29 January 2026 · René de Baaij
Psychological Safety Is Not a Right, and Should Not Become One
On discomfort, courage and adult working relationships
From physical to psychological safety
Over the past few decades, the idea of safety at work has shifted in a striking way. Safety used to be mainly about preventing physical harm: machines that sever fingers, toxic substances that damage health, sexual harassment that violates a person's integrity. Today a new language is emerging. More and more often we hear that psychological safety must also be guaranteed, as if it were part of occupational health and safety law.
Advisory councils, professional bodies and vendors of reporting software have embraced the term with enthusiasm. Even the Dutch Social and Economic Council warns that a lack of social and psychological safety leads to poor performance and raises the risk of bullying, discrimination and aggression. From a communications point of view that is understandable. Yet it raises a fundamental question. Can psychological safety be guaranteed by law, and should it be? Or does the concept lose its very force once we file it alongside the other workplace hazards?
My position is this: psychological safety is not a right, and it should not become one. It is a relational process, not an objective standard. It cannot be enforced through protocols. It asks for adult ways of relating to one another, for courage and for reflection. This essay explores why.
The origin: Amy Edmondson and learning teams
The concept of psychological safety comes from the work of Amy Edmondson, professor of leadership at Harvard. In 1999 she described how teams learn and innovate better when their members feel free to admit mistakes, ask questions and voice criticism without fear of punishment. For her, psychological safety was never a goal in itself. It was a condition for learning.
Crucially, Edmondson never ruled out tension or discomfort. Discussing mistakes and entering into critical conversations creates friction, and that friction is productive. The point is not that everyone feels comfortable all the time. The point is that people dare to step into the discomfort without fear of reprisal.
Here lies the first misunderstanding. Where Edmondson speaks of a relational foundation for learning, much of today's HR practice translates the concept into a risk to be managed. In doing so we lose its essence. Psychological safety is not protection against discomfort. It is an invitation to deal with discomfort as adults.
The misunderstanding: turning relationships into law
In the Netherlands, psychological safety is increasingly placed under the heading of psychosocial workload. It becomes a health and safety topic, just like work pressure or bullying. With that, a risky logic creeps into organizations: if someone feels unsafe because of a critical question, the employer has failed in its duty of care.
This is the moment we lose sight of the undercurrent. Psychological safety is subjective, relational and dependent on context. It cannot be enforced through a checklist or a risk assessment. When we try, we shift responsibility for relational dynamics into the legal domain. That infantilizes managers and employees alike.
Otto Scharmer would say that we are caught in a downloading mindset here. We repeat old patterns of thought (safety means control and regulation) and paste them onto relational processes. As a result, every bit of friction is treated as a problem, while friction is precisely what drives development.
Discomfort as a gateway to learning
Carl Gustav Jung reminded us that growth always passes through an encounter with the shadow. Discomfort, uncertainty and tension are necessary gateways to maturity. Whoever confuses psychological safety with avoiding tension cuts off the road to development.
In his Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell shows how every person and every community receives a call to adventure: the invitation to step into the unknown despite fear and resistance. In organizations, this means having the conversation you would rather avoid, admitting a mistake, or making room for dissenting views. Discomfort is not a danger. It is a necessary travelling companion.
Manfred Kets de Vries stresses that leadership always balances between holding, offering safety, and challenging. Leaders who only offer safety make people dependent. Leaders who only challenge create fear. Mature leadership means doing both at once.
The distinction: unsafe or uncomfortable
Let us be precise. There is a fundamental difference between situations that are genuinely unsafe and situations that merely feel uncomfortable.
Bullying, discrimination, aggression, sexual harassment and structural exclusion are unsafe. These behaviours belong in the domain of health and safety regulation and must be dealt with firmly.
Critical questions, a tough performance review, a conflict within a team or the sting of a mistake are uncomfortable. They are part of the work and of adult collaboration. They are not risks to be minimized but opportunities for learning to be used.
