August 23, 2025
The world keeps changing faster than we can process. Technologies that seemed impossible just years ago now reshape how we work daily, and your team faces constant pressure to leverage AI for growth, master emerging tools, and stay focused on critical goals while everything shifts around them.
This pace of change demands something extraordinary from leaders and teams. You need to innovate rapidly without losing sight of objectives, adapt constantly without burning out, and maintain excellence while navigating uncertainty. It's a tall order, but there's one aspect of team culture that you have direct influence over, one that unlocks the innovation, creativity, and resilience your team needs.
Psychological Safety.
Psychological safety describes an environment where team members believe they won't face punishment, embarrassment, or marginalization for speaking up. In psychologically safe teams, people express half-formed ideas without perfecting them first, they admit mistakes while problems are still small and fixable, and they challenge decisions that don't make sense, even when those decisions come from above.
This creates something powerful. Yes, employees feel more engaged and satisfied, but the real value goes deeper. When people feel safe to bring their authentic selves to work, to voice concerns before they become crises, and to experiment without fear of failure, innovation accelerates, problems surface faster, and teams adapt more quickly to change. The entire organization becomes more intelligent because all of its intelligence actually gets used.
Google's Project Aristotle studied 180 teams to identify what makes some teams exceptional. Their finding surprised everyone: psychological safety matters more than having star performers, more than perfect processes, more than clear goals. It was the single most important factor in team effectiveness.
The numbers tell a compelling story. Teams with high psychological safety are 2.5 times more likely to be rated as high performing, show 20% better collaboration metrics, demonstrate 29% higher engagement scores, and deliver 14% productivity improvements. These aren't marginal gains, they're transformative differences that compound over time.
But perhaps more important than these metrics is what psychological safety prevents. It prevents the talented engineer from leaving because their ideas were dismissed once too often. It prevents the costly mistake that three people saw coming but didn't feel safe mentioning. It prevents the innovative solution from never being voiced because someone feared looking foolish.
To start thinking about how to create psychological safety, I like to reference a book written by Timothy Clark called "The Four Stages of Psychological Safety." It's important to note that while this model can be useful, it is also limited, as all models are.
The limitations are significant and worth understanding. While these stages are presented as a neat progression, reality is far messier and more complex. At any point, individuals within the same team may be in different stages, experiencing psychological safety differently based on their background, role, and personal history. You may find vast differences between individual teams within the same organization, with one team operating at high levels of safety while another struggles with basic inclusion.
There are circumstances that may have individuals, teams, or entire organizations regressing to former stages, such as after layoffs, leadership changes, or project failures. People may experience feeling in multiple stages at once, perhaps feeling safe to contribute ideas but not to challenge authority, or feeling included in some contexts but not others.
However, despite these limitations, the model provides a useful framework to describe how psychological safety might manifest within an organization. It also illuminates the fact that psychological safety is a multi-layered phenomenon, not a simple on-off switch. The stages are:
Inclusion Safety – Members feel safe to belong to the team. They are comfortable being present, do not feel excluded, and feel like they are wanted and appreciated for who they are.
Learner Safety – Members are able to learn through asking questions. Team members here may be able to experiment, make and admit small mistakes, and ask for help without fear of being seen as incompetent.
Contributor Safety – Members feel safe to contribute their own ideas without fear of embarrassment or ridicule. This is a more challenging state, because volunteering your own ideas can increase the psychosocial vulnerability of team members.
Challenger Safety – Members can question others' ideas, including those in authority, or suggest significant changes to ideas, plans, or ways of working without fear of retaliation.
Referencing this model can help leaders start conversations with their teams and peers, helping to define some aspects of psychological safety, which is an important step in creating it. For example:
Having conversations around these types of questions can help you create a plan and cultural values that will lead to prioritization of psychological safety. From the depth and complexity of these questions, it's clear that this is not a process you engage in once. Creating psychological safety is a continuous practice that everyone in the organization plays a role in, though leaders have particular responsibility and influence.
As with most aspects of culture, leaders have an outsized impact and responsibility toward upholding the desired culture. The way leaders respond to mistakes, handle disagreement, and share information sets the tone for entire teams. So what are some ways that leaders can build and maintain psychological safety?
When team members speak, give them your full attention, putting away devices and making eye contact when culturally appropriate. Reflect back what you've heard to ensure understanding, asking clarifying questions rather than making assumptions. Most importantly, act on what you hear when possible, and when you can't, explain why. This shows that speaking up has value and impact.
Don't wait for people to volunteer their thoughts, actively ask for them, especially from quieter team members. Use specific prompts like "What are we missing?" or "What would you do differently?" rather than generic "Any questions?" Create multiple channels for input, including anonymous options, because some people need time to process or prefer written communication.
Define what types of experiments are encouraged and what guardrails exist. Clarify what decisions team members can make independently versus what needs approval. Create small, safe spaces for testing ideas before rolling them out broadly, and celebrate the learning from experiments regardless of outcome.
When mistakes happen, focus first on fixing the issue, then on learning from it, and only lastly on prevention. Share your own mistakes and what you learned from them, normalizing imperfection. Ensure that people learn from mistakes through structured debriefs, but avoid creating blame-focused post-mortems that make people defensive.
Share when you don't know something, when you're struggling, or when you need help. Admit when you've changed your mind based on new information or others' input. Ask for feedback on your own performance and act on it visibly, showing that everyone, including leaders, is still growing and learning.
When someone brings you problems or concerns, your first response should be "Thank you for telling me," even if the news is frustrating. This immediate reaction, especially when others are watching, signals that honesty is valued over comfort. Follow up by asking what support they need rather than immediately jumping to solutions.
Notice who speaks most in meetings and actively invite others to contribute. Use techniques like round-robins or silent brainstorming to ensure all voices are heard. When someone is interrupted, circle back to them, demonstrating that their contribution matters.
When someone takes a risk that doesn't work out, publicly acknowledge their courage in trying. Shield team members from unfair criticism when they've followed the team's experimentation guidelines. Stand behind people who raise uncomfortable truths or challenge existing practices, even when it's politically difficult.
Psychological safety is not a nice-to-have or a trendy concept that will pass. It's a fundamental requirement for teams that need to innovate, adapt, and perform in our rapidly changing world. The impact on business metrics is clear and compelling, but the human impact is equally important, creating workplaces where people can thrive rather than just survive.
Building psychological safety is complex work that never truly ends. It requires constant attention, adjustment, and recommitment as teams evolve, members change, and new challenges arise. There's no perfect formula or checklist that guarantees success, because each team's needs and context are unique.
Most importantly, psychological safety is everyone's job. While leaders have special responsibility and influence, every team member plays a role in creating an environment where people feel safe to learn, contribute, and challenge. Each interaction either builds or erodes psychological safety, making this a truly collective effort.
The questions and frameworks in this guide are starting points for your own exploration. Use them to begin conversations with your team about what psychological safety means in your specific context. Listen to what emerges, act on what you learn, and keep adjusting as you go.
Your team's ability to navigate uncertainty, solve complex problems, and innovate depends on their willingness to take interpersonal risks. That willingness only exists when psychological safety is present. The work of building it starts with your next interaction, your next meeting, your next response to a mistake or challenge.
The investment you make in psychological safety today determines your team's capacity for excellence tomorrow.
