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Most psychological safety content stops at the definition. This session pushes past it. What actually keeps people from speaking up at work? What's the difference between fear and futility? Why does it matter that they're different? And what specifically do leaders do — beyond declaring an open-door policy — that makes psychological safety real instead of aspirational?
Mark Graban led this session as a follow-up to his 2023 webinar Psychological Safety as a Foundation for Continuous Improvement. The format was deliberately interactive — a flipped-classroom style where attendees were asked to watch the original webinar in advance, then come ready for live polling, Q&A, and discussion with Mark, customer marketing manager Morgan Wright, lean strategy director Linda Vicaro, and customer success manager Kaleigh Krauss.
What follows is the substance, with the live polling results that anchored the conversation and the practical Q&A that worked through what people are actually struggling with in their workplaces.
Mark uses Amy Edmondson's definition as the foundation: psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up — including with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
The framing matters because it's commonly misread. Psychological safety does not mean having the right to feel comfortable all the time. It does not mean shutting down disagreement because the disagreement makes someone uncomfortable. It means people can disagree on the merits of an idea without being attacked, dismissed, or punished for raising the disagreement in the first place.
A useful related framing comes from Timothy R. Clark, whose definition Mark builds on: psychological safety is a culture of rewarded vulnerability — or, more usefully in many workplaces, a culture of rewarded candor. Candor means being frank, open, and sincere in speech. The question for any team is whether candor gets rewarded or punished. The answer determines whether people will keep showing up with it.
The visual anchor Mark uses to make psychological safety concrete is the Toyota andon cord. Pulling the cord — to flag a defect, a problem, or a mistake — is an act of speaking up. What happens next determines whether anyone pulls it again.
In a high-functioning Toyota culture, pulling the cord triggers a kind, helpful, constructive response within seconds. A team leader is there to help. The behavior of speaking up gets rewarded by the response, which makes people more willing to speak up next time.
The point Mark draws out is that the cord by itself is not enough. Pulling it requires both psychological safety (do I feel safe doing this?) and effective problem-solving (will this actually lead anywhere?). Without psychological safety, people don't pull the cord. Without effective problem-solving, they pull it once or twice, get a hollow response, and stop.
This is where many lean organizations get stuck. They've invested heavily in problem-solving training without addressing the safety question. People have the skills to investigate problems but won't surface them. The training doesn't get applied because the pulling-the-cord step never happens.
The most useful research-backed insight in the session comes from Ethan Burris's work at the University of Texas at Austin. When people choose not to speak up at work, two factors dominate.
The first is fear. People worry — sometimes accurately, based on what they've seen — that speaking up will lead to being ostracized, punished, or fired. Fear is the factor most leaders assume is at play.
The second, and slightly more common, is futility. People say some version of "I'm not afraid to speak up. It's just not worth the effort. We've raised this concern before. Nothing happens."
Futility matters because it's the failure mode for organizations that have done the work to reduce fear but haven't built the systems to act on what people share. The fear factor goes down. People speak up. Nothing changes. The futility factor takes over, and people go silent again — for a different reason, with the same result.
The live poll Mark ran during the session reflected this. Of the attendees who voted, only one selected fear alone as the barrier to speaking up. Six selected futility alone. Ten selected both fear and futility. Six said they faced no significant barriers. The pattern matched a larger LinkedIn poll Mark ran in advance: 12% fear, 29% futility, 30% both, 29% no barriers.
The implication for leaders: building psychological safety isn't just about removing fear. It requires building the systems that act on what people share, so the futility factor doesn't quietly replace the fear factor. Both have to be addressed.
Tim Clark's framework for the progression teams move through, which Mark uses as a diagnostic tool.
Inclusion safety — can I be my authentic self? Do I feel included, accepted, and respected without conditions? Without this, nothing else progresses.
Learner safety — can I learn and grow without being ridiculed for not knowing? Can I admit mistakes? After training, can I say "I still don't understand that" and get help instead of judgment?
Contributor safety — can I do my work and create value without being micromanaged? Once I've demonstrated my abilities, am I trusted to apply them?
Challenger safety — can I be candid about change? Can I challenge the status quo, point out problems, share ideas, test things that might fail? This is the level continuous improvement and innovation require.
Mark ran a live 1-10 poll during the session asking attendees to rate their workplaces on each stage. The pattern that emerged matches what he's seen in other audiences: averages tend to land around 7.0 for inclusion, 8.0 for learner safety, 6.9 for contributor safety, with challenger safety dropping into a wider distribution that often runs the full range from 2 to 10. The drop-off matters. Most workplaces have made meaningful progress on inclusion and learning. Far fewer have built the conditions where people consistently feel safe to challenge the status quo — which is exactly the level continuous improvement work depends on.
A second framework Mark uses to make psychological safety concrete: how organizations and leaders respond when someone admits a mistake.
