6 Ways to Foster Psychological Safety and Drive Workplace Transformation
“I am new to leading a team. How can I create a healthy and creative team?”
This is one question I receive often as a design mentor. Although there are many answers to this question, my response crystallised from over a decade of mentoring and leading creative teams is this: Build psychological safety.
Psychological, what?
Imagine working in a place where your team members are willing to speak up without being concerned about repercussions. Where there’s a shared belief you will not be embarrassed, judged or punished when you voice concerns, make mistakes, ask questions, give feedback, or simply request for help. That’s psychological safety.
As Amy Edmondson, organisational behavioural scientist at Harvard puts it: “It’s felt permission for candour.” This doesn’t mean the absence of conflict or critique, nor does it mean people are just nice and polite. It means creating an environment where those can be handled with respect and empathy.
This doesn’t mean the absence of conflict or critique, nor does it mean people are just nice and polite. It means creating an environment where those can be handled with respect and empathy.
Why does this matter? Three reasons:
Psychological safety boosts effective problem-solving
Whether you’re crafting a logo design, proposing a social media strategy, or solving a user’s pain point, these tasks involve critique and rejection. Without psychological safety, the fear of failure can encourage self-censorship and suppress creativity. But with psychological safety, someone at an ideation session would feel confident to say, “This might sound silly, but what if…?” Who knows? That ‘silly’ idea might have been just what the project needed.
Psychological safety reduces turn-over
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, it costs a company six to nine months of an employee’s salary to replace them. That doesn’t include the impact on the existing team members’ morale when they see their respected senior or workplace bestie leave. Employees are less likely to jump ship when they find a strong sense of self within the organisation because they feel seen, heard and valued.
Psychological safety enhances engagement
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report states that only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs. Disengaged workers operate out of distrust and wariness. By fostering psychological safety, the strong sense of people-to-people and people-to-company connection helps engagement rise, leading to higher morale and productivity.
Creating this team culture takes continuous and intentional design, patience and a steadfast belief the investment in your team members is worth it. This takes time. Here are things six considerations I’d recommend:
- Adopt a servant-leader mindset
What has served me well is a philosophy built on the belief that effective leaders strive to serve others in the team, rather than take control over people.
What that looks like:
- Empathise with team members’ feelings. Create a compassionate work environment
- Honour your team and give credit where it is due
- Inspire vision. Pave the way instead of only giving out top-down instructions
- Empower team members and prioritise their personal and professional growth before seeking personal gain
- Actively listen to your members and value their input. This ensures everyone feels heard and respected
- Practise persuasion over authority. Instead of relying on positional power, value buy-in from the team
2) Champion vulnerability
One of the most transformative actions a leader can take is to model vulnerability. When I stumble or err, I proactively share the misstep with my team, emphasising my learnings and outlining the different approach I’d adopt in the future. Such transparency isn’t just about personal accountability; it sets a tone for the entire team.
I encourage my team to similarly turn setbacks into shared “learning moments” or reflective takeaways during our regular check-ins or post project evaluations. Leadership isn’t about portraying invincibility. It’s about revealing genuine humanity, admitting our uncertainties, and actively seeking feedback. When a leader shows authenticity and openness, it fosters a culture where people feel emboldened to mirror that vulnerability.
3) Foster authentic communication
Every now and then, I carve out time for the team to interact with each other — not just about work stuff, but about our hobbies, favourite food, or even tough things going on in our lives. It’s about getting to know the real person behind Slack and Zoom. The objective is to transcend the title of ‘co-worker’ and recognise the human behind it. This approach fosters camaraderie and solidifies trust amongst teammates.
4) Cultivate a no-blame environment
When missteps occur, it’s tempting to search for someone to blame. I take the initiative to demonstrate how to regard mistakes as an opportunity to spot where the problem lies and solve the root of it. Rather than apportioning blame, I drive energy towards investigation, learning, and improvement, emphasising progress over perfection.
5) Make decisions together
Whenever feasible, I facilitate decision-making — especially those that impact team members — such that they are not dictated from the top down, but are collaborative endeavours. It’s not about soliciting opinions; it’s about embedding a clear message that their voice matters. This approach enriches the decision-making process and gives team members a sense of ownership, providing everyone a genuine feeling of being a part of the process and trust in the outcome.
6) Equip your team with shared understanding
To truly foster psychological safety, the entire team needs to be equipped with a shared knowledge and a common language about its importance. Regular, interactive knowledge-sharing sessions can be invaluable here. Some of the things I found helpful include covering topics like:
- Creative collaboration
- The nuances of active listening
- The art of giving and receiving feedback
- Superpowers / strengths of each team member
- Awareness of how best to work with each other in a team
By doing this, a collective awareness is cultivated. The goal is to ensure that everyone in the team speaks the same language when it comes to psychological safety and its foundational role in collaboration and innovation.
What’s next?
The heart and soul of any successful endeavour are its people. I invite you to pause and reflect: What are you doing as a leader to ensure your team feels valued and heard? Remember, it’s not just about achieving short-term goals, but nurturing a culture where everyone thrives. It’s a journey worth embarking on. What steps will you take to grow the seed of psychological safety? I’d also love to hear what other methods you have tried in your organization, so please share your comments below!
Wendy is a UX designer who is intrigued by human behaviour and is passionate about using design to help people thrive. Across her varied roles—an employer, employee, wife, mother, daughter, citizen, dog parent—she taps on empathy as her superpower. She combines her wealth of experience in design and her desire to build healthy workplace cultures to run 55 Minutes, the UX design studio she co-founded.
