instrument · all tools
Team Psychological Safety Scan
Also known as: Edmondson psychological safety survey
Measuring a team's psychological safety with Amy Edmondson's validated survey items (e.g., "If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you"), then debriefing the aggregated picture together: where is it safe to speak, where not, and what will we change. The measurement is the easy half; the facilitated conversation about the results is the tool.
Prerequisites
- Anonymity in data collection, aggregation before anyone sees results
- Never let scores become a leadership scorecard or a hunt for who answered what — that move proves the low score right
- Measuring without acting afterwards lowers safety; only run the scan if the team will work with the results
Practical
- Time
- 60-90 min
- Group
- 4–30 · small-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- The 7-item survey (anonymous administration); aggregation before the session
- Mechanisms
- feedback-mirroring, dialogic-encounter
- Change scope
- state · repeatable (e.g., twice a year to track change)
Origin & where it lives
Amy C. Edmondson (Harvard Business School) — Psychological safety research; The Fearless Organization
Instructions: registration
In this directory via IDG Phase 2 Research Report & Toolkit (2022)
The measurement counterpart of safety-building-behaviours: behaviours build the property, the scan makes it discussable. Edmondson's items are published in her research; the branded scan adds benchmarking.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25