Mary Parker Follett Would Agree With Today's Concept of Psychological Safety
There's a moment in almost every workplace where someone has an idea but stays quiet. And that silence? Maybe they think it'll sound stupid. Day to day, maybe they've spoken up before and been shot down. Maybe they just figure it's not worth the hassle. It costs companies millions in missed innovations, unaddressed problems, and employees who feel like cogs rather than people.
Now imagine the opposite: a workplace where everyone speaks up. Practically speaking, where junior employees challenge senior ones and it's met with curiosity rather than contempt. In real terms, where failure is treated as information, not a reason to punish. Where people actually want to be there because they feel like they matter The details matter here..
That's not a fantasy. It's what happens when psychological safety exists — and it's exactly the world Mary Parker Follett was describing over a century ago, even if she didn't use those exact words That's the part that actually makes a difference. Which is the point..
Who Was Mary Parker Follett?
Follett was a social psychologist and management theorist writing in the early 1900s, and honestly, she was decades ahead of her time. Here's the thing — while her contemporaries were busy figuring out how to make workers more efficient through strict hierarchy and top-down control, Follett was asking different questions. She wanted to know how people could work together in a way that made everyone better It's one of those things that adds up..
She spent her life studying groups, organizations, and how humans interact in professional settings. Her work covered everything from conflict resolution to leadership theory to the nature of power itself. And here's the thing — most of what she wrote in the 1920s and 1930s sounds like it could have been written last month But it adds up..
She died in 1933, so she never got to see the modern workplace. But if she were alive today, watching teams struggle with remote collaboration, burnout, and the endless search for "engagement," she'd probably have some very specific opinions. And one of them would be this: psychological safety isn't optional. It's the foundation of everything.
What Exactly Is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety is the belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up, asking questions, admitting mistakes, or sharing concerns. It's the feeling that you can be yourself at work without risking your reputation or your job.
The term got mainstream attention thanks to Google's Project Aristotle, a massive study that tried to figure why some teams thrived while others tanked. That said, not talent. And what they found surprised almost everyone: the single biggest predictor of team performance was psychological safety. Also, the researchers looked at everything — team composition, personality types, work styles, you name it. In real terms, not structure. Whether people felt safe to take interpersonal risks.
Amy Edmondson, the Harvard professor who popularized the concept, describes it as "a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking." It's not about being comfortable. It's about being able to be uncomfortable without being punished for it.
Why It Matters
Here's what most leaders miss: you can have the smartest people in the room, the best processes, the clearest strategy — and still fail if nobody feels safe to say what they actually think.
When people feel unsafe, they self-censor. They nod along with bad ideas because challenging them feels too risky. They hide mistakes until they become disasters. They leave meetings not saying "I think this is going to blow up" and then watching it blow up from their couch. They don't ask "dumb questions" that would actually prevent huge problems.
The cost isn't just missed opportunities. Still, it's employee turnover, burnout, and a kind of slow-motion disengagement that kills organizations from the inside. People can only pretend to care for so long before they stop pretending Which is the point..
Follett understood this intuitively. That's why she wrote about the "group approach" — the idea that the best decisions come from collective thinking, where everyone's input shapes the outcome. But she also knew that collective thinking only works if people actually contribute. And they only contribute if they feel like their voice matters.
That's psychological safety. Follett just called it something different.
How Follett's Ideas Connect to Psychological Safety
Follett wrote extensively about what she called "power with" versus "power over.Day to day, " Most organizations operate on power over — someone at the top has authority, and everyone below them follows orders. It's hierarchical, it's transactional, and it creates exactly the kind of environment where people stay quiet.
Follett thought this was not just inefficient but fundamentally wrong. Also, she advocated for power with — a collaborative model where authority flows through relationships rather than job titles. Where people work with each other, not for or under each other.
Sound familiar? They contribute. But when power is shared, when leadership is seen as a function rather than a position, people relax. Psychological safety requires exactly this kind of environment. When leaders hold all the power and use it to punish or embarrass, nobody speaks up. They take risks.
Voice and Participation
Follett was obsessed with giving people voice. Not as a nice-to-have or a leadership buzzword — as a core principle of how organizations should work. She believed that people needed to participate in decisions that affected them, that mandatory input led to better outcomes, and that silencing voices was both morally wrong and practically stupid.
She wrote about the "law of the situation" — the idea that the right answer depends on context, and the people closest to the situation usually understand that context best. So you need to listen to them. You need their input. You can't make good decisions in a vacuum.
This is psychological safety in action. When people know their input is actually wanted — not just tolerated, not just collected to check a box, but genuinely wanted — they give better input. And they care more. They invest in the outcome because they helped shape it Simple as that..
Integration Over Domination
One of Follett's most famous concepts is integration — resolving conflicts not through one side winning and the other losing, but through finding solutions that satisfy everyone's underlying needs. It's a win-win approach, but not in the superficial "everyone gets a trophy" way. She meant genuinely working to understand what people actually need and finding creative ways to meet those needs Not complicated — just consistent..
