8 Leadership Lessons from running the Psychological Safety Scan

As part of our Psychological Safety in Focus webinar series, we spoke with Mazuba Hainama, an independent consultant with more than 15 years of experience working across tech, government, corporations, and civil society.

In the conversation, Mazuba reflected on her experience introducing a psychological safety scan with the team she was working with at the time. What emerged was a deeper reflection on leadership itself: how leaders listen, how they create space, and how they respond when feedback reveals something difficult but necessary.

Here are 8 leadership lessons from Mazuba on what it takes to build a team environment where honesty, accountability, and trust can grow.

1. Don’t wait for something to break, make psychological safety part of your team hygiene 

Mazuba’s first insight is that leaders should not assess psychological safety only when a team is in crisis. Instead, it should be a regular practice, part of “good team hygiene.” Rather than a one-off intervention, it becomes a proactive way for leaders to maintain a healthy team environment. She recognized the value of using it proactively to “kick off the year in a positive way,” helping her team recalibrate their dynamics before the pace and pressures of work intensified.

Note: Psychological safety is measured through a 7-question survey developed by The Fearless Organization Scan, in partnership with Amy Edmondson, the Harvard Professor behind the concept.

2.  Acknowledge that honest feedback isn’t easy

Mazuba acknowledges that even in a relatively honest team, sharing candid feedback about a workplace can feel risky, especially in smaller teams where people may fear being identified. Her advice is realistic: leaders should not downplay how hard honesty can be.

At Cosmic Centaurs, we believe that giving feedback is a skill that can be learned and strengthened. While speaking candidly can feel uncomfortable, feedback frameworks help make difficult conversations more constructive and less personal. One framework we recommend is the RICH framework, which provides a simple way to structure feedback about a person’s behavior or actions. 

3. Be intentional about creating the space for candid conversations  

She emphasized that the discussion with her team about the scan results only worked because the environment was set intentionally from the start. As the leader, she began by acknowledging her own nerves and the vulnerability involved in opening the floor for feedback.

She made it clear that the purpose of the conversation was not criticism, but learning: whatever surfaced would help the team function better together. By naming the intention and encouraging people to speak honestly, she helped create a space where difficult conversations could happen constructively.

For leaders, this preparation is essential. Honest dialogue rarely emerges spontaneously; it requires leaders to deliberately create the conditions for people to speak openly.

4. Listen until you hear it differently

Some of the insights that surfaced during the discussion with Mazuba was not entirely new. In fact, some team members said they had mentioned these things before. But hearing them in that setting, with everyone present and enough time to unpack the meaning behind them, made a difference.

As she reflected, she realized she had not fully heard those concerns before. For leaders, the lesson is simple: sometimes people have already spoken, it just takes the right moment and space for the message to truly land.

5. Be ready for the team to shift your perspective

What Mazuba expected to surface in the discussion was not what the group focused on most. In fact, some concerns she thought were central turned out to matter less to others, while different perspectives emerged that she had not fully considered.

For leaders, this is an important reminder: the challenges you think define a team may not be the ones your team experiences most strongly. Sometimes the clearest understanding only emerges when everyone has the chance to speak openly.

6. Make commitments explicit

Mazuba emphasized the value of leaving the conversation with clear commitments to one another. Reflection alone is not enough. Teams need to know what they are changing, what they are holding each other accountable to, and how they will revisit those commitments over time.

At Cosmic Centaurs, we recommend ending every retrospective or team reflection with a documented action plan. A strong action plan outlines clear next steps, assigns ownership, and sets deadlines so that commitments do not get lost in the momentum of day-to-day work. It also creates a shared point of accountability that teams can revisit to track progress and sustain change over time.

7. Reflect on the gap between your values and your impact

Mazuba sees herself as a leader guided by communication, accountability, and compassion, but the Fearless Organization Scan helped her confront the fact that good intentions do not always translate into consistent impact. A leader may value compassion, for example, but enact it in ways that create confusion rather than clarity.

The lesson is that psychological safety is shaped less by what leaders intend and more by how their actions are experienced by others. Without actively seeking feedback, leaders can easily develop blind spots that undermine the very culture they are trying to create.

8. Listen with a big heart and be open to what you don’t want to hear

Her final advice to leaders is especially strong: do the exercise, be open to hearing what you may not want to hear, and “listen with a big heart.” She argues that leaders may believe they are doing well and still discover blind spots. The task is not to defend yourself, but to work with what comes up, learn from it, and allow yourself to be transformed by the process. 

Mazuba’s reflections remind us that psychological safety takes courage. It requires the courage to intentionally create spaces where candid conversations can happen, and the courage to truly listen to what people share. It also demands openness: the willingness to question assumptions, reflect on what you hear, and allow new perspectives to shift how you see your team and how you lead.

Download our Psychological Safety brochure to learn more. If you're interested in running the scan with your team, contact us to explore how we can support you.