Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety has become one of the most influential findings in organisational science, demonstrating that teams where members feel safe to take interpersonal risks consistently outperform those where fear and self-censorship dominate. Google's Project Aristotle confirmed that psychological safety was the single most important factor distinguishing high-performing teams from average ones. Yet despite this compelling evidence, many organisations struggle to create psychologically safe environments, and the reason is usually leadership behaviour.
Why Leaders Are the Key
Psychological safety is not created by policies, training programmes, or posters on the wall. It is created by the day-to-day behaviour of leaders, particularly how they respond to vulnerability, mistakes, questions, and disagreement. A leader who responds to bad news with blame creates an environment where people hide problems. A leader who dismisses questions as naive creates an environment where people stop asking. A leader who punishes dissent creates an environment where groupthink flourishes.
The challenge is that many leaders are unaware of how their behaviour affects psychological safety. They may believe they are approachable and open while their team experiences them as intimidating and judgemental. Coaching provides the feedback, self-awareness, and behavioural development needed to close this gap.
Building Self-Awareness
Start by helping the leader understand their current impact on psychological safety. Use 360-degree feedback, team surveys, or direct observation to gather data on how the leader is perceived. Pay particular attention to how the leader responds in moments of stress, disagreement, or surprise, because these are the moments that most powerfully shape the team's sense of safety.
Explore the leader's own relationship with vulnerability and risk-taking. Leaders who are uncomfortable with their own vulnerability will struggle to create space for others to be vulnerable. Those who fear making mistakes will unconsciously communicate that mistakes are unacceptable. Those who need to appear competent at all times will create an environment where others feel they must perform competence too.
Developing New Behaviours
Help the leader develop specific behaviours that promote psychological safety. These include admitting their own mistakes and uncertainties openly, asking genuine questions and listening to the answers without interrupting, responding to bad news with curiosity rather than blame, thanking people for raising concerns rather than punishing them, and explicitly inviting contributions from quieter team members.
These behaviours feel risky to many leaders, which is why coaching support is essential. Practise them in coaching sessions through role-play and rehearsal. Start with low-stakes situations and gradually extend to more challenging contexts. Each positive experience builds the leader's confidence that these behaviours are effective and sustainable.
Addressing Structural Barriers
While leadership behaviour is the primary driver of psychological safety, structural factors also play a role. Help the leader examine whether their team's meeting formats, decision-making processes, and communication channels support or inhibit open dialogue. A meeting format where the most senior person speaks first effectively silences everyone else. A decision-making process that rewards consensus discourages honest disagreement. A communication culture that relies on email rather than conversation reduces the opportunities for genuine exchange.
Work with the leader to redesign structures that are undermining psychological safety. This might include changing the order of speaking in meetings, creating anonymous channels for raising concerns, establishing regular retrospectives where the team reflects on how it is working together, or simply creating more informal spaces for conversation and connection.
Sustaining the Culture
Creating psychological safety is not a one-time intervention but an ongoing commitment. Help the leader develop habits and routines that sustain the culture over time. Regular check-ins with the team about how safe they feel, periodic surveys to track progress, and ongoing coaching to reinforce new behaviours all contribute to a culture that becomes increasingly self-sustaining. The goal is to reach a point where psychological safety is not dependent on any single leader but is embedded in the team's norms and practices.