What Psychological Safety Looks Like in Action and How to Build It in Your Organisation and Teams.

Have you ever felt uneasy in a team, even when the people are kind and the work is familiar? You can't always explain it, but something in the air feels off. Tense. Careful. Controlled.

That something is often a lack of psychological safety.

Psychological safety is the belief that you can speak up, ask questions, challenge ideas, or admit mistakes without fear of embarrassment, rejection, or punishment. It’s not about being nice, it’s about being safe to be real.

This guide breaks down what psychological safety actually looks like, why it matters, and how HR leaders and people managers can help create it in everyday moments.

🔍 What the Research Says

Decades of research, led by scholars like Amy Edmondson, show that psychological safety is a key driver of:

✅ Team learning and adaptability

✅ Innovation and idea-sharing

✅ Resilience under pressure

✅ Honest feedback and reflection

✅ Retention and employee engagement

In short, when people feel safe, they show up more fully and teams perform better.

But when psychological safety is low? People hold back. They second-guess. They self-protect. And organisations lose out on ideas, insight, and potential.

💬 What Psychological Safety Sounds Like

You’ll often hear it in the way leaders and colleagues speak, especially in moments of tension or uncertainty.

Here are some common phrases you might hear in psychologically safe environments:

“It’s okay to get this wrong.

What can we learn from it?”

"You don’t have to know everything, let’s figure it out together.”

“That took courage, thank you for raising it.”

“You’re safe to ask anything here.”

These aren’t just words. They’re signals. And people are constantly scanning for them to know whether it’s safe to contribute honestly.

👀 What It Looks Like in Teams

Psychological safety can be observed in a team’s everyday behaviours. Look for:

🔹 Information shared openly, not hoarded

🔹 Colleagues backing each other, even when mistakes happen

🔹 Disagreements that are curious, not personal

🔹 Leaders who invite feedback and act on it

🔹 Conversations happening with people, not about them

🔹 Debriefs after mistakes focused on learning, not blame

It’s not perfection. It’s a culture where people can take healthy risks and trust they won’t be punished for doing so.

🧠 How Is It Built? (Spoiler: Not with Strategy Documents)

One of the biggest misconceptions is that culture is shaped only at the organisational level. In reality, psychological safety is built at the team level, in small, everyday moments.

As Brené Brown puts it:

“Trust is built in micro-moments.”

Here’s what that might look like in practice:

🔸 A leader says, “I made a call that didn’t land well. I want to unpack why.”

🔸 A team member checks in: “You’ve been quiet in meetings, is everything okay?”

🔸 A manager invites a challenge: “What am I missing in this approach?”

🔸 A team debriefs a failed project without pointing fingers.

These moments model humility, curiosity, and care, the conditions that make safety possible.

✅ Practical Ways to Strengthen Psychological Safety

If you're an HR leader, team lead, or middle manager, here are some starting points:

🔹 Normalise not knowing. Say things like “I’m still working this out” or “I don’t have all the answers.”

🔹 Invite input early. Ask: “What are we not seeing?” before finalising decisions.

🔹 Debrief mistakes together. Use non-punitive reviews to extract learning.

🔹 Respond to feedback well. If someone takes a risk to speak up, honour it.

🔹 Create space for reflection. Build team rituals to pause and process, not just react.

🔹 Model psychological flexibility. Show that change and challenge are part of the process.

You don’t need a full-scale initiative to get started. You need leaders, at every level, who choose to lead with trust, not fear.

💡 Final Thought

Psychological safety is often invisible, until it’s not. When it’s missing, teams shrink. When it’s present, teams expand.

You’ll see it in the risks people take, the honesty they bring, and the energy they carry into the room.

Building it doesn’t require perfection. It requires consistency, care, and the courage to go first.

Author

Sallina Jeffrey MBA

Ph.D Candidate (Organisational Psychology).

📚 References

• Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams

• Carmeli, A., Brueller, D., & Dutton, J. (2009)

• Dutton, J. E., & Heaphy, E. D. (2003). High-quality connections

• Higgins, M., & Ishimaru, A. (2012)

• Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the Heart