12 Strategies for Building Trust and Psychological Safety in the Workplace to Boost Collaboration

The practice that built the most psychological safety on our team was normalising public mistakes starting from the top. Not in a performative way, not a leader standing up at an all-hands, saying they value vulnerability while clearly reading from a script. It started when our CEO began opening monthly team meetings by sharing one decision she’d made recently that she’d got wrong or would handle differently. Not catastrophic failures. Just honest reflections: a hire she’d rushed, a client conversation she’d misjudged, a feature she’d prioritised based on assumption rather than evidence.

The first time she did it, the room went quiet. People weren’t used to a leader volunteering mistakes without being forced to by consequences. By the third month, something shifted. Other senior leaders started doing the same. By the sixth month, it had filtered through the team to the point where someone would flag a mistake in a project channel, and the response was problem-solving rather than blame.

The impact on collaboration was measurable. The number of issues surfaced during projects before they became crises roughly doubled within two quarters. People stopped sitting on problems, hoping they’d resolve themselves, because they’d seen repeatedly that raising a concern early was met with support rather than judgment. Cross-team projects improved because people were willing to admit when they were stuck or out of their depth, rather than quietly struggling until deadlines slipped.

The single most important detail was consistency. When the CEO skipped her reflection one month because the agenda was packed, a team member actually asked about it. It had become expected part of the operating rhythm rather than an occasional gesture. That consistency is what separates genuine psychological safety from a one-off exercise that people see through immediately.

The tip I’d share is that psychological safety cannot be built through policy or training. It is built through repeated demonstrated behaviour from people with power. If leaders only share mistakes when things are going well and retreat into defensiveness during difficult periods, the team learns that honesty is conditionally safe, which means it isn’t safe at all. The practice has to hold, especially when it’s uncomfortable, and that’s what makes it credible.

I’m Anh Ly, founder and CEO of Mim Concept, a premium furniture company, and I also lead the design process day to day. One practice that has built the most trust on my team is separating idea review from personal judgment. In our weekly design and operations check-ins, everyone is expected to point out one risk, one improvement, and one thing that is working before we make decisions. That structure makes it normal to speak up early, especially for quieter team members, because feedback is about the work, not the person. Over time, it changed collaboration in a very practical way. We started catching production and customer experience issues much earlier, and our revision rounds on new product launches dropped by roughly 30 percent over a six-month stretch because people stopped holding back concerns until the last minute. My tip is to give feedback a repeatable format so honesty does not depend on confidence. Psychological safety is built when people learn that speaking up will not cost them credibility, it will improve the outcome.

The one thing that helped build more trust on my team than anything else was admitting when I didn’t have the answer.

Real estate appears from the outside to be a solo sport. But running a brokerage will mean every person on the team has an impact on the client experience, and that requires that people speak up when something isn’t working. You don’t get that if your team has the sense that mistakes get punished.

Early in my career, I ran my business like most business owners do. Project confidence; have the answer ready; keep the energy up. But what I realized over time is that my team would no longer bring me problems early enough to fix them. They’d wait until something was already a bigger issue, because the culture around me didn’t make it safe to raise a flag.

So I changed the standard. I began to be open about my own uncertainty in front of the team. When I didn’t know how a listing was going to do, I said so. When I made a pricing call that didn’t stick, instead of passing quietly, I talked about it openly. That changed the way my team talked to me and the way they talked to each other.

The tip I’d give any business owner is simple: Model the behavior you want. If you want your team to admit to problems early on, you have to do it first and do it consistently. People follow what they see rather than what they’re told to.

For us, it was normalizing saying “I don’t know” out loud. Sounds small but in a technical environment there’s a tendency for people to hedge or overcomplicate rather than just admit they’re not sure about something.

When I started doing it more openly myself the team followed and the quality of conversations improved noticeably. People started asking better questions earlier instead of quietly spinning on something for hours.

The collaboration impact was real. When people feel safe admitting uncertainty they flag problems faster, which in our work means catching issues before they reach a client’s live site rather than after. That’s a direct quality outcome not just a culture one.

The tip I’d give is that psychological safety is set from the top and it’s set fast. New people especially are watching how leadership responds the first time someone admits a mistake or asks a basic question. If that interaction goes well the whole tone gets established early. If it goes poorly people spend the next six months figuring out what’s actually safe to say.

Most leaders say that they want their team to speak up when something goes wrong. But what they are really rewarding in doing that is people who fix problems quietly before anyone notices them. I’ve been down that road before, managing teams across retail operations and what it produces is a group of people who are very good at hiding bad news until it becomes a much bigger problem than it needed to be. The reason that happens is that people don’t hide problems because they’re lazy. They keep them hidden because past experience has taught them that bringing up a problem puts a target on their back.

And that is why for After Action Cigars, instead of keeping track of whether mistakes happened, we decided to keep track of how fast people flagged mistakes. We created a shared Google sheet that all members of the team had access to, where anyone could record an issue, a step missed or a bad call with three fields: what happened, when did they catch it, and what did they do next. There was no approval process, no review by a manager and no consequence to logging something. The only thing that posed a direct response from me was finding out about a problem through a customer complaint rather than through that sheet.

