You’ve hired a brilliant team, set realistic yet ambitious goals, and established efficient processes – so why isn’t performance soaring?
It may be because your team doesn’t feel safe enough to speak up, take risks, or make mistakes. In today’s high-stakes environments, especially in science, tech, and pharma, psychological safety in the workplace is what unlocks innovation, trust, and sustainable high performance.
Here’s a story that might resonate.
“No one likes to deliver bad news to their boss. But that’s exactly what I had to do when a project I’d championed failed to deliver. I’d invested time and energy into it – and convinced others to do the same. I expected frustration or tough questions. Instead, my manager asked one simple thing: What did you learn? That moment changed everything. I now realise they weren’t just being kind – they were creating an environment where our high-performing team could grow.”
That’s the power of psychological safety in the workplace. It turns setbacks into learning…and learning into growth.
What Is Psychological Safety in the Workplace?
Coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson¹, psychological safety is the shared belief that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks. In practice, that means employees can speak up, ask questions, challenge ideas, and admit mistakes without fear of punishment or ridicule. It’s “felt permission for candour.”
Edmondson first observed this dynamic in medical teams: those who reported the most mistakes were actually performing better – not because they made more errors, but because they reported them, leading to faster learning and better outcomes.
Psychological safety is not the same as psychological health, though the two are related. Psychological health refers to individual wellbeing; psychological safety is about the team environment. A safe team creates wellbeing. A toxic team undermines it.
| Psychological Safety | Psychological Health |
|---|---|
| Refers to the context in which an individual interacts with others. | Refers to an individual’s internal state of well-being. |
| Trust, Open communication, Mutual respect | Emotional stability, Resilience, Coping skills |
Why it Matters for High Performing Teams
According to A Great Place to Work², there are six key signs that your workplace is psychologically unsafe:
❌ Projects take too long to roll out
❌ People don’t ask questions or share ideas
❌ The rumour mill is rampant
❌ High absenteeism
❌ High presenteeism
❌ High turnover
Psychological safety drives innovation, trust, and continuous improvement. Google’s Project Aristotle³ proved it is the number one factor of team effectiveness, even more important than technical skill.
Teams with high psychological safety are:
✔ More engaged, creative, and resilient
✔ Better at solving complex problems
✔ Able to learn faster from failure
✔ Equipped to thrive in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments
Edmondson notes: “To move from traditional management to managing in a VUCA world requires adopting a new mindset. Today’s world requires cross-functional and dynamic teaming.”
How Do You Know If Your Team Has Psychological Safety?
Edmondson developed a simple 11-question diagnostic tool⁴ to assess how psychologically safe a team feels. These questions uncover the everyday dynamics that influence learning, risk-taking, and honest communication:
Part 1: Individual Safety
- In this team, it is easy to discuss difficult issues and problems.
- I won’t receive retaliation or criticism if I admit to an error or mistake.
- It is easy to ask a member of this team for help.
- I feel safe offering new ideas, even if they aren’t fully-formed plans.
Part 2: Team Respect
- In this team, people are accepted for being different.
- My teammates welcome my ideas and give them time and attention.
- Members of this team could easily describe the value of others’ contributions.
Part 3: Team Learning
- In this team, people talk about mistakes and ways to improve our team’s work processes.
- We take time to find new ways to improve our team’s work processes.
- Members of this team raise concerns they have about team plans or decisions.
- We try to discover our underlying assumptions and seek counterarguments about issues under discussion.
These questions don’t just measure sentiment – they reflect the team’s shared norms and culture. Pay attention not just to the average scores, but to the spread of answers across individuals. Large gaps could indicate that safety is not being consistently experienced.
Edmondson reminds us: “Psychological safety is not an individual trait. It’s an emergent property of the group.”
Four Elements of Psychological Safety
According to Edmondson, a psychologically safe team has:
- Willingness to help
- Inclusion and diversity
- Healthy attitude to risk and failure
- Open, candid conversation
These are the bedrock of high-performing, agile teams. If you are unsure how to lead difficult conversations, read our expert article here.
