In almost every process I facilitate today, psychological safety comes up sooner or later. We want openness, dialogue, feedback, a culture in which people dare to say what they think.
In quite a few vision statements, we therefore find these terms reflected as values. Yet many employees and leaders in organizations experience the opposite on a daily basis: reluctance, caution as soon as things become tense, unspoken frustrations, and conversations that only take place after the silence in meetings. This points to a fundamental reality: safety does not arise from intentions, but from system behavior. Not from what we say is important, but from what people experience when they speak up.
A common reflex is then to invest in feedback training, to create behavioral charters and communication agreements, “open culture campaigns,” and performance reviews with those who “spoil things.”
The real work only begins once the feedback has been given.
However, the problem is often not in “how the feedback is given”; it is not that people are unable to do that. The problem lies rather in how the feedback is received. That is where the real safety or lack of safety lies. What happens when people give feedback?
For example, last month I heard an employee say: “I feel that decisions are often already set in stone; why would I participate.” The manager responded: “What do you mean? This is exactly why we’re organizing this, isn’t it? That’s not the case at all! We really are trying to involve everyone.”
The intention was good, namely to reassure. However, the effect was that the conversation was shut down. What was not discussed was what made the employee feel that way.
Safe teams and leaders practice containment and therefore the ability to hold tension without immediately resolving it. “I’m hearing something that feels uncomfortable. I’m not going to respond to it right away. Let’s explore this.” That requires emotional maturity, and practice.
Safety, then, is not a skill, but a context that is carried by the whole.
“Safety is therefore not a skill, but a context that is supported by the whole.”
Safety is not comfort, but a secure foundation
Research into psychological safety, including by Amy Edmondson, shows that people only take risks when they know they are supported. To admit mistakes, dare to express doubts, and dare to show resistance, people need to feel supported. George Kohlrieser refers to this as Secure Base Leadership: leadership that both provides safety and challenges. It is a manager or a team that, even without words, can say: “You belong here. And I expect you to grow; it’s okay if that happens by trial and error.” Think of the manager who, when an employee gets stuck, does not immediately start giving advice, but can sit for a moment with the powerlessness and the search, and who also pays attention to what it is like to be in that phase.
In many teams, safety is confused with harmony. People avoid tension, spare one another, and call that “treating each other with respect”. In reality, precisely what is needed for learning and improvement then disappears: difference, friction, and honesty. In the best teams, there is occasional conflict, and it can be quite intense.
For instance, I used to tell my teams that I would rather have them awkwardly shouting at each other, with the difference in vision, the frustration, or the difficulty actually being brought out into the open, than have it disappear under the table.
Or as Patrick Lencioni puts it: without constructive conflict, no real commitment emerges. And without commitment, feedback becomes threatening.
People follow behavior, not slogans
One of the most underestimated sources of unsafety is mixed messages. As a manager, I used to make this mistake myself. I told my employees every day: “Maintain your boundaries. Take good care of yourself.” And at the same time, I was still answering emails late at night, I took no real visible breaks, and I was often the last one at work. I explained this away as “someone has to do it,” or “it’s busy.”
What the system then learns is not that boundaries are important, but that those who count and are important are precisely the ones who go beyond their boundaries.
Anyone who wants to build safety must therefore be congruent. Not perfect, but recognizably human. A leader who shows boundaries legitimizes boundaries in others. He makes recovery visible and lives what he says.
Those who are not seen remain silent
“How do I ensure that -the old hands- don’t always determine everything, but also make room for new people? How do I ensure that these people still dare to put their opinions on the table, and that the old hands truly listen for once, so that they create together instead of continuing to work in silos; how do I build such a culture?” a director asked me recently.
Inequality is another such underestimated source of insecurity. It arises when people structurally feel less seen and are given less space. Besides seniority, this also happens, among other things, because of hierarchy, gender or origin, language proficiency, introvert-extrovert differences, or dominant personalities.
From Deep Democracy, we learn that silence is often a minority position. Not everyone who remains silent is insecure, but many have learned that speaking up yields little, or even involves risks.
Secure Base Leaders actively seek out those other perspectives. Not with: “Is there anything else?”, but with: “Whose voice are we not hearing here?” They know that people do not remain silent out of indifference, which is rarely the case, but out of self-protection. And more importantly: they protect that voice from immediate correction.
Care and challenge: care without dare is stagnation
Kohlrieser emphasizes: safety without challenge leads to stagnation, and challenge without safety leads to fear. In many non-profit organizations, I see how teams constantly move between those two extremes.
