In times of uncertainty, how leaders respond determines whether their teams pull together or fall apart.
Psychological safety – the belief that you can speak up, take risks, and ask questions without fear of embarrassment or punishment – has been shown to be one of the most powerful predictors of high performance and adaptability in organisations.
Research by Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson and Googleās Project Aristotle found that teams with strong psychological safety outperform others because people feel free to challenge assumptions, share mistakes, and offer new ideas.
In Higher Education, this matters more than ever. Universities are facing financial pressure, cultural strain, and the need for rapid transformation – progress depends on people feeling safe enough to tell the truth.
This article explores how psychological safety (or the lack of it) shapes the ability of universities to lead change, drawing lessons from the Gillies Report into the financial collapse at Dundee University and insights from our work with teams across the sector.
Weāve been doing some work with a faculty at one Russell Group university who have been getting better at psychological safety.
They’re starting to raise issues that were impossible before, supporting each other more, and frankly, just working together better. It’s the kind of localised empowerment thatās needed when things are tough.
But they’re operating inside an institution where the senior leadership team (SLT) isn’t encouraging safety. This isnāt intentional but they are falling into some classic traps: knee-jerk reactions, flashes of panic, individual rather than coordinated thinking and rampant back-covering.
Now cuts and reorganisations are hitting, the instinct of leaders is to individually grab back control and start telling people what to do.
That might make them feel better, but what the university really needs is the opposite: more empowerment, less fear.
If you have watched Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmundsonsās great Ted Talk where she talks about psychological safety, youāll know she says two things about highly motivated people (which is most people in HE):
In universities, the awareness of power and status – academic primacy and grade anxiety – is pervasive.
The teams I have been most impressed with have successfully dispensed with that within their group: they have a team leader who regularly canvasses opinion, asks for feedback and enables a space where each person clearly feels valued and respected.
The alternative is power dynamics that lead to fearful environments.
I remember watching a senior colleague chair a meeting and visibly wilt when criticised for letting the meeting ālanguish.ā The rest of the room, though finding the discussion useful, said nothing. No one backed the chair up. Everyone colluded, felt deeply uncomfortable, and walked away feeling a bit helpless.
That moment of silence isn’t just about one meeting; it’s the noise of fear cascading through an organisation. The uncomfortable behaviour at the top becomes the default everywhere else – an isomorphic pattern like the ones we wrote about in a previous post.
What happens when that cascade reaches right across an organisation? Look at the recent Gillies Report into the financial collapse of Dundee University.
Professor Gillies found serious failures in financial governance that were amplified by low psychological safety. The data was all there, but as she put it, her investigation uncovered a āculture in which challenge was actively discouraged.ā
Nobody was questioning the financial information they were given because, her report found, there was no culture or expectation of constructive challenge at executive or court level. Financial literacy was patchy and critically, dissent was routinely shut down, particularly by the Principal, who simply ādid not welcome difficult conversations.ā
This shutting down, whether it’s the Principalās decision to only share good news or female staff being routinely spoken over or labelled as obstructive for asking questions meant very few people dared to speak truth to power.
The most practical insight from Gillies? The value of one person’s innocent question.
She noted that one person’s sincere, “I don’t really understand…” is often a catalyst for someone else to step in, opening the door to curiosity and debate.
This engagement leads to a far richer understanding and, crucially, the uncovering of risks.
That vital question, however, was being squashed out.
And this was happening at School level, at the Executive Board level and at the level of Council. Arguably the Principalās behaviours directly reduced psychological safety across the whole institution.
The risks introduced by this culture were invisible for a long time. But as the levers used by universities to balance out financial bumps have been eroded by government policy and global instability, the risk went up significantly. Low safety limits institutional capability to respond to difficulties and erodes the checks and balances of effective governance.
Ultimately, Gillies made it clear: a “values-led university culture which privileges transparency and accountability is likely to actively support evidence-based collaborative decision-making, integrity and openness to challenge and debate.”
In other words, the cultural lack of psychological safety wasn’t the cause of Dundeeās failure, but it was a major contributing factor.
