Psychological safety is the absence of interpersonal fear. Feeling psychologically safe allows people to perform their best at home, school, and work. When have you been your most productive, creative, or innovative? Think back to a time when you really made yourself proud, and try to remember the environment you were working in. Maybe it’s your current job, if you have challenging work and supportive, engaged colleagues. Maybe it was at university, when you ate your meals in a dining hall and had an adviser to help figure out your course schedule. Or maybe it was even earlier, when your parents were paying your bills and making sure you were getting enough green vegetables.
Or maybe—if things were chaotic at home growing up or if you worked to pay your way through college or if you’ve experienced the isolation that can come with remote work—you’ve had a different relationship with productivity and creativity.
Humans need a minimum number of their needs met in order to survive, contribute to a community, and achieve self-actualization, according to Maslow’s famous hierarchy. Social scientists now believe that psychological safety is one of these basic needs, a prerequisite for people to be at their best in all aspects of life, including home, school, and work.
Psychological safety means feeling safe to take interpersonal risks, to speak up, to disagree openly, to surface concerns without fear of negative repercussions or pressure to sugarcoat bad news. Psychological safety nurtures an environment where people feel encouraged to share creative ideas without fear of personal judgment or stepping on toes. In this kind of environment, it feels safe to share feedback with others, including negative upward feedback to leaders about where improvements or changes are needed. It’s OK to admit mistakes, to be vulnerable, and to speak truth to power. When psychological safety is present in the workplace or at home, it creates a more innovative, stronger community.
Since the term was coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson in 1999, the benefits of psychological safety in the workplace have been well established. According to one Harvard survey, an overwhelming 89 percent of employee respondents said they believe that psychological safety in the workplace is essential.
Psychological safety doesn’t just help people feel good at work, although it does that. It doesn’t just help foster a more diverse and inclusive work environment, although it does that as well. The impact of psychological safety extends far beyond the soft stuff: it substantially contributes to team effectiveness, learning, employee retention, and—most critically—better decisions and better performance.
In extensive research ranging from medical teams in hospitals to software development teams at Big Tech firms, psychological safety is consistently one of the strongest predictors of team performance, productivity, quality, safety, creativity, and innovation. It’s also predictive of better overall health outcomes, as confirmed by social psychologists and neuroscientists.
Psychological safety is not a given and it is not the norm in most teams. In fact, a McKinsey Global Survey conducted during the pandemic indicated that the behaviors that create a psychologically safe environment are few and far between in leadership teams and organizations more broadly.