After a difficult period, people are spared: “We shouldn’t ask too much of them now; they are already having such a hard time, let it rest for a while.”
Some time later, it shifts: “It can’t go on like this; we expect more responsibility.”
Recently, I supported a team in youth care where this pattern became very clear. After months of crisis cases and staff shortages, management had consciously eased off. Understandably. People were tired. But six months later, the team had become stuck. Agreements were no longer being followed up. Roles became blurred. No one dared to address anyone anymore, out of concern about “not making it worse”.
When the pressure was increased again, for many it felt like a rupture: from sparing people to overburdening them, without an intermediate step.
Safe leaders build a more stable balance. They remain close when things are difficult, and at the same time dare to provide direction.
Harmonious teams are often vulnerable
Many organizations describe their team as “warm”, “close-knit”, “pleasant”. That sounds positive. But it is no guarantee of safety.
In many of those teams, loyalty and belonging are more important than truth, professionalism, or growth. People spare one another. They don’t want to disrupt the atmosphere. They don’t want to “let anyone down”. The result: problems pile up underground.
“According to Lencioni, trust is not created by avoiding conflict, but by surviving conflict without relational damage. Teams that never clash therefore do not grow either.”
On the systemic roots of a lack of safety
When I put all these examples together – the closed-off feedback, the double messages, the silent employees, the swinging between sparing and overburdening, the apparent harmony – I rarely see isolated incidents. I see patterns.
Systems that learn what is safe. Systems that remember what risk entails. Systems that adapt in order to survive.
What often feels to leaders like “this team is difficult”, or conversely “the leader creates a lack of safety”, is usually a system that has lost something somewhere along the way.
When psychological safety remains structurally low, you almost always see the same underlying dynamics return.
- Disrupted order
Unclear roles, shifting mandates, unclear lines of decision-making. People no longer know who is responsible for what. That creates uncertainty. And uncertainty activates defensive behavior.
- Imbalance in giving and taking
Especially in care and the social-profit sector, I see great loyalty and emotional commitment, without structural recognition or participation. Commitment then slowly turns into fatigue and cynicism.
- What was given no place
Old conflicts, abrupt departures, failed change processes. What was never named continues to play a role below the surface in how people respond today.
- Organizational trauma
Systems remember. When speaking up involved risks in the past, teams learn to remain silent. That pattern is passed on collectively and often unconsciously.
In all these cases, a lack of safety is not a character problem. It is a logical consequence of history. And that is precisely why we do not solve it with one training session, one model or one good conversation.
Structures without a holding environment strengthen power
I often see leaders and organizations seek refuge in models of self-management, participation, deep democracy, and sociocracy. These can be valuable. However, they presuppose emotional maturity and only work if the team’s level of development is ready for them. In unsafe systems, they often reinforce informal power. Formally, everyone may be allowed to speak, but informally, the articulate win and the quiet lose. That tension only increases frustration and cynicism and does the opposite of what was intended.
Unsafety requires a holding environment first, and only then structure.
Leadership as a regulatory function
Leaders are emotional points of reference. Under stress, a team always unconsciously looks upward and seeks safety there. However, leaders do not stand outside this; they are part of the same field of tension. When they themselves experience no space to doubt, make mistakes, or receive countervailing power, they cannot pass that space on either. That law is simple: you cannot give what you do not receive yourself.
That is why leadership support is not a luxury, but a prerequisite.
What actually makes a difference in practice?
When I look at organizations where psychological safety is not just a word, but a reality, I don’t see perfect teams. But I do see the same patterns returning.
- Leaders and teams who consciously look at what happens after feedback.
Not only at what is said, but at how people respond to it. Is it explored? Or immediately neutralized?
- Teams that practice staying with discomfort.
That don’t want to solve everything immediately. That can say: “I feel resistance, and I’m still listening.”
- Leaders who actively protect dissent.
Who don’t wait until someone dares to speak up, but create space themselves for what has not yet been said.
- People who dare to be congruent.
Who also name their own struggle with boundaries, pressure, and expectations. Direction without one’s own capacity to carry it creates unsafety.
And almost always I see one constant: leaders who are supported themselves.
Who have somewhere to turn with their doubt, their fatigue, and their tension.
These are not spectacular interventions
Psychological safety arises where people know they are supported and challenged.
Where leaders are close without suffocating.
Where conflict is not avoided, but carried.
Where feedback is not a risk, but involvement.
Safety is not a project. It is relational infrastructure.
And that requires daily maintenance.
Are you ready to take the first step toward psychological safety?
“Safety is not a project. It is relational infrastructure.”
