Resisting mutation: how to prevent psychological safety from becoming an empty buzzword (part 3)

If you have joined me for part 1 and part 2 of the series, you will now be familiar with the research behind psychological safety, its core principles, and some of the inevitable misconceptions and mutations that have arisen so far. We have acknowledged that, while the evidence for psych safety is so compelling in the way it impacts teams, it is a very tricky concept to implement, and even harder to maintain.  

In this final post of the series, I’ll focus on the ‘how’. How do we actually create a culture of psychological safety in our school teams, with all of their idiosyncrasies and contextual challenges? Before we start, it might be worth going back to my original post from 2022, where I refer to some of Amy Edmondson’s top tips regarding the ‘how’. 

Let’s begin by acknowledging some of the challenges, particularly for school teams. These often include: 

• School staff are in many teams and many don’t meet that regularly 
• Therefore your attention and time is split across teams 
• Staff feel more aligned to some teams than others, e.g. I might love being in the Maths team, but less keen on being in the Year 9 tutor team (not my view!) 
• School staff don’t actually spend that much of their day with their teams! They are usually with children or working in their classroom 
• Schools are full of unpredictable interruptions, and are often places of high workload. This isn’t conducive to quality time in a team 
• Team meetings are squeezed into before or after school slots.

It can be difficult just to get through the team’s core work in these precious moments together. Of psychological safety, Ruth Ashbee (2023) writes that it is ‘hard, very hard to establish and maintain because we have to put much, much more energy in than seems proportionate.’ So, why should we carve up yet more of our limited time by trying to implement psychological safety, or indeed other generic teamwork traits? 

My belief is that the investment in these areas comes full circle; the time you spend introducing and exploring how to be a psychologically safe team pays back into the team’s future time and effectiveness. In fact, for the sceptics in your team who might be wondering if this is just a ‘nice to have’, the research links psychological safety to improved performance, creativity, problem solving, and learning.  

Keeping our eyes on the prize for a minute, what is it that we are looking to achieve? Our teams work hard; they have a lot of expertise and have to problem solve regularly. What we are aiming for is a team who discusses and debates ideas, without recrimination or awkwardness; a team whose members know they can contribute views, feedback, or questions without wondering if this will tarnish their place in the team or reputation; a team who frame mistakes and setbacks as inevitable learning steps, and therefore commit to growing together; a team who keep their performance challenge in mind and help each other overcome this challenge. This team allows its collective experience and knowledge to be harnessed to its true potential because honesty and openness are built upon trust. This team is energised to do great work together; it does not nod and smile in meetings when other ideas could be shared, and nor does it hold back on correcting or adding to points that are made because of relational reasons. 

‘Disagreement and discussion are key to great culture. If no one is disagreeing with anything, it’s not a sign that everything is fine. It’s a sign that people do not want to share their views. And this is bad. Very bad.’

Ruth Ashbee, 2023

 

7 strategies to introduce, maintain and improve psychological safety in your teams

Create psych safety by……narrating and frontloading the what and the why I’ve always found that, when you introduce psychological safety into a team, it’s an exciting and invigorating time. Start by exploring what psychological safety is, the research behind it, how it benefits our work, and how we will implement it together. You must explore the difficulties of the road ahead while highlighting the end goals.  

This narrative needs to become part of everyday language, like your team vision and values are, too. When we discuss ideas, when we review data, when we look at a process or policy – the principles of psychological safety should be frontloaded to keep the team focused on how we will get the most out of our time together and then do excellent work. 

Create psych safety by…… genuinely asking for help and feedback Some psych safety studies have found that when leaders ask for help or support, it can come across to staff as disingenuous. Leader authenticity is vital for this to work – people see through false modesty, vulnerability or reflection. So when you are discussing a challenge as a team, try to be open to all suggestions, use the feedback to help provoke future discussions, and then circle back to how productive you found previous feedback and how it helped shape the direction of something. 

For team members, being given the green light to contribute and feedback has a big impact on team creativity and innovation, too. Ensure that the group knows that ideas or feedback don’t have to be polished or ready for fine scrutiny; any contributions that help the team shape their plans or evaluate their next move are welcome.  

