CREATING PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY WITHOUT CODDLING

WHY HIGH STANDARDS AND HUMAN DIGNITY ARE NOT OPPOSITES

The Modern Drift of Psychological Safety

There is a strange tension in modern work culture, a tension most leaders feel but hesitate to name. We talk about psychological safety more than ever, but the meaning of the term has drifted into an entirely different landscape than the one it originally belonged to. It has become softer, more padded, more anxious in its intent. And the softness, rather than creating strength, often produces something far more fragile.

When Amy Edmondson introduced the idea of psychological safety, it was never about protecting people from discomfort. It was about creating an environment where truth could be spoken, where questions could be asked, where ideas could be explored without humiliation, and where mistakes could become data rather than shame. It assumed an adult world — a world where competence, responsibility, and clarity were the foundations of collaboration.

But something changed over the last decade. Somewhere between a culture that began prioritising emotional comfort and a generation raised in environments where feelings were encouraged but boundaries were blurred, psychological safety became equated with the absence of friction. And friction is not a flaw in organisational life. It is simply life. It is what happens when competent people think together, disagree together, and build together.

When Care Becomes Counterproductive

The irony is that this shift did not emerge from a lack of care. It came from an excess of the wrong kind.

Leaders don’t want to be harsh. They don’t want to demotivate. They want to retain their teams, inspire them, empower them. They want to avoid conflict because it feels heavy in an already pressurised world. And so they soften. They accommodate. They wrap expectations in comforting language, hoping to make reality feel gentler. But somewhere along the way, the accommodation becomes its own kind of disrespect. It carries the subtle message that adults cannot be trusted with truth, that they are too delicate to handle tension, that the world must bend around their feelings.

It is a strange thing to witness: the interplay of intention and impact diverging so dramatically. What begins as kindness slips into condescension. And condescension is corrosive — not because it is loud, but because it is quiet. It erodes competence in small, nearly invisible increments.

Clarity as Stability: A Lesson From Childhood

I have always believed that leadership, in many ways, resembles parenting — not in authority, but in the way humans respond to structure. When my daughter was very young, I would ask her which teacher she liked best. And without fail, she always named the strictest one. Not because she was a masochist, and not because the teacher was harsh. She loved that teacher because she always knew where she stood. Expectations were clear. Rules were consistent. Discipline was fair. There was no guessing, no ambiguity, no invisible lines she might accidentally cross. There was an anchor.

Children, like adults, do not thrive in chaos. They thrive in clarity. They want to know what is expected of them. They want fairness, even if it comes with correction. They want direction, not indulgence. They want the dignity of being taken seriously.

Lowering the bar does not make children feel safe. It makes them feel underestimated. Raising the bar impossibly high does not make them ambitious. It makes them give up before they begin. And this dynamic does not magically disappear once someone turns twenty-five. The human nervous system does not evolve that quickly. A person who is never challenged becomes bored and resentful. A person who is pushed beyond their capacity becomes demoralised. True growth — whether in childhood or adulthood — happens in the stretch, not the strain.

A Generation Raised on Expression Without Boundaries

But many younger employees today grew up in environments that praised emotional expression while neglecting the guardrails that give those emotions shape and context. Feelings were encouraged, but boundaries were often fluid. Discomfort was treated as a sign that something was wrong. Adults hovered, adjusted, protected, softened. And so a quiet expectation emerged: that safety means freedom from tension.

When these individuals walk into organisations, they bring the unconscious belief that discomfort is a threat rather than a natural part of meaningful work. Difficult feedback feels like judgement. Ambiguity feels like danger. Disagreement feels like conflict. And because leaders do not want to be perceived as harsh or outdated, they respond by softening their language, diluting their expectations, and treating vulnerability as something fragile rather than something deeply human.

But vulnerability does not break people. Dishonesty does.

When leaders avoid clarity out of care, an unintended consequence emerges. Conversations become careful rather than honest. Decisions become padded rather than precise. Teams start hiding their mistakes rather than learning from them. People stop asking questions, because questions feel risky. And slowly, the culture adapts to an unspoken rule: comfort is more important than truth.

