The corporate world has fallen head over heels for the idea of a “speak Up culture.” It sounds good on paper. It feels progressive, empowering and forward-thinking.
But here’s the truth: it’s overrated, misunderstood, and dangerously misleading. Take Qantas, Boeing and ITN. Each promoted “speak up” initiatives, yet employees still feared retaliation, complaints went unheard, and trust evaporated. Here’s why.
The Hidden Assumptions in ‘Speak Up’
When leaders promote a “speak up culture,” they make three risky assumptions.
1. Everyone already feels safe
Psychological safety isn’t a slogan on the wall. It’s not a poster in the break room or on the back of bathroom doors telling people “It’s safe to speak your truth.” It’s an individual’s lived experience of safety, comfort, and confidence in a given moment. It’s personal, contextual, and deeply affected by environment and relationships. It’s how safe you feel in this moment, in this space, with these people. And here’s the thing. No two people in your organization will feel exactly the same level of safety.
“Speak up culture” assumes they do, and they all have the right environment to share their concerns.
If you ask people to speak up in a toxic, negative, or unsafe environment, you’re not empowering them. You’re throwing them to the wolves and handing them a microphone.
As it’s often defined, “speak up culture” encourages people to admit mistakes, give feedback, take risks, voice opinions and “be their authentic selves” without fear of repercussion. Noble idea. But the reality is that without real psychological safety, those very actions can backfire and cause harm. Without the groundwork of genuine psychological safety, speaking up isn’t empowering. It’s exposing.
2. People have the skills to do it
Speaking up is not just talking. It’s a skill set. It takes self-awareness, strong communication skills, and an understanding of team dynamics. It also needs a safe, inclusive space to speak into.
Most people haven’t been trained in these skills. Yet organizations expect them to perform on demand. They put up “We encourage you to speak up” banners without giving employees the tools, training, resources or protected space to practice.
That’s not empowerment. That’s negligence.
3: Superficial fixes will solve it
In the rush to create “speak up cultures,” companies often grab the low-hanging fruit: anonymous reporting tools. Trust-building workshops. Vague statements about respect. Nice ideas, but totally inadequate.
Here’s the truth. If the individual doesn’t feel safe, no tool, workshop or team-building exercise is going to magically make people feel comfortable and confident to speak up. This is why many “speak up” initiatives fail. They’re surface-level and they miss the deeper work.
The Real Problem: A Flawed Definition
The most common definition of psychological safety: a shared belief within a team that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks without fear of negative consequences. Sounds great in theory. But it’s flawed.
This belief is a mental construct. It’s shared, stable, and socially reinforced. If psychological safety were truly a shared belief, everyone in a team would feel the same level of safety. But they don’t. That’s not how human experience works.
In reality, psychological safety is personal. It’s subjective. It shifts based on context, environment, and interaction.
Psychological Safety Is a State, Not a Belief
Psychological safety is an internal, moment-to-moment state, not a fixed team-wide belief. It can change many times in a single day. You might feel safe in a one-on-one meeting, but less so in a larger group.
It’s shaped by:
- Context: who’s in the room, the size of the group, behaviors
- Environment: supportive or hostile
- Interactions: your relationship with individuals in the room, constructive feedback, or public criticism
It’s tied to mental clarity, emotional regulation, and mental steadiness, all of which can change multiple times a day. You might feel psychologically safe one moment and unsafe the next, depending on what’s happening around you.
If You Want People to Speak Up, Stop Forcing It
If you focus solely on creating a “speak up culture,” you’re missing the deeper, essential work that makes it possible. That work includes:
- Building intrapersonal (self) awareness
- Developing communication and feedback skills
- Understanding and strengthening healthy team dynamics
- Creating genuinely safe and inclusive environments
- Encouraging collaboration, innovation, and creativity
Without these foundations, you don’t get more speaking up. You get more fear, more silence, and more disengagement. Here’s the irony: when you create and nurture a psychologically safe and healthy culture, people will naturally speak up. You won’t need to plaster it on the walls or write it into a corporate value statement. It will just happen.
Force it without laying the groundwork, and you’ll create the opposite of what you intended.
What Leaders Can Do
Start with You. Psychological safety starts with you. Understand your own emotions, triggers, and communication style. Show up authentically. Model the behavior you want to see.
Bring Everyone Into the Conversation. Talk openly about psychological safety. Run workshops or training to raise awareness and share practical examples.
Equip People with Skills. Provide training in authenticity, communication, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and feedback. Help teams navigate personalities and dynamics effectively.
Set Clear Expectations and Boundaries. Define how teams communicate, handle conflict, respect boundaries, and celebrate achievements. Clear expectations reduce uncertainty and create a predictable environment.
Measure and Improve. Gather feedback, track progress, and target interventions. Treat psychological safety as a living, evolving priority. Not a one-off exercise.
Think Strategically. Address the root causes of tension or toxicity. Train leaders and teams, revise policies, and create safe spaces for participation.
Safety is something you create and nurture, not declare.
An Illusion
“Speak up culture” has become a corporate comfort blanket. It gives the illusion of progress while ignoring the hard, necessary work of cultural transformation. It’s time to stop promoting it as the gold standard and start doing the harder, deeper work of creating environments where people genuinely feel safe and can thrive.
Psychological safety isn’t about urging people to take interpersonal risks or to be brave. It’s about creating conditions where bravery isn’t needed. When they truly feel safe, valued, and included, they want to contribute. They want to share new ideas. They want to challenge thinking. That’s when teams thrive.
Until organizations understand that, “speak up culture” will remain one of the most dangerous fallacies in modern workplace culture. So let’s move past the buzzwords. Let’s focus on building environments where safety is felt by everyone, in every moment.
Do that, and you won’t need to tell people to speak up. They just will.