Create psych safety by……leading with vulnerability  Building on the process of inviting feedback and input, is how leaders model vulnerability, for example by admitting fault or reporting their own mistakes. I once observed a leader do this with their staff, humbly stating in front of a large group that they hadn’t allowed belonging or psych safety to flourish in their team because he had always papered over the cracks when things went wrong, and only acknowledged task completion when things had gone well. It’s okay to admit when you’ve got something wrong, or when something you asked the group to do hasn’t worked out.

Sherwood and Finney (2025) cite Jacob Morgan’s work ‘Leading with Vulnerability’, who warns that vulnerability isn’t always a good thing, as it can be a ‘crutch to justify ongoing poor performance.’ Rather, Morgan recommends that the ‘vulnerable leader’ uses their reflections to look forward. For example, rather than just admitting to a mistake, the vulnerable leader will do that AND share what was learned. Rather than just being unsure of what to do in a situation, they might reiterate the vision for where they want to go, and use that to ask the team for support with what’s next.  It’s all about looking forward and growing, in addition to being vulnerable.  

Create psych safety by……using structured approaches for discussion Some teams aren’t ready to begin being more open and honest right away. Teams often have historical context that means this won’t come naturally – for example, a previous leader who lead with an iron fist, or a host of other reasons. These teams will require some extra encouragement, through a variety of means. But, in meetings, consider using more structured processes to generate discussion. These can range from relatively straightforward ‘think-pair-share’ activities, to using a more layered approach. The aim is to increase meeting participation, so that team members know their ideas and views will be expected, welcomed, and important. If you turn up to meetings and are never asked to discuss or feed back, it’s easy to stop bringing your brain with you. Our job as leaders is to make sure that the whole group participates so that we benefit from the collective wisdom in the room.

Try this one out (inspired by the work of Andy Buck and Doug Lemov): set the scene by narrating that today, we are here to discuss a challenge that a team member is having. Listening, asking, and providing feedback will be vital for us to move forward as a team with this challenge. To begin with, the person bringing the challenge (me, let’ say) is going to speak about the challenge for a couple of minutes: what’s the vision, what’s the challenge. Then, the whole group gets some thinking time to consider this and possible options. Then, each person speaks, one by one, about their thoughts and ideas – with the rules that you can’t interrupt someone else or refer to their ideas. Once this has been done, the person who brought the challenge can discuss what they heard and what they think of this, and then perhaps narrow down some options and put the team into small groups for further discussion. This process (and there are variants of it!) means that everyone in the group gets to think, contribute, and discuss, rather than many team meetings I’ve observed where psychological safety simply isn’t possible because the participation ratio is torpedoed by dominant voices.  

‘Putting the brakes on a train about to leave the station requires psychological safety – and is unlikely to happen unless leaders are on board with encouraging passionate dialogue.’

HBR, 2024

Create psych safety by……responding constructively to mistakes, while not dodging underperformance. One of the key tenets of psych safey is that mistakes, either individual or a group effort, don’t lead to recrimination. This is easier said than done. I’ve heard feedback from teams that while their leader says mistakes okay, it often isn’t in reality. As a leader, we have to model constructive next steps to a mistake occurring. No passive aggressive emails. No subsequently gravitating towards other members of the group because they deliver more frequently. We have to be constructive and be solution focused. Use a coaching approach to help clarify how we could move forward and approach things differently next time.

As the previous post discussed, we aren’t avoiding difficult conversations or no longer holding people to account. Psychological safety actually makes it easier to have these open, honest conversations about performance. But there’s a difference between that and showing irritation or disappointment in someone when they try something and it doesn’t work out. Lekha Sharma (2023) writes that ‘one small human error can challenge people’s perceptions and beliefs about a leader at an organisational level’, so it’s vital that they model the behaviours that we expect to see in others. Your rousing speech about psychological safety will be shredded the moment you handle a mistake without compassion or fairness.

