The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation

Written by Timothy R. Clark

Narrated by Larry Herron

This book is the first practical, hands-on guide that shows how leaders can build psychological safety in their organizations, creating an environment where employees feel included, fully engaged, and encouraged to contribute their best efforts and ideas.



Fear has a profoundly negative impact on engagement, learning efficacy, productivity, and innovation, but until now there has been a lack of practical information on how to make employees feel safe about speaking up and contributing. Timothy Clark, a social scientist and an organizational consultant, provides a framework to move people through successive stages of psychological safety. The first stage is member safety-the team accepts you and grants you shared identity. Learner safety, the second stage, indicates that you feel safe to ask questions, experiment, and even make mistakes. Next is the third stage of contributor safety, where you feel comfortable participating as an active and full-fledged member of the team. Finally, the fourth stage of challenger safety allows you to take on the status quo without repercussion, reprisal, or the risk of tarnishing your personal standing and reputation. This is a blueprint for how any leader can build positive, supportive, and encouraging cultures in any setting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781523087716

Timothy R. Clark

Timothy R. Clark is founder and CEO of LeaderFactor, a leadership consulting and training organization, and works with leadership teams around the world. He earned a triple degree and first-team Academic All-America honors as a football player at Brigham Young University and completed a doctorate in social science from Oxford University. He is also the author of Leading with Character and Competence.

Reviews for The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

[anthony cartwright · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Overall, easy to follow and some good examples, but the content about autistic/ neurodivergent people came across badly. In this way, it seems out of touch and at times, discrimination. An autistic person, is still a person, they may behave as badly as anyone else, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they do. Autism may affect different people in different ways. The message that autistic people need a lot more support to be productive in the workplace, i.e. beyond acceptance, learning and autonomy, is an over-simplification and many can form coping strategies. To me, this encourages rejection rather than encouraging psychological safety, the very premise of the book.

Later it talks about meltdown being used as an excuse for bad behaviour. This may be the author’s experience, but a meltdown may used to describe an action brought about by overwhelming circumstances for autistic people and they may appear in a variety of forms, if they appear at all. Such that a meltdown is not always an excuse and given that there are huge numbers of undiagnosed autistics around due to the social stigma, judging someone for having a meltdown also sends a message in opposition to the premise of the book.

Ignoring all the content about autism, it’s a reasonably good book, but read a different book for guidance on neurodiversity at work.

[kmbrwhit · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Outstanding book with actionable questions for reflection and the introspection. Well worth your time.

[Eliana Philip-Amulum · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book for leaders, teams and individuals in any organisation