A few years ago, while I was busy encouraging clients to step out of their comfort zones, I reminded myself that I needed to role model it too. I strongly believe you can’t expect others to do something you’re not doing yourself. So, to step outside my own comfort zone, I signed up for an improv course.
I remember standing at the edge of the stage in the first lesson, heart pounding, with no script and no idea what was about to come out of my mouth. It was terrifying. What I hadn’t expected was how quickly the fear eased. Improv has a few simple rules.
You say “yes, and” to whatever your scene partner offers and build on it. You say the first thing that comes into your head instead of waiting for the perfect line. And above all, the team has your back. If you freeze or fumble, someone steps in and makes it work. Once I trusted that, I stopped worrying about getting it wrong and started enjoying myself.
Improv is the most practical and immediate way I know to experience psychological safety in action. Amy Edmondson, who has researched it for decades, describes it as a shared belief that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks: to ask a question, admit a mistake, offer a half-formed idea or disagree with the boss, without being embarrassed or punished for it. When Google studied what made its most effective teams different, psychological safety came out as the most important factor.
Why psychological safety matters in teams
At work, a lack of psychological safety is rarely dramatic. Meetings run smoothly, deadlines are met and nobody seems unhappy. Underneath, though, people are holding back. The idea waits until it feels fully formed, and often never arrives. The concern about the project goes unsaid because it isn’t worth the awkwardness. The mistake gets fixed or brushed under the carpet and is never mentioned, so nobody else learns from it.
Learning from failure is the part that matters most. Failure is emotional, and most of us would rather not talk about it until the sting has worn off. But your mistake can be someone else’s hindsight, if you’re willing to share it while it’s still useful. The teams that learn fastest are the ones where sharing what hasn’t gone so well feels normal.
Leaders set the tone for all of this, mostly through small moments. These include how you respond the first time someone shares something that went wrong, and whether you deliberately seek out different perspectives, for example by asking “who sees this differently?” and waiting for the answer. They also include whether you talk about your own mistakes as openly as your successes. People watch these moments closely and adjust what they’re willing to say.
There’s a new reason why a culture of psychological safety matters even more now.
AI has become part of most teams, and people are experimenting with it every day. Experimenting means trying things, getting some of them wrong and working out what to do differently. In a team where that feels safe, people share what they’ve learned and everyone gets better faster. In a team where it doesn’t, they keep quiet, and the risks and the lessons stay hidden. AI tends to multiply whatever culture is already there, which makes psychological safety central to how we lead as we head into the future of work.
If you’re a senior leader wondering how safe your team feels to speak up, experiment and learn from what goes wrong – and you’d like to build a culture where innovation can thrive, I can help. Let’s chat. Email lucy@lucidity.org.uk to arrange a time.