Exploring The Psychological Safety Index (PSI)

(Trademark: The Fearless Organisation)

Psychological safety is one of those concepts that’s easy to grasp intuitively, but much harder to measure. We can usually sense when a team feels open, trusting, and collaborative – and equally when people are holding back, choosing silence over speaking up. But how do we capture that more systematically, and track it over time?

We generally advise caution with measuring psychological safety, and focussing more on qualitative exploration than resorting to metrics and scores, which have their own dangers.

One answer to the problem of measuring psychological safety is the Psychological Safety Index (PSI). At the core of the Fearless Organization Scan, the PSI suggests that it offers a way of turning the invisible into something more visible: a score, a benchmark, and a set of domain-level insights. It’s popular across industries as a way of diagnosing team culture.

But like all measurement tools, it comes with both benefits and limitations. Let’s take a critical look at what it is, where it’s useful, and where caution is warranted.

What the PSI Measures

The PSI is rooted in Amy Edmondson’s foundational research on psychological safety. Through a short anonymous survey, it produces an overall score (out of 100) and breaks this down into four domains:

• Attitude to Risk & Failure – whether it feels safe to try new things and learn from mistakes.
• Open Conversation – the extent to which people can speak candidly, even when it’s uncomfortable.
• Inclusion & Diversity – whether different voices and perspectives are welcomed and valued.
• Willingness to Help – how readily people support each other, or retreat into silos.

The concept is simple: if we can measure these four aspects, we gain a clear picture of the team’s psychological safety climate.

The Strengths of the PSI

One of the PSI’s biggest strengths is clarity. Leaders often find psychological safety slippery or intangible; the PSI provides a concrete starting point. The four domains offer a shared language, making it easier to talk about cultural issues without it feeling too abstract.

It’s also fairly credible and research-backed. With decades of Edmondson’s work behind it, and validation across industries, the PSI isn’t just another engagement survey.

Another benefit is comparability. Large organisations can use it across multiple teams and build a picture of where psychological safety is thriving and where it’s under strain. Global comparisons may add an extra layer of insight.

Perhaps most importantly, the PSI is a catalyst for conversation. The numbers themselves aren’t the end of the story; they’re just the beginning. A low score on Attitude to Risk & Failure, for instance, should trigger reflection: how do we respond to mistakes? Do people feel blamed, or do we treat errors as opportunities to learn?

The Weaknesses and Risks

Despite its strengths, the PSI isn’t perfect. Like any survey, it’s ultimately a self-report instrument. That means it’s subject to perception, interpretation, and bias. People might answer in ways they think they “should,” or interpret questions differently depending on cultural or organisational context.

It’s also reductive by design. Collapsing the richness of psychological safety into a number or four domains risks oversimplification. Leaders can easily fall into the trap of treating PSI scores as KPIs: “We need to get from 67 to 80 by next quarter.” That’s not the point, and in fact can undermine the very safety the tool is meant to measure.

Cultural nuance is another challenge. The PSI was developed primarily in Western contexts, where speaking up is seen as a virtue. In some cultures, silence can be a sign of respect rather than fear. The risk is that the tool misclassifies behaviours and generates misleading results.

There’s also the snapshot problem. Psychological safety is fluid: it changes with context, leadership, workload, even the dynamics in a single meeting. A PSI report gives you a moment in time. Without follow-up, it can quickly become outdated or misleading.

Commercialisation and proprietary control. It’s important to acknowledge that the PSI is a proprietary tool tied to licensing, certification, and consultancy models. While this ensures standardisation and quality control, it also limits independent critique and adaptation compared to open-source instruments like Edmondson’s original seven-item Team Psychological Safety Scale. This can create dependency on external providers rather than building internal capability, and raises questions about data protection, accessibility and equity of use.

And finally, there’s the risk of misuse. In the wrong hands, PSI results can be weaponised – used to compare teams, reward some managers and punish others, or treated as league tables. That creates pressure to “game the survey” and can reduce, rather than increase, safety.

When the PSI Is Useful

Used thoughtfully, the PSI can be powerful. It’s especially useful when:

• You want to start a structured conversation about psychological safety.
• An organisation is going through transformation and you want a baseline or follow-up.
• You need to compare across teams to identify strengths and hotspots.
• A “data driven” leader or facilitator is looking for an entry point into what can be sensitive territory.

In these cases, the PSI provides a common frame of reference and legitimises the conversation.

When to Be Careful (or Avoid It)

The PSI is less effective – and sometimes damaging – if:

• There’s no plan for follow-up. Running a survey without action breeds cynicism.
• Leaders treat the score as a target or KPI. That risks gaming and defensiveness.
• The organisation is in a high-surveillance, low-trust culture. In such contexts, people may not feel safe to answer honestly, and results may be incorrect, or backfire.
• It’s used as a standalone tool. Numbers without qualitative context – stories, reflections, and dialogue – tell only part of the picture.

A Balanced View

The Psychological Safety Index is neither a silver bullet nor a gimmick. It’s a useful lens, one that can provide structure, legitimacy, and a starting point for deeper work. But it must be handled with care.

At its best, the PSI is not a verdict but an invitation: to listen, to reflect, to understand what it feels like to work in this team, and to create the conditions where people feel safe to contribute fully. At its worst, it becomes another dashboard metric, stripped of nuance, fuelling pressure and fear.

The difference lies not in the tool itself but in how we use it.