Measuring Psychological Safety Requires More Than a Survey—it Requires Trust

Psychological safety is now widely recognized as a critical driver of team performance, innovation, and employee engagement. But how do you actually measure it?

The Fearless Organization Scan, based on the pioneering research of Dr. Amy Edmondson, offers one of the most powerful, evidence-based tools for assessing psychological safety at the team level. It’s insightful, actionable, and research-backed.

But here’s a critical truth most organizations miss:

The accuracy of the Scan depends on who’s facilitating it.

Without a neutral, trained practitioner, even the best diagnostic tool can yield incomplete—or misleading—results.

This post explores why psychological safety must be assessed with care, what goes wrong when internal teams run the Scan, and why partnering with a Certified Practitioner like Shari Soroka, Founder of InKNOWnative, ensures you get insight—not just data.

What Is the Fearless Organization Scan?

Created by Dr. Amy Edmondson and The Fearless Organization team, the Scan assesses psychological safety across four key dimensions:

1. Willingness to Help

2. Inclusion and Diversity

3. Attitude Toward Risk and Failure

4. Open Conversation and Speaking Up

These categories go beyond engagement or satisfaction—they tap into how safe people feel to question, dissent, admit mistakes, and challenge authority.

“Psychological safety is a belief that one can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation.”
— Edmondson, 2019

But belief and behavior are shaped by context. And context is shaped by power. That’s where facilitation matters.

The Problem With Internal Facilitation

Many organizations are tempted to run the Scan through:

• HR

• DE&I Teams

• Internal Coaches

• People Managers

While well-intentioned, these setups come with unintended consequences.

😬 Power Dynamics Mute Honesty

Employees may fear retaliation, judgment, or reputation damage. Even with anonymous surveys, the perception of being watched or evaluated can cause self-censorship.

📉 Responses Become Polished, Not Honest

People “game” the system by giving socially desirable answers, especially if they feel pressure to show progress or protect team leads.

🔒 Sensitive Truths Stay Hidden

Real barriers—like broken trust, toxic leadership, or exclusion—rarely surface in environments that don’t feel emotionally safe.

This creates false signals: organizations believe safety exists when in fact, employees are simply afraid to tell the truth.

“You can’t measure psychological safety in an environment that doesn’t feel safe.”
— InKNOWnative

Why a Neutral Certified Practitioner Makes the Difference

Partnering with a Fearless Organization Certified Practitioner, such as Shari Soroka of InKNOWnative, addresses all of these challenges—and unlocks deeper insights.

Here’s how:

✅ 1. Confidentiality and Objectivity

Shari operates outside your organizational hierarchy. Her presence ensures that:

• Participants trust the process

• Responses remain anonymous and unfiltered

• The data reflects truth, not fear

She holds the space with neutrality, inviting candor and psychological safety during the assessment itself—because ironically, it takes safety to measure safety.

✅ 2. Psychological Safety During the Process

Many companies overlook this irony: you cannot assess psychological safety without creating psychological safety in the process.

As a certified practitioner, Shari ensures:

• Safe entry points for vulnerable conversations

• Clear norms around confidentiality

• Ground rules for feedback and next steps

The Scan becomes not just diagnostic—but developmental—building safety even as it measures it.

✅ 3. Insightful Interpretation

Survey data is only as powerful as the insight you can extract from it.

Certified Practitioners are trained to:

• Identify patterns and blind spots

• Decode “soft signals” beneath the scores

• Translate results into narrative meaning

Rather than merely reporting data, Shari provides a storyline your leadership can understand—and act on.

“She reads between the lines and translates silence into strategy.”
— InKNOWnative Client Testimonial

✅ 4. Actionable Follow-Through with the Leader’s Toolkit

Insight is only half the value.

The Fearless Organization Leader’s Toolkit, used by certified practitioners, provides:

• Team debrief templates

• Reflection questions

• Facilitation guides

• Behavior modeling frameworks

• Learning integration strategies

Shari uses this toolkit to help your organization:

• Respond constructively to the data

• Build rituals that normalize voice

• Coach leaders to model safety daily

• Integrate results into team development and transformation initiatives

This turns your Scan into a launchpad for long-term change—not just a report you file away.

Why Self-Assessments and Engagement Surveys Aren’t Enough

Many companies think they’re already “measuring” psychological safety through:

• Annual engagement surveys

• DE&I dashboards

• 360s and performance reviews

• Self-assessments

Here’s the problem: these tools were not designed to detect fear, silence, or risk aversion.

In fact, the more fear exists in your culture, the more these tools will lie to you.

“Asking an unsafe system to assess its own safety is like asking a locked room to check if the key works.”
— InKNOWnative

Only the Fearless Organization Scan, led by a certified third party, can provide a validated, psychologically attuned measure of voice, trust, and candor at the team level.

Why the Stakes Are Too High to Guess

Psychological safety is not a “soft” metric—it’s a strategic one.

According to the Center for Creative Leadership (2021), silence in the workplace costs:

• Innovation

• Engagement

• Retention

• Ethical clarity

• Decision quality

And Edmondson’s research shows that low-safety cultures are slower to adapt, less collaborative, and more prone to catastrophic failure (Edmondson, 2019).

“Culture change doesn’t begin with software. It begins with truth. And truth begins with trust.”
— InKNOWnative

If you want fearless teams that perform, learn, and grow—don’t guess. Diagnose with integrity.

Who Should Lead Your Scan?

Choose a certified, trained, and neutral facilitator who:

• Has no reporting relationship to participants

• Is versed in trauma-informed, inclusion-sensitive facilitation

• Understands systems thinking, team health, and leadership behavior

• Brings structured frameworks and next-step planning

• Can support both cultural safety and delivery goals

Shari Soroka, Founder of InKNOWnative, brings all of this and more. As a Fearless Organization Certified Practitioner and expert in agile transformation, inclusion, and leadership development, she bridges strategy and safety with clarity and compassion.

Final Thought: Truth Without Trust Doesn’t Surface

If your organization wants real insight into:

• What teams aren’t saying

• Where trust is breaking

• How culture is enabling—or blocking—performance

Then the Scan must be run by someone people feel safe being honest with.

Trust isn’t a feature of the tool—it’s the precondition for using it effectively.

So when you’re ready to explore psychological safety in your teams:

• Don’t default to HR.

• Don’t DIY with a spreadsheet.

• Don’t mistake silence for success.

Partner with a neutral Certified Practitioner who can hold space, decode complexity, and turn insight into action.

Because the future of work doesn’t just require feedback.
It requires fearless honesty—and the safety to express it. Learn more about what to expect with the Fearless Organization Scan.

If you want to bring psychological safety into your organization but aren't sure where to begin, start here by reading this InKNOWnative Insights: How to Use InKNOWnative’s Step-by-Step Training to Build Sustainable Psychological Safety. 

Citations

• Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley.

• Edmondson, A. C., & The Fearless Organization. (2020). The Fearless Organization Scan and Leader’s Toolkit.

• Detert, J. R., & Treviño, L. K. (2010). “Speaking Up to Higher-Ups: How Supervisors and Skip-Level Leaders Influence Voice in Organizations.” Organization Science.

• Center for Creative Leadership. (2021). The Hidden Cost of Silence at Work.

✨ Brought to you by InKNOWnative 

The spark of innovation & knowledge is native to each of us. Empowering organizations to build fearless, high-performing, learning cultures through psychological safety, inclusion, and innovation.

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