I'm looking forward to facilitating a workshop at Shingo Connect: USA 2026 in San Diego titled “Psychological Safety as a Foundation for Continuous Improvement.” This session takes place on March 18, and it brings together themes that have shown up repeatedly in my work, my writing, and my own learning journey.
In many organizations, improvement efforts stall or fade away. Leaders often ask, “Is it our strategy?” or “Do we need better Lean tools?” Those questions matter — but in my experience, they often miss something more fundamental.
People don't speak up when they don't feel safe.
Improvement Depends on Speaking Up
Continuous improvement depends on people doing a few very human things:
- Admitting that something didn't go as planned
- Pointing out problems that others may not see
- Asking questions that challenge current practices
- Experimenting, failing, and learning
All of those behaviors involve some degree of interpersonal risk.
In my book, The Mistakes That Make Us, I emphasize a simple but often uncomfortable truth: mistakes are inevitable, but learning is not. Learning only happens when people feel safe enough to acknowledge mistakes and reflect on them — without fear of blame, embarrassment, or punishment.
When people hide mistakes, organizations lose learning. When people are punished for honest errors, improvement slows. When leaders react instead of respond, silence becomes the safest option.
Psychological Safety Is Not “Lowering the Bar”
One misconception I still encounter is that psychological safety means being “nice,” avoiding accountability, or lowering expectations. That's not what I've seen in high-performing organizations.
Psychological safety means people believe they can:
- Speak honestly without fear of retaliation
- Ask questions without being judged
- Admit uncertainty or error without being labeled incompetent
In The Mistakes That Make Us, I share stories from healthcare, manufacturing, and beyond where leaders made a conscious shift:
from asking “Who messed up?” to asking “What can we learn?”
That shift doesn't remove accountability — it redirects it toward systems, processes, and leadership behaviors.
Accountability for learning is far more powerful than accountability for blame.
Leader Behavior Matters More Than Posters
Many organizations say they value learning from mistakes. Fewer demonstrate it consistently, especially under pressure.
What leaders say matters. What leaders do next matters more.
When something goes wrong, people are watching closely:
- Do leaders ask curious questions or jump to conclusions?
- Do they thank people for speaking up — or visibly bristle?
- Do they treat mistakes as data — or as personal failures?
In the book, I describe how even small leadership behaviors can either reinforce fear or build trust. Over time, those patterns shape culture. People learn whether it's safer to speak up or to stay quiet.
What We'll Explore in the Workshop
This Shingo Connect workshop is designed to be practical, reflective, and grounded in real organizational experience. We'll explore:
- What psychological safety is — and what it is not
- The Four Stages of Psychological Safety, and how teams progress (or get stuck)
- How fear and silence undermine Lean, Agile, and CI efforts
- Specific leader behaviors that encourage learning from mistakes
- How to make it safer to surface problems, not just solve them
Participants will engage in anonymous polling, guided discussion, and peer exchange. The goal is not to label organizations as “safe” or “unsafe,” but to help leaders think more clearly about how their systems and behaviors influence learning.
Why This Fits the Shingo Model
The Shingo Model emphasizes principles, systems, and behaviors. Psychological safety lives squarely at that intersection. Without it, even well-designed systems struggle to produce ideal behaviors — and sustainable results remain elusive.
That's why I'm grateful this conversation is happening at an event hosted by the Shingo Institute. Organizational excellence isn't just about tools or outcomes; it's about creating environments where people can think, learn, and improve together.
A Final Reflection
If your organization struggles to get honest feedback…
If problems are discovered too late…
If improvement feels harder than it should…
It's worth asking not “Why won't people speak up?” but “What happens when they do?”
That question — and the leadership responses that follow — often determine whether improvement becomes a habit or a hope.
If you'll be at Shingo Connect, I hope you'll consider joining this session. And whether you attend or not, I encourage you to keep reflecting on how your organization responds to mistakes — because that response shapes everything that follows.
If you’re working to build a culture where people feel safe to speak up, solve problems, and improve every day, I’d be glad to help. Let’s talk about how to strengthen Psychological Safety and Continuous Improvement in your organization.
Dr. Deming introduced this concept as Point 8 of his 14 Points: “Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the company.” Sometime between then and now, if became more politically correct to substitute “psychological safety” for “fear.” But there are few, if any, newly identified organizational or interpersonal impacts.
Driving out fear means people can speak up, raise concerns, experiment without fear of blame or job loss. When management drives out fear People feel it is safe to speak up. When fear is present, problems are hidden. Fear prevents problems from being found and fixed.
When people are fear-free, they uncover and share problem, making it possible to fix them.
Fear-free workplaces find and fix problems faster. Safety created by freedom from fear of job loss and other punishments, builds trust, enables learning, and supports progress
Where people are silent about problems, improvement is not possible.
In hospitals, fear-free Staff report near misses. In factories workers suggest process changes.
In schools, teachers share challenges openly. Fear-free workplaces build trust, uncover problems, and make improvement possible.
When fear is experienced, we enter Survival Mode: Flight, Fight, Freeze
Frontal lobe (Prefrontal cortex) goes offline
Limbic system/mind and lower brain functions take over. The body generates stress responses. If the exposure to stress induced by fear is long-term, we can experience damage to our brain and body.
Deming’s “Forces of Destruction” chart has this notation, “These forces cause humiliation, fear, self-defense, competition for gold star, high grade, high rating on the job. They lead anyone to play to win, not for fun. They crush out joy in learning, joy on the job, innovation. Extrinsic motivation (complete resignation to external pressures) gradually replaces intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity.
In the face of fear, he wrote, we get, “padded figures, wrong figures, output slowed for 100% inspection. Fear defeats constancy of purpose. In government, Fear of takeover and emphasis on quarterly dividend, can be read as fear of the next administration and emphasis on targets.”
About managers, ““Isn’t it safer to do nothing? To do something you might have to explain why you wish to do it. And if it didn’t work out it would hurt your annual rating. It’s safer to do nothing in management. Management [here] is stepping out and taking a chance, taking some risks,
Knowing that nothing will be accomplished unless you make some changes.”
Deming listed dozens of sources of fear [participants in the IQI Academy have added dozens more] that inhibit our ability to work effectively together.
Not only is fear a factor in the SoPK dimension of Psychology, it is a factor in Appreciation for a System because a manager who appreciates a system focuses their efforts upon managing the interactions in their system. The presence of, or freedom from, fear has a significant influence upon the ability of people to work together to try to accomplish the aim of their system.
Thanks for your comment, Eric. Yes, Dr. Deming was so far ahead of the curve on this.
These ideas go hand in hand. When leaders act in ways that eliminate fear, employees feel a sense of psychological safety — meaning they feel free to speak without fear of punishment or retribution.
Some Deming quotes on fear: https://deming.org/quotes?_sf_s=fear
“Fear invites wrong figures. Bearers of bad news fare badly. To keep his job, anyone may present to his boss only good news.”
“Where-ever there’s fear you get wrong figures.”