Safety as Predictability (Not Just Protection)
What Hierarchical and Self-Managed Groups Both Tend to Get Wrong
The interest in psychological safety (i.e. the general feeling that your environment is safe enough for you to make mistakes) is something I strongly support. But it brings up the question, “What actually creates a feeling of safety?” The thesis of this article is that, in most cases, it’s better to generate safety through predictability rather than protection.
This is a counterpoint to what I usually see when the issue of safety comes up (psychological or otherwise), which equates safety with protection. I think this is a mistake. Or at least a damaging oversimplification.
So, while I agree that a metal shark cage, safety line, or guard rails, protect people and that protection makes them feel more safe, it’s not the only way.
Conventional managers aren’t the only ones who make this mistake. Most promoters of self-management make the same assumption (i.e. that safety equals protection), but rather than over-promoting protection like a conventional manager, the self-management folk tend to over-promote freedom——pushing people too quickly creating confusion and anxiety. After all, if safety equals protection, and there are limits to the fear-based, protection-mindset, then it makes sense to downplay safety. That’s equally a mistake. More on that below.
The point is, there’s another way to achieve safety, and one that has some distinct advantages: create predictability.
To give you an idea of how predictability leads to safety, here is a very non-work example. How might you approach a dog or a cat that you don’t know? Maybe your friend just brought home a new rescue. What kind of approach is more likely to get a positive response: 1) quick and sudden movements, or 2) slow and steady movements? The answer is slow and steady. Because to the animal, slowly reaching your hand out and approaching slowly, makes you predictable.
Freedom is Not Morally Superior to Safety
A lot of people, especially in the self-management space, love to talk effusively about freedom——especially about how freedom requires us to let go of safety. While that’s true, their tone suggests that freedom is somehow morally superior to safety. And that part is not true.
Freedom is not better than safety. And from my experience, telling people that, even suggesting it, is also likely to backfire. Not only because it turns out not to be completely accurate, but because it tends to unintentionally and unconsciously place the blame for their failure to thrive on them, and not the system.
The truth is that freedom and safety are both parts of an interdependent system, and while we should contrast and distinguish them from each other, they are actually more intertwined than we first realize (For more on how contrasting values are usually complementary, read this).
When people feel secure, they’re more willing to take risks, share ideas, and engage. Safety creates the conditions for freedom, allowing people to stretch beyond their comfort zones without fear of being punished for missteps. Without a baseline of safety, freedom becomes overwhelming or even paralyzing; but when safety is solid, freedom becomes an invitation to explore, experiment, and contribute
Equally, safety without some degree of freedom not only feels confining, but actually makes you less safe.
Overly controlling systems, even when well-intentioned, tend to signal a lack of faith in people’s ability to navigate their own experiences. When people are stripped of autonomy, they become hyper-aware of their constraints, which is as likely to heighten fear and resistance as it is to ease it.
True safety requires room to breathe, and what is that room if not the room to make mistakes, which advocates of psychological safety want to create?
Real safety is a balance. It protects without restricting and supports without smothering, offering enough structure to feel grounded and enough freedom to get a little messy.
Predictability as Safety
As I said, there’s another way to get safety. A sense of safety naturally emerges when people can rely on their environment to be stable and predictable. Predictability isn’t about controlling every outcome—it’s about making sure that what’s expected is clear, consistent, and aligned with how things actually operate.
When you communicate explicit expectations and actively work to embed those expectations into the culture, you remove ambiguity and reduce the need for people to constantly guess what’s acceptable or how to engage. Clear structures give people the ability to select for themselves, which way to go and how much to engage.
This consistency builds trust and allows people to focus their energy on contributing meaningfully, rather than navigating unspoken rules or shifting standards. In this way, predictability becomes a subtle but powerful foundation for psychological safety.
In Conclusion
When we equate safety with protection, sure we get a version of safety, but it should be reserved for defining the minimum necessary deal-breakers or anything that would be catastrophically damaging. It is absolutely necessary to protect things. But within that, safety-through-predictability is a better tool for defining clear expectations and pathways that allow us to better integrate the needs of freedom and safety into more empowering relationships and interactions.
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But Don’t Take My Word For It
The thing about rules...they clarify what is expected of us. This helps everybody feel safe and protected. -Laura Linney
If we want innovation, if we want creativity, if we want morale, if we want collaboration–we need safety. –Dr. Angie Montgomery
The average man doesn't want to be free, he wants to be safe. -H.L. Mencken
You cannot have a very tall tree without deep roots. -Cesar Pelli
The law is not a light for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely. -Robert Bolt
Hey Peter,
Good question. I noodled on it a bit and the answer I came to, unfortunately, expanded into what seems like a full deontological (i.e. duty-based) moral theory. But I don’t any to bury the lead…
My answer to the question, “Who is responsible for creating psychological safety (or anything)?” is this: Anyone who has the capacity to do something about it AND thinks they should.
Do with that what you will.
My fuller answer is something like this. To me, your question required a clear and confident use of the word “responsible.” Since it was a question in response to something I wrote, I indulged myself with the question, “What is responsibility?”—a topic I’ve tackled in previous articles.
It was worth diving in again because your question connected to something I was already trying to write about: how “responsibility tracks with capacity.”
I was never completely satisfied with that phrasing, though.
Here’s the simple conclusion: Responsibility belongs to anyone who has the capacity to do something about it AND thinks they should.
Three clarifications:
1. The “thinking” doesn’t need to be consciously identifiable. It can (and often does) show up as a subtle mind/body tension—something resisted or contracted away from. These symptoms are often more obvious than the belief itself. But underneath denial and avoidance strategies, there often remains a person’s own belief in their obligation.
2. Capacity is necessary because one’s own sense of responsibility isn’t a sufficient guide. As much as we need to integrate the subjective, we must also connect it to the question of capacity. Otherwise, we’d be sanctioning every depressive’s sense of guilt for failing to save the world. “Capacity” is open to interpretation, of course, but it provides a useful balance.
3. This doesn't solve it because it naturally leads to a key question: At what point does someone actually become responsible? And what does that transition feel like?
If a person doesn’t think they should do something, I may believe they should feel differently—but that belief alone violates the “Dammit” principle. They don’t feel it, and therefore, they are not responsible in this moment. I can think all I want about their responsibility, but none of my thinking can bridge the gap into convincing the universe to hold them accountable.
However—and this is the important bit—I can work to make them responsible by bringing into their awareness the conditions necessary to generate a sense that they should act.
So how do we define this properly? Responsibility tracks with capacity—but not just that. It’s capacity and felt responsibility. One’s own felt sense of duty naturally obligates. That obligation may resolve in countless ways, only a few of which involve taking direct action.
Kant’s categorical imperative expresses this same sentiment—it’s oriented around an agent’s own felt will. That is, act in accordance with your own will or sensibility that your action would be a universally right action for any other person in the same circumstances. This orients the agent toward moral thinking, which has value beyond the specific instance.
So, who is responsible for creating psychological safety? Anyone who has the capacity to do something about it AND thinks they should. :)
Who is responsible for creating psychological safety?