It’s very possible that your team has talent, expertise, and years of experience, and yet still something is holding them back from performance excellence.
You notice an unwillingness from your team members to speak up in meetings. A few of them mention that they often feel excluded. Your team members seem to be working in silos. When a mistake happens, there is a concern that admitting it would mean getting labeled as an inexperienced underperformer or worse. In a group setting, there seems to be a hesitation to challenge the status quo, translating to a lack of healthy debate and innovative thinking.
These are all signs and symptoms of a low degree of psychological safety. In this environment, you will notice team members taking very little personal risk for fear of consequences or unfavorable exposure. When psychological safety is low, attrition is usually high, trust is low, and productivity suffers.
What Is Psychological Safety, Really?
Psychological safety is the shared belief that it’s safe to be yourself, take risks, ask questions, and even challenge leadership, without fear of negative consequences.
Dr. Amy Edmondson, author of The Fearless Organization, calls it “felt permission for candor.” It’s when people believe they can speak up without fear of humiliation or punishment.
Dr. Timothy R. Clark, CEO of LeaderFactor® and author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, expands on this:
“Psychological safety is a condition in which you feel included, safe to learn, safe to contribute, and safe to challenge the status quo without being marginalized in some way.”
He goes on to say that the central tenet of psychological safety is something called “rewarded vulnerability”. For there to be psychological safety, vulnerability needs to be more than just allowed. It needs to be encouraged, acknowledged, and valued. It needs to be a part of the culture of the organization.
Modeling Vulnerability: The Role of the Leader
To build psychological safety, leaders must go first. As Brené Brown teaches and shares in her book, Atlas of the Heart, “vulnerability is the emotion that we experience times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”
The degree of vulnerability of any behavior depends on how it has been responded to in the organization. As a leader, you make vulnerability safe by modeling it and rewarding it in others when you see it. So set down your social mask and get real with your employees.
According to “The Ladder of Vulnerability™ developed by Dr. Clark, the most powerful way to shift a team’s culture is by intentionally recognizing and rewarding vulnerable behaviors at a variety of risk levels.
When leaders do this consistently, they normalize the behaviors that build trust.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
Using Dr. Clark’s 4 Stages of Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide* as a resource, let’s review specific actions you can take at each stage to build a highly effective team.
Stage 1: Create Inclusion Safety
The need to belong.
At this first stage, people need to feel accepted and connected. Inclusion safety is granted when people are treated with respect and accepted for who they are.
Without inclusion, people won’t speak up, contribute, or take risks. It’s the foundation of every high-performing team.
Actions:
- Create an inclusive onboarding strategy that builds meaningful connections.
- Celebrate individuality by appreciating the unique strengths of the team.
- Learn, use, and pronounce team members’ names correctly.
- Make participation in meetings, activities, and initiatives easy and accessible for all.
- Avoid comparing and contrasting your team members.
Stage 2: Encourage Learner Safety
The need to grow
Learner safety means people feel safe to ask questions, experiment, and make mistakes. When a gap in knowledge is present, they’re supported in their learning.
This stage transforms mistakes from threats into powerful learning opportunities.
Actions:
- Recognize where each employee is on their learning journey and provide appropriate support and oversight, including professional development plans.
- Allow for mistakes to be learning opportunities.
- Inform the team it’s OK for anyone to say I don’t know. Then give them a resource to learn.
Stage 3: Invite Contributor Safety
The need to make a difference
Once people feel included and safe to learn, they want to contribute. Contributor safety means they feel trusted to apply their skills and make a meaningful impact.
Without this, people will sit on the sidelines, even when they have value to add.
Actions:
- Give and receive regular feedback. Make it a cultural norm.
- Align the talents, expertise, and experience of every employee to the work that needs to get done.
- Make expectations, including roles and responsibilities, clear and explicit.
- Increase productivity by helping overcome obstacles and challenges.
- Create a community of shared accountability focused on results.
Stage 4: Build Challenger Safety
The need to improve
This final stage allows people to question the status quo, suggest bold ideas, and offer dissenting opinions without fear of retaliation.
Challenger safety is the most vulnerable stage, and the most vital for innovation and change.
Actions:
- Make the guidelines and boundaries clear so team members know how to handle disagreements.
- Challenge current paradigms and grow the team’s critical thinking skills.
- Invite healthy debate that is low in emotional friction but high in intellectual friction.
- Model healthy debate and disagreement in front of your team.
- Be courageous enough to bring diverse ideas and opinions into the conversation.
Why Psychological Safety Matters
When safety is present, teams:
- Innovate faster: People contribute unique ideas and challenge assumptions, fueling creative breakthroughs.
- Unlock their Potential: A psychologically safe environment enables every team member (not just the loudest voices) to show up fully and authentically, amplifying what a team can become.
- Collaborate better: They feel valued, included, and connected, boosting engagement and trust.
- Learn and grow: Mistakes are part of the process and help people grow into their best-performing selves.
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- Stay resilient: They adapt to change with confidence, not fear.
- Perform stronger: As Google’s Project Aristotle confirmed, psychological safety is the #1 predictor of team effectiveness.
Small Steps, Big Shifts
Building psychological safety is a culture-shaping commitment to build high-performing teams.
So, take a moment. Ask yourself:
- Looking at your team members, who might feel like they are on the outside looking in?
- When was the last time someone openly disagreed with you in a meeting? How did you respond?
- Do team members speak up freely, volunteer to go first or do they play it safe?
- Who on your team would thrive with more autonomy? Who could benefit from more of your support and oversight?
- What have you done lately to show that it’s okay not to have all the answers?
If your answers reveal room for growth, you’re not alone. And you’re not stuck. In fact, you could be one step away from a breakthrough.
At innertelligence we work with leaders and teams to intentionally cultivate the environments that bring out their team’s best performance. Contact me today and take the next step toward unlocking your team’s full potential.
*4 Stages of Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide – A Practical Guide to Improve Psychological Safety at Work – Dr Timothy R. Clark, CEO LeaderFactor®.
https://www.leaderfactor.com/resources/the-4-stages-behavioral-guide
*4 Stages of Psychological Safety Ladder of Vulnerability – Dr Timothy R. Clark, CEO LeaderFactor®.
