You’ve hired an excellent team, set lofty but realistic goals, and implemented efficient processes—so why aren’t your employees reaching their full potential?
It could be that they’re afraid to make mistakes or contribute new ideas.
“Overcoming challenges requires a strong sense of psychological safety and disciplined learning practices,” says Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson in the online course Dynamic Teaming, which can be taken individually or as one of seven courses in the Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB). “This is where you come in. As a leader, it’s your job to unlock the potential of your team and create the best possible chance for breakthrough performance.”
Here’s a primer on psychological safety, why it’s important in the workplace, and how to build it in your organization.
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What Is Psychological Safety at Work?
Psychological safety encourages people within a group to offer opinions, suggest ideas, ask questions, raise concerns, speak up, and admit mistakes without fearing negative consequences.
According to Dynamic Teaming, psychological safety has four key elements:
- Willingness to help: Employees believe asking for help is appropriate, and their colleagues are willing to provide it.
- Inclusion and diversity: Employees feel a sense of belonging and that their diverse experiences and expertise matter.
- Attitude to risk and failure: Employees view mistakes and failures as acceptable in favor of learning.
- Open conversation: Employees perceive conversations as open, candid, and safe to contribute to.
For a workplace to be psychologically safe, it must meet all four dimensions.
The Importance of Psychological Safety in the Workplace
Psychological safety means employees feel comfortable speaking up, taking risks, and making mistakes. Working in a safe environment can help boost their satisfaction, creativity, and performance—making them more effective.
Yet, psychological safety’s importance extends further. It’s critical to managing dynamic teams.
Dynamic teams have fluid membership and may gather in the moment across industries, functions, time zones, and languages. Without proper preparation, they must navigate ever-shifting circumstances and tasks.
As the world becomes more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), dynamic teaming is crucial to responding to new challenges.
“To move from traditional management to managing in a VUCA world requires adopting a new mindset,” Edmondson says in Dynamic Teaming. “Today’s world requires cross-functional and dynamic teaming. It’s your job—the leader’s job—to move your team and organization toward that mindset.”
One key attribute of dynamic teams is their ability to experiment, leverage diverse backgrounds and expertise, and work creatively to find innovative solutions.
In Dynamic Teaming, Edmondson explains that while diversity and inclusive leadership are essential to teams’ success, psychological safety is the foundation. Without it, diverse teams can underperform compared to their homogenous counterparts.
To help unlock your team’s potential, here are five ways to create a culture of psychological safety.
5 Ways to Create Psychological Safety in the Workplace
1. Talk About It and Prioritize It
While it may seem simple, the first step to creating psychological safety is talking about it. The term has become a buzzword and can trigger defensive reactions that imply talking about improving it labels your current culture as “unsafe.”
By openly prioritizing psychological safety as a leader, you can define and dispel misconceptions about it.
“Too many people think that it’s about feeling comfortable all the time,” Edmondson says in the Harvard Business Review, “and that you can’t say anything that makes someone else uncomfortable or you’re violating psychological safety. Anything hard to achieve requires being uncomfortable along the way.”
Edmondson dispels more misconceptions in Dynamic Teaming, including that:
- It’s only about “we” and not “me”
- It’s easy to overcome
- It will allow you to learn from your mistakes but not prevent them
- Every idea is great–rather, every idea is considered
- The goal is trading unaccountability among a team for a lack of interpersonal fear
Being transparent about goals and your new workplace culture’s impact requires team buy-in and can set the stage for a successful transition.
2. Use the Psychological Safety Scale
Before making changes, assess your organization’s psychological safety performance.
One tool you can use is the psychological safety scale. Created by Edmondson, it’s a series of statements that employees indicate to what extent they agree.
For instance, for the statement, “I’m comfortable asking other members of my team for help,” the employee checks off their answer on a scale of “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”
Once all employees have filled out the scale, you’d average the score for each question to identify the areas your team is strongest in and which need improvement. The scale also highlights where the organization falls as a starting point between one and 10 to help you determine how you’re tracking toward business goals.
3. Request Input and Promote Conversation
A critical part of fostering psychological safety is requesting employee input. Until it becomes an ingrained part of your team’s culture, they may hesitate to provide feedback unless explicitly asked.
When asking for their opinions, explain why doing so matters. Emphasize that a team where members share their thoughts offers many benefits—from different viewpoints, chances to discuss, and opportunities to innovate. This helps break away from the usual way of doing things.
Once your team members provide their thoughts, respond productively. Even if you don’t agree or like someone’s idea, ensure they know you appreciate that they shared it. Refrain from shutting down ideas right away; instead, use them as starting points for group discussion and new ideas.
4. Admit Your Mistakes
If you want your employees to feel safe making mistakes, you must be transparent about yours and frame missteps as learning opportunities.
“[Psychological safety] will not eliminate mistakes, errors, and failures, but it will enable you and your team to learn from those mistakes and stop them from happening again,” Edmondson says in Dynamic Teaming.
Modeling mistake-making can encourage your employees to be forthcoming with their missteps, secure in knowing they won’t receive punishment but rather a debrief about what went wrong and what to do differently next time.
5. Continually Reassess and Adjust
Finally, remember that a psychologically safe work environment requires constant reassessment.
Dynamic Teaming likens an organization’s psychological safety to muscular strength in the body—just as you must work to maintain strength over time, you need to put in effort to keep your organization psychologically safe.
If you use the psychological safety scale, revisit it periodically to track whether your efforts are yielding the culture you want. You can also regularly solicit constructive feedback from employees one-on-one about how they feel about the team culture and adjust accordingly.
Unleash Your Team’s Potential
Creating a psychologically safe workplace takes time, effort, and vulnerability—making some leaders shy away from it.
If you’re courageous enough, you can unleash your team’s full potential by cultivating a culture that values open communication, sharing ideas, supportive discussions, and growing from mistakes.
Are you interested in building psychological safety in the workplace? Explore our Dynamic Teaming course, which offers unique strategies to foster trust and collaboration. You can take it independently or as part of the Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB). CLIMB consists of seven courses for leading in the modern business world. Download our CLIMB brochure to learn more about the curriculum, admissions requirements, and benefits.
This post was updated on March 11, 2025. It was originally published on March 28, 2024.
