How Leaders Build Psychological Safety: What It Is and Why It Matters Now
Psychological safety in the workplace has always been an important part of work, even if you haven’t realized it. It is also one of the strongest predictors of team trust, employee engagement, and a healthy workplace culture. Today’s workplaces are no different, except leaders now are far more aware of psychological safety conceptually, and realize that it is an essential skill to maintain morale.
It’s especially notable when workplaces now look very different than they did 10, even 5 years ago. Many workplaces have moved back to hybrid or in-person formats while others have remained fully remote. Some workplaces move quickly, changing goals to respond to upcoming trends. These factors affect how psychologically safe people feel. When that safety net is missing, people go silent, retention plunges, and employees lose morale.
But the biggest impact on psychological safety? Leadership.
In this article, we’re exploring:
What is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety refers to a workplace or social environment where employees feel comfortable, secure, and confident in expressing their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and concerns without fear of negative consequences or judgement. As a concept, psychological safety is the foundation of inclusive leadership, and is essential for any leader working in hybrid, remote, or in-person workplaces.
Leadership’s Role
As a leader, your job is not to keep everyone comfortable. Though that would be nice!
Rather, it’s about creating conditions that emphasize honesty, clarity, growth, and accountability. Naturally, leaders have a big influence on psychological safety because of power dynamics. Even when leaders might feel accessible and approachable, employees hesitate to speak up for a number of reasons both personal and professional, such as past experiences or maintaining distance with authority figures at work.
That means your behavior as a leader (not your intentions!) is what influences your team’s sense of safety. Some direct benefits of psychological safety include:
Stronger Performance
Higher Retention
More Inclusive Environments
The benefits of psychological safety are especially notable for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ employees, individuals with mental health conditions, people with disabilities and more. Of course, establishing psychological safety is good for all employees, but for marginalized groups it works to establish both inclusion and equity.
Remember: Disagreements still happen, tough conversations will also still happen. The important thing is that employees feel comfortable and safe enough to engage in these dialogues.
The Myths of Psychological Safety
There are a number of myths surrounding psychological safety practices. Namely, some leaders and teams might think that psychological safety is the ability to express potentially harmful views that affect inclusion and equity without consequence. That’s why it’s crucial to introduce psychologically safe practices with policies, role modelling from leadership, and a culture of inclusion.
Other common myths include:
It Means Avoiding Conflict: Definitely not. In fact, it’s the opposite! When your team is afraid to speak up, that means that psychological safety is not being felt by everyone. In a psychologically safe workspace, teams will be able to debate and share without fear and with respect built into every conversation.
Performance Suffers: While psychological safety means delivering feedback gently and clearly, it does not mean that poor performance or mistakes are overlooked. Aim to give feedback that is both direct, clear, and kind, framing it as growth, not failure.
It’s Actually Mental Health and Wellness: A psychologically safe workplace might improve mental health for your team and your leaders. However, establishing mental health policies and practices is a separate exercise that cannot be replaced by psychological safety efforts alone.
It Cannot Be Measured: Like any organizational change, psychological safety must be measured to understand its full impact. This means establishing a baseline level of feelings around safety and trust via surveys, workshops (ideally run by an outside organization for maximum effectiveness and transparency), holding focus groups and interviews (also run by outside organizations), or providing comment boxes alongside surveys to get an idea of the nuanced feelings teams may have about the safety of their workplace.
Misconceptions about creating a psychologically safe workplace often stop leaders from making the effort to create them, directly impacting retention and performance.
What Does Psychological Safety Look Like on Teams?
Speaking of measuring progress, surveys and workshops and interviews are not the only way to tell if your psychological safety initiatives are working. The easiest way is, quite literally, to watch, listen, and reflect on the actual changes reflected in your team.
Common signs of psychological safety on a team:
People asking questions openly rather than pretending they already know
In meetings, there are multiple voices rather than the same few people
Team members flag concerns before problems escalate
There is healthy pushback and debate around ideas, goals, and initiatives
Feedback flows in every direction
Conflicts are resolved with respect and transparency
On the other hand, psychologically unsafe teams are equally easy to spot:
Silence during meetings
People agreeing publicly while disagreeing privately
Avoiding risk-taking and contradicting leadership
Defensiveness
High turnover amongst specific departments or groups of people
If you take the time to notice how your team is acting, you can intervene before trust vanishes entirely.
Behaviors to Avoid As a Leader
When you’re a leader looking to establish psychological safety, it can be difficult not to accidentally say something wrong. Small, everyday behaviors and habits will creep in, regardless of how we want to portray ourselves. You might not intend to create an unsafe environment, but it’s also important to accept that you will make mistakes and need to reflect upon them.
Some of these behaviors may include:
Dismissing or minimizing concerns and opinions
Interrupting others
Reacting defensively to feedback
Punishing mistakes and errors, even subtly through tone and body language
Making comments that are identity-based
Rewarding only the loudest or boldest voices
Moments like this reinforce a lack of safety at work. And, if you are in the process of establishing new, psychologically safe behaviours, slipping into old habits is natural. If you find yourself participating in any of these behaviours, try to reflect upon them and, if apologies are needed, deliver them genuinely and quickly.
Behaviors to Build Upon As A Leader
The most effective leaders intentionally demonstrate behaviors that indicate trust and openness.
1. Practice Curiosity Over Judgement
Ask open, clarifying questions such as:
What are we missing here?
How do you see it?
Is there anything you’re concerned about?
Do you have a preference on how to deliver feedback for me?
2. Admit Mistakes
Showing vulnerability through mistakes and apologies is the quickest way to normalize it amongst employees and other leaders.
3. Give Credit Publicly and Corrections Privately
This is a golden rule for psychological safety, and following it strongly influences how safe people feel speaking up. Consistency is crucial here!
4. Offer Multiple Ways for People to Share Input
Everyone on your team is different: some may feel really comfortable speaking in a crowd while others prefer to talk one-on-one. Provide alternative methods for input-sharing to get the most feedback possible. This might mean an anonymous form, through written channels like Slack, or one-on-one check-ins.
5. Always Follow Up
Accepting feedback without follow-up is an easy way to cause trust to degrade on your team. So, follow up, even if it means admitting you haven’t been able to implement asked changes. Give updates, provide context, and be clear with your follow-ups; ideally, you can include a plan of action to implement feedback.
Psychological Safety In Different Teams
The way psychological safety shows up depends heavily on how your work operates. Hybrid, remote, and in-person environments each come with their own set of communication patterns, blind spots, and power dynamics. As a leader, your ability to adapt across formats is crucial, because psychological safety isn’t about the location of work, but the experience of it.
If you work remotely or in a hybrid format, you will lose some of those natural, in-person cues and signals that help interpret intent. So, tone becomes incredibly important, and so does your ability to read the room, even if that room is a grid of faces, a Slack thread, or a calendar of virtual meetings.
In-Person Teams
The biggest advantage of an in-person team is having day-to-day social cues (i.e., facial expressions, tone of voice, body language), but being able to take note of them doesn’t automatically mean your staff are feeling psychologically safe. In-person environments can conceal issues because people appear to be engaged and interested, even if they are silent or feeling pressured.
You can strengthen psychological safety for your team by:
Be vulnerable publicly and privately
Pay attention to who is getting overlooked or interrupted in meetings
Check-in with quieter team members to make sure they feel safe and are given the opportunity to contribute without undue pressure
Hybrid Teams
In a hybrid team, some employees will, quite literally, be closer to leadership or influential colleagues. Workers who are primarily in-office will likely receive more informal updates, organic feedback, or recognition. In the meantime, remote workers may worry they’re being left out of decisions or overlooked when it comes to promotions or new opportunities.
To establish psychological safety across in-office and remote staff, try to:
Share updates in writing so remote employees don’t pick up on information second-hand or much later than others
Make decisions that are beneficial to everyone, not just employees with the most access
Remote Teams
Psychological safety in remote teams relies on how purposefully leaders communicate. When body language and context are missing, small things like punctuation, response time, and message length often change how feedback is received, for better or for worse.
Build psychological safety in remote teams by:
Use language that emphasizes curiosity rather than abrupt commands
Offer different ways to contribute in virtual meeting spaces, such as chats, polls, written follow-ups, or simple conversation
Try not to conflate silence with disagreement; often, the quieter folks may be processing their thoughts internally before they contribute
Bringing It All Together
No matter what format you work within, psychological safety is built through consistent actions, clear communication, and trust. Every environment requires a slightly different approach, but the foundation is always the same: People need to know their voice is valued and their honesty won’t be punished.
Learn More With These Resources
St. John’s University - Psychological Safety in the Workplace: Building a Culture of Trust and Belonging
The University of Queensland - Psychological Safety and Well-Being Guide
Public Services Health & Safety Association (PSHSA) - Workplace Psychological Health and Safety: A guide to support worker well-being
Frequently Asked Questions
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Psychological safety helps teams speak honestly, share ideas early, and raise concerns before issues escalate. It helps to strengthen trust, engagement, and collaboration, which often contributes to improved performance and retention.
When employees feel safe at work, they are more likely to contribute unique ideas, make better, more informed decisions, and create healthier dynamics with coworkers. This is especially true for marginalized employees who may otherwise hesitate to speak up.
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Consistency, consistency, consistency!
But seriously - leaders can build psychological safety via consistently asking open-ended questions, being vulnerable, giving clear, compassionate feedback, and responding to concerns without being defensive. Ultimately, the goal is to show that you care about your employees and want to make the effort to create healthy, safe spaces for them, and establishing trust through consistent actions is the easiest way to do just that.
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Measuring psychological safety can be difficult, but it isn’t impossible. Use surveys, focus groups, one-on-and private feedback to get an idea of how your team feels. Also, make sure to take note of how people respond to changes. Ask: Are quieter employees speaking out? Are you receiving more feedback from employees at all levels? Tracking indirect indicators of change is a great way to see if your efforts are working.
Unsure where to start? CultureAlly’s psychological safety training includes tools and frameworks that help leaders like you assess and strengthen psychological safety across hybrid, remote, and in-person teams.
