Debunking misconceptions about workplace psychological safety
Creating psychological safety in the workplace—an environment where people feel safe to speak up—can help organizations improve employee learning and performance, but misconceptions about the concept can hinder success, according to experts.
In an article in the May-June issue of the Harvard Business Review, co-authors Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, and Michaela Kerrissey, associate professor of management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote that more and more organizations are prioritizing psychological safety.
“We celebrate organizations’ recognition that their ability to increase quality, spur innovation, and boost performance depends on their employees’ input,” they wrote. “However, as the popularity of psychological safety has grown, so too have misconceptions about it.”
Edmondson and Kerrissey explained six misconceptions about psychological safety:
- It doesn’t mean being nice in order to avoid arguments. Instead, being candid and offering constructive feedback are important for improvement. “When psychological safety exists, people believe that sharing hard truths is expected. It allows good debates to happen when they’re needed. But it doesn’t mean that participants find debates comfortable,” they wrote.
- It doesn’t mean that all ideas necessarily have to be supported. While leaders should consider everyone’s input, they don’t need to agree when making a decision.
- It doesn’t mean protection from layoffs.
- It doesn’t have to get in the way of accountability for someone’s performance—leaders can still address mistakes.
- It cannot be implemented only through policy, such as the Workplace Psychological Safety Act passed by the Rhode Island state senate in 2024. “Telling people in a company or on a team that they must have psychological safety ‘or else’ will not produce it,” Edmondson and Kerrissey wrote. “Psychological safety, rather than being created by a policy, is built in a group, interaction by interaction.”
- It does not need to be started by top leadership in an organization—any team at any level can build a productive learning environment.
The authors also offered tips on how leaders can build psychological safety, including by emphasizing the importance of the organization’s goals. “Ironically, talking less about psychological safety and more about the goal and the context and why everyone’s input matters is the first step in building psychological safety,” they wrote.
“Creating [psychological safety] may not be easy, and practicing it may not be comfortable,” they added. “But the pace of change and the level of uncertainty in the business environment make frank, data-driven conversations more valuable than ever.”
Read the Harvard Business Review article: What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety
