Reflections on psychological safety: The power and peril of naming - part 1 (29 August 2025)

Summary

The Psychological Safety newsletter has published a 4-part series, 'Reflections', exploring the field of psychological safety.  Part one explores the name psychological safety itself.

Through epistemic drift, psychological safety has been frequently misunderstood and misapplied, even weaponised at times – and in some quarters dismissed as just another fad. There are still some people who are dubious or cynical of psychological safety, often due to common misconceptions about it, and sometimes simply due to a preference for the status quo. We’ve seen psychological safety treated as a managerial or HR checkbox, stripped of its depth or intent. Thankfully, the overall impact is still very much a net positive effect, but today we have to be even more cautious of misuse and misunderstandings than we did a few years ago when the term was new to most.