That structure told the team something very specific. Flagging that there was a problem in the first place was the right thing to do and nothing bad would happen because of it. That is what psychological safety actually looks like in practice. It’s not a value on a wall. It’s a system that proves that the message is real.

One thing our company does that I actually love is these casual “open mic” sessions. Basically, anyone can bring up ideas, questions, or even admit mistakes—no judgment, no filters.

At first, I didn’t really know if I should say anything. It felt weird admitting stuff wasn’t perfect, like everyone else had it together. But after a couple of sessions, I realized people actually wanted to hear the messy ideas, the half-baked thoughts, the “oops” moments. And that made it so much easier to speak up.

For me, it’s changed how I work with the team. Conversations feel like we’re figuring stuff out together instead of pointing fingers. And honestly, projects move faster because problems get caught early instead of festering.

My tip? Just start small. Even one meeting a month where it’s safe to speak freely can totally change the vibe. Once people feel like their voice matters, collaboration just… works better. It feels way more human, less like trying to hit targets all the time.

We build trust by making disagreement part of the process, not a sign of disloyalty. In important meetings, the person closest to the work speaks first, not the most senior person. This allows people to share what they really see before others start following leadership’s view. Over time, it creates a culture where people know their judgment is valued and raising a concern is seen as helping the business, not creating conflict.

This approach improves collaboration because decisions are based on real work experience rather than hierarchy. Teams work together with less second guessing and fewer hidden concerns. A simple change in the order of speaking can make a big difference. If the highest ranking person speaks last, we hear more honest feedback earlier.

One of the best ways to build true trust in a project is to normalize the messy middle. This means the project team must share their thoughts, ideas, and roadblocks at the early stages of the project.

If all projects are just a series of ongoing conversations rather than high-stakes presentations, the employee experience improves significantly. Employees will get better feedback, and mistakes will cost less money before they happen. All the emphasis will be on the solutions to the problems that the team needs to solve, not on the employee.

To help your leadership build a culture like this, I would suggest that you initiate a “Rough Draft Sync.” Create space for employees to share ideas or rough drafts of documents. No criticism should be allowed in a session like this. Only questions and support. You’ll be creating a tremendous amount of psychological safety for the team by helping them understand that they are each other’s safety net, not the jury.

At Jacoby & Meyers, trust comes from clear responsibilities at each stage of a case. Intake qualifies and signs clients, with a target of converting about 95% of qualified leads. Records handles medical documentation, case managers coordinate treatment and updates, and negotiators manage settlement.

Many of these roles operate in remote or hybrid setups, while trial attorneys handle litigation and must attend in-person hearings, depositions, and trial preparation. Each role has defined expectations, so people know what they own and what good performance looks like.

That clarity reduces uncertainty and makes it easier to speak up or move work forward. Collaboration stays direct because work is handed off by stage rather than managed by one person.

One practical tip is to be clear on both responsibility and expectations.

In over 15 years of experience managing safety in the workplace, I have found building trust largely comes down to company culture.

Most organizations sit somewhere on a spectrum. On one end are workplaces that are consciously unsafe, where leaders and employees can see the hazards around them but lack the systems, accountability, training, or commitment to address them. Organizations without a safety culture or commitment will end up here, as safety will be shortcut in order to increase output.

Just marginally improved from a consciously unsafe culture lies unconscious unsafety, where awareness fades and risk becomes normalized. Dangerous conditions are simply accepted as the way things are, and incidents are written off as bad luck or human error. Most organizations start here in their safety journey.

Organizations that invest in leadership, accountability, and open communication develop conscious safety habits. Here, employees are trained and held to the expectation of safety performance. The organization actively reflects on its culture, deliberately reinforces safe behaviors, and builds systems that sustain it long term.

The highest stage in our progression is unconscious safety, where safety becomes so engrained in the workforce that it’s second nature. Employees no longer “think” about putting on PPE or locking out equipment, they do it because it’s the right thing to do and what the culture expects.

This progression mirrors what the DuPont Bradley Curve describes: organizations moving from reactive compliance driven by fear, through dependent rule-following, toward independent ownership, and ultimately to interdependent cultures where employees genuinely look out for one another.

In each model, the bridge between stages is psychological safety. When employees trust that raising a concern won’t cost them their job, near-miss reporting increases, hazards get caught earlier, and collaboration strengthens naturally. In my experience, the single most effective thing a leader can do is visibly respond to every report, even when the answer is “we looked at it and no change is needed.” Silence kills reporting culture faster than anything else.

Trust isn’t built through posters or policies. It’s built through consistent, visible action at every level of the organization.

DeWitt Pharma Services adheres to a safety mechanism called Stop Work Authority. It empowers every staff member to suspend production if a certain aspect that does not satisfy our quality or safety requirements is identified. No approval is required and no negative consequences will follow. Employees who have a feeling of security in expressing their concerns are able to spot and deal with the issues while they are still minor. This is one of the reasons why our production and quality teams are able to collaborate quite efficiently.

Here is one suggestion for other leaders: Making a clear and visible policy is the first thing, which will enable employees to raise their concerns without any fear. Besides, do it by recognizing and also aligning the performance metrics with the quality priorities. Once employees can witness that the leader really appreciates speaking up, trust is naturally incorporated into the culture.