> Psychological safety describes a belief that neither the formal nor informal consequences of interpersonal risks, like asking for help or admitting a failure,

> Psychological safety describes a belief that neither the formal nor informal consequences of interpersonal risks, like asking for help or admitting a failure, will be punitive. In psychologically safe environments, people believe that if they make a mistake or ask for help, others will not react badly. Instead, candor is both allowed and expected. People feel "psychologically safe" because they have confidence. They have confidence because they have a track record of getting things right. They might be wrong now but they have enough credit to risk being wrong. Successful teams have people who speak up because those people are confident (likely due to a history of success). In any case, in the event that you speak up and are wrong, there's no way you can be insulated from "formal nor informal consequences of interpersonal risks". If someone says something that I know to be wrong, it makes me think less of them. Will I be rude to them? No, but if it keeps happening I'll pay less attention. Kind people will give you plenty of chances but only stupid people will give you infinite chances. The perspective here, where we should aim for "psychological safety" is minimizing one kind of fail case (people not speaking up because they're afraid) and maximizing another (people speaking up and being wrong). It isn't obvious that you should make that trade-off.