The Field Guide › Article
A direct argument against the claim that psychological safety can be kept separate from politics. At its broadest, politics is how people in groups make decisions, so it is at play in everything we do in teams, organisations and society — nothing is out of scope. To have the privilege of moving through the world without thinking about politics probably means politics is working perfectly for you, which is not the case for many. The piece works through a series of real-world scenarios: the nurse who hides an error after watching colleagues lose their jobs for honesty; the lawyer travelling out of state for reproductive healthcare while afraid to ask for time off; the autistic manager called a 'snowflake' for requesting accommodations; the immigrant worker whose visa depends on their job playing it safe; the Black team leader told to 'soften her language' wondering whether to speak at all. Each shows political choices — to prosecute healthcare workers for mistakes, to provide minimal parental leave, to demonise overseas workers, to remove reproductive healthcare, to cut school funding — landing materially in the workplace and shaping the perceived safety of interpersonal risk. The workplace doesn't exist outside society. Practitioners working in the real world cannot disregard these situations as 'too political' to count as psychological safety; doing so is neither useful nor moral. At minimum we can acknowledge them and give people space to talk about how they're affected — and some of the work of making things safer, more equitable and higher performing may itself involve getting political.