Building Psychological Safety During Change and Transformation

Why Change and Transformation Fail When Leaders Focus on Change Management While Ignoring the Psychological Safety That Makes Honest Struggle Possible

The Meeting That Changed Everything

Six months into a major digital transformation, a manufacturing company was quietly failing. Adoption rates stalled at 23%. Performance metrics declined. The best managers were updating their resumes. In meetings, everyone nodded and said the right things. In reality, nobody was using the new system.

Then the vice president of operations did something unusual. Instead of presenting another optimistic status update, he stood up in front of 200 leaders and said, “I want to tell you about three mistakes I made this week with the new system. Here’s what I learned from each one, here’s what I’m still confused about, and here’s what I need help with.”

The room went silent. Then a plant manager raised his hand and said, “I’ve been making the same mistakes. I thought I was the only one struggling.” Within minutes, a dozen people were sharing their struggles, questions, and mistakes. The conversation that followed identified five critical system problems that had been hidden because nobody wanted to look incompetent.

The vice president’s vulnerability didn’t undermine his authority. It created permission for everyone else to be honest. Within weeks, the transformation that had been quietly failing turned around because real problems were finally visible and addressable. As one plant manager later said, “When the most senior person admits they’re struggling, suddenly it’s okay for everyone else to be human too.”

This is what psychological safety looks like during change and transformation.

Not the absence of problems, but the presence of honesty about problems.

Not comfort with failure, but safety in admitting failure so it can become learning.

Not avoiding difficult conversations, but making difficult conversations possible.

The Specific Behaviors That Build Psychological Safety

Psychological safety doesn’t emerge from declarations or posters about values. It emerges from specific, consistent leader behaviors that signal whether honesty carries career risk. During change and transformation, these behaviors become even more critical because everyone is watching to see whether it’s really safe to admit struggle.

Respond to Bad News Without Blame

How leaders respond the first time someone brings bad news determines whether they’ll ever hear bad news again. If the response includes blame, defensiveness, or punishment, everyone learns that honesty carries career risk. The change or transformation problems don’t disappear. They just become invisible until they’re catastrophic.

Leaders who build psychological safety respond to bad news with curiosity instead of blame. They ask, “What are we learning from this?” not “Who’s responsible for this?” They thank people for raising issues early when they’re still solvable, rather than punishing them for problems that emerged despite their best efforts.

Model Vulnerability About Your Own Struggles

The fastest way to create psychological safety is for leaders to be honest about their own struggles with the transformation. When the person with the most power admits they’re confused or making mistakes, it gives everyone else permission to be human.

This doesn’t mean leaders should share every doubt or uncertainty. But it does mean acknowledging when something is difficult, when you don’t have all the answers, or when you’re learning alongside your team. The vice president in the manufacturing example didn’t undermine his authority by admitting mistakes. He strengthened it by creating space for honest problem-solving.

Want to learn more about vulnerability and psychological safety? Watch or listen to Episode 007 of The Human Factor Podcast>

Separate Learning From Performance Evaluation

During change and transformation initiatives, people need permission to be temporarily incompetent while building new skills. Leaders need to recognize the transitions that individuals must go through as they adjust, reform or replace their former identities.

Learn more about transitions that individuals experience>

But if every mistake or slow adoption becomes part of their performance evaluation, they’ll hide struggles instead of seeking help. This guarantees the transformation takes longer and succeeds less often.

Leaders who build psychological safety explicitly separate the learning phase from performance evaluation. They create protected practice spaces where mistakes are expected and celebrated as learning. They make it clear that struggling with new systems or processes during implementation won’t negatively impact reviews or promotions. They measure progress, not perfection.

Ask Questions That Signal Genuine Curiosity

The questions leaders ask reveal what they actually care about. If every question focuses on timeline compliance and adoption metrics, people learn that speed matters more than competency and sustainable success. If questions focus on understanding struggles and addressing barriers, people learn that honesty is valued.

Psychological safety emerges when leaders regularly ask questions like:

“What’s harder about this than we expected?”

“Where are people getting stuck?”

“What would make this easier?”

“What am I missing about how this is actually working?”

These questions signal genuine curiosity about reality, not just interest in positive reports.

Celebrate Honest Feedback More Than Compliance

What gets celebrated reveals what the organization truly values. If leaders celebrate on-time adoption and positive reports while ignoring honest feedback about problems, people learn to comply publicly while resisting privately. If leaders celebrate people who surface issues, suggest improvements, or admit confusion, people learn that honest engagement is what matters.

One technology executive transformed his organization’s psychological safety by publicly thanking the person who identified a major system flaw three weeks into deployment. Instead of punishing the messenger or minimizing the problem, he said in a company meeting: “This is exactly the kind of honest feedback we need. Thank you for caring enough about our success to speak up when you saw a problem.” Within days, the volume of honest feedback increased dramatically and productively.

