What is Trust and Psychological Safety?

In 1817, poet John Keats wrote about people’s capacity for “negative capability”, which Rachel Botsman, an expert and researcher on trust, describes as the ability to “embrace the unknown and resist the urge to explain away what we don’t yet understand.”

In the 200+ years since Keats wrote about this concept, the pressure to perform, produce, and provide clear solutions from the very beginning has only increased. But this expectation is unrealistic...humans are fallible and perfection an unobtainable goal. However, by improving psychological safety (PS) and nurturing trust, a healthier relationship with the unknown or uncertainty is possible.

Both concepts (trust and PS) speak to our ability to deal with uncertainty and risk. Some describe this state as “negative,” as Keats did (though not in the sense of “bad”); others might call it spaciousness, or a liminal state, the space between what we know and what we do not know. The opposite to these concepts might be the need for transparency, defined outputs with little curiosity beyond these, or needing demonstrable impact before a project or programme has even begun.

Without becoming too poetic, this space-between is often where magic happens: where new ideas are generated, new relationships nurtured, and where people may feel more satisfied with their work/lives. Yet we often fear the unknown. Our capacity for the “negative” becomes reduced, and we may find ourselves craving what feels safe and familiar. But as Amy Edmondson notes, psychological safety is not about being comfortable. Learning, experimenting, and sharing can often feel vulnerable and, therefore, uncomfortable. What makes that discomfort tolerable is knowing you will not be judged or blamed in the long term.

But, we getting ahead of ourselves...let’s start from the beginning: what is trust, and what is psychological safety?

Rachel Botsman defines trust as “a confident relationship with the unknown.” She adds, “Deep trust forms based on how people behave. Above all, I think, it comes from integrity.”

For The Trusted Advisor authors, trust becomes an equation, demonstrating that trust can be earned and grown through actions that speak to the four traits below.

Trust is also reciprocal and is often linked to predictability or reliability. As Green, Meister, and Galford write in The Trusted Advisor:

“While there are things you can do to improve your trustworthiness [see equation above], you do not have the ability to create advisor relationships on your own. Your client must participate and reciprocate…No amount of interaction will add up to trust if efforts are all unilateral. You can’t force trust.”

You’ll also see trustworthiness as highly rated in professional frameworks such as the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). They define trustworthiness as “honouring the trust placed in the practitioner”, this emphasises integrity, openness, honesty, and candour as essential skills and behaviours that establish and protect trust. Practitioners must actively demonstrate behaviours that both cultivate and safeguard trust such as active listening and confidentiality.

Importantly, all these experts emphasise the significance of small, cumulative behaviours that signal trustworthiness: acting in the other person’s best interests, sometimes even when this feels risky, such as when speaking honestly despite uncertainty about the outcome or reaction.

While trust tends to operate within interpersonal relationships, psychological safety, as defined by Amy Edmondson, refers to a team- or organisational-level. It is the belief that one can speak up, raise concerns, admit mistakes, and ask questions without fear of embarrassment, punishment, or negative consequences. She writes:

“This is a group-level phenomenon, it shapes the learning behaviour of the group and in turn affects team performance and therefore organizational performance.”

Research shows that work cultures with high levels of PS demonstrate:

• Higher engagement and motivation because team members feel their views are valued
• Better decision-making due to improved knowledge sharing and understanding of problems
• A culture of continuous improvement, because mistakes are surfaced and collectively learned from
• Increased creativity and innovation because all ideas can be shared and considered
• Improve wellbeing, due to reduced stress levels and a higher sense of job satisfaction

Some of these benefits were demonstrated through Project Aristotle at Google, which examined the impact of psychological safety on team effectiveness. It found:

“Using over 30 statistical models and hundreds of variables, the project concluded that who was on a team mattered less than how the team worked together. And the most important factor was psychological safety.”

Timothy R. Clark also proposes that there are four stages of psychological safety: “I’ve discovered that psychological safety follows a progression based on the natural sequence of human needs….This pattern is consistent across all organisations and social units (pg.xiii)". The diagram below demonstrates how these needs progress.

For both trust and PS, small gestures matter, and so does time. We also noticed this during the evaluation of the Heritage Action Zones (HAZ) programme:

“Our experience in the region has always been that your first year/18 months is about engagement, and that’s how delivery happens. But they didn’t do that; they were faced with community and stakeholder scepticism about the value of the HAZ…there was a lot of building of trust and demonstrating through doing before you got the buy-in.”

It seems that when people and organisations intentionally invest in building trust and/or PS, they create environments where uncertainty becomes a space for learning rather than fear. This allows individuals and teams opportunities for performing at their best. By valuing candour, respect, and the courage to speak up, we not only strengthen our connections to other people but it also allows for more meaningful collaborations, more opportunities for autonomy and creativity which can lead to greater long-term positive impacts. A greater opportunity for a legacy to form perhaps.

References

1. Amy Edmondson (2018) ‘How fearless organizations succeed’. Available at: https://www.strategy-business.com/article/How-Fearless-Organizations-Succeed. [Accessed 06.02.26]
2. BACP (2018) ‘Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions’. Available here: https://www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/ethics-and-standards/ethical-framework-for-the-counselling-professions/ [Accessed 10.10.25]
3. Clark, T.R., (2020) The four stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the path to inclusion and innovation. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Ltd.
4. Gallo, A., (2023) ‘What is Psychological Safety?’ Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety (Accessed on: 16.03.26).
5. Green, C., Maister, D.H., and Galford, R., (2021) ‘The Trusted Advisor: 20th Anniversary Edition.’
6. Rachel Botsman (2026) ‘Rethink: The art of not knowing’ Available at: https://rachelbotsman.substack.com/p/rethink-the-lost-art-of-not-knowing [Accessed 20.03.26]
7. SQW (2025) ‘Evaluation of the Heritage Action Zones programme: Final Report’. Available at: https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/heritage-action-zones/breathe-new-life-into-old-places-through-heritage-action-zones/ [Accessed 23.11.25]
8. TIME, 17.03.24 ‘An Expert on Trust Says We’re Thinking About It All Wrong’ An interview with Rachel Botsman. Available here: https://time.com/6957741/rachel-botsman-trust-interview/ [Accessed 18.12.25].