Psychological safety has become a leadership priority, which is a positive sign. It means leaders are paying attention to the human cost of how work gets done.
The trouble is that many organizations are trying to create psychological safety without changing the conditions that make people feel unsafe in the first place.
It's similar to how they chase product roadmaps, as a list of activities that look good in a slide deck. Training. Posters. A new “speak up” channel. A mental health app. Then everyone wonders why the same risks and issues keep surfacing too late.
Psychological safety is not a feeling you announce. It’s a system you build, and you can tell it’s working because risks show up earlier, learning cycles get shorter, and outcomes get easier to prove.
Why this matters beyond tech, and why EHS is talking about it now
The EHS world is clearly calling out that safety is expanding beyond physical incidents to include worker well-being, mental health, psychological safety, and the “experience of work.” That shift is evident in the 2026 EHS trend reporting. It’s the recognition that a workplace can hit every compliance checkbox and still be unsafe in practice if people cannot raise concerns early and be taken seriously.
If you lead in software or product, you should recognize the pattern immediately. A team that can’t surface risks early will face costly problems much later than if it had surfaced them earlier.
The misconception that quietly breaks psychological safety
We discussed this in our weekly blog. Amy Edmondson and Michaela Kerrissey have been blunt about this: psychological safety has become popular, and that popularity has created misconceptions that lead organizations astray.
One of the most common failure modes looks like this:
- Leaders equate psychological safety with “everyone being nice.”
- Teams start treating disagreement as harm.
- Real issues get discussed in private, not in the room.
- Outcomes get replaced by opinions, and risk gets replaced by optimism.
That is not psychological safety. That is conflict avoidance.
The reframe: mental health and psychological safety are outcome enablers
The best teams are not “safe” because no one ever feels comfortable. They are safe because they can:
- raise a risk early (before it becomes an incident),
- challenge assumptions without payback,
- run honest reviews when a bet fails,
- learn quickly, then adjust.
The DORA research ecosystem has consistently found a relationship among organizational performance, stable priorities, and user-centricity. If priorities constantly shift, people feel less in control, stress increases, learning declines, and delivery becomes reactive. DORA’s work also makes clear that delivery performance metrics are tied to outcomes such as organizational performance and team well-being.
Real talk:
Are your people burning out, hiding problems, or staying quiet in reviews? You have a delayed risk detection system. Most of us can't afford that delay.
What leaders are missing: proof beats reassurance
Most leaders try to create psychological safety by reassuring people. Reassurance helps, but it’s not the lever.
The lever is proof, specifically proof that speaking up changes something.
Here are four questions I use with leadership teams to separate psychological safety theater from a real operating system:
- Where did the last “bad news” show up first? In the meeting, in Slack after the meeting, or in a resignation letter?
- How fast do we act when someone raises a risk? Days, weeks, or “next quarter planning”?
- What gets punished here? Missing a date, surfacing uncertainty, or admitting we were wrong?
- When priorities change, do we remove work or just add more? If it’s “add more,” burnout is not a mystery.
Do this Monday morning: run a 20-minute “Speak Up to Outcome” check
If you want a small move with real leverage, try this with your leadership team or your product council:
Speak Up to Outcome (20 minutes)
- 5 min: Each leader names one concern they have not yet voiced.
- 10 min: Pick one concern and define the evidence you would accept as “we’re safer” or “we’re healthier” in the next 2 weeks.
- 5 min: Decide on one action and one owner. Remove one piece of work to make room.
Notice what this does. It turns psychological safety into an outcomes conversation. Not vibes, not slogans, not posters. Evidence, action, follow-through.
Let's Do This!
In 2026, credibility comes from demonstrating impact and learning quickly when you’re wrong. That is true for product delivery and for worker well-being.
Psychological safety is not the goal. It’s the condition that lets people tell you the truth in time to change the outcome.