If you want a healthy workplace, start with psychological safety 

Culture starts with psychological safety, not perks 

We often hear how a great workplace culture leads to better performance, happier employees and higher innovation. But here is what many organisations miss: Before you build an inclusive, positive culture, you must build psychological safety.

Leaders can shape psychological safety in teams. But what does it all mean in practice – and where should you start when it comes to creating a psychologically safe work environment?

What is psychological safety?

Psychological safety means having the belief that there are no negative consequences tied to being yourself. You feel safe to broach new ideas, ask questions, or make mistakes without fear of judgement, embarrassment, or perceived incompetence – in other words, without interpersonal risk.

To clarify some common misconceptions about workplace psychological safety:

Psychological safety is about creating a safe space for honest communication, constructive feedback, productive debate and healthy challenges.

It is not about being “nice” or lowering performance standards in the workplace.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? The truth, however, is that many organisations do not have or prioritise psychological safety – even though this is a key ingredient for growth, learning and high performance. 

This goes further than simply mitigating psychosocial hazards. Psychosocial risks are defined under model WHS laws in Australia as “anything that could cause psychological harm (e.g. harm someone’s mental health)” in the workplace. Fostering a psychologically safe workplace means going beyond these minimum requirements to build a better environment.

When psychological safety is missing, the negative consequences can be far-reaching. It is not just about people being afraid to say something; such as engaging in experimentation, or providing honest feedback. A lack of psychological safety at work can be detrimental… or even life-threatening.

Example: the case of Elaine Bromiley

Elaine’s airway collapsed during a medical procedure. The medical team – three senior doctors and three nurses – fixated on failed attempts which unfortunately, led to her tragic death. The doctors never consulted each other, while a nurse, who recognised the danger and tried suggesting alternatives, was brushed aside (¹van Dongen et al., 2024).

As heartbreaking as Elaine’s case is, this is not an isolated story. People often withhold opinions that are important to organisations, customers, or even themselves. If organisations want a truly healthy and high-performing culture, you must create the conditions for people to speak up, take risks, and show up authentically. 

Why we need psychological safety at work

Here’s my take: Work today is not getting any simpler.

Most organisations operate in a fast-paced, unpredictable world, also known as the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment. With increasing cross-functional teams, new technologies, or global collaboration, success largely depends on people working together.

This places an ever-increasing emphasis on the value of freely sharing knowledge, admitting errors, solving problems – and most importantly, creating a high-performance culture that allows learning and innovation along the way.

Related: How workplace culture helps you attract, keep, and motivate your people

Psychological safety as a driver of culture and performance 

Research further backs up the positive impact of psychological safety. Google’s famous Project Aristotle found that psychological safety is the number-one factor in developing high-performing teams –  outperforming goal setting, work interdependence, and team composition. 

Julia Rozovsky, the leader of Project Aristotle, stated that research into patterns and behaviours within teams that led to high performance clearly showed “psychological safety was by far the most important of the five key dynamics we found. It’s the underpinning of the other four.” (² Rozovsky, 1995)

Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson has also shown that teams with higher psychological safety: 

• Are more satisfied and engaged
• Perform better
• Are innovative, adaptive, and resilient
• Play a huge role in shaping a culture prone to continuous learning and growth (³ Edmondson, 2018)

Related: Unlock High Performance by Building a Winning Workplace Culture

What gets in the way of psychological safety?

If psychological safety is so important, why is it still missing from so many workplaces? 

Often, we see these barriers to psychological safety:

• Authoritative leaders who create strict hierarchies where only “good” news flows upwards, while not welcoming the “truth”.
• Unreachable target goals, and a focus on performance that makes people fear making mistakes.
• A lack of processes or forums to encourage employee voice. 
• High interpersonal risks where people worry about losing face, damaging relationships or facing retaliation for speaking up.  
• Excessive confidence in high-ups or authority leads to employees doubting their own voice. 

The result is a culture of silence. In this type of work environment, employees stay silent and watch problems unfold in order to protect themselves. Organisations suffer from stalled growth and innovation, while ethical breaches go unchallenged – this can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

Remember how shocked we were when we learned about NASA’s Challenger disaster? Even when engineers raised concerns about safety before takeoff, their voices were overruled.

The consequences were devastating, and teach a valuable lesson: A culture inhibiting voice will ignore early warning signs where strategy may fall short. These early warnings are what can prevent avoidable harm, if heeded.

Leaders hold the key to fostering psychological safety  

The good news? Psychological safety is not the result of chance, but of deliberate planning and action.

Leaders play a crucial role to shape psychological safety in their teams. Having a strategy or poster saying “we value your opinion” is not enough – leaders need to create the conditions where people feel safe to speak up (³ Edmondson, 2018).

3 ways leaders can build psychologically safe environments

1. Set the stage

Leaders need to set the tone and frame failures as learning opportunities. Make it explicitly clear that questioning and feedback are expected, and build a compelling vision communicating why voice is important to motivate employees. 

2. Invite participation

Be vulnerable. Leaders do not necessarily have all the answers – rather than forcing opinions, they can admit that they “do not know” to build psychological safety and establish trust. 

Be genuinely curious, ask questions, and encourage input from all voices (not just the loudest) through the establishment of structured forums and team discussion guidelines. 

3. Respond positively

When someone voices an opinion, thank them. De-stigmatise failure and celebrate lessons learnt, while maintaining discipline and sanctioning psychological safety violations. 

How leaders respond to risk-taking, mistakes or challenges will shift attitudes and behaviours. When people can bring their full selves to work without fear or perceived risk, they can do their best work.

How Keogh supports psychological safety at work

At Keogh, we know that creating psychological safety is not just about good intentions. It requires an evidence-based framework that will diagnose, build, and sustain psychological safety, while aligning with strategy and building leadership capability to embed psychological safety at work. 

That is where Conductor’s PS25™ comes in – a tool designed and tested right here in Australia to help organisations measure and develop psychological safety at scale.  

Keogh uses PS25™ to: 

• • Provide clear, actionable feedback to teams  

• • Help leaders discover where psychological safety is strong, and where it needs work 

• • Support co-designing bespoke plans to enhance psychological safety  

Embracing an evidence-based approach, the Keogh Way helps organisations move from awareness to action. We do this by ensuring commitment from teams and supporting the change through leadership coaching, strategic culture alignment, and building feedback or reflection loops to move towards the desired future state.  

If you want to know how psychologically safe your teams really feel, Keogh can use the PS25™ to help you find out – and guide your next steps. 

“Great culture” starts with psychological safety – which starts with effective leadership

At the end of the day, you cannot build a healthy, high-performance “speak up” culture without psychological safety—and you cannot create psychological safety without effective leadership. 

If you want your people to speak up, take calculated risks, and be their best self at work, start by making it safe for them to do so. When interpersonal risk taking is out of the way, people and teams can innovate to their full potential.

For more information, why not contact Keogh today. We can help make psychological safety visible, and tangible, in your organisation.

 

Sources: 

1. 1. van Dongen, D., Guldenmund, F., Grossmann, I. et al. Classification of influencing factors of speaking-up behaviour in hospitals: a systematic review. BMC Health Serv Res 24, 1657 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-12138-x 

1. 1. https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/mdhhs/Folder4/Folder10/Folder3/Folder110/Folder2/Folder210/Folder1/Folder310/Google-and-Psychological-Safety.pdf?rev=7786b2b9ade041e78828f839eccc8b75 

3. 3. Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The Fearless Organization : Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.