Really psychological safety to me personally seems like it is better defined as non-authoritarian and just - or free although all are offputtingly political.
A mob mentality can also act as the "authoritarian" that retaliates against "inappropriate thought". The vagueness of terms is deliberate because it is culturally specific what their elephants in the room are. Even if you think it is worth risking them or they are objectively stupid it is important to keep them in mind for planning presentations.
It is worth ignoring those who think eradicating a disease is playing god but know that some think that to prepare accordingly.
"Authoritarian" organizations fall into insanity obvious to fearless outsiders. For instance intelligence agencies fired people for being gay or otherwise sexually unorthodox. Now it is damn obvious - they created their own blackmail risk in the first place! Compare to a "tenured" system that said they don't give a damn so long as you aren't betraying secrets. So they could laugh off would be blackmailers. To give a colorful illustration of the effectiveness of such a policy. "The New York Times could print a full page spread of me sleeping with my brother in law and wife at the same time and I would still have a job!"
That this would be considered unthinkable to propose in that time period only demonstrates the depth of the problems.
Brutal doesn't mean disrespectful and the article does dive into this
> When it comes to innovation, the candid organization will outperform the nice one every time. The latter confuses politeness and niceness with respect. There is nothing inconsistent about being frank and respectful. In fact, I would argue that providing and accepting frank criticism is one of the hallmarks of respect. Accepting a devastating critique of your idea is possible only if you respect the opinion of the person providing that feedback.
Candid does not mean brutal. Not at all. When you confuse brutal with candid, it is likely that no one was on position to tell you off or cut your crap.
Which very much means that communication was not consistently open.
It depends on how respect is defined as well. Ask any school child about being demanded respect(obedience) for respect(treated like a person).
Some may literally consider honesty more important than concern for feelings.
It is also a somewhat cultural thing - in some it is rude to ask politely to someone well known to "please pass" as opposed to "gimme". Etiquite is ironically very contextual.
I think the point here is that your prof was criticising you rather than your output. That’s why it’s brutal, because it’s personal. He’s being honest about his feelings but it’s not very helpful to you. So I don’t think it’s fair.
He knew I was bullshitting and he knew I knew that. There's no point in telling me what I got wrong when I'm well aware of it. If I had put more effort into studying, I wouldn't have gotten my analysis wrong. Or if I had come in for help before turning the assignment in.
Bringing this back to the article - the context for candid feedback is a competent workforce. By your own admission it appears you we’re still in the process of learning about competence so the prof was not providing candid feedback of your submission but questioning your competence. That’s a different and necessarily more personal discussion!
That’s why you need a culture that allows people to listen to criticism without immediately feeling the need to be defensive. At work I have a few people I can be honest with and it’s very refreshing. I can tell them that I think some this isn’t right and they can tell me. If there is mutual respect and self confidence you can do that.
When you say "brutal candor," the ones who understand how to create psychological safety will understand it as the ability to give real criticism without fear of retaliation. That's rare and refreshing when I see it.
However, I can think of several cases of managers I know who really should learn to create psychological safety, but they would read this as validation for establishing a straight pipeline from reptile brain to mouth as opposed to giving actionable criticism.
In one case, that literally happened: the manager read a book that framed communication with similar connotations to "brutal" and took it as license that he should continue to say things the way he did and expect others to suck it up. Unsurprisingly, it got so bad that all of his direct reports threatened to leave.
A mob mentality can also act as the "authoritarian" that retaliates against "inappropriate thought". The vagueness of terms is deliberate because it is culturally specific what their elephants in the room are. Even if you think it is worth risking them or they are objectively stupid it is important to keep them in mind for planning presentations. It is worth ignoring those who think eradicating a disease is playing god but know that some think that to prepare accordingly.
"Authoritarian" organizations fall into insanity obvious to fearless outsiders. For instance intelligence agencies fired people for being gay or otherwise sexually unorthodox. Now it is damn obvious - they created their own blackmail risk in the first place! Compare to a "tenured" system that said they don't give a damn so long as you aren't betraying secrets. So they could laugh off would be blackmailers. To give a colorful illustration of the effectiveness of such a policy. "The New York Times could print a full page spread of me sleeping with my brother in law and wife at the same time and I would still have a job!"
That this would be considered unthinkable to propose in that time period only demonstrates the depth of the problems.