Ruth Ashbee encourages leaders to consider where errors originate from.  ‘If a desired outcome isn’t achieved, we need to ask if our school systems themselves are adequate for achieving this outcome. If they are, we need to ask what gaps in understanding staff may have, and what our role as leaders should be in developing that understanding. It’s only fair to hold staff accountable if we examine first our own responsibility to lead and implement effective systems, and to work to build shared understanding of those systems. If we fail to do this we destroy trust and psychological safety’ (Ashbee 2023).  It’s worth stating that, like trust, psych safety cannot be built on platitudes and words alone – if the team doesn’t believe that good work gets done, or that leaders don’t follow through with things, then there is no foundation.

Create psych safety by…… actually knowing the reality.  If you want to know the reality of your team’s morale and psychological safety, you have to ask. You could do this with regular surveys, such as those available at psychsafety.co.uk, or by creating something more bespoke. A psychological safety survey is an excellent, albeit intimidating, place to start. The range of questions really helps – some teams have a culture of openness and honesty, but they don’t feel like the team works through moments of difficulty very well; others are different. A survey will help you to uncover how the group feels, and then, more importantly, can be used as a discussion prompt to plan how you will improve in certain areas.

It takes a lot of energy and effort, but I’d also take the time to speak to your team 1:1 or similar in order to see how things are going. Is there anything on your mind that you haven’t brought up lately? How do you feel about sharing your ideas in meetings? When you did contribute something recently, do you feel like it was valued? 

‘Be clear about expectations for ethical decision making and integrity: silence and ambiguity have consequences. Be intentional about seeking out early warning signals and clear about responding. Prohibit retaliation against ‘upstanders’; ensure that employees always have a safe channel for raising concerns.’

HBR, 2024

Create psych safety by…… putting learning at the heart of your team’s work In Alive at Work (2018), Dan Cable argues that many workplaces are deactivating our ‘seeking system’, the part of the brain that gives us the impulse to explore, learn, and experiment, and therefore we lose out on the hit of dopamine this gives us, as well as diminishing our motivation and sense of purpose. When teams learn together and then put this learning back into their processes and challenges, they begin to share more, give each other peer feedback, and frame everything as a learning experience. Psychological safety flourishes in a learning team. 

How can you utilise this ethos? Well, how much are you learning with your team at the moment? How much time do you dedicate to team learning? Is there mapped out, medium-long-term learning plans for your team over the next year or two? Do you begin meetings with a chance to discuss some research, blog, chapter, or recent learning experience that someone in the team has had?

Final reflections

After three blog posts you may be feeling pretty jaded – thanks for sticking with me! What I hope we have explored is a combination of research and strategy, uncovering the authentic meaning of psychological safety, and weeding out common misconceptions. Psychologically safe teams are wonderful and full of purpose and vigour. My hope is that in reading this series, you will be able to take steps towards achieving this in your own teams.

Reflective questions:

• Where will you start your psychological safety journey in your teams? Do you need to do some more thinking or reading, or is it time to crack on?

• What’s the current state of psych safety in your team and wider organisation? Have you considered how you will review this?

• If you have tried some of these strategies before, did they have impact? How could you adapt them next time to improve the psych safety in your teams?

Thank you for reading – please share with teams and leaders!

Sam

 Sources:

Ashbee, R. (2023). School Staff Culture: Knowledge-building, Reflection and Action. Routledge. 

Cable, D. M. (2018). Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do. Harvard Business Review Press. 

Harvard Business Review, Edmondson, A. C., Auger-Dominguez, D., Keswin, E., & Carucci, R. (2024). Psychological Safety (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series). Harvard Business Review Press. 

Morgan, J. (2023). Leading with Vulnerability: Unlock Your Greatest Superpower to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization. Wiley. 

Sharma, L. (2023). Building Culture: A handbook to harnessing human nature to create strong school teams. John Catt. 

Sherwood, C., & Finney, A. (2025). Codified Leadership: Behaviours and Habits that Make a Difference in Schools (1st ed.). Routledge.

Wareham, D. (2025, May). Balancing Psychological Safety and Accountability in High-Performance Teams [Article]. ResearchGate