The term "psychological safety" often conjures images of office environments and corporate meeting rooms. But what does it mean when you work in a high-hazard environment (a construction site, an oil rig, or a major infrastructure project) where physical safety is paramount, and decisions carry multi-million dollar consequences?
The High-Stakes Paradox
In my work with major capital projects across Europe and the Middle East, I've observed a compelling paradox: the higher the stakes, the more critical psychological safety becomes—yet these are precisely the environments where it's hardest to build. When every decision can impact schedules worth millions and safety protocols protect human lives, the instinct is often to tighten control and reduce space for open dialogue. This pushes teams into the 'red zone' of over-activation, where fear of mistakes stifles communication, or the 'gray zone' of disengagement, where low psychological safety leads to passive compliance rather than active problem-solving. The goal should be the 'green zone'—where there's balance and structured processes support open dialogue, enabling teams to challenge assumptions while maintaining accountability.
What Psychological Safety Looks Like in High-Stakes Environments
In major projects, psychological safety isn't about making people comfortable – it's about making them confident enough to be uncomfortable. It means:
A construction supervisor feels secure enough to stop work when they notice a potential safety issue
A project engineer admits uncertainty about a technical solution (in front of a group of peers) before it becomes a problem
A contractor raises concerns about schedule feasibility in front of representatives from the owner’s team during planning rather than after delays occur
Team members from different cultural backgrounds feel empowered to question established processes
Three Core Principles for Building Psychological Safety in High-Stakes Environments
1. Link Psychological Safety to Physical Safety and Performance
In high-stakes environments, psychological safety cannot be treated as a "soft" initiative separate from "hard" performance metrics. The most successful projects I've worked with explicitly connect psychological safety to physical safety and project outcomes.
For example, one major energy project in Kazakhstan made "speaking up about concerns" a key safety behavior that was recognized and rewarded alongside traditional safety metrics. This simple shift led to a 40% increase in early problem reporting over six months.
2. Build Trust Through Structured Dialogue
Trust in high-stakes environments needs to be built systematically. This means creating structured opportunities for dialogue that:
· Focus on specific work challenges rather than general team building
· Include clear protocols for raising and addressing concerns
· Cross hierarchical and organizational boundaries
· Acknowledge and work with cultural differences
On a recent infrastructure project, we implemented regular "partnership health checks" where teams could raise concerns about issues using a structured framework. In this context, the “partnership health checks” serve as a collaborative dialogue mechanism, allowing teams to engage in constructive, depersonalized conversations about challenges in teamwork and coordination." This removed the personal risk of being the one to "complain" and created a routine platform for addressing tensions before they escalated. This way teams focused on solutions rather than attributing blame.
3. Lead with Deliberate Vulnerability
Leaders in high-stakes environments often feel they need to project constant certainty. However, the most effective leaders I've worked with practice what I call "deliberate vulnerability" – they consciously model the behaviors they want to see by:
· Admitting when they don't have all the answers
· Sharing lessons from past mistakes
· Actively seeking input on decisions
· Demonstrating how to raise and respond to concerns
Practical Steps for Project Leaders
1. Create Clear Escalation Pathways
· Define and communicate multiple channels for raising concerns
· Make it explicit when and how to use each channel
· Ensure these pathways cross organizational boundaries
2. Implement Regular Learning Practices
· Hold structured debriefs after key project phases, emphasizing the what and the how
· Create forums for sharing lessons learned across teams
· Recognize and reward learning from near-misses and challenges
3. Build Cultural Understanding
· Invest in cross-cultural training that moves beyond basic theory and awareness to practical application, helping teams recognize how cultural norms shape decision-making and conflict resolution.
· Use structured frameworks to map differences in hierarchy, direct vs. indirect communication, and problem-solving approaches across organizations.
· Establish a shared vocabulary for discussing concerns in a way that respects these differences, creating alignment without erasing cultural identities.
· Acknowledge and proactively adapt to varying leadership expectations, ensuring that collaboration strategies account for different cultural attitudes toward authority, consensus-building, and feedback.
4. Measure and Monitor
· Track leading indicators of psychological safety (e.g., number of concerns raised, response times)
· Include psychological safety metrics in project health checks
· Survey teams regularly on trust and collaboration
· Establish rituals that reinforce psychological safety, such as regular ‘open floor’ meetings where team members can voice concerns without hierarchy, rotating facilitation roles in discussions, or structured debriefs after key project phases to reflect on challenges and improvements.
The Business Case for Psychological Safety
The investment in building psychological safety pays off in concrete ways:
· Earlier identification of potential problems
· Reduced rework and delay costs
· Improved cross-functional collaboration
· Enhanced innovation in problem-solving
· Better retention of key talent
Moving Forward
Building psychological safety in high-stakes environments isn't a one-time initiative – it's an ongoing practice that requires constant attention and renewal. The key is to approach it with the same rigor and systematic attention we apply to technical and safety systems.
The projects that succeed in today's complex environment are those that can harness the full capability of their teams. This only happens when people feel secure enough to bring their full selves – their concerns, their ideas, and their differences – to the challenging work of delivering major projects.
This article is part of a series on building effective project relationships. Read my previous article on why human dynamics make or break major capital projects.
