Psychological safety

What it's not, and what it is, at work

Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone seemed afraid to speak up, even when honest feedback was clearly needed? Or watched someone withdraw after their suggestion was rejected, as if they’d learned it wasn’t safe to share ideas anymore?

These moments reveal something important about workplace culture that Harvard researchers say we’ve been getting wrong.

The Misunderstood Buzzword

“Psychological safety” has become one of those phrases that gets thrown around in corporate settings like “synergy” or “thought leader”—everyone talks about it, but fewer people seem to understand what it actually means.

Writing in Harvard Business Review, Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School and Michaela Kerrissey of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health identify key misconceptions about psychological safety and how to actually build environments where people feel empowered to contribute their best thinking.

Here’s what they say most people get wrong, and what actually works.

What Psychological Safety Is NOT

Actually, they came up with five misconceptions:

1. It’s not about being “nice” all the time. Safety and comfort aren’t the same thing. Real psychological safety means you can have honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversations. When “being nice” becomes code for never saying what you really think, organizations end up, as the researchers put it, “producing ignorance and mediocrity.”

2. It’s not about always getting your way. Psychological safety doesn’t mean every idea gets implemented or that everyone leaves every meeting feeling validated. Disagreement and constructive conflict are normal and necessary.

3. It’s not about job security at all costs. While no one should be punished for offering a well-intentioned idea, psychological safety isn’t a shield against accountability or consequences for actual performance issues.

4. It’s not an excuse for poor performance. The entire point is to create an environment where people feel empowered to express ideas that might *improve* performance. As the researchers note, extensive research shows that when people don’t feel safe, they hide information to save face or be agreeable, and teams fall into groupthink.

5. You can’t mandate it from the top. Psychological safety has to be built by everyone, at all levels of an organization. Leadership support matters, but it requires buy-in across the board.

What Actually Works

If you want to help create psychological safety in your workplace—whether you’re in leadership or not—Edmondson and Kerrissey say there are three key approaches:

1. Focus on shared goals, not on the concept itself. Talk about what you’re all trying to achieve together. When everyone understands and cares about the mission, it becomes easier to have honest conversations about how to get there.

2. Improve the quality of conversations. This means asking good questions, listening intently, and working toward decisions rather than letting discussions drift. High-quality conversations both create and result from psychological safety. You can practice this in any meeting or discussion you’re part of.

3. Create structures for reflection and progress-tracking. Simple practices like regular check-ins, weekly reviews of learnings and insights, or creating time for team members to talk directly with each other can make a huge difference. These don’t require executive authority—often a team can implement them on their own.

The Bottom Line

Creating psychological safety is hard to quantify, but the payoff is real: teams that can speak honestly, challenge ideas constructively, and learn from mistakes consistently outperform those that can’t.

And perhaps most importantly, you don’t need to be in charge to start contributing to this kind of culture. Anyone can ask better questions, listen more carefully, and help create the conditions where good ideas can surface—no matter where they come from.

Which, ironically, is exactly the kind of thing you should feel comfortable saying out loud at work.

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7 other things worth knowing

• Officials from Israel and Hamas were in an Egyptian resort on Monday to launch talks that the U.S. hopes will bring a halt to the war in Gaza and a release of hostages, despite contentious issues such as disarmament of the Palestinian militant group. The negotiations on President Donald Trump’s plan were set to begin on the eve of the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war, when fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. (Reuters)

• The Supreme Court’s new term opens Monday and is poised to deliver President Trump and conservatives a string of victories. Here are some of the biggest cases to watch: Legal challenges over Trump’s tariffs, his attempts to fire an FTC commissioner and his firing of a Fed governor; a case brought by Vice President JD Vance when he was still in Congress in which the court will consider reversing a precedent that limits coordination between campaigns and political parties; and two cases about whether states can bar trans athletes from participating in women’s sports. (Axios)

• One case the court won’t take: an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein. On the first day of their new term, the justices declined to take up a case that would have drawn renewed attention to the sordid sexual-abuse saga after President Donald Trump’s administration sought to tamp down criticism over its refusal to publicly release more investigative files from Epstein’s case. (Associated Press)

• Bari Weiss announced on Monday that she is officially editor-in-chief of CBS News and her outlet, The Free Press, is joining Paramount. “We’re a news organization, so I’ll get right to it: This morning, The Free Press is joining Paramount,” Weiss wrote in an email to readers. The purchase price for The Free Press was $150 million in cash and Paramount stock, according to reports. (Fox News)

• A trio of scientists — two Americans and one Japanese — have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries concerning “peripheral immune tolerance,” a mechanism by which the body helps prevent itself from attacking its own tissues instead of foreign invaders. Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi will share the prize for discoveries that “launched the field of peripheral tolerance, spurring the development of medical treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases,” the Nobel Assembly said in a news release. (NBC News)

• Voters under 50 are the least open to electing a female president, and four in 10 Americans personally know someone who would not elect a woman to the White House, a new poll finds. The American University poll, shared first with POLITICO, says a majority supports electing more women to office, yet female politicians face persistent headwinds over trust on key issues like national security. They also run up against double standards, with voters saying a female president must be both “tough” and “likable.” (Politico)

• Walmart says it’s removing artificial dyes and 30 other ingredients typically found in ultraprocessed foods from its store brands by January 2027, calling the move “one of the largest private brand reformulations in retail history.” Consumers are paying closer attention to ingredient lists as they increasingly prioritize health and wellness. The Trump administration has put additional pressure on companies to reformulate, asking the food industry to eliminate artificial colors by the end of next year. (Food Dive)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Redd Francisco on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.