Psychological Safety Diagnostic & Action Toolkit

Document Purpose

This toolkit provides the necessary resources to measure the level of psychological safety within your teams and equip managers with practical actions to foster a more open, inclusive, and effective "speak-up" culture. Psychological safety is not about being "nice"; it is a critical condition for high-performing teams. It is the foundation upon which the principles of Logos Ethica are built, enabling the lucid dialogue, operational coherence, and authentic trust required to achieve sustainable success.

Part 1: Tool Blueprint & Overview

This section outlines the foundational design and purpose of the toolkit.

1.1. Primary Objective

• To provide teams and their leaders with a clear, data-driven understanding of their current level of psychological safety, and to offer a set of practical, targeted actions to build and maintain a culture where every team member feels safe to be themselves, learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo. By achieving this, you will unlock higher levels of innovation, improve risk management by surfacing problems faster, and increase employee engagement and retention.

1.2. Key Components

• A. The Diagnostic Survey: A short, confidential survey for employees to assess their team's psychological safety across four key dimensions. This provides the objective data—the "what"—to start a meaningful conversation.

• B. Team Results Report & Debrief Guide: A simple, visual report for managers showing their team's aggregated, anonymous scores. It is paired with a step-by-step guide to help managers understand the data and facilitate a non-defensive, constructive debrief session with their team to explore the "why" behind the scores.

• C. Manager's Action Planning Guide: A library of practical, evidence-based actions a manager can take to improve their team's psychological safety. This guide provides the "how"—concrete steps, behavioral nudges, and conversational techniques categorized by the four dimensions, allowing for targeted improvement.

1.3. The Four Dimensions of Psychological Safety

Our diagnostic is built around four distinct and crucial pillars of team safety. They are sequential; each level builds upon the last.

• 1. Inclusion Safety: The foundational human need to feel safe to be yourself and be accepted as a member of the team, including your unique attributes and characteristics.

• 2. Learner Safety: The need to feel safe to engage in the learning process—to ask questions, give and receive feedback, experiment, and make mistakes without fear of being punished, shamed, or seen as incompetent.

• 3. Contributor Safety: The need to feel safe to use your skills and voice to make a meaningful contribution. It's the confidence that your team wants you to apply your talents to improve the work.

• 4. Challenger Safety: The highest level of safety. The need to feel safe to speak up and challenge the status quo—to question an idea from leadership, raise a concern about a project's direction, or point out a potential ethical problem.

Part 2: The Diagnostic Survey

This survey should be administered anonymously. The instructions and questions are designed to be clear, concise, and focused on the team environment.

Introduction for Survey Participants

"Thank you for taking a few minutes to complete this survey. Its purpose is to help us understand our team's environment and identify ways to make it even better. Your responses are completely anonymous and confidential. The results will be shared with your manager only in an aggregated format, with no individual responses identifiable. Please answer honestly based on your typical experience on your immediate team."

Survey Questions

Please rate the following statements on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree).

Dimension 1: Inclusion Safety

1. I feel like a valued and accepted member of this team.

2. I can be my authentic self without fear of negative consequences.

3. Members of this team respect and value each other's unique backgrounds and perspectives.

Dimension 2: Learner Safety

4. On this team, it is safe to ask questions when I don't know something.

5. Team members are not punished or shamed for making mistakes; we treat them as learning opportunities.

6. I feel comfortable giving and receiving honest feedback with my teammates.

Dimension 3: Contributor Safety

7. I feel empowered to contribute my ideas during team discussions.

8. My unique skills and talents are valued and utilized by the team.

9. It is clear to me how my work contributes to the team's goals.

Dimension 4: Challenger Safety

10. I feel safe to voice a dissenting opinion or challenge a decision made by the team leader.

11. We can have difficult conversations on this team without it becoming personal or hostile.

12. If I saw a potential problem or ethical concern, I would feel confident raising it with the team.

Part 3: Team Results Report & Debrief Guide

This section is for managers. It provides a template for sharing results and a guide for leading the team conversation.

3.1. The Team Results Report (Template)

Your team's results will be presented in a simple bar chart format, showing the average score (from 1 to 5) for each of the four dimensions.

(Example of how the report would be described)

"The report shows four bars, one for each dimension. For example:

• Inclusion Safety: 4.5

• Learner Safety: 4.2

• Contributor Safety: 3.8

• Challenger Safety: 3.1

The report would also include the two highest-scoring and two lowest-scoring individual questions to highlight specific strengths and opportunities.

3.2. How to Analyze Your Team's Results

Before you share the results with your team, it's important to understand what they mean. Use this guide to interpret the scores and prioritize your focus.

Interpreting the Scores (on a 1-5 scale):

• 4.0 - 5.0 (Green Zone - A Clear Strength): This indicates a healthy and positive environment for this dimension. Your team generally feels safe here. The goal is to understand what's working well and ensure you continue those behaviors.

• 3.0 - 3.9 (Yellow Zone - An Opportunity Area): This is a mixed result. Some team members may feel safe, while others do not. The environment is inconsistent. This is a clear opportunity for focused improvement.

• Below 3.0 (Red Zone - An Urgent Priority): A score in this range indicates a significant problem. A meaningful portion of your team feels unsafe in this dimension. This requires immediate attention and action.

