Over the past three decades, a wealth of research has shown that psychological safety—the perception that it is safe to speak up and take risks without fear of embarrassment, rejection, or retribution—is one of the most consistent and important predictors of leadership competence and team effectiveness. As one of us (Amy Edmondson) has illustrated in The Fearless Organization, when team members trust that their voice will be heard and valued, they are more willing to take the kinds of interpersonal risks that innovation requires.
Unsurprisingly, this matters enormously in today’s organizations. Whether the challenge is developing a new product, responding to a shifting market, or solving a stubborn customer problem, innovation rarely emerges only from top-down decree. Instead, it tends to bubble up from people on the ground, with people feeling the freedom to test ideas, share half-formed thoughts and, especially, point out problems others would prefer to ignore (just consider the impact of an employee highlighting a deficient company process to their boss, versus pretending everything is fine, just in order to avoid being reprimanded). Without psychological safety, those behaviors are stifled, and teams end up playing it safe; choosing caution over candor, and conformity over creativity.
The leader’s role in creating safety
Decades of evidence also highlight that leaders play an outsized role in creating the conditions for psychological safety. Simply put, a manager’s behavior sets the tone for what is acceptable, expected, rewarded, and sanctioned in a team.
Leaders who foster safety tend to do several things. First, they model curiosity and openness, asking questions, inviting ideas, and showing genuine interest in different perspectives. Second, they are also good at sanctioning bad behaviors, making it clear for everyone that dismissiveness, ridicule, or hostility have no place in the team. Third, they tend to build trust by admitting their own fallibility. That is, when leaders acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers, they encourage others to contribute, which is a critical enabler of team and organizational performance in an age in which knowledge and expertise are likely shared among employees rather than concentrated in those who are in charge. Finally, these leaders encourage smart risk-taking: allowing room for small experiments, tolerating failures, and helping the team learn from them. In short, leaders create safety when they challenge themselves and others to confront reality and engage with each other in honest, respectful ways.
As these behaviors imply, psychological safety is not about comfort. Rather, it is a platform for productive discomfort: the kind of discomfort that fuels innovation, learning, and growth. And leaders are the architects and engineers of this climate.
Why ‘just being yourself’ threatens safety
As one of us (Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic) illustrates in a forthcoming book, Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated and What to Do Instead, it has become fashionable to tell leaders—and others—to “just be yourself” or to “bring your whole self to work.” The idea is seductive: after all, who wouldn’t want to work in a place where they can express themselves freely, without external pressures or obligation to align their behavior to a corporate norm, and perhaps even celebrated for expressing their unedited and unfiltered self? But here lies a dangerous misconception. In fact, your “authentic” or “whole” self also includes the undesirable, unprofessional, and dark side dimensions of your character. As a comprehensive review of this topic highlights, “self-expressions may be experienced and perceived as authentic, and yet reduce one’s influence if they irritate, anger, or overwhelm others.” In that sense, you are better off bringing your best self to work; save the rest for your family, with whom we sympathize for having no escape! Psychological safety is not built through unfiltered self-expression; instead, it tends to require the opposite. Leaders who want to build safe environments for learning and innovation must resist the temptation to bring their “whole self” to work. Rather, they must make an effort to cultivate and express the best possible version of their professional self, namely the self that is devoted to the greater good, to developing others, and to working hard to achieve meaningful goals.
In any of these cases, “bringing your whole self” may feel liberating for the leader, but it comes at the expense of the team’s ability to contribute without fear. Psychological safety demands that leaders filter, regulate, and elevate their behavior: an aspiration that is quite distinct from unedited authenticity.
Consider four ways in which “whole self” leadership can obstruct safety:
- Unfiltered emotions: A leader who vents every frustration, irritation, or passing mood risks creating a volatile climate. Teams end up tiptoeing around the leader’s emotions instead of focusing on the work.
