Psychological safety, put simply, is the belief that we shouldn’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with our ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Which, if you ask me, seems like common sense. Fancy terminology aside—why did everyone suddenly embrace it as if it were the greatest discovery since sliced bread?
(To be fair—even Amy Edmondson herself was surprised when it became an HR staple.)
We all know, as the saying goes, that common sense is terribly uncommon. So this “new” concept finally gave people (and HR) permission to call out rowdy behaviour in organisations. Its popularity is certainly evidence enough that many workplaces are still plagued by bosses who behave like stone-age monkeys.
Fair point. Yet, I can’t shake the suspicion that truly nasty bosses are unlikely to care about fancy academic concepts. Plus, in practice, “psychological safety” often gets invoked rather indiscriminately and superficially: it becomes a mandate for everything from etiquette, sentimentalism, or political correctness, to a sudden demand that employees be more agile, engaged, and vocal in generating new ideas or improving processes. All of which may be helpful in some cases, but in others, quickly become another exercise of “socialisation” power (Foucault, anyone?). I suspect we already have enough linguistic violence in management, the sort that infantilises adult employees—think of terms like growth mindsets, empowerment, fail fast, human capital, and so on.
Of course, but that was never the original intention, you will object. Here I agree. I am certainly not advocating for organisations that tolerate fear or where employees suffer undignified, disrespectful working practices and cannot speak up.
Yet, I can’t lose the feeling that there’s more to the story. You know me: I always get uneasy when certain “discourses” suddenly become hegemonic. Just listen to the language: “psychological.” “safety.” It’s curious how “psychological” acquires an odd sort of normative value. Why should something “psychological” (i.e., an emotive or unconscious phenomenon) suddenly turn into a universal rule for everyone? What if I demanded “psychological holidays”? The risk here is that supposed normativity is actually disguised instrumentality. In fact, Google’s Project “Aristotle” (sic!), which popularised the concept, was grounded in a definition of efficiency based on subjective views of “progress” and sales performance. In a nutshell: If happier cows give better milk, then we must make them happy. If safer cows…
Wait. But what about “safety”? Why has the very idea of “being safe” become so sexy? Have we all become so anxious in this “VUCA” (yet another problematic term!) world that even the most basic promise of protection now feels like a revolution? Or is safety—pace Hobbes—merely the cardinal expression of negative, individual freedom? Is psychological safety just another way of saying: the only thing that matters is ME, MY emotions, MY thoughts, MY desires, and MY absolute right to express them, whatever the cost? Does it become a social defence mechanism, a way to avoid deeper questions about genuine and collective responsibility? Or, perhaps, just a convenient excuse for organisations to virtue signal their responsibility—a “psycho-washing” with no substance? Who knows…
But that wasn’t even the main point I wanted to write about! Whenever I hear HR consultants clamouring for more “psychological safety,” I sense that they’re approaching organisational transformation from entirely the wrong angle. Let me explain:
Why do psychological risks exist at work in the first place? The answer is simple: organisations are built on encounters between human beings. Why, then, do we need safety? Beyond the need to sanction truly abusive companies or bosses (shame on them!), we want safety precisely to enable the challenging of ideas, people, or perspectives. Companies today need agility, collective learning, and continual transformation.
Excellent. But there’s the problem. Growth, learning, and development are not merely about the absence of risk—they depend on tension, conflict, and sometimes even crisis. Supporting individual and collective growth means learning to “stay with the trouble” and “contain the risk.” We need “holding environments” where people care for and take responsibility for one another. More important than eliminating risk, or offering immunity from embarrassment, is cultivating mutual trust, inter-independence, and collective responsibility for “lifting each other up.” We also need “public places”—arenas for collective deliberation—so that personal needs and ideas can be transformed into shared ones, and so that the agents themselves are transformed through participation in community. Not to mention structures and resources—don’t expect people to contribute if they have no real rights or don’t participate in the benefits! Transformation, then, is not about an individual “psychological state,” but about collectively crafting INSTITUTIONS.
Incidentally, Amy Edmondson herself (see below) shows that maximising psychological safety “by itself” quickly dead-ends in the comfort zone.
Source: Amy Edmondson
In fact, demanding risk-free organisations ignores the existential reality that every person has their own way of being. We cannot wish this away, but must create spaces that allow for mutual exposure, building relational resilience, political maturity, and reciprocity. This is not about compromise; it is about transforming our dialogical ability to co-develop. If the goal is to eliminate all risk for the individual, to “immunise” ourselves from the necessary ambiguity of exposure to each other, we may get more diverse “voices” in meetings, but we will not create spaces for true co-development—and risk losing much of the aliveness of organisations.
This is why I’ve always found “radical candour” more compelling than “psychological safety.” Radical candour is about accountability—a reciprocal commitment to action, providing constructive feedback “because we care” about one another’s growth. Yet Kim Scott’s version can focus too much on improving performance, too little on personal and collective development, and sometimes gets twisted to legitimise bullying or harassment. So, more in line with Aristotle (philosophically speaking), I would suggest a move towards “virtuous friendships” that enable both individual and collective flourishing…
In summary, psychological safety is not an end in itself, but merely an indicator—perhaps important, but still only a marker on the journey. The real aim is to create “good” organisations. That requires developing professional standards and shared norms to enable mutual accountability, building trusting social relations, fostering personal development, and, above all, installing what the great philosopher called koinonia: a political community working toward a higher good.
