Psychological safety is enabled by manager capability

Awareness and compliance training are only part of the solution, writes Sleiman Abou-Hamdan.

Picture this.

A technically strong employee has recently been promoted into a management role.

One of their team members has been missing deadlines. Errors are starting to affect others. The manager knows they need to address it, but they’ve been putting off the conversation.

Eventually, they sit down together.

“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” the employee says.

Then comes something the manager wasn’t expecting: “I’ve been overloaded for months. Nobody asked. And now you’re telling me I’m the problem?”

What happens in the next 30 seconds matters.

Does the manager become defensive? Do they retreat because the conversation has become uncomfortable? Or can they hold two things at once?

There may be a genuine performance issue. And there may also be something important they need to hear.

That is manager capability, and increasingly, it is also part of the human side of psychosocial safety.

From technical expert to people manager

There is an assumption I’m seeing in Australian organisations.

Someone is excellent at their job. They understand the technical work, solve difficult problems and become the person everyone turns to when something goes wrong.

So they get promoted.

Then they’re asked to do something considerably more complicated: lead and manage people.

Suddenly, they must give difficult feedback, respond when someone says they’re overwhelmed, navigate conflict, listen when their decisions are challenged and address behaviour affecting the team.

And they’re expected to help create a psychosocially safe workplace.

My concern is that we sometimes give someone responsibility for people before developing their capability to lead them.

They are not the same thing.

In my previous HR Leader article, Why HR must lead the human side of AI transformation, I argued that as systems accelerate, organisations also need to strengthen human capability.

Psychosocial safety brings that challenge into everyday workplace moments.

Because eventually, psychosocial safety becomes a conversation.

“I’m not coping with the workload.”

“I think I’m being treated unfairly.”

“I disagree with that decision.”

That is where policy meets human behaviour.

What happens when someone speaks up?

A meta-analysis of 136 independent samples and more than 22,000 individuals examined the drivers and outcomes of psychological safety, including the importance of leadership and workplace relationships (Frazier et al., 2017).

Psychological safety and psychosocial safety are distinct concepts, but research on psychological safety offers useful insight into what happens when employees raise concerns or speak openly with their managers.

An employee tells their manager their workload has become unmanageable.

One responds: “Everyone’s busy. We just need to get through this month.”

Another says: “Talk me through where the pressure is coming from.”

The workload hasn’t disappeared, but the employee’s experience of speaking up has changed.

Or imagine an employee challenges a proposed change: “The decision has been made.”

Versus: “The decision may not change, but I want to understand the risk you’re seeing.”

Everyone else in that room is learning something.

What really happens here when someone speaks up?

Safe doesn’t always mean comfortable

Psychosocial safety should not mean removing difficult conversations from work.

Sometimes the manager does need to address poor performance. Sometimes behaviour does need to change. Sometimes the answer will still be no.

Research into workplace conflict avoidance suggests anticipated relationship costs can influence people to preserve superficial harmony rather than confront an issue (Zhang & Wei, 2017).

A manager thinks: “They’re going through a difficult time. I’ll raise it next week.”

It feels compassionate.

Weeks later, expectations remain unclear, colleagues are compensating and resentment is growing.

The capability is being able to say, “We need to talk about what happened,” and remain open when the other person says, “I see it differently.”

Accountability and psychological safety are not opposites.

Managers must manage themselves first

There is another human being in every difficult management conversation who is easy to overlook: the manager.

Research suggests that how managers regulate their emotions is associated with their performance in emotionally demanding leadership situations (Torrence & Connelly, 2019).

When challenged, some become defensive or controlling. Others detach or avoid the issue.

An employee says: “You’re not listening to me.”

The manager’s immediate thought might be: That’s unfair.

Can they notice their reaction without being controlled by it? Can they stay curious enough to ask: “What am I missing?”

Remaining open when your judgement is being challenged takes confidence.

A meta-analysis by Schlaerth, Ensari and Christian (2013) also found emotional intelligence positively associated with constructive conflict management.

Technical expertise might help determine what went wrong. Leading people requires something more.

From awareness to capability

This is where I think manager psychosocial safety development needs to evolve.

Hazard awareness matters. Policies, systems, risk assessments and compliance training matter.

But knowledge doesn’t guarantee capability.

It is relatively simple to identify the better response in a training room. It is much harder when someone is sitting opposite you, upset, challenging your judgement or telling you something you don’t want to hear.

Managers need opportunities to practise those moments before the stakes are real.

• Can they give difficult feedback without unnecessarily escalating defensiveness?
• Can they communicate an unpopular decision while remaining open to legitimate concerns?
• Can they recognise what pressure is doing to their own behaviour?

That is the shift from knowing about psychosocial safety to leading it.

Technical expertise matters. Policies matter. Systems matter.

But none can determine what happens in those next 30 seconds when an employee closes the manager’s door and says: “Can I talk to you about something?”

The goal shouldn’t be to remove difficult conversations from work. The goal should be to develop managers who can have difficult conversations well.

If organisations expect managers to create psychosocially safer workplaces, we need to give them more than responsibility.

We need to give them the capability.

Sleiman Abou-Hamdan is the founder of Holistic Psychology Australia, a clinical psychologist, leadership and executive coach, author, and former Australian Army Officer.

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