In a previous blog post, we took a deeper look at the predictors of psychological safety at the individual level. We mainly discussed personal traits that influence your experience of psychological safety, but also task characteristics and social aspects of your job. In this blog post, we’re moving up a level: the team level. Psychological safety is, by definition, a concept at the team level. While it can be felt individually, too much variation in perceived safety between team members is not ideal. And even though organizations can do a lot to support it, differences between teams within the same organization are common. So let’s focus on the team level. To keep things structured, we’ll explore three aspects: how team characteristics can support psychological safety, which social interactions are important, and the role of effective leadership behavior.
1. Team Characteristics
First, it’s important to organize your team well. Make it easier for yourself right from the start.
- Start with shared team goals. Everyone should be aligned and convinced of the same objectives. A fun exercise here is to ask everyone to write down what they believe the team’s goal is—and compare answers. Evaluation conversations and rewards should also be tied to these goals.
- Next: the team must be genuinely accountable. If nothing happens when goals aren’t met or mistakes are made, why would anyone take the risk to give feedback or admit errors?
- It’s also crucial to foster a true learning orientation and a focus on continuous quality improvement. Learning from each other and from mistakes should be the norm—not the exception.
- Lastly, regular contact with other teams and clients is important. Organize tasks in a way that requires physical and/or verbal/digital interaction—not just asynchronous digital tools. This brings richer feedback, encourages adaptation, and supports ongoing learning.
2. Social Interactions
Beyond cross-team and client interaction, social interactions within the team are just as critical. First and foremost, there needs to be frequent communication between team members. Psychological safety is impossible when team members barely interact on work-related topics.
But it’s not just about quantity—quality matters too. Allow time for expressing disagreements and for fully discussing issues. A quick team meeting that only touches the surface won’t help. Ensuring everyone has a voice—that will.
Third, having teammates who support and help you is key. You’ll only open up about important matters if you believe your colleagues truly have your back. This creates shared norms around what’s okay to talk about. It’s hard to build psychological safety without a common frame of reference. Lastly, role models are essential—colleagues who are willing to speak up and show courage. Developing psychological safety isn’t a linear path. You need people who are willing to stick their necks out so others feel safe to do the same.
3. Leadership
Finally, leadership plays a major role. It’s less about who leads and more about whether key leadership tasks are being fulfilled. To keep it simple, let’s assume these are carried out by one person (though of course they can be shared). First, it’s important that the leader actively listens and interacts with everyone. You don’t need daily chats with every team member, but regular presence (even virtually) helps build safety. Inclusive leadership is also essential: this means ensuring everyone is heard, their strengths recognized and used. Transparency is also key. Often, leaders are perceived to know more than the team. Being honest and open—while respecting confidentiality—builds trust. You can even say that you know more but can’t share it yet. In the literature, leadership styles like transformational, servant, ethical, and engaging leadership are all positively linked to psychological safety. The bottom line: the leader should focus on the needs of the team—not their own or those of upper management. That people-centered approach fosters positive leadership and psychological safety.
As you can see, there are several important team-level predictors of psychological safety that precede your action plan. Just like at the individual level, it’s important to reflect on how things are organized. The team leader is a key figure—not just responsible for team dynamics, but also the one with the most impact. A clear understanding of what psychological safety is (and isn’t) is vital. Small actions can quickly boost psychological safety—but a thoughtless reaction can bring it crashing down just as fast. So before rushing into tools and quick fixes, make sure you understand what you’re working with. In the final blog post of this series, we’ll explore the organizational level and its predictors of psychological safety.
Interested in how to implement psychological safety in your organization?
- O’donovan, R., & Mcauliffe, E. (2020). A systematic review of factors that enable psychological safety in healthcare teams. International journal for quality in health care, 32(4), 240-250.
- Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 1(1), 23-43.
- Frazier, M. L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan, A., & Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological safety: A meta‐analytic review and extension. Personnel psychology, 70(1), 113-165.
- Newman, A., Donohue, R., & Eva, N. (2017). Psychological safety: A systematic review of the literature. Human resource management review, 27(3), 521-535.
- Ming, C., Xiaoying, G., Huizhen, Z., & Bin, R. (2015, April). A review on psychological safety: Concepts, measurements, antecedents and consequences variables. In 2015 International Conference on Social Science and Technology Education (pp. 433-440). Atlantis Press.
