Why Psychological Safety Shouldn’t Solely Live in HR Decks
I know you’ve seen the slide. It’s got a soft blue background maybe, a diverse team circled around a laptop, laughing (??why??), and the title that says something along the lines of, “We Foster Psychological Safety.”
And then you looked around the room (or the Zoom) and saw a sea of blank faces. SO many companies just yap about psychological safety, but refuse to put it into practice. Psychological safety does not exist because someone in HR or in leadership declared it once in a pretty slide deck. It exists when people believe, based on lived experience at that company, that they can speak the truth, take risks, admit mistakes, and still belong.
That kind of culture is not built by HR. It’s built by leadership and it needs to be passed down through your entire organizational hierarchy.
Psychological Safety is a Leadership Competency, Not a Perk
When leaders think of psychological safety as an “initiative” or a “perk,” it becomes something nice to have, like cold brew on tap. That’s the one thing I’ll say I miss about working in an office, that delicious cold brew.
Anyway, if you’re building products, managing risk, or navigating complexity (so if you’re, y’know, any company that exists), it’s not just something that’s “nice to have” or should be written off as “some woke gross DEI thing”, it’s necessary for true business success.
Your team can’t move fast if they’re afraid of getting screamed at by management. They won’t innovate if they’re scared of being the one who suggests the wrong thing.
And they sure as hell won’t stay if they spend every day second-guessing whether it’s safe to be themselves.
A Note on Performative Politeness
A lot of companies conflate politeness with psychological safety, and that confusion is killing their ability to grow, adapt, or lead. Politeness is about keeping the peace. Psychological safety is about making space for the truth, even and especially when it’s hard.
Politeness says, “Let’s not upset anyone, don’t rock the boat.” Safety says, “It’s okay to challenge the idea—even if it’s your boss’s—because the mission matters more than anyone’s ego.”
When people are punished for rocking the boat, what you end up with is a room full of quiet resentment and performative alignment. Everyone nods, no one believes, and no one speaks up with their ideas. You’ve created politeness but not safety. You’ve created politeness but it’s built on a foundation of unspoken tension and conflict avoidance. Whoops.
Real safety isn’t a smiling face or a tidy agenda. It’s the messy, brave work of building a culture where honesty isn’t punished, dissent isn’t feared, and the goal isn’t harmony, it’s truth.
Want that? Start by asking the hard question:
Who in your org feels safe enough to say, “I think we’re getting this wrong”?
And what happens to them when they do?
Building Safety Means Leaders Have to Go First
If you’re actually looking to create a culture of psychological safety, it starts with you and your leadership. Are YOU a safe person to tell the truth to?
Overwhelmingly, leaders who create psychologically safe environments for their employees display the following traits:
Accountability
Curiosity
That list is intentionally short because that’s really all you need: be able to be held accountable, own up to your mistakes, respond to criticism with curiosity instead of defensiveness (this is the HARDEST one for a lot of leaders!), and show people that disagreeing with you won’t cause them harm now or later down the road.
You, as a leader, do not have the luxury of sitting back and allowing HR to take the reins on creating psychological safety. It’s up to YOU as a leader to create the culture on your team.
And you do that by normalizing and modeling honesty, inviting discomfort, and rewarding people who raise hard questions.
You stop hiding behind corporate veneers and start showing up like a real human being.
That’s the work.
And if you don’t know where to start—we do.