Punitive responses — blaming, shaming, firing for systemic mistakes. Counterproductive almost universally because they teach people to hide and cover up mistakes when they can. We can't learn from or prevent mistakes we don't know about.
Nice responses — "It's okay, don't feel bad, I know you didn't mean to do it." Better than punitive, but often the end of the discussion. The mistake gets emotionally smoothed over, and nothing changes systemically. We're doomed to repeat it.
Kind responses — drawing on Karyn Ross's work in The Kind Leader. Kind is focused on being helpful. The conversation goes beyond "don't feel bad" into "what did we learn? Do we understand what allowed that to happen? Are we going to investigate root cause? Can we put corrective actions and mistake-proofing in place?" Mark's framing: nobody wants to make mistakes. Helping someone learn from one — and helping the team prevent the next one — is the kindest possible response.
The poll results during the session reflected the gap most workplaces still have. Six attendees said the most likely reaction to mistakes in their workplace was punitive. Nine said nice. Eleven said kind. The distribution at KaiNexus's own internal mid-annual meeting (40 anonymous responses) showed zero punitive votes, with the rest split roughly evenly between nice and kind. Even at companies actively building this culture, getting from nice to kind is the harder lift.
The three-step pattern Mark recommends, building on Clark's framework.
Model candor first. When leaders say "I don't know," "I was wrong," "I made a mistake," "I have an idea but let's test it because I'm not sure if it's right" — they're showing what they want to see. Modeling has to come before encouraging because encouragement without modeling reads as performative.
Encourage candor explicitly. Once leaders have shown the behavior themselves, asking for it from others lands differently. "What questions do you have" instead of "do you have any questions." "What ideas do you have" instead of "do you have ideas." The framing assumes the candor exists and invites it forward rather than offering optional permission.
Reward candor. The critical step. Not tolerating it — actively thanking people, leaning in, listening, taking action when the candor surfaces something worth acting on. Mark's framing: psychological safety means we all get to have our say. It doesn't mean we all get our way. People can disagree, be heard, see their input considered, and walk away feeling respected even if the decision goes a different direction. What kills speaking up is being ignored, dismissed, or shut down.
During the session, Mark asked attendees for examples of candor that might be punished in their workplaces. The responses came in fast and named specific situations many CI leaders will recognize.
Pointing out a wage gap. Pointing out ethics violations. Correcting a superior. Pointing out abusive behavior. Slowing down to understand a problem. Pushing back on physician behavior. Asking why something is happening. Talking to people about their mistakes. Asking to pursue problem-solving instead of going with a gut solution. Pointing out during leadership training that the CEO leading the training is a tyrant. Questioning a direction. Suggesting a meeting might not be useful.
The list captures the operational reality of what candor actually looks like in workplaces — and how many of these examples get punished depending on the culture. Mark's response to one of them is worth lifting: candor needs to be paired with empathy and respect. Being candid in a way that's respectful is a different thing from being candid in a way that's brutal. The reward depends partly on how the candor is delivered.
But — and this matters — the same content delivered respectfully gets received very differently in different cultures. A team where the leader has modeled their own candor will hear pushback as collaboration. A team where the leader has not will hear the same pushback as insubordination. The deliverer's tone matters, but so does the environment they're delivering into.
A few exchanges from the live Q&A worth surfacing because they map onto situations CI leaders face constantly.
On engaging shop floor employees in continuous improvement. Recognize the cultural starting point. If people have been conditioned not to speak up — don't be a troublemaker, don't be negative — you can't slap a huddle board on the wall and expect them to start using it. Ask people to speak up; don't require it. Make sure ideas they share get acted on so neither fear nor futility kicks in. Start with small, local improvements that benefit them directly. Kaleigh added a useful framing from her customer success work: ask "what's a little thing that you could do to make your day better?" The reward of seeing their own work improve is what builds the willingness to suggest more.
On turning around a manager-created culture of fear and futility. The manager has to acknowledge their role. Declaring "it's safe now" doesn't work. Apologizing, being candid about previous behaviors, asking the team to call them out when they fall short of new commitments — that combination starts to land. It still takes time. Some leaders need outside support to make a fresh start.
On asking better questions to invite participation. Instead of "do you have questions" (which people interpret as "is it okay to have questions"), ask "what questions do you have." Instead of "do you have ideas," ask "what ideas do you have." Linda added a useful variant: "I know that's just my perspective. Where might I have missed the mark?" The framing invites critical feedback by assuming it exists rather than offering optional space for it.
On futility specifically. Mark's working definition: every time I say something, nothing happens, so I stop bothering. It's close to apathy, but the cause is structural. People stop participating not because they don't care but because they've concluded their voice doesn't move anything.
