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What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: Creating Psychological Safety at Work
HGA Takeaway
What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
Why psychological safety matters, what silence could be costing your business and how leaders can create a culture where people feel able to speak up.
When everyone in the room agrees with you, is that a sign of brilliant leadership and complete alignment? Or could it mean nobody feels comfortable enough to tell you you're wrong?
That was one of the questions at the heart of this session from Rachel Blackburn MBE, MBA and Dr Danny Kett of US2U Consulting, exploring psychological safety and the impact that workplace culture can have on decision making, innovation, performance and retention.
For leaders, the uncomfortable bit is that silence can look a lot like agreement. Your team may appear completely on board while concerns, mistakes, ideas and useful information stay firmly beneath the surface.
The more senior you become, the harder it can be to know whether people genuinely agree with you.
Takeaway 1
Culture is much more than what's written on the wall
Company culture isn't created by a list of values on your website. It's shaped by the things people experience every day.
The session explored how organisational culture is influenced by everything from stories and routines to power structures, systems, symbols and the way the organisation itself is structured.
Look beyond your stated values and think about:
What stories get repeated around the business?
What behaviours are rewarded?
Who really has influence?
What happens when somebody makes a mistake?
What happens when somebody challenges a senior person?
Takeaway 2
Psychological safety isn't about everyone being nice
Psychological safety is about people feeling able to speak up, raise concerns, challenge assumptions, report mistakes and offer ideas without fearing humiliation, punishment or damage to their professional standing.
Crucially, that doesn't mean avoiding difficult conversations or lowering standards. In fact, done properly, psychological safety should make honest and sometimes uncomfortable conversations easier to have.
Psychological safety isn't the absence of challenge. It's what makes healthy challenge possible.
Takeaway 3
Think ASK, ADMIT and ARGUE
One of the simplest ways to think about psychological safety is through the three As. Ask yourself whether people in your business genuinely feel comfortable doing all three.
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ASK Can someone say "I don't know" or ask for help without worrying that they'll look incompetent? |
ADMIT Can someone admit they've made a mistake without expecting blame or humiliation? |
ARGUE Can someone constructively disagree when a more senior person thinks differently? |
Takeaway 4
Silence can be completely rational
When intelligent, capable people stay silent, it's easy to assume they simply didn't notice the problem or didn't have anything useful to contribute.
But silence can actually be a perfectly rational response to the environment they're working in. If speaking up risks being labelled difficult, damaging your career or embarrassing yourself or somebody else, keeping quiet can feel like the safer option.
The problem is that silence has an organisational cost too:
Innovation can stall
Risks and learning stay hidden
Poor decisions go unchallenged
Mistakes aren't corrected early
Takeaway 5
Listen to the language in your business
Culture often reveals itself in tiny everyday comments. People quickly learn what happens when somebody challenges the status quo, and that learning gets passed around the organisation.
Listen out for phrases like:
"Don't go there."
"Pick your battles."
"That's above my pay grade."
"We've tried that before."
"You know what they're like."
"It's not worth it."
None of those phrases necessarily proves there's a problem on its own, but collectively they can tell you a lot about whether people believe speaking up is actually worthwhile.
Takeaway 6
Good decisions need good information
A leader can make a completely rational decision based on the information in front of them and still make the wrong decision because the important information never reached them.
Psychological safety affects whether information travels upwards, particularly when that information is inconvenient, uncertain or challenges the prevailing view.
Something happens. Somebody notices. The important question is: do they tell you?
Takeaway 7
High standards and psychological safety belong together
One of the biggest misconceptions is that creating psychological safety means lowering expectations. The opposite can be true.
The session illustrated this using four different environments created by the combination of psychological safety and accountability.
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Comfort Zone High psychological safety but lower demands can create a nice culture with limited challenge and limited growth. |
High Performance Zone High psychological safety combined with high standards creates open dialogue, clear expectations, learning and innovation. |
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Apathy Zone Low safety and low standards can lead to disengagement and minimal effort. |
Anxiety Zone High standards without psychological safety can create fear of speaking up, stress and hidden errors. |
Takeaway 8
How you react matters more than saying "my door is always open"
People don't decide whether it's safe to speak up based on what leaders say. They watch what happens when somebody actually does it.
The session suggested thinking about leadership behaviour before, during and after somebody raises a concern or challenges an idea.
