I was shocked – I tried hard for it not to show. It wasn’t that I minded that he didn’t know the term, we all need to learn somewhere – what really troubled me was that he was a senior manager leading a team of six highly specialist advisors in a skilled environment. Clients relied on this person’s team members for some serious life advice. The shock was that someone could reach this level of seniority in an organisation without ever having heard the term psychological safety. All I could think was, what on Earth else is going on in this organisation?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t consulting to his organisation, just part of the DEI session, however, I have since learnt that his team has experienced some difficulty. It has gone from six to one in 18 months and inter-departmental morale is through the floor. When psychological safety is missing, any number of issues can arise.

The term psychological safety is generally attributed to Amy Edmondson, Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School who, in 1999 defined it as “the shared belief among team members that they can take interpersonal risks without fear of negative consequences”. The concept was actually introduced in the 1960s by Edgar Schein and Warren Bennis who viewed it as a group behaviour that could reduce interpersonal risk by lowering a person’s anxiety about being accepted and worthwhile.

Since becoming mainstream in the early 2000s, the concept of psychological safety has become heavily researched and has, according to Edmondson and Bransby in their 2023 paper 'Psychological Safety Comes of Age', moved from a ‘nascent area of work in the 1990s' to one that qualifies as ‘mature theory’. Essentially, it has been accepted as a mainstream concept in a significant proportion of organisational studies.

It is likely that one of the key drivers to raising awareness of psychological safety is because of its quantifiable link to productivity, i.e., if organisations create psychologically safe environments for their employees, they are likely to see anything up to 41% more productivity than those with low levels of psychological safety. This is certainly worth giving serious thought to when a recent Global Workplace study by ADP Research Institute found that only 26% of employees globally report feeling psychologically safe in the workplace.

So, what are the key factors that suggest an organisation has Psychological safety for its employees? Put simply, a safe environment is one where individuals and teams can ask questions or point out problems, where mistakes can be made and used as a learning opportunity, and where there is meaningful collaboration and teamwork. Edmondson also identifies that in a psychologically safe environment employees feel part of something meaningful and can feel a strong sense of purpose and connection to their job role.

Vulnerability also plays a key role in showing a psychologically-safe workplace, only those willing to be vulnerable can invite and accept challenge and criticism and acknowledge mistakes or failed innovations.

The above examples show clearly why this safety is so important for organisations and particularly startups and those reliant on knowledge and innovation to succeed. When teams feel psychologically safe, they will innovate and collaborate and share knowledge and ideas openly, leading to a culture of development and growth.

When psychological safety is not cultivated, organisations become high risk, mistakes get hidden, potentially unsafe practices go unchallenged, and hazards are ignored. We have seen this repeatedly with devastating consequences in healthcare environments where fear of speaking out has led directly to a negative impact on patient safety. There becomes a culture of silence because speaking up likely brings negative consequences.

There are also strong links between low levels of psychological safety and emotional exhaustion in teams, as well as direct negative links with bullying and burnout, all of which directly impact on employee engagement levels and as a consequence poor levels of productivity.

So how can leaders create a psychologically safe environment? According to Edmondson, leaders have to go first. It is up to them to talk about their mistakes and be vulnerable to create an environment that gives others permission to do the same. She also suggests leaders foster an environment where teams can ‘create space’ to carve out time to problem solve, to reflect, and to share their fears, their wins, and their ideas, whoever they are.

Leaders also need to actively invite input and act on the feedback that they receive. They must learn to ask the right questions and be willing to accept answers that may not be ones they want to hear. They must build inclusion throughout the organisation, this should cross departments, levels, and generations – all voices should be heard and all knowledge given the opportunity to be shared.

This may look simple in theory but founders and leaders need to know how to actually create this psychologically safe space through their own behaviours. Edmondson and Bransby point out that despite there being so much research into psychological safety and why it’s so important, there remains a ‘glaring gap’ in leaders and founders understanding how to actually create it.

One way to do this is for leaders to undertake deep personal work to identify their individual anxieties and defences to first create their own sense of psychological safety within themselves. Only then will they be able to create the same safe space for their organisation and their employees.

With a 2024 Microsoft workplace study suggesting that teams with strong sense of psychological safety are 35% more likely to exceed their productivity targets, it is certainly worth it.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe