Rebuilding Psychological Safety When It's Broken

By Jade Garratt

Which of these do you think might damage psychological safety in a team?

Someone rolling their eyes when a colleague raises a concern
An organisational restructure that creates uncertainty and job insecurity
A team member being interrupted repeatedly in meetings
Important decisions made without consultation or explanation
Feedback delivered harshly, without care or curiosity

The answer, of course, is that all of them can.

Sometimes it’s individual behaviours that cause harm to the psychological safety experienced by members of the team – the eye roll, the sigh or the snappy email. Sometimes it’s structural, cultural, or organisational shifts or changes – budget cuts, restructures or leadership changes that leave people feeling destabilised. Sometimes (often) it’s a combination of all of the above.

And this is so common – as Edmondson and Lei put it, there’s an asymmetry when we’re working on psychological safety, in that, “psychological safety takes time to build, through familiarity and positive responses to displays of vulnerability and other interpersonally risky actions, but can be destroyed in an instant through a negative response to an act of vulnerability.”

Building psychological safety isn’t linear

Sometimes we come across oversimplified models of psychological safety – ones that assume we’re always building it from the ground up, as though we have a blank sheet of paper and are starting fresh. And there’s a place for that: setting our team norms, listening effectively, and rewarding speaking up are all valuable foundations. But what about when psychological safety has already been fractured? When people are navigating the aftermath of something that’s shaken their trust in each other, the leadership or the organisation? Linear, one-size-fits-all models often overlook the reality that psychological safety isn’t a static checklist we can just follow to fix – it’s dynamic, relational, and shaped by history.

In fostering psychological safety, the journey is rarely straightforward. Psychological safety is primarily a relational concept, and relationships are messy, full of moments of disconnect, tension, mismatch and misunderstanding. Often, these moments are simply something we work (or muddle) through as we embrace the complexity and joy of working together, but sometimes these small disjunctures cause actual harm, leaving at least one person in the relationship less likely to speak up in the future with their ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.

We also have to recognise that no team operates in a vacuum, and how safe people feel to take interpersonal risks – even within their team – is likely to be affected by external influences and occurrences.

In our work, we often meet people and teams who are recovering (sometimes still reeling) from past events. Maybe there were threats of job losses, or a culture of blame crept in during a busy, high-pressure period. Maybe they’ve lost trusted colleagues and collaborators due to a restructure, and they’re struggling to rebuild their networks, or to know who to turn to.

We have to remember that in these cases (which, in reality, is most cases), we’re not starting from scratch. We’re starting from a place where trust has been shaken and we might need to do something more intentional to repair and rebuild psychological safety.

So how do we rebuild psychological safety when it’s broken?

If psychological safety has been damaged, all is not lost. Psychologist John Gottman’s research found that relationships are most at risk not from isolated conflicts or ruptures, but from a sustained imbalance where negative interactions consistently outweigh positive ones. This implies that how effectively teams respond to moments of rupture – by reconnecting intentionally and restoring balance through positive interactions – can critically influence team stability and psychological safety.

Similarly, Safran and Muran’s research into therapeutic relationships highlights that ruptures themselves aren’t the primary issue – instead, what matters is the quality and sincerity of the repair attempts. By intentionally addressing these ruptures, we not only mitigate harm but often build relationships even stronger and more resilient than before. In other words, it’s not the rupture that defines a relationship, but how we repair it.

Gottman’s research focuses on couples and Safran and Muran’s on therapeutic relationships, but we know that teams are built on relationships too, and those relationships inevitably include moments of tension, disconnect or harm. Realistically, we can’t avoid all of these moments, even with the best intentions, but we can respond to them with care and skill. If we treat workplace relationships like any other human relationships, we need to normalise rupture and make repair more explicit.

So whether the harm came from a mistake you made, something another team member did, or a broader organisational change, there are things we can all do to begin rebuilding psychological safety.

If you were the one who got it wrong:

Start with a sincere apology. This can be a powerful act – it shows that getting it wrong is human, and that what matters most is how we respond. Owning a mistake models the awareness, personal responsibility and vulnerability that psychological safety is built on. Then we commit – verbally and through our actions – to doing better now we know better. We won’t always get it right, but we can always strive to learn.

If the damage came from someone else in the team:

Address the problematic behaviour (or highlight it with someone who can) – non-violent communication might be useful here. Revisit the team norms or social contract (or establish one if it’s not already in place!) and get really clear on the expectations within the team. It’s actually a good opportunity to remind ourselves that the social contract is a living and lived agreement, not something we ‘do’ and forget about. And know that although it will take time, we can rebuild psychological safety with this greater clarity in place.

Much like the classic archetype of resilience – a broken bone heals stronger than it was before, through this process, we can even build back better than before.

If the rupture came from structural or systemic factors, like organisational restructures, poor communication from elsewhere in the organisation, or external pressures:

Our most important role is to acknowledge what’s going on, offer clarity where we can, and provide support and consistency. We might not be able to fix everything, but we can help people feel seen, heard, and supported during difficult times. This may involve peer communities, mentors, and coaches to help everyone manage through a difficult period.

Give it time

Rebuilding psychological safety takes time. It may be slower than you’d like. Trust can be earned and re-earned, but it can’t be forced or rushed.

Sometimes what matters most is simply continuing to show up. Holding steady boundaries, staying curious and keeping communication channels open. These consistent, reliable, small gestures become the new data points people use to assess whether it’s safe to speak up again.

The Japanese art of kintsugi offers a powerful metaphor here – the practice of mending broken pottery with gold, treating the breakage as part of the object’s history rather than something to be hidden. Similarly, when we acknowledge harm and engage in meaningful repair, we actually have the chance to make the team stronger, more resilient, and better connected with each other than before.

Photo credit Daderot on Wikipedia (Creative Commons CC0)

If psychological safety has taken a knock in your team recently, whether through tension, upheaval, or a slow erosion over time, what’s one small step you could take to begin rebuilding?

It doesn’t have to be grand. Sometimes it starts with a conversation, or a check-in, or an apology. The main thing is that we start somewhere, and keep going.