within the team.

Psychological safety questions for your one-on-one meetings

What is psychological safety in the workplace? Research has shown that psychological safety is a key ingredient of high-performing teams. At first, you assume high-performing teams are founded on the right blend of complementary hard skills, but it’s a balance of human-centered traits that set the right foundation for performance. As coined by the brilliant Amy C. Edmondson, psychological safety simply means teams trust each other to experiment without judgment, voice opinions without being shamed, and fail without being labeled a failure.

A good way to see if your team feels psychologically safe is to speak with each person individually. We’ve prepared a meeting template for psychological safety! This template is designed to discuss behaviors related to psychological safety within the team and identify areas for improvement.

When to assess psychological safety

We created this meeting template to help you assess your team’s level of psychological safety when you think it needs improvement.

Here are some examples of when psychological safety is low:

Your team is avoiding difficult or sensitive conversations.
Your sense that your team is not comfortable owning up to mistakes.
Your team doesn’t ask one help from others when they are struggling.

How to improve psychological safety at work

The feedback you gather from your team will lead you in the right direction. Use what you learned from the one-on-one meetings to create a set of team values everyone has to commit to and hold each other accountable to. It’s even better if you invite the whole team to take part in this process. They will feel like you heard their concerns – and just like that, you took the first step to improve psychological safety!