Psychological safety is often talked about as if it were a mood. Let’s create a space with good vibes, a warm and welcoming energy where people can feel “comfortable”. But in futures work, I believe that psychological safety is structural.
If people don’t feel safe to speak, challenge, or not know, then all you get is the future that already fits inside the dominant voices in the room.
That’s not foresight. That’s rehearsal.
Research from Google’s Project Aristotle (https://psychsafety.com/googles-project-aristotle/) made this visible years ago: the best-performing teams weren’t the smartest, most experienced, or most confident. They were the ones where people felt safe to contribute, and safe to be wrong.
In “The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety,” Timothy R. Clark describes psychological safety as moving through stages: inclusion, learning, contribution, and challenge. Whether or not you buy into the model in full (it’s been debated and refined since), I think that the insight holds: challenging the status quo only happens once people feel they belong.
I sometimes struggle with this idea of “safety” and creating “safe spaces”, because speaking up is always a risk. Really what I’m thinking of when I talk about “safety” is about creating spaces where people feel safe enough to be brave, and speak up.
In futures facilitation, safety (or bravery) isn’t about avoiding discomfort. It’s about creating enough trust that discomfort becomes usable.