Psychological Safety and Its Importance for a Healthy Culture of Mistakes

This article briefly introduces the concept of psychological safety as primarily conceptualised by Amy C. Edmondson. With Edmondson it is argued that psychological safety clearly has a positive and lasting impact on organisational culture. In a psychologically safe organisation employees are encouraged to actively participate in the design of work processes to overcome the so-called "epidemic of silence". In practice, this is primarily achieved by destigmatising mistakes and failure. Instead of promoting a culture of blaming, psychologically safe organisations perceive mistakes and failure as opportunities for organisational learning experiences. As a result, a positive culture of mistakes is created which in the end contributes to the continuous development of the organisation and its people.