Why Psychological Safety Matters Even More During Change and Transformation

Psychological safety is important in all work environments, but it becomes critical during organizational change and transformation for specific psychological reasons that most leaders don’t know or overlook.

Change and Transformation Require Temporary Incompetence

During change and transformation, people move from being competent experts to confused beginners. This is psychologically threatening for professionals who have built their identity around being good at their work. Without psychological safety, people will fake competence rather than admit confusion, which delays real learning and guarantees implementation failures.

When psychological safety exists, people can be honestly incompetent while they build new competence. They can ask basic questions, admit mistakes, and seek help without fearing that temporary struggle will permanently damage their professional reputation. This accelerates learning and reduces the time people spend stuck.

Problems Need to Surface Early

Every change and transformation encounters unexpected problems. The difference between success and failure isn’t whether problems emerge, but how quickly they become visible and addressable. Without psychological safety, problems stay hidden until they’re catastrophic because nobody wants to be the person who admits the change or transformation isn’t working.

In the manufacturing example at the beginning of this article, five critical system problems existed for months before they surfaced. They weren’t invisible because people didn’t notice them. They were invisible because admitting problems felt risky. The moment psychological safety emerged through the vice president’s vulnerability, problems became solvable because they finally became visible.

Resistance Needs to Be Understood, Not Just Overcome

Traditional change management treats resistance as something to overcome through better communication or stronger mandates. But resistance often signals legitimate concerns about implementation approaches, overlooked dependencies, or unintended consequences. Without psychological safety, this valuable information stays hidden because expressing concerns gets labeled as resistance.

When psychological safety exists, concerns can be expressed and evaluated on their merits. Sometimes concerns reveal genuine problems that need to be addressed. Sometimes they reveal misunderstandings that need clarification. Either way, the change or transformation improves through honest dialogue rather than being derailed by underground hidden resistance.

The Hidden Costs of Missing Psychological Safety

When psychological safety is absent during change and transformation, the costs extend far beyond the obvious metrics of adoption rates and timeline delays. These deeper costs often explain why change and transformation fail even when they appear to be progressing on schedule.

People comply publicly while resisting privately. They complete training, attend meetings, and say supportive things while quietly maintaining old workflows and avoiding new systems. This creates the illusion of progress while guaranteeing ultimate failure.

The best people leave. High performers have options. When transformation creates an environment where struggle is shameful rather than normal, they leave for organizations where they can be honest about challenges without career risk.

Innovation stops. Change and transformation should spark innovation as people discover new possibilities in new systems, structures, or processes. But innovation requires psychological safety to experiment, fail, and learn. Without safety, people stick to minimum requirements rather than exploring possibilities.

Trust erodes beyond repair. Each time people are punished or blamed for honest struggles, organizational trust degrades. Eventually, the damage becomes so deep that even when leaders try to create safety, nobody believes them anymore.

Future change or transformation becomes harder. When change and transformation happen without psychological safety, people learn that organizational change means hiding problems, faking competence, and protecting themselves. This makes every future change or transformation more difficult because defensive behaviors become organizational habits.

Practical Steps to Build Psychological Safety During Change and Transformation

Building psychological safety during change and transformation requires deliberate, consistent action. Here are specific practices that work based on research and real implementation experience.

Create Structured Opportunities for Honest Feedback

Don’t rely on people volunteering concerns in public meetings. Instead, create specific channels for honest feedback: anonymous surveys about implementation challenges, small-group discussions facilitated by neutral parties, one-on-one check-ins where leaders explicitly ask about struggles, and retrospectives focused on learning rather than blame.

Normalize Mistakes as Learning Data

Explicitly reframe mistakes from failures to learning data. When problems surface, publicly thank people for identifying them early. Share stories about mistakes leaders made and what they learned. Create “learning libraries” where common mistakes and their solutions are documented and shared to help others avoid them.

Measure and Monitor Safety

Use brief pulse surveys to track whether people feel safe raising concerns, admitting confusion, or asking for help. Monitor whether feedback volume increases or decreases over time. Track whether the same people always speak up or if diverse voices emerge. Treat declining psychological safety as a critical change and transformation risk requiring immediate attention.

Protect People Who Speak Up

When someone raises a concern or admits a struggle, actively protect them from any negative consequences. If other leaders respond with blame or defensiveness, intervene immediately and redirect toward learning. Make it explicitly clear that honesty is valued and protected, not just tolerated.

Take Action: Build Your Psychological Safety Foundation

Psychological safety isn’t a soft skill or nice-to-have during change and transformation. It’s the foundational requirement that makes honest problem-solving, rapid learning, and genuine adoption possible.

The question isn’t whether change or transformation will be difficult. It will be. The question is whether your culture makes it safe for people to be honest about that difficulty so that problems can surface when they’re still solvable rather than festering until they become catastrophic.