Is Psychological Safety Enough? Why Your Journey to a Human-Centered Culture is Falling Short

This post is part of a three-part series on psychological safety, brave space, and cultural intelligence.

I’m a bona fide geek, and proud of it. I love disappearing into fantasy worlds, from comic books to video games to films, especially when they use fantastic ideas and themes to explore complex issues we face in the real world. Star Trek, with its hopeful vision for a diverse and more peaceful future, is an amazing example of this kind of fiction. It’s captivated me since childhood, and I find myself returning to it time and again when I need to feel not just entertained, but inspired. Recently, it’s given me new ways to think about a topic that is coming up in my work with leaders with increasing frequency: psychological safety.

It feels like psychological safety is everywhere. It’s the new (or, more accurately, back in style) buzzword in boardrooms and on executive retreats, and for good reason. For years, leaders have been seeking a silver bullet to unlock innovation, boost performance, and create cultures where people feel they truly belong. In our increasingly complex, diverse, and at times divided world, the promise of psychological safety—a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking—seems like an answer. And in many ways, it is.

The concept, famously defined by Harvard’s Amy Edmondson, is built on a worthy and compelling premise. It’s about creating an environment where team members feel confident speaking up, asking questions, admitting mistakes, and challenging the status quo without fear of embarrassment or punishment. For decades, a lack of psychological safety has been linked to a host of organizational ills, from stalled innovation to silent dissent. In my work with leaders, I’ve seen firsthand how a psychologically safe team can operate like a well-oiled machine, its members leveraging their full cognitive capacity on the work at hand rather than on navigating internal politics.

The benefits are undeniable. Research consistently shows that psychological safety is a cornerstone of high-performing teams, as famously highlighted by Google's Project Aristotle. The data tell us that when people feel safe, they are more likely to share diverse perspectives, which leads to better problem-solving and stronger outcomes. They are more engaged, more resilient, and more committed to the success of the organization.

Despite its many upsides, many people presume that I am critical of the notion of psychological safety, especially since I've spent years critiquing the notion of "safe space." The language of safety, as I’ve learned from my work developing the brave space framework both independently and with my friend and collaborator Kristi L. Clemens, is often misaligned with the realities faced by diverse groups when learning and talking together about diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, and belonging, among other challenging and contentious topics. People are rightfully skeptical of promises of safety in a world that is fundamentally unsafe for so many.

Yet, I am not only a proponent of psychological safety; I see it as a truly worthwhile destination. It's an essential state for any organization aiming to thrive in the modern world. The problem, as I see it, is not the destination itself, but the journey to get there. As leaders, we often try to achieve this state without the right tools, and in the process, we encounter three persistent challenges that can derail our progress.

The first challenge is what I call the power and equity gap. A psychological safety strategy often presumes that a leader's invitation for "candor" or "dissent" is a sufficient invitation to speak up. But this perspective overlooks a crucial reality: marginalized and minoritized communities have been punished over and over again for challenging the injustice of the status quo. For someone whose identity has been historically and systemically marginalized, the invitation to "speak up" or "be vulnerable" from a leader is often met with the weight of generations of experience that tell them it is unsafe to do so. A leader cannot simply command an equitable outcome in an inequitable world. It requires a deeper, more intentional process, one that acknowledges and works through the historical and present-day realities of power dynamics. This is the first major pothole on the journey to a human-centered culture.

The second challenge is cultural bias. The framework of psychological safety, in its traditional Western interpretation, often assumes a cultural context that values direct communication, low power distance, and a focus on the individual. But what about leaders and team members from cultures that emphasize indirect communication, a respect for hierarchy, or a more collectivist approach? In these contexts, what is perceived as "safe" or "brave" can be profoundly different. An invitation to "challenge my authority" might be a sign of respect and trust in one culture, while in another, it could be seen as deeply disrespectful and confusing. Without a clear understanding of these culturally-based differences in communication and behavior, leaders risk creating a psychologically safe space only for some while alienating others. This can inadvertently perpetuate the very same exclusionary dynamics we are trying to dismantle, setting you off-course on your journey.

The third challenge is the "say versus do" problem. In my work, I frequently encounter leaders who earnestly believe they have created a psychologically safe environment. They've shared the research, encouraged candid feedback, and even celebrated a well-intentioned failure. Yet, their team remains quiet. They are baffled, not realizing that the true measure of psychological safety isn't in what a leader says, but in what they do and how their actions are perceived. When a leader invites dissent but then subtly penalizes it, or asks for vulnerability but then weaponizes it, the message is clear. Intentions, no matter how good, are not enough. Building psychological safety requires a continuous, deliberate practice of modeling the behavior we want to see in others, and it requires us to build trust incrementally rather than presuming it is already there. Without this foundational work, you’ll find yourself spinning your wheels, making plenty of noise and expending lots of energy but making little actual progress.

Psychological safety is a worthwhile and necessary destination for any human-centered organization. But to get there, you need the appropriate vehicle (let’s call it a starship, shall we?) and a robust navigation system. In the next post, I'll explain how the brave space framework and cultural intelligence (CQ) provide exactly that.