My Thoughts
The Psychological Safety Myth: Why Your Team Isn't Speaking Up (And It's Not What You Think)
Related Articles:
Everyone's banging on about psychological safety these days like it's some revolutionary concept Google invented in 2015. Truth is, I've been watching teams self-destruct for the better part of two decades, and the problem isn't that people don't feel "safe" to speak up.
The problem is they don't trust you'll actually listen.
I learned this the hard way back in 2019 when I was consulting for a Melbourne tech startup. Beautiful office, ping pong tables, the works. The CEO kept asking why his developers weren't flagging issues early enough. "We have psychological safety," he insisted, pointing to their open-plan office and weekly stand-ups.
Meanwhile, three separate team members had privately told me about a critical security flaw that could've sunk the company. But they'd stopped mentioning it in meetings because the last person who raised concerns got quietly managed out six months later.
The Trust Deficit Nobody Talks About
Here's what the Harvard Business Review won't tell you: psychological safety isn't about creating safe spaces and meditation corners. It's about proving—repeatedly, consistently, sometimes painfully—that dissent won't get someone fired.
And Australian workplaces are particularly brutal about this. We love our tall poppy syndrome, but we're equally quick to cut down anyone who questions the status quo. I've watched brilliant engineers, nurses, and tradies bite their tongues because they've learned that "speaking up" is corporate speak for "give us ammunition to replace you."
The research shows that 73% of employees have observed workplace problems they never reported. But here's the kicker—it's not because they were scared of retaliation. It's because they genuinely believed nothing would change.
Think about your last team meeting. How many times did someone raise a legitimate concern only to have it dismissed with "let's park that for now" or "we'll circle back on that"? Those phrases are psychological safety killers. They teach people that their input is performative theatre, not genuine problem-solving.
Why Most Psychological Safety Training Is Useless
I've sat through dozens of these workshops over the years. They're usually run by consultants who've never managed a P&L or dealt with an angry customer. They talk about "creating space for vulnerability" while completely ignoring the economic realities that make speaking up genuinely risky.
Take the construction industry, where I cut my teeth fifteen years ago. You want psychological safety? Try telling a site foreman that his scheduling is unsafe when you're a casual worker with a mortgage. The power dynamics are real, and no amount of role-playing exercises will change that.
The effective programs I've seen focus on structural changes, not emotional ones. They create anonymous reporting systems that actually get investigated. They promote people who surface problems, not just those who solve them quietly. They track how often leadership says "I don't know" or "you're right, we were wrong about that."
Because here's the thing—psychological safety isn't built through training sessions. It's built through consistent leadership behaviour over months and years.
The Australian Leadership Problem
We have a particular problem in Australia with what I call "mateship management"—leaders who think being approachable means having a beer with the team on Friday. But psychological safety requires something much harder: admitting when you're wrong in front of people who report to you.
I worked with a Brisbane-based logistics company where the GM would rather lose major contracts than acknowledge that his warehouse layout was fundamentally flawed. Three different supervisors had suggested improvements, but he took it as personal criticism rather than operational feedback.
The breakthrough came when they implemented a simple rule: every leadership meeting had to start with one person sharing something they'd learned from a mistake that week. Not something they'd fixed—something they'd learned. The cultural shift was immediate.
What Actually Works (From Someone Who's Been There)
After watching countless initiatives fail, here's what I've seen work in practice:
First, measure the right things. Stop tracking "employee satisfaction with speaking up" and start tracking how often suggestions get implemented. If your psychological safety is working, your processes should be constantly evolving based on frontline feedback.
Second, make failure visible. The best leaders I know are constantly talking about their mistakes. Not in a self-deprecating way, but as data points for better decision-making. When your team sees you adapting based on criticism, they'll start believing their input matters.
Third, reward the messengers. This sounds obvious, but most organisations punish people who bring bad news, even when they claim they don't. The person who identifies a problem should get the same recognition as the person who solves it. Maybe more.
I remember working with a Perth mining company where the safety officer was seen as the enemy because he kept shutting down unsafe practices. The day they started celebrating him in company newsletters—literally highlighting how his interventions saved lives and money—was the day other workers started proactively reporting hazards.
The Melbourne Coffee Shop That Got It Right
Let me tell you about this little café in Fitzroy that completely changed how I think about team dynamics. The owner, Sarah, had this policy where any staff member could stop service if they spotted a food safety issue. No questions asked, no justification required.
Sounds risky, right? Actually, it made them more efficient. The baristas started catching problems before they escalated. They prevented health department issues. Customer complaints dropped to nearly zero.
But here's the crucial part: Sarah never once questioned someone's judgment when they called a stop. Even when it turned out to be unnecessary. She understood that the moment she started second-guessing those decisions, people would stop making them.
That's psychological safety in action. Not feelings-based, but systems-based.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Authority
The real barrier to psychological safety isn't employee fear—it's management ego. I've coached executives who genuinely want feedback but unconsciously shut it down through body language, tone, or follow-up questions that feel like interrogations.
There's this Brisbane tech CEO I worked with who kept complaining that his developers weren't innovative enough. Meanwhile, he'd respond to every new idea with detailed questions about budget implications, timeline risks, and potential failure modes. Technically, he wasn't saying no. Practically, he was teaching people that suggestions meant extra work and scrutiny.
The fix wasn't communication training. It was teaching him to respond to ideas with curiosity before analysis. "Tell me more about that" became his default response, followed by practical questions only after he'd fully understood the proposal.
Where Most Companies Get It Wrong
They treat psychological safety like a feel-good initiative instead of a operational necessity. They run workshops on "speaking truth to power" while maintaining hierarchical approval processes that punish initiative.
I've seen companies spend thousands on psychological safety consultants while their managers still micromanage every decision. You can't workshop your way around fundamental trust issues.
The companies that get this right understand that psychological safety is about information flow, not emotional comfort. They want bad news to travel up the organisation as quickly as good news. They know that problems caught early are problems solved cheaply.
The Bottom Line
Psychological safety isn't about making everyone feel warm and fuzzy. It's about creating conditions where information flows freely, problems surface quickly, and solutions come from unexpected places.
Stop asking whether your people feel safe to speak up. Start asking whether they believe their input will create change. The difference between those two questions is the difference between therapy and leadership.
And if you're still not convinced, ask yourself this: when was the last time someone disagreed with you in a meeting and you thanked them for it? Because until that becomes your natural response, all the psychological safety training in the world won't help.
Your team is watching. They're always watching.
Other Resources: