I have a mental image of the organization that I run. I see it like a difference engine in the style of Charles Babbage crossed with Dr Frankenstein’s lab. A castle spanning Victorian monstrosity with brass gears, and levers, and a henchman or two. When the machine is running, I can stand in the middle of it, and hear the racket of everything moving. As the organization changes the noise it makes changes, but it always makes some kind of noise. And that’s how I know when something goes wrong. When the sounds stop, or change rapidly in unknown ways, I know I need to pay attention.

This is only a metaphor – I don’t live in the middle of a giant machine. I work within an assemblage of processes run by people. When the processes stop working, I look for trouble.

This “noise” is important to me. It lets me not have to see everything at once, and a key part of getting this noise is psychological safety. If the members of my organization are not comfortable raising problems the noise stops. If people start hiding mistakes, the noise changes. And this only works if people are willing to share the problems they encounter as they happen. That only happens in the context of a strong sense of psychological safety.

This organizational noise and the psychological safety that enables it are not just personal observations—they’re backed by extensive research. Let’s explore what psychological safety means in today’s workplace.

Psychological Safety

What is Psychological Safety?

Psychological safety is the belief that people are safe to take risks without fear of punishment, humiliation, or rejection. This provides them with the feeling that they can speak up, bring forth questions, raise concerns, or discuss mistakes openly. Discussions occur in a respectful and supportive way. Team members are not embarrassed or defensive and do not fear penalization 1^, 2^, 3.

It’s not about being comfortable all of the time. Rather, it’s about building an environment where honest dialog and risk taking occur. Requirements of the job are still enforced.

Psychological safety is a key component in high-performance teams. Google’s Project Aristotle showed that teams with high psychological safety outperform others4. Beyond just creating a pleasant workplace, psychological safety directly impacts your bottom line. Teams with high psychological safety innovate more, resolve problems faster, and retain talent longer—giving organizations a measurable competitive advantage.

A recent study shows a significant decline in psychological safety, mainly attributed to rigid return-to-office policies and a reduced focus on diversity and inclusion 5.

Even with the importance of psychological safety, it is easily undone by a few actions.

How is Psychological Safety undone?

There are a number of ways that psychological safety can be undone. A few common ones are:

Punishing people for bringing forth problems. It’s common for leaders to react poorly when problems are brought to them. This is often perceived as punishment. In some cases, people are actively punished for pointing out problems. In both cases the level of safety in the group drops. People are less likely to be the ones to bring things up. This reduces your ability to deal with problems quickly. For instance, when a team member points out that a project deadline is unrealistic based on resource constraints, responding with ‘We don’t need that kind of negative thinking” effectively punishes honesty and discourages future transparency.

Pushing back on messages about feelings or perspective is more common in some environments than others, but in whatever form, it damages the trust people have. If you downplay other people’s perspectives, they will stop bringing you ideas.

Failure to accept feedback. Leaders mistakenly believe that they have nothing to learn from reports. Not taking feedback from team members breaks down trust. Failure to accept data that is being pointed out reduces trust.

It’s important to note that managers often overestimate how safe their team feels. This leads to a disconnect with the team, making any lack of trust worse. The best thing you can do is to gather real data, 360 reviews are recommended, and use this data to drive your understanding of reality.

When psychological safety is undermined in the ways described above, predictable barriers emerge that hinder team performance.

What barriers are created by a lack of Psychological Safety?

A lack of psychological safety causes people to react in predictable ways. These responses often take the form of barriers put in place to protect themselves. A few of these barriers are:

Lack of trust is eroded when psychological safety is missing. Trust is an individualistic building block of psychological safety. Without trust, individuals may begin hiding or hoarding information. They may become engaged in activities that are intended to protect them from harm. For example, if you lack trust in a team member to not call you out for asking for help, you are not going to ask for anything, even when it would be beneficial. This slows progress and innovation6^, 7.

Fear of looking incompetent and with it a lack of risk taking is a common result of a lack of psychological safety. When people do not feel comfortable showing differences, or highlighting skill strengths in others people will put up barriers to avoid being seen as the person without the skills. They will ensure that they never step outside of safe zones by avoiding taking on risk. Make sure that when people step outside of comfort zones they are rewarded in some way regardless of the success of the effort8.

Fear of repercussions commonly results from regular abusive or negative responses to sharing of information. People who are constantly attacked, put down, or ignored when sharing bad news will protect themselves by stopping the share of information. Treat news, good or bad, as just a source of data8.

