# The Safety Check — Facilitator Guide

> Folder: `the-safety-check` · Category: trust · 4–12 people · 20 min · offline + online · print props · tool pack
> License: CC BY 4.0

A 20-minute, 4–12 person trust tool. Psychological safety isn't a mood — it shows up in four concrete questions, and teams almost always have one that scores far below the rest. Everyone privately rates those four, the team reveals together, and the lowest-scoring one becomes the target: name a single behavior that would raise it, and commit to try it before you check again.

**How this relates to the other trust folders:** The Safety Check is the trust folder that *measures* — four questions, dot-rated, one visible lowest bar. Step In If… shows shared experience without numbers; The Reliability Ledger writes promises down; The Trust Timeline maps past ruptures. Run this when the question is "where exactly are we holding back?" — then follow with whichever repair tool the answer points to.

## Objectives

By the end of the activity, participants will have:

1. Privately rated the team's real 1–5 score on all four safety statements — ask a dumb question, admit a mistake, disagree with the decision-maker, take a risk without it being used against me.
2. Revealed the four bars side by side and agreed out loud which single one is lowest — without averaging it away.
3. Committed to one concrete behavior anyone could start this week to raise that bar, with a re-check date attached.

## When to use this activity

- A team where things feel fine in meetings and quietly don't between them — unreported problems, unasked questions.
- After something went wrong and nobody said so at the time; a lagging "I can't admit a mistake" bar is usually why.
- On a rhythm (quarterly pulse) to watch the four bars move — or to prove they won't move by themselves.

## Setup

**Clock:** twenty minutes end to end. The rating is fast; the argument about the lowest bar is the activity — don't let it get squeezed out by the reveal.

**Space:** a wall or shared board with four columns, one per statement, and a spot for **The lowest one**. Online, the columns live on a shared board and dots become anonymous votes.

**Materials per person:**

| Item | Source |
|---|---|
| 4 × private 1–5 dots (sticky notes or markers, no names) | your own |
| The four statement cards — Ask a dumb question · Admit a mistake · Disagree with the decision-maker · Take a risk without it being used against me | `the-safety-check-prop-cards.pdf` |
| 1 × "The lowest one" card + 1 × "One behavior to raise it" card + blank | `the-safety-check-prop-cards.pdf` |
| Optional: the poster with the two rules in view | `the-safety-check-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) on the wall |

**Grouping:** 4–12 people who work together and share decisions — a team, a pod, a leadership group. Below 4 the anonymity dies; above 12, keep the reveal to the shape, not the count.

**Roles:** everyone rates privately and un-names their dots; you run the reveal without commentary, refuse the average, and force the close — one behavior, who does it, which day, and the re-check date. No projector, no account, no online form required.

## How to run it

| Time | Phase | Facilitator does | Participants do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–4 | Mark | Read the four statements aloud, exactly as worded. "1 = definitely not safe here, 5 = completely safe. No names on the dots." | Privately place a 1–5 dot on each of the four statements |
| 4–8 | Reveal | Count the dots per statement together, no commentary. Let the shape of the four bars land before anyone speaks. | Watch one bar clearly lag while the others hold up |
| 8–12 | Find the lowest | Circle **The lowest one**. Refuse "but our average is fine" — the lowest bar is where people actually hold back | Agree out loud which single statement is the problem, and what it cost recently |
| 12–20 | Raise it | Ask for one concrete behavior anyone could start this week that would raise that bar. Push from "everyone should" to "I will, from Tuesday". Commit, and set the re-check date | Name the behavior, who starts it, and what the first visible proof would look like |

Then run the debrief — see `the-safety-check-debrief.md`.

## The card

The four statement cards are the instrument — fixed wording, because the whole readout depends on comparing the same four bars every time you run it. The labels are deliberately in first person ("I can admit a mistake"), so each dot is about the room, not about someone's leadership style. **The lowest one** and **One behavior to raise it** keep the check from ending in a score: the tool's product is a dated behavior, not a chart.

## Failure modes

1. **Everyone rates 5s.** The check itself feels unsafe — a classic sign. Rescue: switch to anonymous written dots, or ask "what would have to be true for a 3 to be safe to say?"
2. **The team wants to fix all four.** Rescue: you'll fix none. Force the single lowest bar; one raised bar lifts the others faster than four half-efforts.
3. **A leader explains why the low score is wrong.** Rescue: that explanation is the data. Thank them, park it, and keep the anonymous result — the check measures the room, not the org chart.

## Variations

- **New team, week one:** run it to set expectations out loud — "here's what we want to be safe for, and we're not there yet."
- **After something went wrong:** a spike in "I can't admit a mistake" is usually why things stopped being reported. Check that bar first.
- **Quarterly pulse:** re-run on a rhythm; the four bars over time are the truest health readout a team has.
- **Two teams that hand off:** run it once per team; the bars that differ are where the inter-team trust leaks.

## Facilitation notes

- Dots carry no names. The moment someone's score is traced to them, the ratings turn safe and useless — protect the anonymity harder than you protect any other rule here.
- The lowest score is the target, not the average. A team averaging 4 with one statement at 2 has a real problem in that one place.
- "One behavior" means observable: if a stranger couldn't spot it happening, it isn't one yet.

## Put it on the wall

Print `the-safety-check-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) to keep the four statements and the two rules — name the lowest, not the average; anonymous dots — in view during the reveal.

## Props in this folder

- `the-safety-check-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides): four statement cards, the lowest one, one behavior to raise it, blank card, branded backs
- `the-safety-check-guide.md` — this run sheet
- `the-safety-check-debrief.md` — the debrief questions and the failure modes of the debrief
- `the-safety-check-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this run sheet + the debrief, bound as one A4 document with bookmarks
- `the-safety-check-activity-poster.pdf` — the whole tool on one A3 wall sheet: the four bars, the flow, the watch-outs
- `the-safety-check-start-here.md` — one page, thirty seconds, then print and go
- `SKILL.md` — machine-readable manifest for AI agents
- `*-Letter.pdf` — US Letter editions of the print documents

## Agent version

Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the cards, the debrief and this run sheet with three curl commands (see `SKILL.md`). The paper version needs nothing but four statements on a wall and anonymous dots.