Building Psychological Safety at Work: What Leaders Often Overlook

Key Takeaways:

Speaking up does not carry the same risk for every employee, and leaders who miss that difference also miss the voices they need most.

Organisations that want to grow and innovate depend on people who will challenge an idea, admit what they do not know, and flag a problem before it becomes a crisis. The condition that makes all of that possible is psychological safety at work.

Innovation experts often describe psychological safety as the ground in which innovation and transformation take root. When two colleagues can argue hard about a problem while still respecting one another, they tend to land on a third option that beats both of their starting positions.

There is a complication, though. Psychological safety asks people to be vulnerable, and vulnerability does not feel the same to everyone in the room. Canadian research shows how real that gap is: in a Mental Health Research Canada study of more than 5,500 working Canadians, one in three respondents said they were uncomfortable speaking up, and roughly one in four did not often feel comfortable being themselves at work.

Psychological Safety at Work Starts With Trust, Not Vulnerability

When leaders want a more open team, it is tempting to skip ahead and ask people to share before any trust exists. Practitioners have a name for this shortcut: forced vulnerability.

It rarely produces the result leaders are hoping for. An employee who discloses something personal before feeling safe often regrets it almost immediately. In the worst cases, what someone revealed in an unguarded moment is later turned against them, and the damage to trust spreads well beyond one relationship.

The more reliable path runs the other way. Leaders earn trust first by consistently demonstrating high-trust leadership behaviours, and only then can they reasonably expect employees to take the interpersonal risks that psychological safety at work depends on.

At Great Place To Work, we see the standard leaders need to meet very clearly. Employees need a leader who knows and cares about them both inside and outside of work, because every part of a person’s life shapes how they show up.

The return on that investment is significant. Great Place To Work research shows that when employees feel they can be their true selves at work, they are twice as likely to look forward to coming to work and 50% more likely to want to stay in their jobs.

The Boundaries That Healthy Vulnerability Needs

Over the past decade, vulnerability has become a widely celebrated leadership quality. It is commonly understood as a willingness to accept uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

As the idea gained traction, many leaders embraced it and began encouraging employees to bring their full selves to work. Along the way, an essential point tended to get lost. Healthy vulnerability has boundaries.

That missing piece shows up in most workplace training and education. Plenty of people move into management simply because it was the next rung on the ladder. A new title does not come with a clear sense of where the line sits, what is appropriate to share with a team, or how to share it well.

Without that guidance, well-meaning managers can overshare, or they can expect a level of openness from others that the team has not yet built the trust to sustain.

Inclusive Leadership Starts With Recognising Unequal Risk

Not every employee takes on the same risk when they raise a concern or offer a different view.

Inclusion practitioners who have examined why “safe spaces” so often fell short of creating psychological safety for everyone point to the same blind spot. Organisations tend to overlook the fact that vulnerability is not experienced equally.

Consider anyone who is the only one of something in the room: the newest person on the team, the only woman among men, or the only person without a college or university degree. For that employee, the risk attached to speaking out looks very different. If leaders do not understand those barriers and actively address them, an open invitation to share can start to feel like a façade.

Yet these are frequently the perspectives an organisation most needs to hear. Because their experience differs from the majority, these employees are often the ones who can fill in the blind spots everyone else has stopped noticing.

This is where inclusive leadership moves from aspiration to practice. According to Mental Health Research Canada, 68% of employed Canadians consider their workplace psychologically safe, but 23% say it is not. A healthy average can easily hide the people for whom speaking up still feels like a gamble.

How Coaching Leadership and Constructive Feedback Lower the Risk

If speaking up carries more risk for some people, leaders cannot simply wait for employees to find their voice. They need to make it safer on purpose, and one of the most effective ways to do that is to take a coaching stance.

Coaching leadership replaces directing with understanding. By asking questions first, a leader learns the reasoning behind someone’s actions, what they intended, and whether they can see the effects that did not go as planned. In practice, that looks like:

• Asking about intent first: Before correcting a decision, find out what the person was trying to achieve.
• Exploring impact together: Help employees recognise consequences they may not have anticipated, rather than simply listing them.
• Treating feedback as a conversation: Constructive feedback lands best when both people come away knowing more than they did before.
• Protecting the time: Coaching takes longer than giving instructions, so build room for it into the week rather than squeezing it between meetings.

That time commitment can be a genuine obstacle for senior leaders with packed calendars. Poorly delivered feedback, however, is what quietly kills innovation. A leader who only ever tells people to do things the way they have always been done, or the way the leader prefers, ends the conversation having learned nothing at all.

Small Steps That Build Psychological Safety in the Workplace

Most people have never been shown how to share more of themselves at work, so the prospect can feel intimidating. The best approach is to take baby steps, testing the water with one foot before wading in.

A leader might open a team meeting with something as simple as: “I’m a parent of two young kids. Anyone else?”

• Offer one personal detail: A small, low-stakes disclosure invites connection without pressuring anyone to match it.
• Let others opt in: An open question, rather than a round-the-table requirement, allows each person to set their own pace.
• Notice what you hold back: Before your first meeting of the day, pause to consider which parts of yourself you are packing away, and recognise that keeping them hidden comes at a cost.

Shared at a pace that feels right, these small moments build connection and a stronger sense of community over time.

Where Workplace Culture Meets Canada’s National Standard

Canadian organisations also have a practical reference point. The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, commissioned by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and launched in 2013, was the first standard of its kind in the world. It offers voluntary guidelines, tools, and resources to help organisations promote mental health and prevent psychological harm at work.

The Standard asks employers to assess and monitor a set of workplace psychosocial factors, including organisational culture, civility and respect, and clear leadership and expectations. Read alongside the ideas above, the message is consistent: psychological safety in the workplace is not the product of a single initiative. It grows from how leaders behave every day and from a workplace culture where trust comes before any request for openness.

Make Psychological Safety at Work a Lasting Strength

Psychological safety at work does not happen by accident. For more than 30 years, Great Place To Work has studied what helps employees feel safe to speak up, take risks, and bring more of who they are to their jobs.

The clearest way to know how safe your own people feel is to ask them. Our Trust Index™ employee survey measures the everyday experiences that shape trust, and our research on the Great Place To Work Effect shows how that trust translates into stronger business results.

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This article is an adaptation of the original Great Place To Work®, written by Ted Kitterman, Content Manager.

 

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People Also Asked

What is psychological safety at work?
Psychological safety at work is a shared belief that you can ask questions, raise concerns, admit mistakes, and offer new ideas without being embarrassed or punished. It shapes how openly a team learns, solves problems, and adapts.

How do you measure psychological safety?
The most dependable measure is a confidential employee survey that asks people directly whether they feel safe to speak up, take risks, and be themselves. Tracking results by team and demographic group reveals where the experience is uneven.

What is the difference between psychological safety and psychological health and safety?
Psychological safety describes the everyday climate of a team and whether people feel free to speak up. Psychological health and safety is a broader framework, reflected in Canada’s National Standard, that covers preventing psychological harm and promoting mental health across an organisation.

Is the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety mandatory in Canada?
No. The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace is a set of voluntary guidelines, tools, and resources that organisations of any size or sector can adopt.

What does psychological safety look like on a team?
People disagree openly and respectfully, ask for help without hesitation, report errors early, and hear feedback as information rather than judgement. Quieter or newer members contribute as readily as the most senior voices.

How can leaders build psychological safety in a team?
Leaders build it by modelling trustworthy behaviour, setting clear boundaries around sharing, removing the extra barriers some employees face, and coaching rather than directing. Consistency over time matters far more than any single initiative.

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