In every school, there’s that kid—the one who gets invited to speak at assemblies, praised by teachers, maybe even wins awards. Everyone knows them. When lunchtime rolls around, they sit alone. They're liked, yet not quite one of them. Admired, but not embraced. Celebrated in public, sidelined in private.

That’s psychological safety in most organizations today.

It’s the popular unpopular kid. This phenomenon of being “known but not accepted” mirrors the concept of the popular unpopular kid—someone who is visible, respected for certain qualities, yet not fully embraced by the group.

The Paradox of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety, as defined by Amy Edmondson (1999), is “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.” It’s been linked to innovation, learning, ethical behavior, and high performance (Edmondson, 2019). Companies feature it in slide decks, keynote speeches, and values posters. Executives endorse it. HR or DE&I trains for it.

However, when it comes time to actually practice it—when someone disagrees in a meeting, raises an ethical red flag, or suggests a radical new idea—it’s suddenly too inconvenient. Too uncomfortable. Too risky.

In other words, psychological safety is popular when it’s theoretical, but unpopular when it’s real.

The "Popular Unpopular Kid" at Work

This phenomenon of being “known but not accepted” mirrors the concept of the popular unpopular kid—someone who is visible, respected for certain qualities, yet not fully embraced by the group.

In a workplace context, psychological safety:

• Wins awards (as a value)
• Makes guest appearances (in team offsites or town halls)
• Is name-dropped (during agile transformations or culture initiatives)

…but isn’t invited to hang out when:

• An employee shares something controversial
• A manager feels personally challenged
• A team member highlights flaws in a project

This duality creates a façade. Everyone wants to be seen supporting psychological safety, but fewer are willing to back it when it means defending the unpopular opinions, difficult truths, or quiet voices.

That’s when the cost begins to compound.

Why Is Psychological Safety Left Out?

1. It’s Threatening to Power Structures

Psychological safety invites candor, critique, and curiosity. Many traditional hierarchies reward conformity and control. When safety is present, people feel empowered to question how decisions are made, how promotions are handled, and why certain people are never held accountable.

To some leaders, this isn’t safe—it’s dangerous.

“The fear of losing status or competence in the eyes of others is deeply wired into us,” notes Edmondson (2019), explaining why people stay silent in unsafe environments.

Psychological safety disrupts the status quo. So even if it’s applauded in theory, it often stays benched when the real game begins.

2. It’s Misunderstood

Too often, organizations confuse psychological safety with comfort, niceness, or a lack of accountability. Real psychological safety isn’t soft—it’s strong. It enables productive conflict, difficult conversations, and truth-telling without fear.

Timothy R. Clark (2020) defines psychological safety in four stages: inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety, and challenger safety. It’s that last one—challenger safety—that organizations struggle with the most.

Allowing someone to challenge the way things are done requires humility, openness, and trust. It’s a high bar. So instead, many organizations get stuck in the earlier stages, never fully progressing.

3. It’s Easier to Perform Than to Practice

Talking the talk is easy. Real support takes work. Walking the talk requires:

• Leaders modeling vulnerability
• Teams creating norms for feedback and disagreement
• Accountability without retaliation
• Systemic protection for whistleblowers and dissenters

When psychological safety is treated as a checkbox instead of a cultural commitment, it becomes a branding asset—not a behavioral norm.

The Emotional Toll of Being Half-Accepted

Let’s go back to our metaphor.

Imagine being praised for your insights, but mocked when you speak up.
Imagine being told you’re brave, then punished for being honest.
Imagine being in the spotlight, but never feeling seen.

That’s the experience many employees have when organizations say they support psychological safety, but don’t back it with behavior.

It hurts.

Neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman (2013) found that social pain—like exclusion or rejection—activates the same brain regions as physical pain. The brain doesn’t distinguish much between a broken bone and being ostracized in a meeting.

So when someone speaks up and is ignored, belittled, or sidelined, it’s not “just a work thing.” It’s a wound.

Those wounds come with compound interest. That means the emotional or psychological pain not only persists—it grows over time, building on itself, especially if unacknowledged or unhealed. It’s a powerful metaphor for how unresolved trauma or conflict escalates quietly but powerfully.

Read the InKNOWnative Insights: You Can See Physical Pain. You Can't See Exclusion Injury. Your Brain Feels Both. 

The Cost of Exiling Psychological Safety

Ignoring psychological safety isn’t just emotionally damaging—it’s operationally expensive.

• Teams stop speaking up about risks, leading to costly failures.
• Innovation dries up because only “safe” ideas are entertained.
• Burnout increases as people can’t express concerns or needs.
• Ethics erode because silence becomes a survival strategy.

Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the number one predictor of high-performing teams (Duhigg, 2016). Not talent. Not tenure. Not compensation. Safety.

Yet, many companies still treat it as optional.

So What Can You Do?

If you’re a leader, coach, HR or DE&I partner—or just someone who believes people deserve to feel safe at work—here’s how you can stop psychological safety from being the popular unpopular kid:

1. Walk the Talk

Don’t just endorse psychological safety. Live it. Admit mistakes. Invite dissent. Thank people for hard feedback. Show people it’s safe by making it safe.

2. Build the System to Hold It

Policies, feedback loops, reporting mechanisms, meeting norms—all of these should support psychological safety structurally. It can’t be one person’s job or a seasonal initiative.

3. Protect the Voices at the Edges

Look out for the quiet ones, the new ones, the contractors, the dissenters. When you advocate for the least powerful in the room, you make the room safer for everyone.

4. Move Past Performance

Psychological safety isn’t a show. It’s a culture. Drop the posturing. Ditch the posters. Start listening—really listening—to what your people are saying.

Read the InKNOWnative Insights: The Human Need to Be Heard: How Deep Listening Builds Belonging, Trust and Psychological Safety. 

Let Psychological Safety Sit at the Table

The kid who’s popular but always alone? They don’t want pity.
They want inclusion.

Psychological safety doesn’t need another poster campaign or a shoutout in the All Hands. It needs real commitment.

Let it sit at the table. Let it lead the discussion. Let it challenge your assumptions. Let it be uncomfortable.

"When psychological safety finally moves from popular-but-unpopular to popular-and-integrated, that’s when real transformation happens."

—InKNOWnative

It stops being a kid everyone watches but no one invites.

It becomes the foundation everyone depends on—but no longer takes for granted.

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. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

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

✨ 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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