“It’s no good having a great culture if you’ve gone out of business.”
“A team is only as safe as the least safe person.”
“The number one barrier to psychological safety is not a lack of trust or empathy — it’s power. And we can’t fix what we won’t name.”
“If we want people to speak up, we must both reduce the cost and increase the benefit of speaking up.”
“Speaking up doesn’t necessarily mean verbally. We may speak up in writing, using sign language, drawing a picture or simply by pointing a finger.”
“Building psychological safety requires more than just nurturing high performing bubbles of teams in isolation. It requires weaving an organisational fabric of psychological safety.”
“The inner belief of psychological safety arises from past and present outer conditions.”
“We all have the potential to damage psychological safety for those around us – and as a result, we all have a responsibility to help foster it.”
On Power and Systems
“All Models Are Wrong, and Some Are Harmful.”
“Safety is as much about social dynamics as physical risks.”
“Telling people to ‘try harder’ or ‘pay more attention’ ignores the system that made the mistake possible. Fix the system, not the person.”
“Power isn’t just formal hierarchy. It’s also how popular we are, how much expertise we hold, and the characteristics we possess.”
“You can’t train your way out of a system that punishes people for doing the right thing.”
On Leadership and Organisational Design
“If your processes only work when no one makes a mistake, you don’t have a process, you have a hope.”
“You can be a great manager of things without leadership skills, but you can’t be a great leader of people without good management skills.”
“High performance doesn’t come from pressure. It comes from safety, expertise, and clarity about what matters.”
“…maybe we should consider ourselves ecologists; stewards of thriving, ever-changing environments.”
On Learning and Failure
“A big failure doesn’t require a big cause; it requires a loaded system.”
“Every time we blame an individual, we lose a chance to understand the system.”
“Learning is hard when the price of honesty is high.”
“We are always operating within varying degrees of complexity. The job isn’t to force things into order, it’s to make some sense of the mess.”
“We should consider whether we’re blaming because it’ll make us feel better, or whether it’s actually a constructive thing to do.”
On Privilege
“Privilege isn’t just what gives you an advantage — it’s what protects you from consequences that others can’t avoid.”
“When we don’t experience a barrier ourselves, it’s easy to assume it doesn’t exist.”
“If your psychological safety comes at the cost of someone else’s, it’s not safety, it’s dominance.”
On Diversity and Inclusion
“Can we ever really “belong” in an organisation where our worth is significantly deemed to be relative to our productivity or effort?”
“It’s not enough to invite people in to the space. We have to change how the space works. Otherwise, we’re just asking people to assimilate.”
On Voice, Power, and Equity
“There is no such thing as a zero-risk interaction.”
“People in power are unlikely to dismantle the power structures that got them there.”
“Who gets to speak, who gets believed, and who gets to stay — those are the real markers of inclusion.”
“If only the most confident, privileged, or senior voices are heard, then we’re simply reinforcing existing power structures.”
“You can’t have equity without discomfort. Especially for those of us who’ve long (often unknowingly) benefited from inequity.”
