Psychological Safety at Work: Why It’s So Misunderstood

Psychological safety at work has become one of the most talked-about ideas in leadership — and one of the most misunderstood. In this post, we unpack what Amy Edmondson, who coined the term, actually meant, why it has nothing to do with keeping everyone comfortable, and how leaders genuinely build it: not through workshops or wall posters, but in thousands of small moments of not punishing honesty.

Psychological safety is the most important idea in leadership right now — and also the most dangerously misunderstood. Most organisations have quietly turned it into a feeling. A vibe. An offsite. A value painted on a wall.

What psychological safety at work really means

Amy Edmondson, the Harvard professor who coined the term, never said psychological safety means everyone feels comfortable. She said it means people believe they will not be punished for speaking up — and that one distinction changes everything.

When Google studied what made its most effective teams work — the famous Project Aristotle research — it landed on exactly the same finding. The biggest differentiator wasn’t talent, seniority or resources. It was whether people felt safe enough to take a risk in front of each other.

Comfort is not the same as safety

Here is where it gets misunderstood. Comfort is passive avoidance; safety is earned, one difficult conversation at a time. A comfortable team avoids friction, while a psychologically safe team can sit inside friction — disagree, challenge, admit a mistake — and trust that no one will be punished for it. One keeps the peace; the other builds something real.

And when leaders punish honesty, people simply go quiet. That silence is often the first drift toward the fear-based patterns of toxic leadership, where people hide problems instead of raising them.

You can’t buy psychological safety at work

You cannot buy psychological safety, programme it, or put it on a learning calendar. The leader who openly listens to upward feedback — even when it stings — creates more of it than a hundred workshops ever could. It is the everyday, human work of leadership: the same shift toward emotional well-being and humanising the workplace that turns a policy on paper into a culture people actually feel.

It’s built in ten thousand small moments

You build psychological safety in ten thousand small moments of not punishing honesty — the manager who says “thank you for telling me” instead of getting defensive, the leader who admits “I got that one wrong,” the meeting where you genuinely ask the quietest person what they think, and then listen. None of it is dramatic, and all of it compounds.

So it’s worth asking honestly: what is the culture around psychological safety in your organisation? Do people actually feel safe to speak up — and to whom?

Written by Sneha Shah, psychologist, co-founder of ISRA, and one of only 17 Heal Your Life® Master Trainers worldwide, with 19+ years of experience across 40+ countries.

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