Psychological Safety: 6 Common Misperceptions and What Leaders Can Do (Part 2)

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As I'm recording this podcast, I just saw a live stream from Rome, Italy, where the white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel just started to billow out, which means that there is a new pope, a new head, a new pontiff of the Catholic Church. And it just made me reflect on, I wonder how much psychological safety was in that room over the last two days. Probably more than the movie led on there to be. Hopefully so. But we'll see who the new pope is here soon.

Well, in this cast, we're picking up with Misconception No. 5 from the article, What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety. It's by Amy Edmondson and Michaela Karacy. Of course, Amy Edmondson is probably the world's most foremost researcher on psychological safety. This is from the May-June issue of Harvard Business Review 2025.

Well, the first misconception that we'll talk about here, Misconception 5 in the article, is that psychological safety is a policy, that somehow we can mandate psychological safety. This was actually tried in 2024 in the state of Rhode Island. They passed a law that if an employee didn't like what was going on, they could, in their company, they could actually sue the company because they weren't fostering enough psychological safety.

Now, of course, this might sound ridiculous to us, but this piece of legislature reflects the common but misguided belief that organizations should mandate psychological safety. We can't mandate this any more than we can mandate things like trust or rapport or motivation or any other sort of intangible leadership virtue. Psychological safety is... Is not a quick fix. You can't just push a button and make it happen.

So telling people in a company or on a team that they must have psychological safety or else will not produce it. In fact, it's actually more likely to drive it underground like most things that are mandated. Psychological safety is built in a group, interaction by interaction, and it takes intention and effort to create this climate of candor. And it's particularly helpful when leaders consciously use these three tools. The article points out that really it's messaging, modeling, and mentoring.

So number one, messaging, making statements that highlight the challenges of the situation or challenges that the organization is facing. Not trying to sweep anything under the rug, being transparent, honest, candid. About all issues and problems. That's positive messaging because people are going to trust you more when you tell them the truth.

And then model the things that drive psychological safety, like asking good questions, listening well, listening with intent, and acknowledging that it's okay to not know all of the answers. And then finally, mentoring. Leaders need to give people feedback on their impact, how well they invite and respond to other people's input, and work to minimize the negative consequences anyone on the team suffers from speaking up.

We've got to make sure that we as leaders are modeling this idea that it's okay to speak up. There's no consequences for that, and it's okay to show that. Okay. Ultimately, conversations about how to keep improving the work environment is really what's going to drive this particular concept.

All right. That was misconception number five. Misconception number six is that psychological safety requires, keyword, requires a top-down approach. Now, it's true that it matters what leaders do. There's no question about that. They have an enormous impact on a team or an organization's culture. Hierarchy seems to be deeply ingrained in our psyche. People instinctively care what leaders think about something.

But ultimately, psychological safety is built by everyone at all levels of the company. Now, it's both powerful and helpful when senior executives strike this sincere tone of humility and curiosity. But quite frankly, it's possible to create a motivated, psychologically safe, high-performing team anywhere. It starts by focusing with your own team. So think about how much you are driving this concept. Think about how free your people are to speak their mind without any type of consequences.

In small but important ways, every single person on your team influences the environment. Okay, so that rounds out the six misperceptions in this article that the authors bring up.

Now they give us a roadmap for the journey ahead. And the first thing they recommend is to really double down on goals and why goals matter. Now, you might think, well, that's kind of, when I first read that, it kind of threw me off a little bit. But I understand now what they're talking about. Putting the focus where it belongs on critical goals of the team or organization and why they're important gets people on the same page.

We want to be singing from the same sheet of music. So keep in mind that psychological safety is not the end goal. It's the enabler of success. And so when we're thinking that organizations are required to do one thing, get results, that better society, that's really what the goal of work is. But then managers are required to do two things, get that work done, but then get it done through other people. And then psychological safety is really the catalyst for this type of output.

Ironically, talking less about psychological safety and more about the goal and the context is why everyone's input matters is the first step in building psychological safety. Okay.

Now, the second thing that they recommend is to increase psychological safety is improve the quality of your conversations. Once everyone is on the same page about goals and purpose, the real work can start. Conversations are how a lot of work gets done. We know this. They're how team members coordinate. That's how they make decisions, provide feedback, change direction, celebrate a job well done.

It's not a stretch to say that the quality of our conversations really determines the quality of our results. The best way to strengthen psychological safety is to lead conversations in a way that encourages information to be shared candidly and processed thoughtfully. That entails asking good questions, listening intently, pushing for closure. High-quality conversations really create a learning environment as a byproduct of your team.

So the authors here have created a simple and practical framework for assessing the quality of a work conversation. So if we think about the attribute of are people contributing and listening? Some things that you can ask yourself are, are people sharing information and opinions candidly? And to what extent do people seem to be holding back and saying only safe things?

What you want to watch out for that's positive is that everyone appears engaged in the substance of the discussion and negative when only one person or just a few people dominate the entire conversation. So that's one thing to think about. What about the balance between advocacy and inquiry? We want to make sure that both are present. So ask yourself, what's the balance here between promoting certain ideas, which is advocacy, and inquiry, asking questions to understand those ideas?

Are people asking genuine questions that prompt others to respond with their ideas and concerns? That's good. It's positive when good questions are frequent and expand understanding. It's negative when people get stuck trying to prove their original points, regardless of new information. And then finally, the attribute of mutual learning and progress.

We want to make sure that's happening. So good questions here are, do I feel that I'm gaining understanding of the topic as the conversation goes on? And does the team seem closer to making a good decision? So it's positive when the conversation is disciplined, it's systematic, and it's data-driven. It goes into the negative when the conversation just keeps going around in circles. So those are things, those are questions, attributes, and things that we can

be listening for on our team. Are all those positive things happening? Are any of those negative things happening? And what can we do to root those out? So finally, creating psychological safety may not be easy and practicing it may not be comfortable.

But the pace of change and the level of uncertainty in this business environment make frank, data-driven conversations more valuable than ever. Timely input, candid feedback, and robust debate are as vital for ensuring innovation as for preventing strategic mistakes. Leaders who create the kind of teams that practice these ways of interacting will be outperforming those who do not. So ultimately, psychological safety is about changing the expectations for how

we work together to successfully navigate the storms ahead. Hope you enjoyed this review. And until next time we meet in the Manager Lab, do good work.