United Airlines Flight 173, bound from New York to Portland, never reached its destination. It was December 1978.
The landing gear seemed to be damaged, and the captain decided to keep the plane in the air while waiting for instructions from the control tower. For almost an hour they circled above the city, trying to solve the issue while the fuel was running out.
And as the fuel dropped below safety levels, no one was truly speaking — not in the sense of communicating. The captain was focused on the landing gear, the copilots knew the fuel was about to run out but didn’t really say it; one of them hinted at it, the other asked about it in a low voice, the captain minimized the concern, and they stopped insisting. A few minutes after 6 p.m., the plane crashed a few miles from the runway, and ten people died.
During the investigation, it emerged that the problem wasn’t technical — it was human. No one had the courage, or the possibility, to say: “We need to land immediately.” No one felt authorized to contradict the captain. Because in that cockpit a hierarchical silence prevailed — a silence that cost dearly, the lives of ten people.
If today the cockpits of commercial aircraft speak of Crew Resource Management, it is thanks to incidents like this one. Thanks to that tragic lesson: expertise is not enough. People must be able to talk to each other.
There must be a space where the truth can surface, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it comes from those with less voice.
Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, has spent thirty years studying the contexts in which this kind of space exists. She calls it psychological safety. But be careful: don’t imagine a soft place or a climate of serenity and peace. It’s a dynamic, unstable, living condition. It’s the deep feeling that you can make mistakes without being punished, that you can disagree without being pushed aside, that you can tell the truth even when it creates friction with someone else’s truth.
One of the most underestimated elements is, in fact, the sense of purpose. Feeling that your work contributes to something bigger—that you are not just a cog in a productive mechanism, but part of a broader vision—makes a difference. In companies where this sense is clear, where everyone’s contribution is recognized, and where people feel they are part of something that transcends them, joy is not an exception but a daily experience.
And this is where another fundamental element comes into play: desire. Daniel Z. Lieberman, in his book Dopamine: The Chemistry of Desire, describes how dopamine is the driving force behind human ambition. It is not activated by achieving a goal, but by anticipating a new one. It is the same impulse that pushes us to search, to imagine the future, and to build what does not yet exist. If dopamine fuels desire, joy is the energy that allows it to be sustained over time. And the world of work is no exception.
In her book The Fearless Organization, Edmondson states this clearly:
Psychological safety is something to continually strive for, rather than a goal to achieve once and for all.
She describes it as a dynamic and endless journey — a tendency, an ambition that teams must keep nurturing by analyzing internal dynamics and dysfunctional or closed patterns. It’s not a destination, it’s a practice; it’s not a result, it’s a tension. A continuous pull toward a culture of listening, toward words that take shape within shared responsibility.
And it is also a paradox: to create safety, you have to be willing to take small relational risks. You have to put yourself out there. To say: “I don’t understand,” “I disagree,” “This seems risky to me.”
We don’t have to imagine dramatic cases like United Airlines Flight 173 — psychological safety can “save” us at any moment. Another of its oddities is that psychological safety is invisible when it exists, but its absence is glaringly obvious. It shows in the pause when no one responds, in the avoided glance, in the suggestion that dies halfway through a sentence, in the colleague who has an idea but keeps it to themselves, in the manager who notices something but doesn’t say it. It is in that moment when one chooses not to disturb the order, even if the order is wrong. And yet, very little would be enough: a gesture, a response, an authentic invitation.
Talking with Pietro, one of our Wyders, he reminded us of exactly this: the most powerful way to foster psychological safety is to act as if it already exists. As if the team were already a space of freedom. As if trust were already there — because that’s often how it starts: by imitation, by resonance. Someone speaks up, and that gesture becomes an implicit permission for others.
But it’s not just about authorizing people to speak; it requires something deeper: a culture of listening. Listening that is presence, willingness to change one’s mind, the ability to support another’s voice even when it challenges us. And in a team, the real obstacle to expression is not a lack of ideas, but the fear of judgment. When that fear eases (it doesn’t disappear, but it loosens), something rare can emerge: living thought. The kind that forms while it is being spoken. The kind that needs another person to take shape.
Tommaso, one of our Wyders, tells us on this subject:
“Psychological safety is the result of a well-defined organizational culture that is expressed at the level of work groups and cannot be limited to specific characteristics of the individuals who are part of it. As such, it can be promoted and sustained through training interventions and, above all, through continuous practice in daily work.”
There is no organization that “has” psychological safety once and for all; there are teams that cultivate it every day, that notice when it begins to decline. And here, hierarchy doesn’t matter: the climate is shaped by those with decision-making power, but also by those with the courage to speak uncomfortable truths. It is shaped by those who care about the way people work together. Those who don’t wait to feel “safe” to speak, but speak in order to make the place safer for others as well.
From this perspective, the measure of a company is not how many mistakes are made, but how it reacts when they occur.
At Wyde, we firmly believe in the organizational value of psychological safety and its positive impacts on productivity and the work environment.
For this reason, we are committed to promoting and spreading it through the Erasmus+ project wellbeINTeam (Healthy and productive hybrid workplace environment in small and medium-sized enterprises).
We are project partners together with:
-
Oic Poland Foundation Of Wsei University – Poland – Project Leader
-
Smartup N.B.Systematicmanagements.L. – Spain
-
Macrix Technology Group
We leave you with a question that you could bring into your organization when you feel there isn’t openness in the team: don’t ask yourself, “Why isn’t it being said?” but rather, “What can we do, together, to make it sayable?”
Here are some small, simple actions that can make a difference right away:
-
Halve statements and double questions: there is no safety without listening;
-
Set learning goals alongside business goals: growth is not just about producing more;
-
Receive bad news with curiosity and balance: this too is a way to make people feel welcomed.
