Nowadays, the term “ psychological safety” has become quite the buzzword — especially with the new-normal, the traditional workplace has changed and how – this has increased the importance of the concept and the idea of psychological safety. It has a close relationship with trust and effective leadership – high performing teams have been seen to possess high levels of psychological safety. 

What is Psychological Safety all about?

Borrowing a few words from an article published in forbes.com, the term, “psychological safety” has been around since at least 1999, when Dr Amy Edmondson (@amyedmondson) of Harvard University published a paper on the subject. In her study, Dr. Edmondson proposed that regardless of its makeup, a team’s success will largely boil down to its members “tacit beliefs about interpersonal interaction,” and whether they have “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”

Psychological safety means nothing you say or do will be used against you—as long as you mean well. (And it means your teammates will assume you mean well until proven otherwise.)

In other words, if you can take risks without your team beating you up, you’ll be more likely to succeed. That’s what psychological safety is about.

So, if you ask me to sum up the importance of psychological safety, I would say : 

Psychological Safety —> Interpersonal Trust—>Effective Leadership —> High Performing Teams