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BEFORE Invite disagreement. Acknowledge uncertainty. Ask what you might have missed. |
DURING Regulate your reaction. Ask questions before defending your position and explore the evidence. |
AFTER Close the loop. Explain what was decided and why, and acknowledge errors when they happen. |
Being heard isn't the same as being agreed with.
Takeaway 9
Ask better questions
"Any questions?" sounds like an invitation to contribute, but it doesn't necessarily make challenging a decision any easier.
Instead of asking questions that encourage agreement, deliberately ask questions designed to uncover what you're missing.
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Instead of... "Any questions?" "Everyone happy?" "Do we all agree?" |
Try asking... "What might we have missed?" "What information would change this decision?" "What is the strongest argument against this?" |
Takeaway 10
Psychological safety and psychosocial safety aren't the same thing
The session also made an important distinction between psychological safety and psychosocial safety.
Psychological safety is about whether people feel able to speak up without fearing humiliation, punishment or professional consequences. Psychosocial safety relates to exposure to work related psychosocial hazards and the potential harm those hazards can cause.
They're related conversations, but they aren't interchangeable terms.
Takeaway 11
Don't rely on one survey question
Asking employees whether they feel psychologically safe can be useful, but the answer won't necessarily give you the whole picture.
People may feel safe with one manager but not another. They may happily ask for help but feel unable to admit mistakes. They may speak freely about everyday issues but stay silent when the stakes are higher.
Psychological safety leaves traces. Look at:
What people say: surveys, interviews and focus groups
What people do: challenge, escalation, reporting and participation
What leaders do: their response to mistakes, dissent and bad news
What the system produces: turnover, grievances, incidents, absence and exit data
What the culture sounds like: everyday language that signals whether speaking up is worthwhile
Takeaway 12
Watch out for the perception gap
One of the biggest risks is the gap between what leaders think is happening and what employees are actually experiencing.
A leader can genuinely believe their team is open, honest and comfortable challenging them while employees experience something completely different.
Diagnose → Understand → Intervene → Measure
Takeaway 13
Speaking up is good for business
This isn't simply about making work feel nicer. There is a genuine business case for creating environments where employees contribute, challenge and share information.
Research highlighted during the session links psychological safety with increased performance, learning, information sharing and engagement. The webinar also referenced large scale employee engagement research showing the financial significance of the outcomes that strong engagement and information flow can support.
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23% Higher profitability |
Up to 51% Reduced staff turnover |
63% Fewer safety incidents |
These figures relate to outcomes associated with employee engagement, as referenced in the webinar from the Gallup Q12 Meta Analysis (2024). They are not presented as direct effects of psychological safety alone.
Put it into practice
Three things you can do straight away
You don't need to completely redesign your organisation tomorrow. The session ended with three simple things leaders can start doing immediately.
1. Ask better questions
At your next meeting, instead of asking "Does everyone agree?", try asking "What might we have missed?"
2. Notice your response
The next time somebody challenges you, disagrees or admits a mistake, pay attention to your first reaction. Ask before you defend.
3. Look for silence
Choose one important decision, meeting or process and ask yourself: "Whose information might I not be hearing, and why?"
For Home & Gift businesses
What aren't you being told?
Whether you're running a small independent brand or managing a much larger team, it's worth asking yourself what information might not currently be reaching you.
You don't need a huge HR department to start creating a healthier culture. Small changes in how meetings are run, how mistakes are handled and how leaders respond to challenge can influence whether people choose to speak the next time something important happens.
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ASK How do you know your team would tell you they don't understand? |
ADMIT How do you know they'd tell you they'd made a mistake? |
ARGUE How do you know they'd tell you they think you're wrong? |
The HGA Takeaway
Silence isn't always agreement
1. Psychological safety means people can ask for help, admit mistakes and challenge ideas without fearing the personal consequences.
2. It doesn't mean lowering standards, avoiding conflict or removing accountability.
3. Silence can be a rational response to a culture where speaking up feels risky.
4. Good decisions depend on information reaching the people making them.
5. Leaders need to actively invite challenge and manage how they react when it arrives.
6. Don't rely on one survey score. Look at behaviour, leadership responses, data and everyday language.
7. Ask yourself what you're not being told, because that information may be exactly what your business needs.
One question to take back to your next meeting
"What might we have missed?"
It's a small change, but it creates a very different invitation to "Does everyone agree?"