Edgar Schein distinguishes here between learning anxiety and survival anxiety. Learning always provokes anxiety: the fear of admitting mistakes, of thinking differently, of putting relationships under strain. Yet it is precisely by tolerating that learning anxiety that transformation becomes possible.
Cultural and systemic dimensions
How we interpret psychological safety cannot be separated from culture. Geert Hofstede showed that countries and organizations differ widely in how they deal with uncertainty. In cultures with high uncertainty avoidance, there is a tendency to want to control every risk, relational risks included. There, psychological safety is quickly translated into protection. In other cultures, tension is regarded as a normal and productive force.
Arnold Cornelis described this as the control spiral. The more we try to regulate uncertainty, the more systems we build, and the less room remains for dialogue and experiment. In this way psychological safety can be flattened into a set of protocols that stifle the very learning it was meant to enable.
The adult working relationship
What is the alternative? I call it the adult working relationship. It is not a right but a relational practice built on courage, responsibility and reciprocity. It involves:
- the courage to tolerate differences and to engage with tension;
- taking responsibility for one's own emotions and reactions;
- a willingness both to give and to receive feedback;
- distinguishing between crossing a boundary (unsafe) and tension (uncomfortable).
Peter Senge would see this as part of the learning organization: collective learning can only take root where tensions are explored rather than swept under the carpet.
Where it chafes, it grows
In the public sector, a municipal chief executive told me how political pressure regularly causes tension within the management team. In the past this was labelled unsafe. Now the team acknowledges that tension is unavoidable and uses it as fuel for shared reflection.
In a large organization, conflict had been avoided for years for fear of escalation. Only when managers learned to name differences and to bear them did a culture of trust and shared responsibility emerge.
Leaders who ask themselves questions such as how do I handle the tension between autonomy and direction? and how do I respond to resistance when I set boundaries? discover that discomfort is not the enemy but a way into growth.
Archetypal perspectives: when energies collide
Carol Pearson and Joseph Campbell help us see that tension often arises from colliding archetypes. The Rebel who breaks boundaries provokes resistance in the Caregiver who seeks harmony. The Hero who goes into battle unsettles the Sage who wants to preserve nuance.
When these collisions are seen as unsafe, we lose the value of archetypal diversity. When we recognize them as necessary tension, a richer and more creative interplay emerges. Psychological safety then means making room for colliding energies without destroying one another.
Leadership: from protection to holding
What does all this ask of leaders? First of all, the realization that psychological safety cannot be guaranteed. It can only be lived.
- Self-reflection: know your own triggers, fears and shadow sides.
- Courage: bear discomfort instead of managing it away.
- Role model: show that you can take criticism and are capable of self-criticism.
- Facilitating dialogue: create a foundation in which conflict can take place constructively.
Robert Quinn speaks in this context of deep change: whoever truly wants renewal must be willing to change themselves. Only then can the organization change.
The paradox of safety and learning
There is an intriguing paradox in psychological safety. On the one hand it is essential for learning: without a minimum of trust, nobody dares to admit mistakes or ask questions. On the other hand, the pursuit of safety can itself become an obstacle. If everything has to stay comfortable, nothing is learned.
The art, then, is not to confuse safety with comfort. It is about trusting that discomfort can be lived through, not about a guarantee that discomfort will be avoided.
Psychological safety as an invitation
Psychological safety is not a right, and it should not become one. It is a relational process that calls for courage, reflection and maturity. When we turn it into law, working culture becomes infantile. When we embrace it as an invitation, a culture of learning, trust and growth emerges.
The question for leaders and teams is therefore:
- Do we dare to bear tension without turning it into a problem?
- Do we see discomfort as a risk or as a gateway to development?
- Are we willing to live psychological safety rather than claim it as a right?
That is the adult working relationship. It cannot be captured in protocols. It can only be embodied in everyday collaboration.