Honestly, this part trips people up more than it should.
This requires honest conversation. It requires people feeling safe enough to say what they actually need, rather than what they think the boss wants to hear. It requires vulnerability — admitting you want something, explaining why it matters to you, trusting that the other person will respond with curiosity rather than dismissal.
That's psychological safety. Follett knew that integration was impossible without it.
What Most People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety
Here's where a lot of organizations mess this up: they think psychological safety means being nice. They avoid hard conversations because they might make someone uncomfortable. Think about it: they create "safe spaces" that are actually just echo chambers. They mistake agreement for safety Which is the point..
Not obvious, but once you see it — you'll see it everywhere.
That's not what Follett was talking about, and it's not what psychological safety actually is And that's really what it comes down to..
Psychological safety doesn't mean nobody ever gets criticized. Practically speaking, it doesn't mean you can't challenge ideas or push back on poor performance. Because of that, it means that when you do those things, the way you do them matters. You can tell someone their work isn't good enough — you just can't humiliate them while doing it. You can disagree with an idea — you just can't dismiss the person who proposed it.
Not obvious, but once you see it — you'll see it everywhere And that's really what it comes down to..
Follett believed in confronting reality, not avoiding it. She just believed you could do that while still treating people with respect. In fact, she believed you had to — because pretending problems don't exist doesn't make them go away, it just makes them worse Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
Another mistake: leaders think they can mandate psychological safety. Psychological safety isn't a policy. Now, it's a behavior. They put up posters, run workshops, tell everyone "we have an open-door policy" — and then snap at someone who walks through that door with bad news. Plus, it has to be modeled, consistently, over time. One moment of punishment wipes out months of messaging.
What Actually Works
If you want to build psychological safety — the kind Follett would endorse — here are some things that actually move the needle:
Model vulnerability yourself. Leaders who admit mistakes, ask for feedback, and acknowledge what they don't know create permission for everyone else to do the same. If you're never wrong, your team will never feel safe to be wrong either Worth knowing..
Respond to bad news with curiosity, not blame. When someone tells you something went wrong, your first reaction sets the tone for every future conversation. If you immediately start looking for someone to punish, people will stop telling you things. If you start by asking "what happened" and "what did we learn," they'll keep talking.
Ask for input before you need it. Don't just ask for ideas when you're stuck. Ask for them regularly. Show people that their perspective matters even when it's not crisis mode. This builds the habit of speaking up.
Separate the person from the problem. Follett was clear about this: you can challenge ideas, push back on proposals, and demand better results — without attacking the person behind them. Make that distinction explicit. When someone screws up, address the screw-up, support the person Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
Reward the right behavior. Pay attention to what you actually celebrate. If you claim to want people to speak up but only reward the people who never cause problems, people will figure out which behavior you actually want. Make sure the people who raised concerns, flagged risks, or admitted mistakes are seen as valuable — not as troublemakers Small thing, real impact..
FAQ
Was psychological safety a concept in Follett's time?
Not by that name. The term wasn't coined until much later, largely through Amy Edmondson's work in the 1990s. But the underlying ideas — voice, participation, collaborative power, integration — run through everything Follett wrote. She was describing the same phenomenon, just from a different angle Small thing, real impact..
Can psychological safety exist in hierarchical organizations?
Yes, but it's harder. Hierarchy isn't the enemy — abuse of hierarchy is. Still, follett didn't say organizations shouldn't have leaders. She said leaders should lead through influence, not authority, and that the best decisions come from collective input. You can have a clear structure and still create space for everyone to contribute.
It sounds simple, but the gap is usually here.
What happens when psychological safety is too high?
This is a real concern some teams face. That said, the goal isn't to eliminate all discomfort — it's to make sure people feel safe to be honest. If there's no accountability, if everything is always "safe," you can end up with groupthink or a culture where nobody delivers hard feedback. That includes hearing honest feedback about their own performance.
How do you measure psychological safety?
Edmondson's team safety survey is the most commonly used tool. Are mistakes hidden or discussed openly? It asks questions like "If I make a mistake on this team, it is held against me" (reversed) and "Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.In real terms, " You can also look at behavioral signals: do people speak up in meetings? Do junior employees challenge ideas?
The Bottom Line
Mary Parker Follett spent her career arguing for a workplace where people matter — where their voices are heard, their contributions valued, and their dignity preserved. She believed that when you give people real participation in decisions, when you resolve conflicts through understanding rather than domination, when you share power instead of hoarding it — everyone benefits.
That's psychological safety. It's not a soft skill or a nice gesture. It's the engine that makes everything else work.
If your team doesn't have it, no amount of strategy, talent, or resources will matter. People will hold back. On top of that, they'll hide. They'll leave.
But if you build it — genuinely, consistently, through behavior not just words — you'll have something Follett knew was possible: an organization where people actually want to contribute, where the best ideas win, and where work doesn't feel like a constant performance of perfection.
She'd probably say it's about time we caught up.
