When Amy Edmondson conducted the research that gave us the term psychological safety, she interviewed two employees in the same organization about admitting mistakes. One said, "You are never afraid to tell the manager." The other said, "You get put on trial! People get blamed for mistakes. You do not want to have made one."

Same company. Same stakes. Radically different climates. In one team, speaking up was natural and expected. In the other, it was a last resort. That difference is what psychological safety actually measures. More than 25 years later, most organizations have misunderstood it in both directions.

The Double Distortion

Many leaders never fully grasped the concept. They labeled it a soft skill, turned it into a catchy phrase, and went about business as usual. At the same time, the term drifted in the other direction. Employees have recast it as a promise of comfort and a shield against critical feedback, hard conversations, and accountability. In some workplaces, saying "that is not psychologically safe" has become a way to shut down the very candor the concept was designed to protect.

Neither version is aligned with the research – I share just a few at the end of this piece. Edmondson defined psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for taking interpersonal risks. It means you can admit an error, ask for help, challenge an idea, or deliver bad news without being punished or humiliated. In her study of 51 work teams, psychological safety predicted learning behaviors such as seeking feedback, discussing errors, and experimenting, and these behaviors, in turn, predicted team performance. It was never about feeling comfortable. It is about making candor possible so teams can learn and perform.

What the Evidence Says Leaders Should Do

Silence follows status. In a follow-up study of 23 intensive care teams, Ingrid Nembhard and Edmondson found that the lower people were in the hierarchy, the less safe they felt speaking up. This negatively impacts results: the frontline workaround, the early warning, and the better idea stay trapped at the bottom of the room. Every industry has its version of this problem.

Inclusive leadership changes the dynamics. The same study found that leader inclusiveness, meaning the words and actions a leader uses to invite and appreciate the contributions of others, predicted psychological safety and reduced the effect of status. When leaders actively invited input, the gap between senior and junior voices narrowed and engagement in improvement work rose. Safety is not something leaders talk about; it is something they demonstrate, one interaction at a time.

It is a system, not a trendy phrase. A 2020 systematic review of 36 studies identified 13 distinct enablers of psychological safety operating at the organizational, team, and individual levels, from a learning orientation to supportive relationships to how status and hierarchy are managed. Leadership is a major driver, but you cannot create psychological safety through policy alone, nor can you delegate it to HR.

A Practical Toolkit

Psychological safety is built through concrete leadership practices, not good intentions. Here are seven that I teach leaders.

1. Be self-aware. Know your triggers and manage your reactions. Your response to the last mistake or differences in opinion determines whether you hear about the next one.

2. Check your ego. Admit what you do not know, and listen to learn rather than to defend.

3. Foster inclusive problem-solving and creativity. Invite ideas deliberately, especially from the people closest to the work and furthest from the title.

4. Encourage collective learning. Treat failures as data, hold honest reviews after setbacks, and remove the stigma from intelligent risk-taking.

5. Flatten the room. Speak last, share the floor, and call on the quietest voice before the loudest one.

6. Facilitate healthy conflict. Normalize vigorous debate about ideas while keeping respect for people non-negotiable.

7. Focus on collective performance and results. Hold the line on standards. Accountability is not a violation of psychological safety. It is a feature of it.

Psychological safety and high standards are not opposites. They are partners. Safety without standards produces complacency. Standards without safety produce silence. The teams that excel are the ones that demand both an environment where the truth travels fast, and candor about performance is an act of respect rather than aggression.

That is what Edmondson found in 1999. It is time we reclaimed it.

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