When Warmth Masks Suppression: My Own Experience

I learned this the hard way in a role I once entered with genuine enthusiasm. I had been invited to bring clarity, structure, and momentum to an organisation that claimed it wanted to evolve. The mission made sense. The vision felt promising. The team seemed ready. I arrived with energy and intention.

But almost immediately, I sensed a subtle tension beneath the surface warmth. My superior checked in with me several times a day — “How are you? Are you settling in? How does this feel?” Questions that mimicked care but never truly invited an answer. When I tried to share what I was observing, what I was learning, what I was questioning, the responses took on an unexpectedly uniform tone: everything is done for a reason. You don’t need to ask why. The why comes with the doing.

Curiosity, it turned out, was unwelcome — not because it was confrontational, but because it exposed ambiguity. There was very little transparency about how decisions were made, and even less examination of whether those decisions still served the organisation’s goals. Questions created discomfort, and discomfort was to be avoided.

Ideas followed a similar pattern. Every proposal I brought was warmly received — initially. “Great idea,” they would say, followed almost immediately by, “but adjust this,” “remove that,” “add this.” The ritual was always the same: enthusiasm, then correction. It was clear that the idea itself was never the problem. Ownership was. Enthusiasm was ceremonial; control was not. What was invited was contribution without agency.

Micromanagement often enters through the side door, disguised as collaboration.

Something in me began to grow quiet. Not because I disengaged, but because I began to protect myself. I slowed down my questions. I weighed my words. I started to second-guess every initiative. I watched myself shrink in an environment that claimed to value empowerment. It is astonishing how quickly a competent, confident adult can become cautious and self-monitoring when the culture communicates, in subtle ways, that initiative is dangerous and truth is unwelcome.

Then came the inconsistency of expectations. Targets shifted without explanation. Metrics rose without relation to resources. Priorities changed overnight. It became the professional equivalent of being asked to sprint through deep sand — exhausting, demotivating, futile. Adults do not give up because work is hard. They give up because work becomes disconnected from meaning or impact.

The entire experience taught me more about leadership than any formal training ever could. It revealed how quickly psychological safety collapses when people are managed through a mixture of warmth and suppression — the warmth to appear supportive, and the suppression to maintain control.

Reclaiming the True Meaning of Safety

This, to me, is the real danger of misapplied psychological safety: not that it creates conflict, but that it prevents the authentic conflict needed for progress. It tells people to speak, but not too loudly. To question, but not too deeply. To contribute, but without disrupting the invisible order. It keeps teams comfortable enough to comply, but not clear enough to grow.

So what, then, is psychological safety in its truest sense?

It is not softness. It is not blanket reassurance. It is not emotional shielding. It is certainly not the elimination of tension. Real psychological safety is the environment where truth can exist without punishment. It is the place where adults can be adults — where they can make mistakes, admit confusion, challenge assumptions, ask difficult questions, and disagree with intelligence.

It assumes capability. It assumes dignity. It assumes the adult on the other side of the conversation is strong enough to hear the truth and responsible enough to act on it.

Standards as a Form of Respect

And this is where standards matter. High standards are not the enemy of safety; they are the container for it. When expectations are clear, people know how to contribute. When expectations are reachable but challenging, people rise. When expectations are consistent, people trust their environment. Clarity is not cruelty. Ambiguity is.

But standards do not live in isolation. They require accountability — not as punishment, but as a natural extension of respect. Psychological safety does not mean an absence of consequences. It means consequences are transparent, proportionate, and understood ahead of time. Mistakes can absolutely be made; they are part of learning. Yet when the same mistakes repeat without reflection or change, accountability becomes essential — for the sake of the individual, the team, and the work itself. What destroys safety is not the existence of consequences, but the unpredictability of them. When standards shift from week to week, when rules tighten suddenly or loosen without explanation, when expectations change based on who feels uncomfortable, people stop trusting the ground they stand on. Real safety comes from knowing where the boundaries are, what they mean, and how they will be applied — consistently, fairly, and without theatrics.

