Treat psychological safety as a one-off training, and you’re gambling with your business future. Unsplash+
For years, leaders have repeated the same definition of psychological safety: a shared belief within a team that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks without fear of negative consequences. This definition has become a staple in keynotes, leadership manuals and LinkedIn posts. It sounds great in theory. But in practice, it misses the complexity of how safety actually shows up at work.
Here’s the problem: this definition treats psychological safety as a shared, stable belief that applies equally to everyone. If psychological safety were truly a shared belief, everyone in a team would feel the same level of safety. They don’t. That’s not how human experience works.
Psychological safety is a state, not a belief
Psychological safety isn’t a fixed team-wide belief. It’s an internal, moment-to-moment state that’s deeply personal and constantly shifting. Each employee moves through moments of confidence and hesitation, influenced by who’s in the room, what’s at stake and how feedback is given. A one-on-one with a manager might feel supportive, but speaking up in front of senior leadership can be intimidating. Context, environment and interaction style matter. Supportive behaviors create openness, while dismissive or critical reactions shut it down. Safety is a dynamic tied to mental clarity, emotional steadiness and the willingness to share ideas.
If you want to build a culture that lasts, you can’t treat safety as a one-off “team belief.” Invest your time and effort in creating conditions where each person feels safe enough to contribute at their best, in every situation.
The real-world cost of getting it wrong
When organizations ignore this nuance, the costs are steep, and we’ve seen this play out on the biggest corporate stages. From Boeing to McDonald’s to BP, companies keep getting blindsided by culture crises—and pretending they came out of nowhere. Rather, these were slow-burn culture failures, ignored until they blew up.
Boeing’s internal culture, which discouraged employees from flagging safety concerns for fear of retaliation, contributed to two fatal crashes, billions in losses and a brand still trying to recover. Wells Fargo’s sales practices thrived in a pressure-filled environment where employees faced near-impossible targets, leading to a fake accounts scandal that destroyed trust and cost billions in fines. In the tech sector, several high-profile A.I. firms have faced public criticism and mass resignations after ethical concerns were ignored or punished, damaging credibility and investor confidence.
These aren’t “soft” culture problems. They’re business crises, impacting people, performance and public trust.
What happens in a toxic workplace
You don’t need a global brand to see the damage. Even mid-sized and smaller firms see the ripple effect. A manufacturing company with cutting-edge facilities and global reach still suffered when leadership conflict created tension at the top that filtered down to the shop floor. Communication broke down, and mistakes crept into production, leading to quality defects. Clients noticed, orders were canceled and contracts weren’t renewed. The culture problem became a product problem. And then a revenue problem. When safety is missing, performance takes the hit first, profit second and reputation third. And by the time leaders connect the dots, they’ve already lost millions.
And yet, many leaders think leadership training will fix everything. Spoiler: it won’t. Because if your workplace culture is not underpinned by real, moment-to-moment psychological safety, you’re building on quicksand. When it’s not, the best people leave—the ones who stay disengage, small problems turn into PR disasters and your reputation takes years, sometimes decades, to rebuild. Psychological safety is the foundation of performance, trust and long-term success. Without it, your strategy, your people and your product are all at risk. Ignore it, and you won’t just have a toxic workplace. You’ll have a dying business.
The cost of doing nothing
Toxic cultures don’t stay contained. They spread. Leaders should view psychological safety as a strategic asset and watch out for warning signs: high turnover, lack of innovation, disengagement, increased customer complaints or regulatory scrutiny. Training programs alone won’t fix this. Real progress comes from leaders who create conditions where employees feel supported enough to contribute, challenge and innovate. Boards and investors are beginning to track cultural health as closely as financial performance, and forward-looking companies are including psychological safety metrics in ESG reporting.
The longer you delay building psychological safety into your culture, the harder (and more costly) it is to fix.
The leadership imperative
If you want long-term success, you need to make psychological safety non-negotiable. Not the watered-down, “shared belief” version. The real thing.
- Be a role model. Bring your authentic self to work. Your energy matters. Positive, magnetic energy inspires contribution; bad energy stifles it. Own your mistakes and what you’ve learned along the way.
- Connect individually. Check in with your people authentically, in a real and empathetic way. Don’t assume one person’s experience reflects the whole team.
- Measure what matters. Use surveys, listening sessions and performance reviews to capture real feedback about work experiences, not just the “team vibe.” Benchmark progress quarterly, and share results transparently.
- Act fast on toxic behavior. No exceptions, no matter the seniority. Protect the culture and the people who make it thrive.
- Reward constructive challenge. Celebrate and incentivize employees who raise tough questions or point out risks others missed.
Markets will shift and strategies will evolve, but culture remains the bedrock on which everything else is built. If your culture isn’t built on psychological safety, you’re gambling with your future. Ignore it and you’ll watch good people leave, bad decisions pile up and your competitive edge disappear. Prioritize it and earn trust, unlock innovation, reduce operational risk and protect themselves from costly missteps—creating a resilient, adaptable, high-performing team ready for whatever comes next.
Psychological safety isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s a lever of competitive advantage that separates companies capable of adapting and thriving from those that erode from within. And it starts by throwing out the flawed definition you’ve been sold.
Build a battle is the author of The Authentic Organization: How to Create a Psychologically Safe Workplacewhich has been shortlisted for a Business Book Award.
