Psychological Safety: If Your Team Is Afraid To Ask Questions, You Have a Problem

As the head of Brafton’s Editorial department, I’m asked to meet with new Brafton hires across the company and provide an overview of our writing team, the work we do and how we’ll eventually collaborate. In these sessions, I always give the same advice:

• When in doubt, ask questions: Brafton is a fast-paced agency where everybody’s spinning multiple plates. Questions are a natural — and expected — part of the process. For example, „How do you guys spin all those plates?“
• If you forget how to do something, ask for re-training: Like any organization, Brafton has its own processes, software and terminology. If two months into the job, a new hire suddenly forgets which button they need to press in our proprietary project management tool, asking for a quick refresher is a lot less time-consuming than the cleanup that follows a disastrous button-guessing game.
• Never hesitate to say when you need help: You’re spinning plates, pressing buttons — it can get overwhelming. But your manager’s there to support you and offer solutions.

No one told me to give this advice to new Brafton hires. These are just things I wish someone had said to me when I entered the workforce (because I’ve pressed so many of the wrong buttons). And, to my surprise, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I learned the managerial approach I’d naturally come to embrace had a name: psychological safety.

What Is Psychological Safety?

Psychological safety is the belief that workers can freely share ideas, concerns, mistakes and questions without the fear of being punished or humiliated, per Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. A psychologically safe work environment is one where interpersonal risk-taking is just part of the culture.

3 Examples of Psychological Safety

Having worked in a creative agency for the past 15 years, I’m fully aware that „interpersonal risk-taking“ could be interpreted in some pretty wild ways. So before anybody does something crazy, let’s run through three examples of what exactly I’m talking about here.

1. Asking Questions

Whether a worker wasn’t fast enough taking notes in a meeting or simply wasn’t paying attention, the outcome is the same: They’re not sure what to do next. They can delay confronting the issue, take a long walk in the hope the answers will come to them, panic-chat their work bestie for advice … or, they could just swallow their pride and ask the one person they know can provide clarity. 

Their fear, of course, is that this person (potentially their manager) will snap back with any of the following:

• „Huh? Didn’t we just have a whole meeting about this?“
• „Why do I bother speaking if you don’t pay attention?“
• „This is ridiculous — you’re fired.“

That last one’s particularly extreme, but we’ve all probably thought we were going to hear something like that at least once in our careers. (And honestly, if your manager talks to you like that, you’re better off moving on.) But in a psychologically safe environment, the idea is you don’t need to waste precious time on these thoughts. You’re encouraged to ask questions without being viewed as foolish or subjected to retaliation.

2. Admitting Mistakes

Let’s say an agency worker was moving too fast and accidentally attached the wrong document in an email to their client. While the attachment didn’t feature anything deal-breaking, it did include some internal information the agency would prefer the client didn’t see. The worker immediately realized their error and took action to address it and correct the mistake. They just haven’t told their manager.

Because these potential retorts are so fun to write, here’s what a concerned worker might anticipate hearing after sharing their slip-up with their manager:

• „Why would you attach the wrong document in the first place?“
• „I’m sorry, do I need to train you on sending emails, too?“
• „Great, the client probably hates us now.“

This fictional manager’s a real piece of work, huh? 

In a psychologically safe environment, you can admit to mistakes you’ve made, because you know your manager isn’t looking to paint you as an incompetent scapegoat. The focus is less on blame and more on learning. 

So in that example scenario, the worker brings the mistake to their manager’s attention, rather than hoping they just never find out. This allows the manager to provide immediate and constructive feedback and prevents them from hearing about the mix-up from someone else who lacks the necessary context.

3. Proposing Ideas

A worker might be brand new to a company, but they weren’t born yesterday. They have their own unique experiences and viewpoints — and clearly, they were good enough to get hired. Isn’t that part of the reason why companies onboard new talent? For fresh perspectives? As a manager, I want to know if there are new, better and more efficient ways I could be working. I don’t care if it comes from the most or least tenured member of my team. 

That’s why you’ll never hear me say:

• „I’m the SVP of Editorial. I’m pretty sure I know the best ways to work.“
• „Sorry, didn’t you just start a month ago? Maybe hold off on pitching me ideas, OK?“
• „How about you focus on writing, and I’ll decide the department policies?“

If you do ever hear me say stuff like that, I’d join the writers in overthrowing my tyranny!

Anyway, in a psychologically safe environment, innovation reigns supreme. Some ideas will be great, while others will be tossed aside. But even if not every idea is implemented, the workers know they’re in a setting where they can pitch freely and not be judged. That mentality is mutually beneficial to the growth of both the staff and the company they work for.

Psychological Safety’s Impact on Business

I, of course, believe in the positive impact psychological safety can have on a workforce. But you don’t come to the Brafton blog for Chris Hassan’s opinions — you want the facts! 

Well, check this: 2025 research from Workplace Options and the International Institute of Risk & Safety Management found that 93% of participating leaders agreed that psychological safety played a role in increasing productivity and innovation.

Long before that, there was Google’s Project Aristotle, which was a research study designed to understand what factors influenced effective teams. Spoilers: Teams with the greatest psychological safety also happened to be high-performing teams, according to Psychsafety.

