Since Amy Edmondson's work at Google (Project Aristotle), psychological safety has become one of the most cited concepts in management. Yet it is also one of the most misunderstood.
The common definition — 'feeling comfortable on the team' — is both too vague and too soft. It implies that psychological safety is a matter of atmosphere, good mood, or team building. It is not.
Edmondson's precise definition
Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as the shared belief that the team is a safe place for interpersonal risk-taking. These risks include: asking a question that might seem naive, submitting an idea that might be rejected, flagging a problem that might offend the manager, expressing disagreement on a team decision.
What is crucial here is that psychological safety is not the absence of conflict — it is the ability to go through conflict without disproportionate consequences. A team with high psychological safety can have intense debates, sharp disagreements, direct feedback. What doesn't happen is punishment for speaking up.
Signs of a psychological safety deficit
In a T.A.M. diagnostic, psychological safety appears in all three dimensions, but it is most visible in the Tensions component. Here are the most common signs of a deficit:
- •Meetings are formally 'positive' but the real conversations happen in one-on-ones afterwards.
- •Questions are asked privately but not in public.
- •Problems are flagged late, often when it is too late to act.
- •Some team members speak a lot; others are nearly invisible.
- •Feedback remains vague ('that was good') rather than specific and actionable.
What the manager can do concretely
The most powerful lever for building psychological safety is deceptively simple: the manager must model vulnerability. This means publicly acknowledging their own uncertainties, mistakes, and blind spots.
In the TSM weekly loop, this translates into two concrete practices: first, in the end-of-week review, the manager shares one thing they would have done differently. Second, in the daily micro-checkpoints, they create space for 'what is stuck' before addressing 'what is moving forward'.
Want to implement this system in your team?
The TSM book gives you the complete framework. The coaching method helps you install it.