On alternative phrases for psychological safety when the term feels too soft. A few options that land in different cultures: "speak-up culture" (Stephen Shedletzky's framing in his book of the same name), "rewarded candor" (Tim Clark), or "radical candor" (Kim Scott). The substance matters more than the label. Shedletzky's framing that's worth keeping: people will speak up when it feels both safe and worthwhile. Sometimes the situation is unsafe but so important that someone speaks up anyway. The goal is building cultures where the calculation isn't that hard most of the time.
On the line between asking for help and developing yourself. A practical exchange between Mark and the panelists. Kaleigh described needing to ask for help multiple times a day in customer success work, but knowing when to escalate versus when to dig in herself. Morgan added that earlier in her career she pulled the andon cord too early — that learning to try something first before asking made her more confident when she did need to escalate. The takeaway: genuine support has to be paired with development. Leaders who solve every problem for their teams build dependence. Leaders who never help build futility. The middle is what works.
A few specific things the platform does that connect to the substance of the session.
KaiNexus makes the act of speaking up systemic rather than dependent on individual leader behavior. Ideas, concerns, and improvement suggestions get captured in a structured way, routed to the right people, tracked through implementation, and reported back to the person who raised them. That's the systems-level antidote to the futility factor — when speaking up reliably leads to action and visible progress, the loop closes and people keep speaking up.
The platform also supports the kind of transparency that lets leaders see whether the loop is actually closing. How many ideas are being submitted? Are they getting acted on? How quickly? Are some teams contributing while others go silent? The visibility makes drift addressable instead of invisible.
If your improvement work is producing the right ideas but losing them — or producing the right culture moments but failing to convert them into sustained change — the gap is usually the infrastructure that connects intent to action. That's the gap KaiNexus is built to close.
Mark Graban is a Senior Advisor at KaiNexus and a recognized voice in lean management and continuous improvement. He is the author of Lean Hospitals, Healthcare Kaizen, and The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, and host of multiple podcasts including My Favorite Mistake and Lean Blog Interviews. Mark has worked with healthcare systems, manufacturers, and software organizations to build cultures grounded in psychological safety, scientific problem solving, and learning from mistakes. He holds a BS in industrial engineering from Northwestern University, an MS in mechanical engineering and an MBA from MIT's Leaders for Global Operations program.
What is psychological safety in the workplace?
Psychological safety is the belief that you can speak up — with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes — without being punished, humiliated, or dismissed. It's not about being comfortable all the time, and it's not about shutting down disagreement. It's about whether candor gets rewarded or punished in your workplace, which determines whether people will keep showing up with it.
Why is psychological safety important for continuous improvement?
Continuous improvement depends on people surfacing problems, admitting mistakes, suggesting changes, and challenging the status quo. All of those are acts of candor. If candor gets punished or ignored, the improvement work stops happening regardless of how good the methodology or training is. Psychological safety is the precondition that makes the rest of CI work possible.
What's the difference between fear and futility as barriers to speaking up?
Fear is the worry that speaking up will lead to being ostracized, punished, or fired. Futility is the belief that speaking up isn't worth the effort because nothing will change. Research from Ethan Burris at UT Austin shows futility is at least as common as fear. The implication for leaders: building psychological safety requires both removing fear and building the systems that act on what people share, so reduced fear doesn't get replaced by futility.
What are the four stages of psychological safety?
Timothy R. Clark's framework names four progressive stages. Inclusion safety: can I be my authentic self and feel included? Learner safety: can I learn and ask questions without being ridiculed? Contributor safety: can I do my work and create value without being micromanaged? Challenger safety: can I challenge the status quo, point out problems, and test ideas? Continuous improvement and innovation require challenger safety, which is the level that drops off most sharply in most workplaces.
How should leaders respond to mistakes?
The three common patterns are punitive (blame and punishment, which teaches people to hide mistakes), nice (smoothing over the mistake emotionally without addressing it systemically), and kind (drawing on Karyn Ross's work in The Kind Leader, focused on being genuinely helpful — investigating what allowed the mistake, putting countermeasures in place, helping the team prevent recurrence). Kind responses are the hardest and the most useful. Most workplaces still default to nice when they want to be supportive, which prevents the punishment but also prevents the learning.
What can leaders do to build psychological safety?
Three steps in order. Model candor first by showing the behavior themselves — saying "I don't know," "I was wrong," "I have an idea but I'm not sure if it's right." Encourage candor explicitly using framings that assume it exists, like "what questions do you have" instead of "do you have any questions." Reward candor when it shows up by thanking people, listening, and acting on what's surfaced. Modeling has to come first; encouragement without modeling reads as performative.
Is there a better term to use than "psychological safety" if it sounds too soft?
Possibly. Stephen Shedletzky uses "speak-up culture." Tim Clark uses "rewarded candor" or "rewarded vulnerability." Kim Scott uses "radical candor." All point at roughly the same substance with different language. The label matters less than the underlying behavior — does candor get rewarded or punished in your workplace? — but choosing language that lands with your audience can help the conversation start.
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