> Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research.
I've always taken it to mean: Do you feel safe speaking up? Particularly when you disagree. Or do you feel safe voicing your opinion, particularly when it goes against the majority?
That is probably the most charitable interpretation of the phenomenon possible. I do not think it is about holding people accountable at all, I think it is a new way to enforce shifting social norms that allows people to judge others without being ‘judgy.’
Please name a single instance of an individual being “cancelled” for anything but bigotry, hatred, violence, or dangerous rhetoric. I’ll wait.
People aren’t being cancelled for speaking their minds. They’re being cancelled when speaking their minds is literally offensive to small and large groups of people.
Almost every time someone is complaining about cancel culture, what they’re really complaining about is being held accountable for the dumb shit they say or want to say.
Also, “shifting social norms”, lol, from what to what, if you don’t mind me asking?!
Edit: you can downvote me but you can’t produce a single example.
I don't think an answer will satisy you because anything can be bigotry.
Or more aplty: the problem is we have a deep divide in what constitutes bigotry. A significant portion of Americans oppose gay marriage, and a roughly equal portion would consider that bigotry.
You cannot run a society that way.
Im not necessarily trying to say you're wrong. Rather, I am trying to infuse some humility and shades of grey into a situation that I think you're portraying as black-and-white.
If you can't offend, you can't dissent. Anything is offensive to somebody.
Frankly, I'm not interested in examples that weave their way through your maze of exceptions for what you deem to be acceptable dissent. I care about the people spouting "dangerous rhetoric", whatever that is, getting cancelled.
I'm torn between down voting this for being unnecessarily condescending and letting you feel safe to speak your mind on HN. Take my down vote with the knowledge it's OK to share you disagree or find the topic a nuisance of late, but you can be a little more thoughtful on how to voice that.
This seems like an example where someone takes unnecessary offense. I didn't feel any arrogance from the post. Perhaps a good portion of sources of fears of "psychological safety" is everyone is getting constantly told how they're a "nobody", without ever thinking that if it was so, then they already wouldn't be there.
Like do you feel job security? Do you think that doing a good job is enough? Can you do your job without feeling like you’re going to get fired all the time? Do you trust your boss and coworkers and feel safe being open with your leadership chain?
Psychological safety and job security are different. They may have correlations.
Job security comes from career capital. You are seen as a key contributor and the company does its best to retain you. If you leave or are left, you can pick up a new job quickly.
Psychological safety comes from mutual respect. You don’t make fun of people for making suggestions you disagree with, they don’t think you’re dumb for making a mistake. That sort of thing. Having each other’s backs basically. While management can work on promoting psychological safety, they do not have direct power to implement it (outside of firing/coaching toxic people), you and your team have to do the implementation.
Funnily, your job security may come at the cost of psychological safety to the team, if you’re the problem, but also a critical high performer.
> Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety