Psychological Safety: How it Drives Better Marketing Solutions

Fostering an environment where team members feel psychologically and emotionally safe leads to better marketing outcomes.

As agency work environments grow more flexible, workplace culture must evolve as well. For agencies, like Gen3 Marketing, who strive to deliver meaningful outcomes to clients, this holds especially true.

With presence in six continents, Gen3 is a global agency that has long since made the transition to a remote/hybrid workforce. Our agency embraces flexibility while striving for stronger collaboration. This has led us to develop processes that are effective both at a distance and in person.

One essential aspect to our hybrid/remote success is fostering an environment where individuals feel free to show up authentically, contribute diverse perspectives, and speak openly without fear of negative consequences.

This is commonly referred to as “psychological safety.”

Why is psychological safety important? Without it, teams may withhold ideas, avoid raising concerns, or disengage entirely. It’s also a quiet, yet substantial element to digital marketing success.

It’s all about communication and relationships.

Jan Hagen’s book, Confronting Mistakes, describes how, prior to the 1980s, many fatal aviation accidents were linked to cockpit cultures that discouraged junior crew members from speaking up.

For instance, in 1977, a miscommunication in Tenerife led to a runway accident that became the deadliest in aviation history. Investigations showed that junior crew members had noticed the mistake but hesitated to say something.

This entire, unfortunate scenario illustrates how the absence of psychological safety can silence critical voices.

The lessons from this incident reshaped aviation practices and highlighted the importance of open communication under pressure. In response, the aviation industry underwent a transformation.

NASA psychologist John Lauber’s work on cockpit communication led to the development of Crew Resource Management (CRM). This was a framework that preserved clear hierarchies but normalized questions, feedback, and shared responsibility. Over the next two decades, this shift dramatically improved safety outcomes.

While we’re far from flight decks in the digital marketing space, the core lesson still applies: Outcomes improve significantly when people feel safe to speak up, question, and collaborate.

The aviation industry showed that safety improves when people can speak without fear. At Gen3, we found the same principle applies to marketing. Encouraging openness allows us to catch issues earlier, generate better creative ideas, and maintain trust across our global teams.

All this leads to stronger performance for clients.

Does psychological safety really matter?

Plenty of well-regarded, empirical studies have linked psychological safety in work teams to better outcomes.

A 2021 Norwegian survey of 236 people in 43 agile software development teams showed that work design features such as autonomy, role clarity, and task interdependence foster psychological safety. It also revealed that psychological safety has both a direct positive effect on performance and an indirect effect via team reflexivity.

In 2025, a systematic review of healthcare practice teams found that psychological safety is associated with improved teamwork, higher rates of error-/adverse-event reporting, enhanced patient safety, and overall better patient outcomes.

A 2018 study of 50 teams (345 members) across multiple organizations conducted a moderated mediation analysis showing that learning orientation mediates the relationship between psychological safety and team performance. Likewise, it showed that psychological empowerment strengthens this mediated relationship.

These examples only scratch the surface, but the evidence is strong. Psychological safety offers real “win-wins” for employees, organizations, and the people they serve.

Open communication and trust build stronger team relationships.

How do you build psychological safety in an agency environment?

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, who coined the term psychological safety, describes it as “mission critical” in today’s work environment.

Her research highlights four ways leaders and teams can foster it.

1. Form connections and bonds.

Encourage teams to bond through everyday work. Shared tasks build trust, ease, and mutual respect, which are essential ingredients for openness.

Beyond work-related tasks, spend time connecting on whatever personal topics feel right. When we build relationships with our colleagues, partners, and clients, it’s much easier to communicate regardless of whether the topic is difficult or easy to broach.

This point cannot be emphasized enough.

At Gen3 Marketing, we believe that fostering a sense of community and collaboration is key to our company’s success.

Our Culture Club plans and organizes events for our global team. It is made up of enthusiastic volunteers who enjoy building relationships with colleagues and have a passion for creating memorable experiences.

Since its inception in 2023, our Culture Club has done an incredible job of keeping different teams connected in ways that extend beyond their day-to-day workflow. These positive community shifts have led to measurable improvements in cross-team interactions, leading to even better client services.

2. Learn from mistakes.

Create space to reflect on what went wrong and why. When people feel safe to admit missteps and ask for help, innovation follows.

A vital element for leadership is normalization of making errors. I often say I expect people to make mistakes, but we build processes to catch them before they see the light of day.

Introspection is key to marketing success. While you should celebrate wins, you must also know how to reflect and internalize when things aren’t going the way you’d like.

Our company values highlight this. Striving for innovation, growth, and conscientiousness takes discipline, and discipline is learned through understanding our mistakes.

A supportive, compassionate leadership team makes this possible, particularly when paired with people who genuinely care about the work they’re doing and their clients’ success.

3. Help people feel seen.

Authenticity flourishes when individuals feel recognized and valued. This isn’t just for output, but for who they are.

One might make a point to recognize even small contributions, or they might recognize their teammates’ ideas as valid even if they aren’t put to use.

This may feel difficult when work gets busy and time is scant, but a little effort toward demonstrating positive regard to those you work with goes a long way, particularly in times of high stress.

Between our Slack “Gratitude Wall,” internal employee newsletter, quarterly all-hands meetings, there’s no shortage of celebration here at Gen3 Marketing! Leadership makes an ongoing and consistent effort to celebrate individual successes and achievements.

Of course, this goes both ways. Junior staff members frequently post to share their own appreciation for their managers. These close relationships yield stronger bonds which amount to employees who are more motivated to drive success for clients.

Beyond internal celebrations, Gen3 Marketing is no stranger to public success. Our results speak for themselves, which have in turn yielded dozens of awards and nominations. Again, one of the reasons this is possible is because of how well our agency fosters psychological safety.

4. Invite input.

Leadership must model humility.

Ask questions like, “What do you think?” or “What am I missing?” This signals that all voices matter, especially dissenting ones.

According to Adam Grant in his phenomenal book, Think Again, fostering an environment where task conflict is invited, healthy, and safe leads to stronger outcomes.

This becomes particularly evident when teams feel psychologically safe to challenge ideas without attacking individuals.

At Gen3 Marketing, we take this to heart.

Much like how we celebrate success, we also celebrate internal input and feedback. We routinely conduct anonymous employee satisfaction surveys to better understand our people and to identify areas where we can be even better.

We have also seen first-hand how psychological safety transforms marketing outcomes. Safe environments produce stronger solutions, reduce costly mistakes, and build deeper trust with clients.

Supportive leadership fosters learning and psychological safety.

When teams feel safe, clients get their best work.

As the workplace continues to evolve across remote, hybrid, and global teams, these practices will only grow more critical. For us, building psychological safety is not only about culture. It is a strategic advantage, and one we are proud to carry into every client engagement.

Learn more about psychological and emotional safety.

Here are some great reads on the topic.

Amy Edmondson’s The Fearless Organization (2018) provides a more rigorous, research-backed exploration of psychological safety. This book focuses on how teams can speak up, share concerns, and engage in productive disagreement.

Adam Grant’s Think Again (2021) centers on intellectual humility and rethinking, including how to encourage open debate without creating interpersonal conflict.

Liz Fosslien & Mollie West Duffy’s No Hard Feelings (2019) and Big Feelings (2022) are both excellent for understanding emotion in workplace communication and leadership and offer a more emotionally intelligent, inclusive view of workplace dynamics.

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