And this is not easy. True transformation is not a top-down installation of behavioural norms or the denial of risk; it is a slow, frustrating, difficult, and often unpopular process of changing individual and collective attitudes and behaviours. It is founded on embracing relational risks, not running from them.
So the real question is not whether organisational spaces should be absolutely safe, but rather what kind of safety is desirable, and at what point our desire for safety becomes counter-productive. The modern, often superficial debate on “psychological safety” reduces it to a binary “either-or,” erasing the opportunity for real judgement. If we unconsciously reify an almost infantile denial of relational risk, if we foster negative freedom at the expense of collective development—by leaping into top-down rules, D&I programmes, or standards to eliminate supposed hazards—rather than inspiring a climate of care, instigating “liberating disciplines,” and opening honest conversations about “appropriate risk,” we miss the point.
Above all, and herein lies the value of “professional” performance standards, true transformation is about embracing and embodying a deeper inspiration. A professional tradition connects our activity to a higher good, nurturing our desire to both do and become better, and compelling us to work and compete for the good inherent to the activity itself.
You want psychology? Then let’s call it “Psychological Hope”—an environment designed for and protective of mutual “co-elevation.” Rather than fixating on safety, we must create relational and institutional contexts that spark deeper motivation and challenge teams to care for each other, inspiring them to pursue meaningful impact for themselves and for others…
Comments & Dialectics
On hope and self-determination theory
C: Love it! As a positive psychologist I researched the development of hope at work and what organizations can do. We examined how people's hope benefits from satisfying basic psychological needs according to self-determination theory: satisfying the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness (or purpose in Dan Pink's words). I love this emphasis on lifting each other up and making hope a focus!
A: Very glad it resonates! Of course, I am trying to do a bit what Frank Martela does - connect virtue ethics with SDT, which does not really offer any foundation for that "transcendental pull". This is where Maslow, Ryan/Deci and many others were unwilling or unable to make the "leap of faith". Sadly, there is no good life with a merely psychological explanation of being - that's why Aristotle elegantly made "telos" both a psychological pull and a metaphysical ideal. We must dare to cross the Rubicon from our bleak empiricist landscapes into the enchanted world of transpersonal imagination. That is where safety fails. It tries to decorate Plato's allegorical cave, rather than daring to step into the sun of beauty, truth and good. And it quickly becomes simply another way to discipline the enlightened who upon return from the world of forms is "jeopardising the safety" of our own psychic prison. Sed fortasse liber in anima, said Seneca - but that freedom comes at a cost. We must leave the shores of personal safety to discover the lands of eudaimonic individuation… ;-)
The problem of common sense:
C: Unless we come to terms with WHY common sense is absent from so many organisation, what good is it to suggest another common sense thing, even if we express it in better language?
A: that is a great point. I need to ponder! Of course, here my first suggestion is to jump from a "psychology horse" (which can never get us anywhere) to a "philosophy horse" (which could get us somewhere, but over the last 2500 years of moral philosophy has arguably raced into all possible corners, country roads and dead ends on the planet of human imagination). So, the "pathway" is one of reasoning - intended as practical wisdom - not a change of emotional state. In other words, the implied problem with "common sense" is that people are fools. ;-) Not because they are stupid, but because they are "uneducated" - as Socrates suggests: "virtue is knowledge". He says, all people are good and if they fail to act wisely, they must be lacking understanding.But that is certainly too narrow. In fact, as Mats Alvesson suggests: "functional stupidity" is when a system induces clever people to do dumb stuff. It is not people being stupid, it is our system that makes them stupid. In a nutshell, my (underlying) suggestion here is that: people do things that are wrong, because they are not conscious or insufficiently (ethically) educated, or contextual conditions (institutional systems) seduce them to behave in the wrong way. In terms of solution, we are arguing with good old Aristotle where "phronesis" is the combination of consciousness and enacted (metaphysical) inspiration. That opens two pathways of change: education/consciousness and the change of "institutional" patterns of behaviours. But change, I guess I am also arguing, requires a transcendental "pull". We will not change our habits if there is not something deep and visceral driving us. So we must reconnect with something important, an eutopia, a sense of aliveness, a spirit. In other words, (faith and) hope. By that logic, we need to work on individual reasoning, collective institutions and social systems, and individual/collective behavioural habits… And get to some shared vision of a better future. No easy feast :-)) As Schumacher once pointed out: our "modern attempt to live without religion has failed."
