Psychological safety is often mistaken for comfort. But at its core, it’s something far more rigorous: the confidence to speak up, even when it's uncomfortable, and the systems that make that possible.
Coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and widely recognized through Google’s Project Aristotle, psychological safety refers to a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In practice, that means people feel able to raise concerns, ask questions, or admit mistakes without fear of humiliation or retaliation.
Contrary to popular use, psychological safety is not about shielding people from challenge or tension. It’s not consensus, permanent empathy, or constant agreement. In fact, genuine psychological safety often coexists with high standards, direct feedback, and real accountability. It enables difficult conversations not by making them easier, but by ensuring they don’t get avoided.
When misunderstood, psychological safety can have the opposite effect. When disagreement is suppressed in favor of harmony, teams risk losing the very candor they need to adapt and perform. Standards fall not because expectations are too high, but because critique is confused with criticism. Over time, this erodes trust—not because there’s too much challenge, but because there’s too little clarity.
According to Julia Rozovsky, a lead researcher on Google's Project Aristotle, psychological safety was the single strongest predictor of team performance. Not experience, tenure, or subject-matter expertise but the ability to surface truth without fear.
High-performing teams didn’t get there through soft skills alone. They created structure:
In these environments, employees were more likely to raise ethical concerns, highlight inefficiencies, and flag burnout risk.
Psychological safety cannot be outsourced to HR or confined to culture slides. It is a leadership responsibility and an operational one. For senior teams navigating cross-functional and global complexity, psychological safety is not about eliminating friction; it’s about making friction productive.
That means leaders must model uncertainty. Ask questions without pre-loaded answers. Respond to difficult truths without defensiveness. And crucially, build systems: how meetings are run, how feedback is gathered, how dissent is encouraged early, rather than penalized after the fact.
A meeting where everyone agrees may feel smooth, but it may also signal fear.
Psychological safety is not a cultural perk or personality fit. It’s a team-level dynamic that shifts based on role, visibility, identity, and power. What feels safe to one executive may feel risky to another, particularly in underrepresented groups navigating added scrutiny.
That makes psychological safety a matter of design. Leaders should be asking: Who’s not speaking? What’s being left unsaid? Where does silence persist even when performance is at stake?
Psychological safety is not about making work feel good. It’s about making performance sustainable. In fast-moving environments where risks are reputational, regulatory, or strategic, the ability to surface hard truths early becomes an advantage.
Sources