Iām sure many readers of that report will have been thinking, āthat could easily have been us.ā
I can think of three or four other institutions that we’ve worked with at ThenSomehow where there are similar patterns. Where members of the executive group have a real reluctance to challenge a VC. The members say things to us such as, ā[challenge] is not something you can do very easily in the meetings, I have to pick my momentsā¦ never in front of the wider group.ā
That failure to challenge is a misunderstanding of a key role of these groups, and will likely play out in a number of ways across all levels of an institution:
If you are wondering if this could possibly be happening in your university, hereās a link to a brilliant illustration by Liz Fosslien of how low psychological safety plays out at the most basic level.
Have you ever experienced that?
Another of Lizās brilliant illustrations show one of the differences between effective and ineffective teams.
In response, Gillies says executive groups should be receptive to challenge – that it should be the normal mode of operation. She proposed 5 key principles, which we could treat like a checklist:
The University Executive Group (UEG), or its equivalent, should learn how to interpret financial data and routinely challenge the institution’s management accounts. Not to beat up the Finance Director but to back them up, demonstrate robustness and stand by their recommendations together.
Do people speak up at town halls? Do you provide a range of fora for questions to come out from all levels of your organisation?
All senior role holders ought to be receptive to challenge, routinely requesting it, demonstrably grateful for receiving it, evidently listening to it and responding.
How do your committees structure conversations so that everyone is heard, and āstupidā or naive questions are aired and built upon? (See Liberating Structures for practical ideas to support this.)
Is your instinct to paint the best picture or to trust your advisors with the whole truth? This is especially true when it comes to governance, and arguably works well for your team too.
The challenges at the top of HE can feel overwhelming, but you can have a lot of influence over the environment you create in your own corner of your university.
Hereās what you can do today, taking a leaf from Amy Edmondsonās great exploration of psychological safety, the Gillies Report, and Liberating Structureās alternatives for how to structure meetings:
Itās completely appropriate to admit that things are complex, uncertain, and interdependent. No one perspective can hold all of the data so hearing every single voice is very necessary. Speaking up isnāt risky: itās the only way you can ensure you have the best understanding.
You have power, use it to level the playing field. Tell people, āI donāt know what I donāt know. If you have a doubt, say it – weāll miss something important if you donāt.ā As Amy Edmondson says: āShowing vulnerability acts as an immediate de-stressor for your team.ā
Commit to making the time for real explorations. Actively ask questions to draw people in, especially those who are quiet. Take the advice from Gillies’s 5 key principles: make it a habit to minute challenges – not just decisions – and ensure every person in the room has contributed to the discussion.
If you are currently shouldering the responsibility for change in HE, there is a clear personal risk, too. Low psychological safety means leaders can become isolated and unable to ask for help or feel able to challenge, leading to poor decisions simply going through. If you or your peers are experiencing high levels of burnout, isolation, or a sense of helplessness, these are critical warning signs that the safety nets of challenge and support may be failing across your institution.
Ultimately, psychological safety is not just about creating a thriving workplace, it’s the foundation of sound financial and institutional governance.
As the Gillies Report reveals, the cultural dynamics that silence an “innocent question” at a committee level are the very same dynamics that can bring down an institution. Cultivating safety isn’t just about being a ānicerā leader; it’s about making your university more resilient, more responsive, and more capable of fulfilling its mission.
Psychological safety is the hidden superpower your organisation needs to navigate the current climate.
When people donāt feel safe to speak up, systems fail – not just teams.
The Gillies Report showed how low psychological safety can ripple from executive level right through an institution, silencing the very questions that could prevent disaster.
For leaders in Higher Education, the challenge is twofold: to nurture psychological safety in your own team, and to model it in the wider organisation. That means creating the conditions for curiosity, honest feedback, and shared learning – even, and especially, when things are uncertain.
At ThenSomehow, weāve seen how one teamās courage to work differently can start to shift a whole institution. Building psychological safety isnāt a soft skill; itās a strategic capability for resilience and intelligent change.
So ask yourself: whatās one question you could ask today that would make it safer for someone else to speak the truth?
At ThenSomehow we help universities and other HE organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff thatās stuck.
If youād like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.
