One of the concepts that has influenced my leadership is psychological safety. The research is compelling: Psychological safety supports learning behaviours such as admitting mistakes, asking for help, challenging ideas, and voicing concerns. Amy Edmondson helped establish the modern, team-level concept, defining it as “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”
In my first year as a Director of Engineering, I realized there had been a misconception: Psychological safety does not mean work should feel comfortable.
Safe does not mean easy
Leadership is full of uncomfortable moments: an organizational change affects people’s role. and they will not like it, a tech lead needs constructive feedback or a developer will not pass the probation period. Those are part of the job and psychological safety can coexist with discomfort. It is not part of my job remove every difficult feeling and make peopel happy all the time. If difficult conversations are avoided, we don’t end up with psytchological safe and healthy teams. We end up with unresolved issues.
Trust and psychological safety are different
The literature actually distinguishes between trust and psychological safety.
Trust is often about another person. I trust that you are competent. I trust that your intentions are good. I trust that you will do what you said you would. It can also be about whether I trust an organisation’s processes and commitments.
Psychological safety is about the environment. It is the shared belief that I can speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes or disagree without being punished or humiliated.
The two reinforce each other, but they are not the same thing. I can trust my manager. I can feel completely safe disagreeing with them. And I can still dislike the decision they make.
The real test of psychological safety
Psychological safety is not tested when everyone agrees. It is tested when people disagree.
- Can they challenge each other without becoming personal?
- Can they lose an argument without withdrawing?
- Can they raise their concerns without penalty, even after a decision has been made?
- Can they continue treating each other with respect after a conflict?
I remember one situation where a team told me consistently they felt psychologically safe and trusted each other. When one person decided to leave the team, they treated this person in a way I would describe as bullying. A team is not psychologically safe simply because people are vocal about it. Often the opposite is true: A team can be polite, praise their great team culture publically and still be unsafe. If people hold back and self-censor it’s not a safe team.
Psychological safety requires accountability
I also started thinking about another misconception. Sometimes psychological safety gets interpreted as protecting people from uncomfortable situations or as lowering standards.
Giving difficult feedback is uncomfortable.
Receiving difficult feedback is uncomfortable.
Making unpopular decisions is uncomfortable.
Even healthy disagreement can feel uncomfortable.
Leadership is uncomfortable.
Psychological safety does not mean protecting people from difficult conversations, receiving difficult feedback. It means making those conversations possible while holding people to clear standards and commitments.
What I believe today
Psychological safety does not mean comfort, agreement or immunity from consequences. In psychological safe environments people can take risks, raise concerns, challenge a decision, admit errors or disagree without the fear of humiliation or retaliation. The psychologically safest teams I have worked with often had the most difficult conversations early and would not even label themselves as a “psychologically safe” team.
References
- Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
- Edmondson, A., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 23-43.
- Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.