The problem with religion
C: I like where this is going. I get a sense that you know where the answer will come from, but are somehow afraid to go there? The problem is that people aren't just fools, they are sinners. God wrote a book for us, and it's emphatically clear on this. Just one example: "And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil." (John 3:19) Peter Drucker (heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview, although himself not a Christian as far is I know) knew this very well: "I'm only too aware that human beings perversely insist on behaving like human beings. This means pettiness and greed, vanity and lust for power and, yes, evil." That's the truth. Yet ever since the "enlightenment" we like to think that people are basically good and that all we need to do is to educate them. How did that work out so far? We need to understand and acknowledge our condition first. Then we can look for solutions from there. "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge." (Proverbs 1:7) Thoughts?
A: Great thoughts - thanks! Well let's put it this way: depending on the day I'm between an idealist neo-platonic first principle, a disgruntled Nietzsche-esque existentialism and a hopefully naive aristotelian teleology. Venturing into dialogic monism is easy, moving to Augustinian dogma more difficult. As in Aristotle's hylomorphism my primary gaze is inwards, not upwards (as Plato's) and certainly not outwards (as Luther's). As David Norton (or Carl Jung) suggest individuation is "losing self to find self", not to go to heaven. But, what matters is the capacity for faith - in the James Fowler sense. Which brings me back to Schumacher and you: yes, we must step into faith (and certainly in the religious-philosophical sense hope is one part of faith). But not necessarily into divine revelation…
C: Gazing inwards (if looking for truth and solutions) is exactly the problem: "The heart is more deceitful than all else" (Jeremiah 17:9). I'd be really curious to learn what makes you rule out Divine revelation.
A: Great point, but of course the notion that "the heart" is inwards, is a misguided dualistic notion of the romantics. For Aristotle, inwards is metaphysical - it is the essential universal good residing in ourselves. 'T is what the Christians translated into 'imago dei', replacing the inward with the outward - thus, only in eternal life can we "see" the truth, in the eternal light of God. I do not rule it out, but I find it unnecessary and somewhat schizophrenic. If the good is outside me, as Plato's absolute form or in some (often ridiculously anthropomorphic) projection, then the individual disappears. Then my only cause is to become "him" (or her?), to ascend to BE that ideal. Not to BE me. This is what most people do not understand, and what Nietzsche rebelled against. Religious dogma must imply the annihilation of the self, qua human being. Any absolutism only knows "the individual", not "the person". And behavioural norms can only be inspired by some rationalist rules that allegedly support a religious eschatology. That, with all due respect, might be "helpful" as a socialisation device, but it is fundamentally totalitarian in its ontological grounding. And that… I cannot possibly endorse. ;-)
C: Thanks, Otti. If I were to briefly summarise your argument: I cannot accept that there is a creator God who made me (and everybody and everything else there is), because that would mean I would have to accept that He also gets to define what is true. I'd rather define that myself. It's man's core problem: man wants to be autonomous, be his own God. He refuses to bow to objective truth outside of him. That leads to all sorts of vain speculation at best (but more likely to a messed up world, as we can witness). Of course you're free to think this way, but it that doesn't make it true. "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:21–22) I can only plead with you to reconsider your position.
A: What an intriguing conversation! Great challenge & very useful to summarize! No, that's not quite what I meant. When it comes to metaphysics, there is no easy access to "truth". There simply isn't a notion of "accepting a reality" (see chain of creation argument) - however loudly the orthodox may shout, there is only COMMITMENT to a reality. Hence, any assertion of ontological facts is intrinsically a hermeneutical act. The question is whether to abdicate agency for that act to a group of self-proclaimed experts who meet at councils to define an "objective truth", or whether it is better to nurture the agency in every person to navigate the "travails" of life finding contingently the best option. Both can be inspired by a universal spirit, but responsibility and agency work differently. Hence it is also not a question of "autonomy", a psychological concept, but "freedom", an ethical one. And here I am again with you: insisting on freedom without responsibility is immoral. But abdicating freedom to an extra-natural lawgiver is a peculiar device at the best of times, whatever its legitimising narrative. Hence, we must be careful with missionary zeal - rather than debating eschatology, I'd suggest we should focus on how to make a concrete action good. ;-)
PS: I think one problem is that many proponents of religion (not saying you!) really forget they are in a corner of the onto-epistemological map that is not accessible by reason - to walk upon those metaphysical meadows requires what Plato called "the third eye" of intuition, ecstasy or divine revelation. Hence, there are no "reasons" for a specific religious dogma that we can easily demand others to endorse. Moreover, the argument of "truth" is not so quickly reconciled with normative legitimacy as people might think. Even if an omniscient creator God existed at any point in time - that would by no means automatically imply that everybody today should do as she/he/it did (people really should look at the old testament's demiurge a bit more closely ;-)), or indeed commanded - based on scriptures written and re-written over centuries by old white men. It might sometimes be just a tiny step from faith to fanatism. Anyway - thank you for your stimulating inputs! This is a fascinating and centuries-old conversation which is too often neglected in post-modern times. And it is hard to swallow that we need common ground to substantiate a just and good globalised society - as Arrows's impossibility theorem demonstrates, but apparently have no options left. Universalist dogma has long become ineffective in our pluralist and complex world - and has far too often deteriorated into not-so-benign dictatorship - so what are the solutions? Anybody's guess…