I was recently reading an article about why Agile implementations are failing (yes, I’m a total geek), and it got me thinking about safety. I haven’t thought much about safety explicitly (beyond being an Amazon Safety Czar for my floor, which is different from emotional safety – I have a bright orange vest :)), but now I realize how important it is for your team to feel emotionally safe at work.

If your staff doesn’t feel safe, things might get pretty rough.

• They won’t trust you or your company. Everything you ask them or tell them goes under a skeptical magnifying glass and is hyper-analyzed. They may become hyper-critical
• They’ll probably start looking to leave. Honestly, the moment I stop trusting my company, I brush up my LinkedIn profile and start checking TheLadders for likely postings.
• They’ll stop telling you things that have gone wrong. They’ll be scared of your reaction and will delay telling you any bad news for as long as possible. For me, this is a nightmare situation, because I sincerely value the opportunity to work through issues WITH my team.

I’ve been thinking of ways to identify when folks don’t feel safe, and I’ve come up with the following:

• Defensiveness. A few years ago, I found myself getting weirdly defensive whenever I received any feedback. I thought I’d gotten beyond a lot of defensiveness in college, but it was back with a vengeance. In retrospect, I firmly believe it was because I had stopped feeling safe with my boss. Because I expected to be attacked, I responded defensively to everything.
• Lack of communication. Sure, sometimes folks are just quiet, but if you start not finding out about things that go wrong until MUCH LATER than they knew, guess what’s probably happening?
• Work ethic nosedive. Heaven knows, I have no issue with Facebook use at work, but if a geek stops producing and never seems to be looking at work stuff, you probably have a problem. It’s most concerning to me when I see a shift and can’t come up with a reason for it (e.g., burnout or home “stuff”), since it could be a safety issue.
• Crankiness. Do you have a geek who just seems to be a sourpuss? Okay, so they might just have dealt with a cranky user, but ongoing crankiness may be a sign of a safety issue.

I haven’t been thinking about this issue for long, so I’m sure I’ve missed things. What other safety warning signs are there?