Psychological Safety ≠ Emotional Indulgence

Creating cultures of courage, not avoidance.

You want me to what? Work? I just can't today.

By now, most leaders have heard the term "psychological safety"—the belief that employees can speak up, ask questions, or admit mistakes without fear of punishment or embarrassment. Pioneered by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson in 1999, it's recognized as one of the strongest predictors of team performance. But knowing the definition and understanding what it actually looks like in practice are two very different things. As the term has gained traction, its meaning has become muddied. Too often, psychological safety is confused with something it was never meant to be: emotional indulgence.

Safety Doesn’t Mean Comfort

Let’s be clear: safety is not the absence of discomfort. It’s the presence of trust, boundaries, and consistency that allow people to stay present even when things get hard.

In fact, most of the growth we ask of our people—feedback, accountability, conflict navigation, innovation—requires discomfort.

If your team never feels uncomfortable, you don’t have psychological safety. You have stagnation.

To understand this better, let’s go back to real-world safety.

Fall-arrest gear isn’t comfortable. It’s heavy, restrictive, and awkward. But when a worker clips in, they’re not expecting to fall—they’re preparing just in case. The harness doesn’t remove risk; it minimizes harm if something goes wrong.

Seat belts are the same. No one buckles up expecting a crash; they buckle up because they understand that safety is a system. The belt doesn’t prevent the accident—it prevents tragedy when the unexpected happens.

And if an accident does happen, that doesn’t mean you’ll walk away without a scratch. You might be bruised, shaken, even sore for days. But you’re alive. You’ve absorbed the impact in a way that lets you recover.

That’s what psychological safety does, too. It doesn’t protect people from discomfort, tension, or hard feedback. It gives them enough support—enough trust and structure—to withstand the impact, learn from it, and keep moving forward.

So yes, safety can feel restrictive at times. Boundaries often do. But those boundaries are what make risk-taking possible. They’re the harness that allows innovation without freefall and make it possible to take risks, recover from impact, and keep going.

When we understand that, we stop treating discomfort as danger—and start seeing it as data. Discomfort tells us where growth is happening, where boundaries are being tested, and where support structures might need strengthening.

Unfortunately, many workplaces miss this distinction. In trying to make everyone feel safe, they unintentionally drift into emotional indulgence—where comfort becomes the goal instead of courage.

The Problem with Emotional Indulgence

Here’s what emotional indulgence looks like at work:

• Tolerating repeated emotional outbursts without feedback

• Allowing performance issues to go unaddressed because someone is “having a hard time”

• Letting feelings dictate priorities instead of values or goals

• Avoiding difficult conversations because “they’re too sensitive”

While well-intentioned, these approaches enable emotional outsourcing: “My discomfort becomes your responsibility to manage.”

This is not sustainable—and it’s not fair to peers, leaders, or the individual themselves.

What True Psychological Safety Looks Like

• You can say, “I’m struggling,” without fear of punishment.

• You can receive feedback without being shamed.

• You can set a boundary and be asked to stay accountable.

• You can be human—without making others carry your emotions for you.

True psychological safety empowers people to self-regulate—not self-protect through avoidance.

Courage + Containment = Real Safety

Think of psychological safety like parenting:

• Courage is creating space for feelings and vulnerability.

• Containment is holding the boundary and saying: “You can feel that… and we’re still going to school/work/life today.”

Healthy families, teams, and societies need both. If we only do courage, we risk enabling helplessness. If we only do containment, we risk shutting people down. But together, they create the conditions for resilience—the ability to feel deeply and still move forward.

We’ve spent a generation teaching courage—how to name feelings, validate emotions, and talk about mental health. That work matters deeply. But now, we must also teach containment—how to hold those feelings responsibly, manage them in context, and stay connected while self-regulating.

If we want to create societies rooted in psychological safety, we have to model both courage and containment from childhood to boardroom. Kids learn emotional regulation the same way adults do—through consistency, trust, and boundaries that hold when things get hard.

The next evolution of psychological safety isn’t just about workplaces—it’s about rebalancing the social contract. It’s about moving from venting as expression to regulating as connection. When courage and containment coexist, we don’t just build high-trust teams. We build high-trust communities.

Final Word: This Is the Work

Creating psychologically safe workplaces that aren't emotionally indulgent requires a fundamental shift in how we lead. It means getting comfortable with discomfort—yours and others'. It means having the courage to give honest feedback, hold people accountable, and let them struggle through challenges that will help them grow.

This isn't about being cold or unsupportive. It's about recognizing that real safety comes from knowing your leader will be honest with you, not from being shielded from reality. It's about building teams where people can handle hard conversations because they trust the intent behind them.

The leaders who do this well understand that psychological safety and high standards aren't opposing forces—they're what make each other possible. Safety without accountability becomes indulgence. Accountability without safety becomes fear. Together, they create environments where people can do their best work.

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Join me live: Cultivating Emotional Regulation as a Personal and Professional Skill

If you're ready to develop the skills that make this possible, join us on November 28 for our free webinar: Cultivating Emotional Regulation as a Personal and Professional Skill. We'll explore how to manage your own emotional responses, create space for others' emotions without being derailed by them, and build the kind of steady leadership that psychological safety actually requires.

Cultivating Emotional Regulation as a Personal and Professional Skill

Date: November 28, 2025

Time: 10:00 AM (GMT -07:00 MT (Edmonton))

Format: Live Online

Cost: Free

In this session, we'll explore:

• The neuroscience of emotional regulation and why it matters for leaders

• Creating space for difficult emotions without letting them drive decisions

• The difference between compassion and emotional enmeshment

• Practical strategies to maintain composure when stakes are high

Save your spot: https://www.elioscollective.ca/event-details/cultivating-emotional-regulation-as-a-personal-and-professional-skill

Strong leaders aren't unfeeling—they're emotionally steady. Join us to develop the skill that makes everything else possible.