Think about the worst boss you ever worked for.
Whatever you brought to them didn’t land. Got dismissed. Maybe showed up three weeks later as their idea. At some point you stopped bringing things to them. Not because you didn’t care. Because it wasn’t worth it.
That information didn’t disappear. It just stopped traveling.
The procedure that didn’t match field conditions. The workaround the whole crew was running. The thing you noticed but decided wasn’t worth the friction.
That’s psychological safety. Or the absence of it. Nothing soft about it. It’s whether honest information moves through an organization or gets stuck.
That’s psychological safety. Or the absence of it. It has nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with whether honest information moves through an organization or gets stuck.