How to Prioritize: The Sequential Rule

It can be tempting to jump straight to your lowest score. However, the four dimensions of psychological safety are sequential and build on each other like a pyramid. You must ensure the foundational levels are solid before you can effectively work on the higher levels.

• Rule #1: Check Your Foundation First. Before you do anything else, look at your score for Inclusion Safety. If this score is in the Yellow or Red Zone (below 4.0), this is your starting point, regardless of any other score. A team that doesn't feel included cannot be expected to learn, contribute, or challenge effectively.

• Rule #2: Work Sequentially. Once Inclusion Safety is strong, look at Learner Safety. Once that is strong, move to Contributor Safety, and finally to Challenger Safety. For example, if your scores are:

• Inclusion: 4.2 (Green)

• Learner: 3.5 (Yellow)

• Contributor: 4.1 (Green)

• Challenger: 3.2 (Yellow)
  Your priority is Learner Safety, not Challenger Safety, even though its score is lower. You must first create an environment where people feel safe to learn before you can expect them to challenge the status quo.

• When is action absolutely needed? Any score below 3.5 should be considered a clear signal that action is needed. Any score below 3.0 is a red flag that requires immediate and focused intervention.

3.3. The Manager's Debrief Guide

Goal: To facilitate a constructive, non-defensive conversation with your team to understand the "why" behind the scores and collaboratively decide on a focus area, guided by the sequential rule.

Step 1: Prepare Yourself

• Review and analyze the results using the interpretation guide above. Identify your priority area based on the sequential rule.

• Avoid the temptation to get defensive. The scores are not a judgment of you; they are a reflection of the team's collective experience.

Step 2: Frame the Conversation with Your Team

• Start by thanking them and reinforcing confidentiality.

• State a positive intent. "My goal for this conversation is for us to identify one or two things we can do together to make this an even better team to be a part of."

Step 3: Share the Data & Ask Open-Ended Questions

• Present the high-level scores. Show the bar chart with the average scores for the four dimensions.

• Start with the positive. "Let's start with our highest-scoring area. What are we doing well here that we should continue doing?"

• Explore the priority opportunity area (based on the sequential rule). "Based on our results, the first area for us to focus on is [e.g., Learner Safety]. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. What might make it difficult for us to ask questions or learn from mistakes on this team?"

• Use powerful, open-ended questions:

• "What does this score mean to you?"

• "Can you share any general examples of when this feels easy, or when it feels difficult?"

• "What might be one small thing we could change that would improve our score in this area?"

Step 4: Decide on a Focus Area & Commit to Action

• Confirm the focus area. "Based on our conversation, it seems we're aligned that focusing on [e.g., Learner Safety] is the right place to start. I'm committed to working on this with you."

• Transition to the Action Planning Guide. "Great. I'm going to use the Manager's Action Planning Guide from the toolkit to find some concrete ideas we can try. I'll share a proposal at our next team meeting."

Part 4: Manager's Action Planning Guide

This is a library of practical, actionable ideas for managers to improve their team's psychological safety. Choose one or two actions that feel most relevant to your team's specific opportunity area.

Actions to Improve Inclusion Safety

• Run a "Personal User Manual" Session: Have each team member fill out a one-page "user manual" about themselves (e.g., "How I like to receive feedback," "My working style," "What people misunderstand about me") and share it with the team.

• Start Meetings with a Personal Check-in: Begin team meetings with a quick, non-work-related question (e.g., "What was the highlight of your weekend?" or "What's one thing you're looking forward to this week?").

• Be Conscious of Interruptions: Pay active attention to who gets interrupted in meetings. If you see it happen, gently intervene: "Hold on, Sarah, I'd like to hear the rest of your thought."

Actions to Improve Learner Safety

• Share Your Own Mistakes: Start a team meeting by saying, "I want to share a mistake I made this week and what I learned from it." This normalizes imperfection and models vulnerability.

• Celebrate "Intelligent Failures": When a well-planned experiment doesn't work out, publicly praise the team for the quality of the attempt and facilitate a discussion about the learnings.

• Ask for Feedback on Yourself: End 1-on-1s by asking, "What is one thing I could do differently to be a better manager for you?" This shows that feedback is a normal and valued part of your culture.

Actions to Improve Contributor Safety

• Use "Brainwriting" Instead of Brainstorming: To get ideas from everyone (not just the loudest voices), give team members 5 minutes to write down their ideas on Post-it notes before any discussion begins. Then, go around the room and have each person share one idea at a time.

• Assign a Rotating "Devil's Advocate": For important decisions, assign someone the formal role of challenging the prevailing opinion. This makes challenging an idea a required task, not a personal risk.

• "Close the Loop" on Ideas: When a team member offers an idea that isn't implemented, take 30 seconds to explain why a different path was chosen. This shows their contribution was heard and respected, even if not acted upon.

Actions to Improve Challenger Safety

• React with Gratitude: When someone brings you bad news or challenges your idea, your immediate verbal response should be, "Thank you for raising that. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention." This rewards the act of speaking up.

• Separate the Idea from the Person: When debating, use language like, "Let's explore the potential downsides of this approach" instead of "Here's what's wrong with your idea."

• Create Formal Channels for Dissent: Implement practices like "Red Team Reviews" or "Pre-Mortems" where the explicit goal is to find flaws in a plan before it's too late. This makes challenging the plan a safe and valued part of the process.