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The Eight Principle · Psychological Safety × Standards

The best teams are demanding and safe. Is yours?

Psychological safety and high standards aren't opposite ends of one dial: they're two separate axes. The healthiest teams run high on both, and let them feed each other. Fourteen questions show where yours sits.

14 questions  ·  about 4 minutes  ·  private to you
Psychological Safety × Standards is the first dimension of The Eight Principle, a framework and diagnostic created by Martín García Acuña. It builds on Amy C. Edmondson's work on psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) and her framing of the relationship between psychological safety and standards in The Fearless Organization (2018). The survey items and scoring are the author's own original adaptation; this is not Edmondson's validated Team Psychological Safety scale. Intended for reflection and conversation, not as a validated psychometric or clinical instrument, and not affiliated with or endorsed by Professor Edmondson. © 2026 Martín García Acuña.
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Your result
High safety
The Comfort Club
Safe but unchallenged — cozy
The Learning Zone
Safe and stretched — the eight
The Apathy Zone
Low bar, low safety — drift
The Anxious Zone
High bar, low safety — fear
Low safety
Low standards High standards
Where to start

See it across your whole team

One leader's read is a hypothesis. When the team answers, the spread between their answers is itself the diagnosis — a team that disagrees about whether it's safe usually isn't.

Read the full idea
Psychological Safety × Standards is the first dimension of The Eight Principle, a framework and diagnostic created by Martín García Acuña. It builds on Amy C. Edmondson's work on psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) and her framing of the relationship between psychological safety and standards in The Fearless Organization (2018). The survey items and scoring are the author's own original adaptation; this is not Edmondson's validated Team Psychological Safety scale. Intended for reflection and conversation, not as a validated psychometric or clinical instrument, and not affiliated with or endorsed by Professor Edmondson. © 2026 Martín García Acuña.