Creating Safe Spaces: Building Psychological Safety in Your Organization
- Kevin Davis
- May 14
- 7 min read
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." — Maya Angelou
What You'll Learn
Beyond the Buzzword
When the executive team of a healthcare organization approached us with concerns about stagnant innovation and high turnover, they had already read the books and articles on psychological safety. They could recite Amy Edmondson's definition verbatim: "a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes."
Yet despite this intellectual understanding, the lived experience in their organization told a different story. Team members were still withholding critical information. Innovative ideas died quietly in people's minds rather than being voiced. And exit interviews consistently cited "fear of making mistakes" as a primary reason for leaving.
"We talk about psychological safety," the CEO confessed, "but we haven't figured out how to actually create it."
This gap between intellectual understanding and practical implementation is common. Psychological safety has become a management buzzword, but transforming it from concept to culture requires more than awareness—it demands consistent, deliberate action.
The Neuroscience of Safety
To understand how to create psychological safety, we must first understand what happens in its absence.
Our brains are constantly scanning our environment for threats. This scanning happens automatically through our amygdala, the fear center of our brain. When it detects a potential threat—even a social one like disapproval or rejection—it triggers our fight-flight-freeze response.
As one healthcare executive explained to us, "I realized that when I frowned while concentrating, my team interpreted it as disapproval. Their threat detection systems were activated even when no actual threat existed."
In organizations where psychological safety is absent, people's brains remain in a perpetual state of vigilance. This vigilance:
Consumes cognitive resources: Mental energy devoted to self-protection isn't available for problem-solving or creativity
Narrows focus: Threat responses tunnel our vision to immediate dangers rather than opportunities
Impairs learning: Information processing and memory formation deteriorate under threat
Reduces collaboration: Social connection diminishes when we're in self-preservation mode
Creating psychological safety isn't about making people feel good for its own sake—it's about creating the neurological conditions where optimal thinking, learning, and collaboration become possible.
From Retribution to Safety: The Mindset Transformation
Creating psychological safety requires transforming several key mindsets within your organization:
Retribution to psychological safety: People need to know they won't face punishment or rejection for speaking up.
Fixed mindset to growth mindset: Everyone must believe that capabilities can develop through dedication and hard work.
Judgmentalism to elevation: Rather than judging others as weak or incapable, we need to see potential and provide support.
Exclusion to inclusion: Diverse perspectives must be actively sought and valued, not marginalized.
Conventional thinking to creativity: Taking intellectual risks should be encouraged rather than dismissed.
This transformation doesn't happen through declarations or policy changes. It happens through consistent behaviors that signal safety to the primitive parts of our brains that are constantly assessing our environment.
The Four Pillars of Psychological Safety
Through our work with hundreds of organizations, we've identified four essential pillars that support psychological safety:
1. Leader Vulnerability
Leaders who model appropriate vulnerability create permission for others to do the same. When leaders admit mistakes, acknowledge gaps in knowledge, ask for help, and show their humanity, they demonstrate that imperfection is not just acceptable but expected.
Brad, one of our co-founders, shares his own experience: "I've suffered from crippling anxiety and occasional depression throughout my life. I've been to six psychologists, one psychiatrist, and several executive coaches over my career. I tell you this because I think it's important to be open about our need for support in maintaining our own mental fitness."
This kind of openness doesn't diminish leadership—it humanizes and strengthens it.
2. Active Appreciation
In environments where criticism outweighs appreciation, people learn to play it safe. Psychological safety requires a significantly positive-to-negative feedback ratio.
Active appreciation isn't about generic praise. It's about noticing and acknowledging specific contributions: "Your question in the meeting helped us identify a critical gap in our thinking," or "The way you handled that customer concern demonstrated exactly the values we want to embody."
3. Response to Failure
How an organization responds to mistakes and failures is perhaps the strongest signal of psychological safety. In safe environments, failures are treated as learning opportunities rather than reasons for blame.
After-action reviews focus on:
What happened?
What did we learn?
How will we improve?
Rather than:
Who screwed up?
Why didn't you prevent this?
How will we punish them?
One healthcare organization implemented "Failure Forums" where leaders shared their biggest mistakes and what they learned. This practice dramatically increased error reporting throughout the organization, allowing for systemic improvements that wouldn't have been possible in a blame culture.
4. Decision Transparency
When decisions seem arbitrary or secretive, people feel unsafe. Transparent decision-making processes—even when the decisions are difficult—build trust and safety.