How Insights Discovery® Fuels High Performance
At Zestfor, we integrate Insights Discovery®, a powerful psychometric tool, to build trust, empathy, and collaboration. It helps teams understand individual differences and communication preferences — all of which are essential for high-performing teams.
An Insights Discovery workshop helps teams:
- Encourages Open Communication: Safety removes the fear of sharing unconventional ideas, allowing diverse perspectives to shape decisions.
- Create Innovation: Safe environments encourage risk-taking and creativity.
- Improves Problem-Solving: Constructive conflict and candid discussion lead to better solutions.
- Increases Engagement and Collaboration: People who feel valued contribute more and work together effectively.
- Reveals Hidden Skills and Potential: Safety allows individuals to share strengths that might otherwise remain unseen.
How Insights Discovery Strengthens Psychological Safety:
- Common Language: Insights Discovery provides a shared vocabulary for communication and behaviour, reducing misunderstandings.
- Self-Awareness and Empathy: It helps individuals understand their own and others’ preferences, improving relationships.
- Improved Team Dynamics: Insights help teams resolve conflict, enhance inclusion, and build trust – all crucial for psychological safety.
How Leaders Build High Performing Teams
Here are five powerful leadership behaviours:
| Be Vulnerable | Admit when you don’t have all the answers. Share mistakes. Model learning. |
|---|---|
| Be Transparent | Say what you know, what you don’t, and how you’ll figure it out. Credibility builds trust. |
| Be Fair | Audit processes, promotions, and pay. Ensure hybrid team members feel equally seen. |
| Be Curious | Ask questions, challenge assumptions, and encourage dialogue. Dissent is valuable. |
| Be Reasonable | Respect boundaries and manage workload. Psychological safety suffers under unrealistic expectations. |
5 Ways to Build Psychological Safety in Your Workplace
Building psychological safety for a high performing team is an ongoing process. According to Harvard Business School⁵, there are five evidence-backed steps:
1. Talk About It and Prioritise It
Start by naming psychological safety as a strategic priority. As Edmondson says: “Too many people think that it’s about feeling comfortable all the time. Anything hard to achieve requires being uncomfortable along the way.”
2. Push Beyond Impression Management
Employees often stay silent to avoid appearing incompetent or negative. Reframe risk-taking as a team necessity:
- Not every idea will be implemented, but all ideas will be considered.
- Disagreement is welcome when it leads to the best solution.
- Mistakes are valuable for collective learning.
3. Use the Psychological Safety Scale
Regularly measure team perceptions using Edmondson’s survey, and track improvements over time.
4. Promote Open Dialogue (Jazz Dialogues)
Adopt Jazz Dialogues, where team members listen more, build on others’ contributions, and respond to ideas as they emerge. This encourages collective engagement and innovation.
5. Continually Reassess and Adjust
Just like physical strength, psychological safety requires maintenance. Check in with your team, collect feedback, and adapt leadership behaviours to keep safety high.
Our ‘Harnessing the Power of Team in Uncertainty and Change’ programme is particularly popular with clients operating in VUCA environments. It helps teams comes together, build trust, and focus on collective resilience and adaptability.
Misconceptions to Avoid
- “It’s all about being nice.”
Workplaces can be polite but still lack candour. Safety is about constructive challenge, not avoiding discomfort. - “It should feel comfortable.”
True learning and growth require discomfort – but without fear of blame or judgment.
Psychological safety in the workplace isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation of high performance, especially in dynamic, cross-functional, and hybrid teams.
Frequently Asked Questions About Psychological Safety for High Performing Teams
Transform Your Team’s Performance Today
Psychological safety in the workplace isn’t a soft skill. It’s a strategic advantage.
When your people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and learn from failure, performance follows. As Edmondson says: “Anything hard to achieve requires being uncomfortable along the way.”