Intimidation causes more junior team members to not speak up in the presence of more senior members. Junior members will defer without sharing data that only they currently have. Junior members may feel like they don’t have the right to say something. It’s common for new employees to see a number of things that seem off to them. A psychologically unsafe environment pushes them to question their finding rather than share.

Apathy due to inaction occurs when team members fail to see action taken by leaders when they do speak up. This drives disconnect and causes people to stop trying to share8^, 9.

If these barriers are put up because of a lack of psychological safety, how can you improve it with your organization?

How do you foster Psychological Safety?

Here are a few actions you can take to foster psychological safety within your organization.

Talk about it as a way to foster psychological safety. This doesn’t have to be a forced conversation. Publicly reflect on how you are impacted as thing occur. Share when issues are causing strain, and understand when your reports are also under pressure. Add a check box item in your weekly self review to identify occurrences where you should have spoken up about concerns you were having. Rehearse ways of being vocally self critical in public settings, and reflect on how often you are.

Walk the talk through the use of inclusive practices to model desired behaviors. Actively solicit feedback. Act quickly on data being provided. Accept bad news openly without blame or recrimination. Doing these things as a leader shows that there is action behind your rhetoric. Document when bad news is brought to you, include your emotional state and your reaction. Review the reaction with your team members at your next 1:1 meeting to ensure their interpretation matches your intent.

Acknowledge mistakes made by yourself and by others. Frame them as learning opportunities10^, 11. Establish norms for handling failures. At Amazon, we use a Correction of Errors process to discuss problems that have occurred. One of the key tenets of the process is to clearly identify the cause of the error, but not to blame specific individuals. Most problems are process problems. A lack of tooling or support is the most common cause for mistakes. Build a similar process within your organization to take the personalization of identifying and fixing mistakes.

Celebrate Contributions in a timely and consistent way. Successes should be shared by identifying what behaviors contributed to the success, and highlighting that publicly12. Do this regularly, and use consistent rules for identifying how to identify successes. Write a plan for yourself to regularly point out successes. Schedule check-in times to ensure you do it. Write a rubric upfront to help you identify contributions regularly.

As you can see, by taking a regular and timely action the overall psychological safety of your organization can be improved.

Conclusion

Psychological safety is a cornerstone of high performing teams in today’s business environment. It’s your job as a leader to build that environment.

Inspect your current level of trust and safety by openly discussing with team members. Ask yourself these questions to gauge your team’s psychological safety: Do team members frequently offer contrary opinions in meetings? When was the last time someone on your team openly admitted a mistake? How often do junior members speak up before senior ones?

Build processes to identify where safety is being impacted. Consider implementing anonymous pulse surveys with questions like ‘How comfortable do you feel disagreeing with the most senior person in a meeting?’ or ‘How confident are you that raising a concern won’t negatively impact your standing on the team?

Develop mechanisms to redress any loss in trust or damage to the team’s psychological safety.

However you do it, building psychological safety will pay dividends over any investment.

Footnotes

​1 What is psychological safety? - McKinsey https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-psychological-safety​

​2 How Leaders Can Build Psychological Safety at Work - Ccl.org https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/​

​3 Definition of Psychological Safety - LeaderFactor https://www.leaderfactor.com/learn/definition-of-psychological-safety​

​4 Building Trust and Psychological Safety in the Workplace, Lean Agility https://leanagility.com/en/trust-psychological-safety​

​5 Why Psychological Safety at Work Is Declining And What Leaders … https://www.inspiring-workplaces.com/content/why-psychological-safety-at-work-is-declining-and-what-leaders-can-do​

​6 The Difference Between Trust And Psychological Safety https://psychsafety.com/the-difference-between-trust-and-psychological-safety/​

​7 What Are Communication Barriers? (And Ways to Overcome Them) https://ca.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/communication-barriers​

​8 Why Teams Stay Silent: Breaking Barriers to Psychological Safety https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-teams-stay-silent-breaking-barriers-psychological-lindegaard-gofff​

​9 Speak up culture: 10 reasons why employees do not speak up https://www.integrityline.com/expertise/blog/10-reasons-why-employees-do-not-speak-up/​

​10 Ways to Create Psychological Safety at Work - Achievers https://www.achievers.com/blog/psychological-safety-at-work/​

​11 How Leaders Can Build Psychological Safety at Work - Ccl.org https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/​

​12 10 Tested Strategies To Improve Psychological Safety At Work - Nectar https://nectarhr.com/blog/psychological-safety-at-work​