How Founders Can Build Psychological Safety That Actually Works

Startup life doesn’t slow down for reflection, but ignore how your team feels and you’ll pay for it later. Culture isn’t ping-pong tables and free snacks. It’s how safe people feel speaking up when things get messy, complicated, or outright broken.

In high-growth companies, psychological safety isn’t a perk; it fuels trust, speeds up decisions, and stops mistakes before they snowball. As Ed Catmull of Pixar wrote in Creativity, Inc.: “Without candour, there can be no trust. And without trust, creative collaboration is not possible.”

If you want teams that think fast, challenge each other, and don’t bail when things get hard, this is where to start.

Psychological Safety in Startups: What It Is and Why It Drives Growth

Amy Edmondson nailed it: Psychological safety means people can speak their minds without fear of getting shut down or shamed.

Why should you care?

• Faster innovation - No one’s afraid to say what they really think.

• Fewer blind spots - Issues get flagged before they become disasters.

• Stronger retention - People stay when they feel heard and respected.

• Better performance - Teams that trust each other deliver, plain and simple. In fact, high psychological safety is linked to a 27% increase in performance (Center for Creative Leadership).

• Hard evidence – Teams with high psychological safety were rated as effective twice as often by executives compared to those with low safety (Google Re:Work).

• Massive engagement impact – Psychological safety makes team members 12x more likely to be engaged. That’s your engine for motivation and staying power.

  
  

Skip it, and you’ll end up with silence, stress, and a bunch of ‘yes’ people.

Google’s Project Aristotle found psychological safety was the number one factor in building effective teams, more than skillset, experience, or structure (Google Re:Work).

Signs Your Startup Culture Lacks Psychological Safety

This isn’t about feel-good vibes or trust falls. It’s about everyday behaviours.

Research from the Center for Creative Leadership found that in high-pressure environments, leaders frequently overestimate how safe their teams feel. In fact, employees are 2.5 times more likely to feel unsafe speaking up when they believe mistakes will be penalised (CCL Research Brief). Look out for:

• Deafening silence in meetings.

• The same voices dominating every call.

• No one calling out obvious issues.

• Feedback feels personal or just non-existent.

If you’ve seen this, you’ve got work to do.

It’s worth noting: In one study, over half of leaders believed they’re creating psychological safety, yet only 33% of employees agreed. That disconnect points to a deeper issue in how safety is demonstrated and experienced across the company (CCL Research Brief).

5 Leadership Moves That Build Psychological Safety in High-Growth Teams

1. Start With Yourself

Your team mirrors you. If you act like you’ve got all the answers, they’ll keep their mouths shut.

Psychological safety starts with leadership behaviour. As highlighted by The Growth Faculty, when leaders visibly own their missteps and invite open input, it creates the conditions for others to do the same, building trust and accelerating performance (The Growth Faculty).

Start here:

• Own your mistakes before someone else has to.

• Say “I don’t know” and mean it. No bluffing.

• Lead by example. Vulnerability earns respect.

2. Challenge the Comfort Zone

Hiring smart people then ignoring them? Classic founder move. Fix it.

At Pixar, one of the core tenets is 'everyone has a seat at the table.' Ed Catmull dismantled literal and figurative hierarchies to ensure fresh perspectives had room to challenge assumptions (Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull). That principle applies everywhere bold work gets done.

Shake it up:

• Ask, “What’s missing?” even when you think you know it all.

• Step aside and let someone else chair the room.

• Champion the awkward idea, the gold’s usually buried in discomfort.

  
  

You don’t need more nodding; instead, aim for some friction that sharpens.

3. React Like a Leader, Not a Threat

How you respond to challenge sets the tone. Get defensive, and it’s game over.

According to Google’s Project Aristotle, psychological safety was the number one factor in team effectiveness across the board, outranking individual expertise or experience (Google Re:Work). The science backs what instinct already knows: safe doesn’t mean soft, it means strong enough to listen.

Set the tone:

• Thank the people who challenge you, it means they care.

• Critique the work, never the person.

• Follow up and finish the conversation—don’t leave people guessing. Unanswered feedback breeds mistrust and second-guessing.

• Recognise contributions publicly. A simple "Thanks for speaking up" or "That perspective’s important" signals that courage is noticed and valued.

  
  

Consistency builds safety. One bad reaction can undo a year’s trust. Remember, senior leaders often shut down innovation without realising it, especially when they react too quickly to new ideas from junior staff (CCL).

4. Make Feedback Part of the Job

Waiting for annual reviews? You’re already behind.

Feedback is about daily, safe course correction. Our take: if you’re not creating time and space for quick, low-pressure check-ins, self-doubt creeps in and performance suffers. We break this down further in our post on self-doubt and leadership.

Build the rhythm:

• Weekly 1:1s—don’t cancel them. Ever.

• Five-minute chats save five-week meltdowns. Use them.

• Ask, “What’s one thing I can do better?” Then shut up and listen.

• Feedback doesn’t need slides. Just say it.

Feedback shouldn’t be an event. It’s part of the daily rhythm.

5. Reframe Failure

There’s a quick way to determine if your company has embraced the negative definition of failure. Ask yourself what happens when an error is highlighed. Do people shut down, instead of coming together to get to the root causes? Do they look for someone to blame?

That’s a failure culture. And it kills innovation fast. People won’t take risks... They’ll play safe, repeat what worked last time, and do just enough to avoid sticking out.

You don’t want that. You want a culture that sees failure not as a flaw, but as a necessary cost of doing anything worthwhile. The kind that charges into the unknown and isn’t afraid to course-correct at speed.

Redefine the rules:

• Deconstruct the failure, out loud, not behind closed doors.

• Praise the bold, not just the polished.

• If someone tried something hard and missed, back them, don't blame them.

  
  

As Ed Catmull (co-founder of Pixar) put it in his book Creativity, Inc.: “Failure is not a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new” (Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull).

Want growth? Then get comfortable with the mess. Catmull nailed it when he said, “While we don’t want too many failures, we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.”

Why Psychological Safety Is a Startup Growth Strategy, Not a Soft Skill

This isn’t about being nice. It’s about creating a team that can take hits, fix fast, and move quicker than your competition.

You’re asking people to break new ground. Make it safe for them to speak up while doing it.

Build this into leadership. Not HR. Not later. Now.

What Great Leaders Do:

• Show you’re human. That gives your team permission to be honest.

• Encourage dissent. That’s where the real ideas live.

• React calmly. People are watching how you handle challenge.

• Give feedback often, five minutes now beats five weeks of silence.

• Talk about failure, out loud, often, and without blame.

  
  

Need leaders who create safety, not silence? Motive Group partners with high-growth, mission-driven startups and scale-ups to build leadership teams that people trust. No noise. Just high-impact hiring. Get in touch.