🕊️ Psychological Safety Isn’t a Trend—It’s a Survival Skill
- Dr. Mary Shepherd
- Apr 1
- 3 min read
Psychological safety isn’t about trendiness, it’s about survival. I explore how true safety shows up in the workplace, from war shelters to boardrooms, and how leaders can create environments of dignity and trust
By Dr. Mary Shepherd
In boardrooms, it’s a buzzword.
In slide decks, a checkbox.
In too many organizations, psychological safety has become a slogan, stripped of its soul.
But I’ve lived where safety wasn’t optional. I’ve stood between rockets and rubble. And I’ve learned that:
You cannot innovate in a system that makes you afraid to breathe.
🚨 Safety Isn’t Soft
Psychological safety isn’t a luxury. It’s not a warm-and-fuzzy HR perk. It’s a survival mechanism.
I’ve worked with aerospace engineers who could calculate orbital trajectories in their heads, but were terrified to say, “I don’t know.”
I’ve coached teams where trauma lived behind every brilliant idea, ADHD, PTSD, invisible battles masked by excellence.
I’ve held the hands of war survivors who still flinched at raised voices in corporate meetings.
This isn’t about productivity. It’s about preservation. It’s about dignity.
🕯️ A Memory from the Shelter
I was a child when the air raids came. Our school had an underground bomb shelter. It was dark, pitch black. It smelled like rats, cold metal, and silence.
Two, maybe three hundred of us, teachers and children, scrambled together in that space, no lights, no words.
And yet… I felt safe.
Not because I could speak. Not because it was warm. But because I wasn’t alone.
Safety isn’t always light. Sometimes it’s darkness with arms around you.
Today, I sit in rooms where people speak but are not heard. Where people perform but are not seen. Where light floods every wall, but no one feels held.
And I wonder…
How many people are still sitting in bomb shelters, mouths closed, brilliance buried, waiting for permission to matter?
🧠 The Cost of Fear
How many breakthroughs die between a thought and a raised hand?
We design for precision, efficiency, profit, but forget to design for the safety of the voice. Safety of difference. Safety of being human
.
✨ What Real Leaders Do
Psychological safety starts with the unseen choices:
Listening without rushing to fix
Normalizing not knowing
Rewarding dissent instead of punishing it
Regulating your nervous system before managing others
It starts when a leader says:
“You don’t need to be perfect to belong here.”
And then lives it, over and over.
And sometimes? It’s even smaller than that.
Sometimes, it’s finishing someone’s sentence when they can’t. Sometimes, it’s the soft glance across the table that says, "I hear you,” even as others tear the idea apart. Sometimes, safety is invisible, but unmistakable. And once you’ve felt it, you never forget. You learn to become it for others.
💡 If You’re a Leader Reading This…
Start now. Start softly.
Ask: “What do you need to feel safe today?”
When someone gives hard feedback, say “Thank you” before anything else.
Protect the quiet thinkers. Lift the unheard voices.
Don’t just track performance, tend to presence.
Because safety isn’t a trend. It’s the soil for everything we hope to grow.
I was here.
And I want to make sure they still are too.
Comentarios