How Do Leaders Create Psychological Safety at Work?

Psychological safety is often described as people feeling safe enough to speak up in the workplace. While that’s true , it doesn’t explain the full story.

Psychological safety lives in the messy moments. It shows up in how leaders react when things don’t go smoothly, when someone disagrees, when a mistake happens, or when emotions and uncertainty surface.

It’s in those moments that people decide, often unconsciously, whether it’s safe to be honest here, or whether it’s wiser to stay quiet.

What Is Psychological Safety in the Workplace?

Psychological safety is the shared belief that you won’t be punished, shamed, or marginalised for being human at work.

That includes:

asking a question you “should” already know the answer to
admitting uncertainty or a mistake
offering a different perspective
raising a concern early, before it becomes a problem

When people feel safe, they’re more willing to engage, and take responsibility, because they’re not spending higher amounts of energy on self-protection.

Why Is Psychological Safety a Leadership Issue?

Teams will generally experience safety in the workplace depending on how leaders show up.

You can have the best values statement in the world, but if a leader reacts defensively, dismissively, or unpredictably under pressure, people will adapt accordingly. Meaning they’ll be careful about what they say, and will often stay quiet rather than create risk.

This is why psychological safety often requires leaders to unlearn behaviours that once served them well. Many leaders were rewarded for:

having answers
moving quickly
projecting confidence
staying emotionally contained

Those traits can often become limitations in environments that depend on learning, creativity, and collaboration.

How Do Leaders Create Psychological Safety Day to Day?

You don’t create psychological safety in a single moment. It grows, or disappears, through the small, day-to-day interactions people have with each other.

The key question most people are asking (often unconsciously) is:

“What happens here when something goes wrong?”

Leaders who build safety in the workplace consistently respond with curiosity rather than judgement. Instead of immediately correcting, fixing, or defending, they slow the moment down.

They might say:

“Explain more about that.”
“What led you to that conclusion?”
“What were you working with at the time?”

This creates a subtle but powerful signal: your thinking is welcome here, even if the outcome isn’t perfect.

What Role Does Vulnerability Play in Psychological Safety?

One of the most misunderstood aspects of leadership is vulnerability.

Vulnerability isn’t about oversharing or stepping away from authority. It’s about being honest about what you don’t know, what you’re still figuring out, and where you might be wrong, or calling out your own mistakes.

If a leader pretends they have it all figured out, teams can feel that something’s off. Most people will either nod along or hold their real thoughts back.

There’s often a noticeable shift when a leader says “I’m not sure.” Others relax, step forward, and the thinking opens up.

How Should Leaders Respond to Mistakes to Build Safety?

Mistakes are inevitable. The response is where culture is shaped.

In low-safety environments, mistakes are often followed by:

blame
withdrawal
subtle punishment
a search for who’s at fault

Over time, this teaches people to hide problems rather than surface them early.

In psychologically safe environments, leaders focus first on understanding. A simple question like:

“What made sense at the time?”

This can transform the conversation. It helps understand the intelligence behind the action, even if the result wasn’t what was hoped for.

How Do Leaders Encourage Honest Contribution From Everyone?

Many teams believe they’re open, but only hear from a few voices.

Creating safety often means:

slowing conversations down
asking questions and waiting for answers
recognising that different people process differently

Leaders don’t need to agree with every perspective. They do need to demonstrate that offering one won’t cost someone socially.

What Does Self-Awareness Have to Do With Psychological Safety?

A lot. Leaders are emotional reference points, whether they intend to be or not. People track tone, timing, and reactions constantly.

A leader who becomes sharp under pressure, avoids conflict, or needs to be right may never say “don’t speak up” — but the message lands anyway.

One of the most powerful reflective questions a leader can ask is:

“What is it like to work with me when things are difficult?”

Psychological safety often grows as leaders become more aware of their own nervous system, patterns, and triggers.

Clients often learn how to show up fully in sessions with me and that then makes it more possible to show up with their peers and team one step at a time.

Is Psychological Safety Something Leaders Can Learn?

Yes, but not as a technique.

It’s less about adopting the right phrases and more about developing the capacity to stay present, curious, and grounded when things feel uncomfortable.

Most leaders don’t need to become different people. They need support to notice when old unconscious strategies are becoming more common or running the show, and to experiment with new responses.

That’s where coaching often becomes valuable. Not to teach leaders how to “perform” safety, but to help them understand themselves well enough to create it naturally.

James O'Halloran

As a Business Coach I help Founders and those in Career Transition unlock problems and increase self-mastery so that they are confident in their direction and leadership. Through Career and Business Coaching, I help people who want to disrupt the(ir) status quo.