Psychological safety
Ψυχολογική ασφάλεια
The shared belief inside a group that speaking up with a question, a doubt or a mistake will not be held against you. It is a property of the group rather than of the person speaking, which is why the same person is talkative in one team and silent in another.
How to spot it
Do not ask people whether they feel safe. Remember instead what happened to the last person who disagreed out loud there, and how long the group spent on it.
The research behind the term
The term is not our invention. It comes from published research, and what follows is what that research found — our own synthesis of the published abstract, not a translation of the original.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams — doi:10.2307/2666999
What it found
- Psychological safety is defined as a shared belief among members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.
- It is associated with team learning behavior, whereas team efficacy is not, once psychological safety is controlled for.
- Learning behavior mediates the relationship between psychological safety and team performance.
- Both structures — context support, leader coaching — and shared beliefs shape the outcomes.
How it found it
A multi-method field study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company, measuring antecedent, process, and outcome variables.
What it means for collaboration
Psychological safety does not improve performance directly, but because it lets the team learn — ask questions, admit mistakes, and seek help.
Practised in
The term does not stay a definition. It appears inside missions where the pattern happens in real time and you have to recognise it as it happens to you.
Someone Says No
The Person Who Signs It Off
Sources
Every claim on this page maps to published research. The citations link to the original source.
- Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams — doi:10.2307/2666999