Transparency involves:
Clarifying how decisions will be made before making them
Explaining the rationale behind decisions
Acknowledging constraints and tradeoffs
Being honest about uncertainty
Practical Implementation: Building Safety in Teams
Creating psychological safety isn't achieved through a single initiative or workshop. It requires consistent practices woven into the fabric of daily work:
Daily Practices
Begin meetings with check-ins: Start with a brief round of sharing current states or priorities before diving into agendas.
Use appreciation rounds: End meetings by having each person acknowledge someone else's contribution.
Normalize "I don't know": Regularly acknowledge your own knowledge gaps and invite questions.
Practice "yes, and" thinking: Build on ideas rather than immediately evaluating or dismissing them.
Address tensions directly: Create norms for healthy disagreement and resolution.
Weekly Practices
Learning rounds: Take turns sharing something you're learning or a mistake you're recovering from.
Cross-functional shadowing: Have team members observe different roles to build empathy and understanding.
Recognition rituals: Establish consistent ways to acknowledge contributions and growth.
Progress celebrations: Mark incremental achievements, not just final outcomes.
Feedback exchanges: Create structured opportunities for mutual feedback.
Organizational Practices
Psychological safety surveys: Regularly measure and discuss psychological safety metrics.
Learning from failure processes: Establish structured reviews that focus on improvement rather than blame.
Idea incubation programs: Create low-risk spaces for exploring new ideas before formal evaluation.
Cross-hierarchical dialogues: Enable conversations across levels that build shared understanding.
Innovation rewards: Recognize not just successful innovations but courageous attempts.
Measuring Psychological Safety
How do you know if your efforts are working? Psychological safety can be measured through both surveys and behavioral indicators:
Survey Measures
Speaking up: "I feel comfortable expressing my honest opinions in team meetings."
Risk-taking: "I'm willing to take risks and try new approaches in my work."
Error reporting: "When I make a mistake, I feel comfortable acknowledging it."
Asking for help: "I can admit when I don't know something without fear of judgment."
Voice of difference: "Diverse perspectives are valued on my team, even when they challenge the majority view."
Behavioral Indicators
Error reporting rates: Are people voluntarily acknowledging mistakes?
Participation metrics: Who speaks in meetings? Is conversation distributed or dominated?
Question frequency: How often do people ask questions in group settings?
Idea submission: Are new ideas coming from throughout the organization?
Cross-level communication: Does information flow freely up and down the hierarchy?
Overcoming Common Challenges
Creating psychological safety isn't without challenges. Here are strategies for addressing common obstacles:
Challenge 1: Middle Manager Resistance
Middle managers often feel caught between senior leadership expectations and frontline realities. They may resist psychological safety initiatives out of fear that openness will reflect poorly on them.
Solution: Start by building psychological safety for middle managers first. Help them experience it before asking them to create it for others.
Challenge 2: Mistaking Politeness for Safety
Many teams confuse surface harmony with psychological safety. They avoid conflict and mistake the absence of tension for safety.
Solution: Distinguish between "artificial harmony" and genuine safety. Teach that productive conflict about ideas is essential for innovation.
Challenge 3: Inconsistent Application
Some leaders create safety in formal settings but undermine it through corridor comments or reactive behaviors.
Solution: Create feedback mechanisms that help leaders recognize inconsistencies between intentions and impact.
Challenge 4: Cultural Differences
Psychological safety looks different across cultures. What feels safe in one context may feel uncomfortable in another.
Solution: Involve diverse perspectives in defining what psychological safety means in your specific context.
The Path Forward: Making Safety Sustainable
Creating psychological safety isn't a one-time achievement. It requires ongoing attention and renewal. To make psychological safety sustainable:
Embed in onboarding: Help new members understand safety norms from day one.
Train continuously: Provide regular skill-building in psychological safety practices.
Recognize safety champions: Identify and celebrate those who exemplify safety-building behaviors.
Address violations promptly: When safety is undermined, address it immediately and transparently.
Renew commitment regularly: Use team retreats or planning sessions to refresh safety commitments.
The Ultimate Competitive Advantage
In today's rapidly changing environment, the most successful organizations aren't necessarily those with the best strategy, technology, or talent. They're those where psychological safety enables people to fully contribute their unique perspectives, take intelligent risks, and learn continuously.
The choice is yours: Will you create the conditions where your people feel safe enough to contribute their best thinking? Or will you settle for the limited version of their capabilities that emerges when they're focused on self-protection?
The organizations that thrive in the future will be those where people feel safe enough to bring their full selves to work—not because it's nice, but because it's necessary for sustainable success.
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