Psychological Safety Within Brafton Editorial

I’d like to think psychological safety plays some role in the success of the writing team I’m fortunate enough to work with. (Though, when you work with such talented, hardworking professionals, psychological safety has it pretty easy!)

For as long as I’ve run this department, I’ve promoted a culture of constant feedback. My philosophy is rooted in the nature of the work we do. As I said earlier, we spin multiple plates — it’s inevitable that, now and then, one or two will go flying and smash against the wall. Obviously, that’s not ideal, nor was it what the plate-spinner intended. The last thing that person needs is anxiety over whether their plate-spinning days are over.

So, when writers are producing thousands of words a week, they need to know that constructive feedback from their peer editor or a client request for a second draft shouldn’t be cause for alarm. It’s all part of the creative process. I’m more focused on how writers process the feedback they receive and apply the learnings to their future work. If there are no takeaways, that’s when the alarm bells begin to ring.

How To Introduce Psychological Safety on Your Teams

If everything I’ve covered so far sounds appealing to you, but you’re not sure how to make your team more psychologically safe, consider starting with these three, easy-to-implement actions.

1. Model Vulnerability

So you have „manager“ in your title. Yes, your own manager and your direct reports expect you to solve problems when they arise — but it’s also OK that you don’t always know what to do. There’s a balance, of course. If you’re a manager who constantly doesn’t know how to solve a problem, you might be in the wrong line of work. But letting down your guard now and then or giving glimpses into times you struggled can help those around you loosen up as well.

Before Brafton was a remote company, the Boston-based Editorial team had its own corner of the office. It wasn’t uncommon to see a writer staring at a blank Google Doc, unsure of where to start. That’s the creative process — it happens to the best of us. But in a psychologically safe environment, that challenge opens the door to knowledge-sharing.

For instance, I could acknowledge that the writer seems stuck and offer my time to discuss their apparent writer’s block. After first hearing them out, I could run through my own struggles with the blank page, as well as the strategies that I’ve found work best for me (just freewriting my thoughts is my usual go-to). If we’re still stuck, we could open the discussion to the rest of the team, as I’m confident there are other strategies we’re not even aware of.

Ultimately, the goal is for the writer to overcome this temporary hurdle, but in the process, they understand that their manager has faced some of the same challenges they do.

2. Invite Participation

I mentioned earlier that Brafton has its own processes, and I’m assuming your company does, too. And I’m confident, exciting new processes are on the way. Whenever this happens, I invite my team to share questions, concerns or feedback. Given they’re professional writers who need to think critically every day, their observations tend to be quite astute and helpful in pressure-testing these processes.

Let’s say an all-Brafton email goes out, detailing the new process. I’m likely to forward the note along to my team with this type of message: 

„Hi all, here’s a breakdown of the new process. Please carve out some time to give it a read. I feel like it’s pretty straightforward, but don’t hesitate to reach out to me if anything seems unclear. I’ll also add it to our 1:1 agendas this month so we can discuss the process together and you can flag any additional questions or concerns.“

In this short message, I’m doing the following:

• Signal-boosting the new process and allowing everybody to familiarize themselves with it.
• Sharing my view on the new process, but letting everybody know it’s OK if it’s not as clear to them.
• Giving everybody a chance to bring their thoughts to me in a one-on-one setting at a later date.

My hope here is that, while not everybody played a role in creating the process, they know that they can safely raise questions about it to better understand — or even raise concerns. As their manager, this, in turn, helps me get ahead of potential problems with the new process or my team’s ability to follow it successfully.

3. Celebrate Behavior You Want To Encourage

This is an easy one. As you take steps to foster more psychological safety within your team, you’ll — hopefully — start to see positive changes among your staff.

For example, maybe a writer produces copy for a client with a seemingly endless style guide. If, piece after piece, they’re always missing key stylistic elements, it’s on their editor to call out these misses in a constructive manner. But let’s say that the writer wants to break this cycle and create a custom process (like a personal cheat sheet) to ensure they never miss something again. Well, that’s amazing initiative and the kind of innovative problem-solving that managers should share and celebrate with the rest of the team. Plus, that cheat sheet could probably provide value to other writers on the team as well.

For the innovative writer, positively singling them out reinforces their good instincts. And for their peers, it’s a reminder that it’s OK to think outside the box in the pursuit of better outcomes.

Psychological Safety: Your New Competitive Advantage

There’s so much more to psychological safety than I can fit into this blog post, so if you’re interested, I encourage you to Google it and do some further reading. (Yes, even this blog is an opportunity for personal growth!)

But to circle back to where we started, I share advice with new hires because I want them to do their best work, which, in turn, helps build a better Brafton. Psychological safety isn’t a trend you read about in your LinkedIn feed — and it’s definitely not about coddling low-performing workers. It’s about fostering a respectful environment where professionals can strive for greatness without the fear of reprisals, even if they shatter a few plates along the way. 

And you know, I feel psychologically safe enough with you, dear reader, to admit I wasn’t sure how to end this blog. But as I sweep up all these plate shards from the floor, I think I’ll wrap up by proposing a potentially innovative idea …

What if we switched over to spinning plastic plates?