In many Singapore workplaces, every meeting has two versions. One happens out loud. The more honest one happens afterwards, in the corridor, in a group chat without the manager, or in thoughts people keep to themselves.
The gap between the two is the cost of silence. It shows up as poor decisions, preventable errors, unaddressed risks and capable people who leave for places where their voice is welcome.
What psychological safety is, and is not
Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, who coined the term, defines psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In practice, people can ask questions, raise concerns, admit mistakes and share ideas without fear of embarrassment, punishment or exclusion.
It is not the same as harmony. It does not mean avoiding challenge, difficult conversations or high standards. Safe teams are often the most challenging, because challenge can be offered and received without threat.
Why people stay silent
People rarely stay quiet because they have nothing to say. They stay quiet because experience, their own or what they have seen happen to others, has taught them that speaking up costs more than it gains. When ideas are dismissed, raising problems is treated as disloyalty and mistakes are punished, silence becomes the sensible choice.
A quiet team can look settled, but silence is often a warning sign. People tend to hold back on exactly what leaders most need to hear: workload and stress, worries about their career and their own well-being.
Why it is harder to build in Singapore
Deference to seniority, avoiding contradicting superiors and presenting a united front are embedded in many Singapore organisations. These norms are not bad in themselves. But in meetings and decisions, they can mean the people closest to a problem stay silent while leaders work from filtered, optimistic information. Errors go unreported, poor decisions go unchallenged and strong performers disengage.
What the research shows
Google’s Project Aristotle, a study of its own teams, found psychological safety was the most important of the factors that set effective teams apart. Edmondson’s research across healthcare, finance, manufacturing and technology links low psychological safety to slower learning and weaker adaptation to change. In high-stakes fields such as healthcare and aviation, it has been linked to incidents that might have been prevented had people felt able to speak up.
What leaders can do
Psychological safety is built through behaviour, not policy. Three behaviours make the biggest difference:
- Admit your own mistakes. When leaders acknowledge errors and uncertainty, others feel able to do the same.
- Respond well to bad news. How you react when someone raises a problem decides whether they, and everyone watching, will raise the next one.
- Invite disagreement. Asking “What am I missing?” or “Who sees this differently?” gives people the permission many are waiting for.
Leaders who punish problems, dominate meetings or mistake deference for agreement wear safety down, often without realising it. None of this needs a personality change. It needs intention and consistency.
It is everyone’s job
Leaders set the tone, but everyone shapes it: how a colleague reacts when someone shares a concern, whether questions are welcomed, how feedback is given and whether gossip is tolerated. Training managers and staff in supportive communication, and creating peer support or Well-being Champion roles, helps teams respond consistently when someone disagrees or is struggling.
Our Foundational Psychological Safety at Work course helps teams and leaders build these habits through practice in the conversations that matter most.
The silence in your meetings is telling you something. The question is whether your team feels safe enough to say it out loud.