- Biases and prejudices: Everyone harbors biases, but airing them under the guise of authenticity is toxic. Expressing stereotypes or discriminatory views (however sincerely held) undermines trust and risks excluding essential voices.
- Radical candor taken too far: Brutal honesty about every thought or judgment may feel authentic, but it can humiliate others. Safety requires candor, yes, but also tact, empathy, and timing. Even Ray Dalio, one of the most famous champions of radical transparency, acknowledges there must be some limits to unfiltered honesty. He says, “if someone shows you a picture of their newborn child, you don’t tell them ‘that’s an ugly baby.’”
- Self-centeredness: Leaders who insist on prioritizing their own needs, quirks, or values above the team’s mission confuse the purpose of leadership. Leadership is about enabling others, not indulging oneself. Indeed, with power comes responsibility, and with great power comes great responsibility. The only people who want absolute power without any responsibility are narcissistic or psychopathic megalomaniacs who end up being toxic or destructive leaders.
Why others, too, should bring their best, not their whole, selves
The same principle applies to employees who are not formal leaders. While leaders carry the heavier responsibility, every team member contributes to the climate. A workplace cannot function if “being yourself” means failing to consider how one’s actions affect others.
Imagine a software engineer who insists on interrupting colleagues because “that’s just how I am.” Or a salesperson who justifies aggressive, competitive behavior as “authentic.” Or someone who loves cracking jokes that make some people laugh but are offensive or hurtful to others. At some point, the right to be fully oneself collides with the obligation to create space for others. Teams thrive not because everyone is indulging their idiosyncrasies, but because members align around a shared mission and adapt their behavior to make collective work possible.
The goal is thus not to suppress individuality but to channel it productively. The healthiest teams encourage employees to bring their best selves: the part that is curious, constructive, and committed to learning. Our best selves make an effort to understand others and to collaborate effectively even with those who don’t think like us. This professional version of yourself can still come across as authentic, because it is an authentic part of who you are, but it requires developing adequate social skills and an empathetic mindset to strengthen safety rather than undermine it. This is not always easy, but it’s important for helping to advance the mission of the organization. So, by all means, seem authentic—by being a positive influence on others and harnessing a reputation for adding value to the team. Embrace the aspiration to have an authentic self that is admirable and worthy of followers.
Authenticity and safety: a nuanced relationship
As we have tried to illustrate, the relationship between authenticity and psychological safety is not simple. At their best, they reinforce each other: when people feel safe, they are more likely to be authentic, and when leaders model thoughtful authenticity, they reinforce safety. But without boundaries, both concepts can be distorted into their opposite.
Authenticity without self-awareness becomes selfishness. Safety without accountability for impact becomes permissiveness. The real challenge for leaders is to hold the tension between the two, to create an environment where people can speak up candidly yet still regulate themselves in service of the team’s goals.
This requires negotiation, experimentation, and repair. Teams must talk openly about what behaviors support or undermine safety. Missteps will happen; what matters is how they are handled—such as, with humility, apology, and renewed commitment. Karl Popper’s famous paradox of tolerance is instructive here: “if you want a tolerant society, you must be intolerant of intolerance.” The same logic applies in organizations. If you want psychological safety, you must be unwilling to tolerate behaviors that erode it.
The leadership imperative
In the end, creating psychological safety is less about leaders revealing their whole selves and more about leaders taking responsibility for the selves they bring. The leader’s task is not self-expression but stewardship: creating the conditions where others can do their best thinking, experimenting, and learning.
That is the paradox of safety and authenticity at work. To build trust, leaders must be human, vulnerable, and real. But to sustain safety, they must also regulate, filter, and discipline their impulses. The same is true for peers. Authenticity is valuable only when it is paired with accountability to others.
Leaders who grasp this nuance will build workplaces where people feel free to speak up and take risks, but not free to disregard the collective mission. That balance, between authenticity and responsibility, between freedom and accountability, is the real foundation of psychological safety.
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