As mental health continues to rise up the organisational agenda, it’s tempting to reach for silver bullets. “If we just build psychological safety,” we hear, “our teams will perform better.” It’s a seductive promise – support your people and performance will follow.
But is psychological safety the answer? Or is it part of a deeper, more complex picture of what helps teams truly thrive?
At Organisational Coaching Hub (OCH), we believe that psychological safety is vital, but it’s not the full story. It’s not a standalone solution, and it’s certainly not something a line manager can create for a team. Instead, it’s part of a mutual trust to aspire together – to take risks, disagree well, support one another, and co-own both the challenges and the growth.
The Real Link Between Well-being and Performance
Psychological safety is often defined as the shared belief that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks. In psychologically safe teams, people are more likely to speak up, admit mistakes, challenge ideas, and bring their full selves to their work. Unsurprisingly, these behaviours are strongly linked to innovation, engagement and resilience.
But here’s where the conversation often falls short: psychological safety isn’t gifted by leaders; it’s co-created by teams. Indeed, managers play a disproportionately influential role in shaping the climate, but they’re not the only ones, and they’re not solely responsible.
The best teams don’t just feel safe, they actively build that safety through how they listen, how they disagree, and how they show up for one another.
Two Kinds of Teams, Two Kinds of Performance
Last year, OCH founder David Kesby presented at the Tallinn Business School, in Estonia, on this issue. His talk, titled “Teams – Realising Potential or Creating a Prison?”, dived into a distinction that’s often missed in conversations about team dynamics.
“Teams are the best of times, and the worst of times,” he says. “They can be liberating, synergistic spaces – or confining, draining ones.”
David’s research over the years has identified two different types of teams that exist in every organisation:
- Interdependent Teams – where team members collaborate closely toward a shared goal, rely on one another, and are mutually accountable.
- Extra-Dependent Teams – where individuals perform similar roles independently, with little true interdependence.
The issue is that many teams are structured like Extra-Dependent teams but are treated like Interdependent ones. The result is a mismatch between leadership expectations and team reality, leading to frustration, disengagement, and what David calls “the prison effect.”
In one recent case study, a consulting team in a UK university scored clearly as Extra-Dependent. Yet their team leader viewed them as Interdependent and attempted to apply the wrong model, pressuring the team to collaborate, align, and “act more like a team,” despite their individualised roles. Instead of freeing them to perform, the structure became a constraint.
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Diagnosing Team Types to Build Psychological Safety
Understanding whether a team is interdependent or extra-dependent is essential for creating a culture of psychological safety that fits reality.
At Organisational Coaching Hub, we’ve developed the Team Dependency Diagnostic to help organisations clarify how their teams truly function. In Interdependent teams, psychological safety enables deep collaboration, open feedback, and shared ownership. In Extra-dependent teams, it shows up as honest peer reflection, learning from each other’s experience, and safe spaces for challenge, not forced togetherness.
Without this insight, organisations often push for the wrong kind of safety or expect teams to act more “team-like” than their structure allows. This can lead to frustration, disengagement, or even a sense of being trapped.
Once you understand your team type, you can create psychological safety in a way that’s relevant, effective and sustainable, whether your team works closely together or shares knowledge from across silos.
Explore the tool here: Team Dependency Diagnostic.
Coaching as a Catalyst for Psychological Safety
Psychological safety doesn’t emerge from policies, posters or promises, it’s built through consistent relational experiences. And that’s where team coaching plays a crucial role.
Team coaching creates the space for teams to:
- Pause the task-focus and reflect on how they relate
- Surface unspoken dynamics that may be undermining trust
- Explore how differences are handled – through avoidance or with curiosity
- Practise real-time dialogue that deepens understanding and connection
In coaching, safety isn’t something we talk about in theory, it’s something teams experience and shape together. It becomes visible in the way they:
- Listen to each other
- Own their impact
- Navigate disagreement without damaging trust
Importantly, team coaching helps shift psychological safety from something the leader must provide, to something the team actively co-creates. This shift is where long-term change begins.
Coaching isn’t about helping teams to “be nicer” to each other but to be braver – together. To build the kind of trust where support and challenge go hand in hand, and where people feel free to bring the truth of their experience into the room.
Because that’s the ground where performance and well-being can both take root.
Leading Without Breaking the Team Spirit
So back to the question: Is psychological safety the answer to team performance?
Our view: not in isolation. Psychological safety is one piece of a wider system – a relational foundation that allows performance to emerge without breaking the team spirit. It’s not a quick fix. It requires clarity about the type of team, alignment of leadership approach, and shared commitment to co-create the space where real work and real connection can happen.
