Why Workplaces Need to Think Differently About Psychological Safety

Psychological safety has become a familiar term in workplace conversations. But according to leadership consultant and behavioral scientist Steve Robbins, many organizations may still not be taking it seriously enough — or, perhaps, may not be thinking about it in the right way.

“Psychological safety sits underneath a lot of the things organizations say they care about,” said Robbins, founder of Grand Rapids, Mich.-based consulting and training firm S.L. Robbins & Associates. “It influences whether people can participate, whether they feel connected, whether they believe they have value, and ultimately how much of themselves they can bring to the work asked of them.”

But there are many challenges in addressing this properly, Robbins said. Part of the challenge, he explained, is that psychological safety is difficult to see. Unlike a physical safety concern, its effects can be largely invisible — even as they influence how employees think, participate, and perform.

When employees don’t feel psychologically safe, some of that mental capacity may be redirected toward monitoring the environment, second-guessing themselves, avoiding blame, or determining what is safe to say. Robbins describes this as “distracted working,” akin to “distracted driving.” 

It’s an idea that Robbins will be discussing at the upcoming BLUEPRINT for I&D Conference, held Nov. 15-18 in Nashville.

Ahead of his session, SHRM talked with Robbins about why psychological safety remains underestimated, why HR may need to rethink the connection between psychological safety, inclusion, belonging, and performance; and what attendees can expect from his session.

Event: BLUEPRINT for I&D

SHRM: What do you think workplaces are getting wrong about psychological safety? 

Robbins: I think one of the biggest problems is that psychological safety still isn’t taken as seriously as it should be because we can’t see what people are going through. There’s a tendency to think, “Well, it’s all in their head.” And in a sense, it is. But what’s going on in your head matters. It affects attention, judgment, emotional regulation, decision-making, and performance. 

Just ask any serious athlete. Most have no problem accepting that there’s a huge mental aspect to an athlete’s mental performance. The degree of confidence, distraction, fear, frustration, or overthinking can change what happens on a tennis court, a soccer field, or a golf course. The workplace is no different. It’s another performance arena.

Another problem is that psychological safety often gets confused with psychological comfort. They are not the same thing. Psychological safety does not mean people should never feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations, lowering standards, removing accountability, or protecting people from criticism. People need challenge. They need honest feedback. They need to be stretched. Sometimes they need to hear things they don’t want to hear.

Psychological safety isn’t about making work easier. It’s about making it safer to do hard things. 

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SHRM: How should HR and company leaders think about it differently?

Robbins: We need to stop seeing psychological safety as a soft skills or soft culture issue and start seeing it as a condition that directly affects human performance. Leaders need to think beyond, “Do people feel comfortable here?” and start asking, “What is this environment requiring people to spend their mental and emotional energy on?” If part of your attention is being used to monitor whether it’s okay to speak up, whether the boss is angry, whether you’re going to be blamed, or whether you really belong, that’s attention that isn’t fully available for the work.

Psychological safety isn’t just about how people feel at work. It affects how well they can think, decide, collaborate, and perform.” The better question goes beyond, “Do people feel comfortable here?” It’s, “What is this environment requiring the brain to spend its attention and energy on: contribution and engagement or threats and self-protection?” 

SHRM: Tell me about your upcoming session on the topic at BLUEPRINT.

Robbins: The title of my session is “Psychological Safety Is Dead. Long Live Psychological Safety,” and obviously I’m being a little provocative with the title. I’m not arguing that psychological safety is dead. I’m arguing that maybe we need to expand the way we think about it.

The commonly known definition has given us a really important way to think about interpersonal risk-taking. I want to look underneath that and ask what’s happening from a human behavior and neuroscience perspective. What happens when the brain perceives interpersonal threat? What does that do to attention and performance? Why can someone look disengaged when they may actually be highly engaged in protecting themselves?

I also want to connect psychological safety to inclusion, belonging, and mattering. Because if I don’t feel psychologically safe, it becomes much harder for me to fully participate. I may hold back ideas, questions, disagreements, or parts of who I am. That affects inclusion. If I’m constantly monitoring whether I’m accepted or whether I really fit here, that affects belonging. And if the environment repeatedly sends signals that my voice, contribution, or presence doesn’t really count, that affects mattering. 

We’ll also spend some time separating psychological safety from comfort and permissiveness because I think that misunderstanding is one of the reasons some leaders push back against the whole idea. And I want to connect psychological safety to something HR already spends a lot of time thinking about, which is employee engagement.

SHRM: What do you hope attendees take back to their organizations?

Robbins: My hope is that people leave with a somewhat different way of thinking about psychological safety and a practical framework they can take back to their organizations. I want them to be able to explain to a skeptical leader why this isn’t about being nice, lowering standards, or protecting people from hard things. It’s about creating an environment where people can participate, belong, know that they matter, and use more of what they’ve got to do the work they are hired to do.