And there is another dimension to this. A high bar inspires effort; an unreachable bar erodes it. Adults feel this immediately, just as children do. When leaders set goals that are structurally impossible, people do not rise — they withdraw. Not from laziness, but from self-preservation. Why invest deeply in something that is rigged against you? Why take pride in work that will never be acknowledged as enough? Impossible expectations do not create excellence; they hollow it out. But the opposite extreme is equally corrosive: standards so low that competence becomes incidental and meaningful challenge disappears. In such environments, confidence quietly deteriorates — not because the work is too demanding, but because it demands nothing at all. Without real stretch, there is no progression, no pride, no internal sense of having grown through effort.

What is most destabilising, however, is inconsistency. Standards that tighten one week and relax the next. Goals that change direction whenever someone’s discomfort surfaces. Priorities that shift without clarity. Adults cannot move with conviction when the ground beneath them keeps changing shape. Leaders often misinterpret the resulting withdrawal as a lack of motivation, when in truth, it is a rational response to unpredictability. Clear expectations function as a psychological anchor. They allow people to make decisions without overthinking, and they reduce unnecessary conflict. People feel most secure not when standards are erased, but when they are clear, meaningful, and connected to something they can stand behind.

The Leader’s Responsibility and the Invitation Forward

Leaders must have the courage to tell the truth, the courage to hear the truth, and the courage to hold standards with calm firmness. Not from hierarchy, but from respect. Not from fear, but from clarity. Not from ego, but from purpose.

If psychological safety collapses through the quiet erosion of dignity, clarity, and trust, it is rebuilt through their deliberate restoration. And that responsibility sits, unavoidably, with leadership. Not because leaders are expected to carry the emotional weight of an organisation, but because they shape the conditions in which people interpret reality. Culture, in its most practical sense, is the cumulative impact of what leaders permit, what they ignore, and what they consistently reinforce. Safety grows out of this consistency far more than it grows out of warmth. Ambiguity must be replaced with clarity. People need to know what matters, why it matters, and how their work connects to something larger than themselves. Coherence is not a luxury; it is the operating system of a healthy organisation.

And when organisations succeed in combining genuine psychological safety with clear, meaningful standards, the shift in culture is unmistakable. People stop navigating the emotional undercurrents of the workplace and begin directing their energy toward the work itself. They ask clearer questions. They take more thoughtful risks. They bring forward ideas they once kept to themselves. Not because the environment has become soft or coddling, but because it has become coherent. Teams grow more resilient not in spite of challenge, but because of it.

Psychological safety is not the opposite of high standards. High standards, held with consistency and human dignity, are the very thing that makes psychological safety real.

And perhaps this is the invitation many leaders have been waiting for — to stop protecting people from the realities that make them grow, and to start creating the kind of clarity that lets them rise.

For Reflection

Every organisation reaches a moment where it becomes clear that the real obstacle is no longer workload or strategy, but the conditions under which people are expected to think, speak, and act. Psychological safety is often reduced to reassurance, yet its true purpose is far more structural: it gives people the ground they need in order to bring their full intelligence to the table.

When leaders separate safety from coddling — when they can uphold standards without hardening, and offer steadiness without softening into indulgence — the entire tone of a workplace begins to shift. Not dramatically, but decisively. Conversations deepen. Decisions sharpen. And people begin to contribute from a place that feels honest rather than guarded.

If something in this resonates with your own experience — if you recognise the tension between clarity and comfort, or the quiet places where your culture hesitates — consider what might become possible if safety and standards were not treated as competing forces, but as partners in shaping a more grounded way of working.

Not as a performance.
Not as a correction.
But as a maturation.

Because when that alignment is restored, people stop adapting themselves to survive the culture.
The culture adapts to support the people who give it life.

What parts of your culture feel clear and s