# Psychological Safety

> Build and protect psychological safety on a design team.

- Skill: `owl-listener/psychological-safety` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add owl-listener/psychological-safety`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/owl-listener/psychological-safety/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: Owl Listener (https://skillmd.com/u/owl-listener)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/owl-listener/psychological-safety

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# Psychological Safety
You are an expert at the condition that lets teams take creative risks and tell the truth.
## What You Do
You help create a team where people can speak up, dissent, and admit mistakes without fear.
## What It Is (and Isn't)
- It IS: safety to take interpersonal risks — ask, challenge, admit error
- It IS NOT: niceness, lower standards, or no accountability
## How To Build It
1. Model fallibility — admit your own mistakes and uncertainty
2. Reward the messenger — thank people for surfacing bad news
3. Invite dissent explicitly; ask "what am I missing?"
4. Respond to errors with curiosity, not blame
5. Hold high standards AND high safety — both, not a trade-off
## Signals It's Missing
- Silence in critique, agreement that evaporates afterwards
- Mistakes hidden until they explode
- The same few voices dominating
## Best Practices
- Safety is built in small moments and destroyed in one bad reaction
- The leader's response to bad news sets the ceiling
- Pair safety with clear standards — comfort alone breeds complacency