Are You Building Psychological Safety — or Just Kumbaya?

A team where everyone is nice to each other isn't necessarily a psychologically safe team.

I've worked with teams that looked great from the outside.

People were friendly. Meetings were pleasant. Nobody raised their voice. Very little friction.

And that can easily be mistaken for psychological safety.

I don't think it is.

Because psychological safety isn't about everyone being comfortable all the time.

It's about what happens when we're not.

Can I challenge your idea without you experiencing it as an attack?

Can a junior engineer question the solution proposed by the most experienced person in the room?

Can someone say "I don't understand" without feeling stupid?

Can we disagree — sometimes strongly — and still trust each other afterwards?

That's when psychological safety becomes visible.

Friction isn't the problem

I actually want friction in a team.

Not personal conflict. Not disrespect. Not people trying to prove they're the smartest person in the room.

I want the kind of friction that challenges our assumptions and gives us access to something I value enormously:

Collective intelligence.

I sometimes describe it like football.

Give me eleven Zlatans and I'm not convinced I'll have the best team.

If everyone needs to be the star, wants the ball and believes their solution is the solution, all that individual brilliance can actually make the team worse.

I'd rather have the B-team that knows how to play together.

The smartest team isn't necessarily the team with the smartest people. It's the team that can access each other's intelligence.

And for that to happen, people need to feel safe enough to disagree.

One comment can change an entire room

I've seen how quickly that safety can disappear.

I once had a situation where a very experienced person responded to another team member in a way that made the other person look stupid.

For me, that's a big no.

Not because everyone has to be nice all the time.

Because I watched what happened next.

The room changed.

People stopped asking questions. Ideas stopped coming. Nobody wanted to be the next person whose contribution was dismissed.

So I addressed it directly afterwards.

I explained what I had observed — what was said and what happened in the room afterwards.

The response was:

"How can you know that's how people felt?"

Fair question.

I knew how I felt. And I could observe that after that interaction, nobody else asked a question or brought forward another idea.

So I asked:

"How do you think he felt when you said that? If you put yourself in his shoes?"

I'm curious about people's intentions. I try hard to interpret people generously — in Swedish we have a word I love: snälltolka. Assume good intent, then get curious.

But good intentions don't erase impact.

And empathy doesn't mean avoiding boundaries.

Psychological safety requires boundaries

This is where I think human-centered leadership is sometimes misunderstood.

Being empathetic doesn't mean accepting every behaviour.

Being curious doesn't mean everything is negotiable.

And psychological safety doesn't mean nobody gets uncomfortable.

When I see behaviour damaging the safety of a team, I address it.

Sometimes the person reflects and changes.

Sometimes they don't.

You can't coach someone who doesn't want to change.

At that point, my responsibility isn't only towards that individual. It's towards everyone else in the team too.

I can remain curious about the person while being very clear about the behaviour.

Those two things can coexist.

Trust is built through behaviour

I've also learned this from my own mistakes.

Earlier in my career, I once shared findings from a team retrospective with leadership because I genuinely believed they needed to act on what the team was experiencing.

My intention was good.

My judgement wasn't.

I hadn't understood how little psychological safety existed around that team. They weren't comfortable with what they'd shared leaving the room.

I had broken their trust.

So I gathered the team, acknowledged what I'd missed, explained my intention without using it as an excuse, and apologised.

I promised that what they shared in that space would never leave it again unless they explicitly said it was okay.

Then I had to prove it.

Because trust isn't something you ask people to give you. Your behaviour has to give them reasons to give it to you.

Over time, that same team became comfortable enough that we could invite leadership into an after-retro conversation.

Not because I told them it was safe.

Because they'd experienced enough evidence to decide that for themselves.

A quiet team isn't necessarily a healthy team

Today, when I look at a team, I'm not particularly impressed by the absence of conflict.

I'm more interested in what happens when people disagree.

Who speaks?

Who doesn't?

What happens after the most senior person gives their opinion?

Can someone change their mind without losing status?

Can people challenge behaviours as well as ideas?

Can they say "I think you're wrong" and remain curious about each other?

Because the goal isn't kumbaya.

The goal is a team where people can bring their intelligence, experience, doubts, mistakes and different perspectives into the room — and trust that those things can survive contact with each other.

Psychological safety isn't the absence of friction.

It's what allows us to use friction constructively.