This page brings together my most essential insights on the value of psychological safety within your team or organization. I found this topic confusing for a long time. I’ll do my best to demystify it because it’s critical. I’ll explain why you need it and how to build it. I’ve done my best to cover the fundamental principles of psychological safety in a way that’s easy to absorb, even if you’re short on time.
At the end of this page, you’ll find a complete list of all the articles I’ve written on psychological safety.
Principle First: Defining Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety /sai-kuh-lo-juh-kl sayf-tee/ noun.
A shared belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. The concept refers to the experience of feeling able to speak up with relevant ideas, questions, or concerns. Psychological safety is present when colleagues trust and respect each other and feel able—even obligated—to be candid.
“For an idea that does not at first seem insane, there is no hope.”
Where are you most comfortable sharing your crazy ideas? Your hopes and dreams? Your concerns?
Jeff Hunter calls that place “home”. Home is the place you feel safe. You are respected, you experiment more. You take risks more.
You speak up.
So what’s happening at “home”?
It’s psychological safety.
Understanding Psychological Safety Through Its Opposite
Let’s look at the opposite of psychological safety: psychological danger.
If someone feels they are in danger of looking foolish or being punished or some other harm will come to them as a consequence for sharing their knowledge, opinions, or ideas—or even for saying “I don’t know”—they will protect themselves by not sharing their knowledge, opinions, or ideas.
Galileo Galilei was was persecuted for suggesting the Earth orbited the sun. He was right, he was just way ahead and he was sentenced to house arrest for the last 9 years of his life.
As Einstein says – the most innovated ideas sound crazy when first spoken.
Amy Edmondson says:
“Psychological safety describes a belief that neither the formal nor informal consequences of interpersonal risks, like asking for help or admitting a failure, will be punitive.”
This fundamental concept from Edmondson’s The Fearless Organization highlights why psychological safety is crucial for team success.
Psychological Safety as the Foundation of Team Performance
You’re paying your team for their ideas, not just their presence. But what happens when those ideas stay locked inside their heads? Many leaders don’t realize that a lack of psychological safety—the freedom to share ideas without fear of embarrassment, punishment, or being ignored—leads to untapped potential, lost innovation, and silent disengagement.
“It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Yet, in many workplaces, employees hesitate to speak up, fearing negative consequences. When people feel psychological danger—where speaking up could lead to embarrassment, criticism, or dismissal—they stay quiet.
The Cost of Silence
The problem isn’t just that good ideas are lost—it’s that leaders don’t even realize it’s happening. Psychological safety isn’t about making people comfortable all the time; it’s about ensuring they feel safe enough to take risks, challenge assumptions, and share insights that drive business forward.
In a culture of psychological danger, employees hide their ideas to protect themselves. But in a culture of psychological safety, employees share their ideas to protect the team.
Just imagine this: You’re about to walk on stage to give a speech. You’ve got toilet paper stuck to your shoe. You better hope someone feels safe to let you know before you walk on stage in front of all those people.
But, create an environment where nobody can tell the emperor he is not wearing clothes, and the team won’t!
This difference can make or break a team’s success. Without an environment that supports open communication, feedback, peer to peer coaching leaders unknowingly create a workplace where only a fraction of their team’s capabilities are utilized.
Group Norms
A manager of mine handed me an article by Charles Duhigg way back in 2016 called “What Google Learned from It’s Quest to Build the Perfect Team.” Duhigg defines “Group Norms” as these “traditions, behavioral standards and unwritten rules that govern how we function when we gather.”
I thought – unwritten? Really? Why would we let these go unwritten? I had a team of 160 people at this point – and each person has to figure out these unwritten rules? Surely they’ll bring their own from wherever it is they come from.
We’ve got to write it down.
If we don’t have a codified culture, people will bring their baggage from wherever they came from. If we set up new teams, add new members without a codified culture, the same will happen. It has to be codified.
So what are the group norms I want on my teams?
Introducing Team Rules
As the leader, I’m making consequential decisions and I need people to tell me they think I’m missing something.
So I don’t leave it to chance, I started documenting the behaviors I expect. It would be a much longer post to describe how I arrived at these. I’ll write that someday.
I demonstrate these behaviors. I demand it of others. And I delegate to anyone to hold each other accountable to these behaviors, and especially me.
I have found these team rules to be very valuable in establishing psychological safety.
- Improve the program/system/process (whatever it is you’re collaborating on) and this team at the same time. One cannot fall victim to the other.
- Afford everyone the assumption of best effort and best intentions.
- If you don’t know, say so. We’ll all learn together and it will increase the team’s mutual understanding.
If your team is already established, introduce each rule to each person in your one-on-ones. Each rules is a bilateral agreement between you and that person – they are to hold you accountable to these rules and you will hold them accountable. Once you’ve gone through the entire team, and make it quick, bring it to a whole team meeting to show everybody is enrolled.
That’s what I did when I turned this team around.
To further foster psychological safety:
- Model vulnerability: Admit mistakes and seek input to show that risk-taking is safe.
- Encourage diverse perspectives: Actively solicit input from all team members.
- Practice Active Listening: When people feel listened to, they share more.
A safe group will be full of ideas. Ensure the team has mechanisms to capture them, including robust planning rituals, issue tracking, and risk management.
Conclusion: Commit to Psychological Safety
If you want a high-performing team, psychological safety isn’t optional—it’s foundational. To recap:
- Psychological safety allows employees to protect the team by sharing ideas, rather than protect themselves by staying silent.
- A risk-aware culture, transparent processes, clear team norms, and skilled facilitation create an environment where ideas flow freely.
- The best teams—Pixar, Google, Navy SEALs—actively design for psychological safety.
Now it’s your turn. What’s one thing you can do today to make your team feel safer sharing their best ideas?
Here are all the articles I’ve written on Psychological Safety.
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