Is it safe to speak up on your team? Score what you have seen, not what you assume.
Most leaders believe their team feels safe to speak up. Most teams would put it lower. This scale does not ask you how safe your team feels, because you cannot know that from your chair. It asks what you have seen and heard in the last 30 days: who told you that you were wrong, who owned a mistake before you found it another way, who asked the naive question in front of the group, and who said "I don't know" without softening it.
Twelve statements, four dimensions, about four minutes. You get a score from 0 to 100, a level, a bar for each dimension and a result page written for that level, with one thing to do this week. No email is needed to see any of it.
Answer from memory of real moments, not from how you hope the room works. If you find yourself choosing "neither" a lot, that is a reading in itself, and the result will say so. A team mode, where your team rates the same twelve statements anonymously, is planned as a second phase.
Psychological Safety Scale
Is it safe to speak up on my team, and do I know that or assume it?
What you get
- Your score out of 100
- Which of the 4 results you land on
- Scores across Challenge, Error, Voice and Ask
- Your strongest dimension and your gap, and where to start
Email me this result
Optional. Your score is already on screen. Enter your details and a copy of this result, your score, your level and your four dimension scores, is sent to you.
Done. Your result is on its way.
Related tools
The four results
Every completed run lands on one of these pages, with your own scores drawn from the link the tool gives you. Each one is readable without taking the tool.
How this differs
The widely used seven item scale in this field is Amy Edmondson's, published in 1999. Its items are copyrighted and are not used here. This scale measures the same construct from the leader's vantage point, through behaviours you can have observed in the last 30 days, rather than through a team member's felt experience.
That makes it a different instrument with an honest limitation: it measures what you have seen, and you are the person the team is most likely to hide things from. The result copy says that plainly, and the team mode closes the gap when it ships. It also differs from the live Team Trust diagnostic, which scores your own trust building behaviours; this one scores the team's observable speaking up behaviour.
What happens to your responses
Your score, your result and your dimension scores are shown on screen without an email address. An anonymous copy of the score and the dimension scores, with no name, email or free text, joins the aggregate statistics for this tool, which are published only when a cut has at least 30 completions. Email is optional. Only if you ask for the result by email is it written to your contact record, and only then. The full rules are on the methodology page.
Common questions
Is this the same as the seven item psychological safety scale used in research?
No. The scale used in most research asks team members how they feel. This scale asks you, the leader, what you have seen and heard in the last 30 days. It measures the same idea from the other side of the table, and it says openly that the leader is the person a team hides things from. The twelve items are original and you see every one of them as you take the scale.
Can I really score my team's psychological safety myself?
You can score what you have observed, which is what this scale asks for. Every statement is anchored to a moment you either saw or did not see: someone disagreeing with you in the room, someone owning a mistake first, the quietest person speaking unasked. If you have not seen these things, the honest answer is disagree or neither, and the result will tell you what a high neither count means.
What does a high neither count mean?
On this scale, neither usually means you have not seen the behaviour either way. If five or more of your twelve answers are neither, read the result with that in mind. It is not a fault in your answers; it is a reading. It means the room is not showing you these moments, or you are not in the room when they happen, and only a team mode, when it ships, can tell you which.
Will my team be able to rate the same statements?
That is the team mode, planned as a second phase. Your team members will answer the same twelve statements, reworded for their side, anonymously, with a minimum of three responses before anything is shown. You will see your score next to theirs and the gap between them. Until then, the scale reports what you have seen, with the limitation stated on every result page.
Do I need to give an email address to see my result?
No. The score, the level, the four dimension bars and the full result page are shown without an email. After the result you can choose to have it emailed to you: the link to your result page and your score, nothing else. Completions are counted anonymously so the statistics page can report level distributions once thirty leaders have taken it.
Related tools
- Psychological Safety in the WorkplaceReference. A founder CEO's field guide, the hub of the safety cluster.
- Leadership Style Quiz12 min. How you exercise authority.
- Leadership Assessment GuideReference. How to assess leadership, and which tool to use.
- 360 Feedback TemplateDownload. A complete 360 survey structure.
- One on One Meeting QuestionsReference. Questions that make a one on one worth having.
The numbers behind this tool
Aggregate results are published at Psychological Safety Statistics: Leader Benchmark once a cut reaches 30 completions, under the Leadership Readiness Index methodology. More free tools are at the tools shelf.