In hesitating and then choosing not to speak up, Christina was making a quick, not entirely conscious, risk calculation – the kind of micro-assessment most of us make numerous times a day.

We now know that psychological safety emerges as a property of a group, and that groups in organizations tend to have very interpersonal climates. Even in a company with a strong corporate culture, you will find pockets of both high and low psychological safety.

Their work shows that psychological safety makes it easier for people to speak up about problems and to alter and improve work processes rather than engaging in the counterproductive workarounds.

They found that even when employing a highly-structured process improvement technique, interpersonal climate matters for success.

...more and more of the tasks that people do require judgement, coping with uncertainty, suggesting new ideas, and coordinating and communicating with others. This means that voice is mission critical.