Psychological safety has become one of the most talked about ideas in leadership over the past decade, and for good reason. Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, offered one of its clearest definitions in a 1999 field study, describing it as a shared belief among team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. In practical terms, it is what happens when people feel they can voice an idea, raise a concern, or admit a mistake without fear of being punished or shut out for it.

The idea gained wider attention in 2014, when Google published the results of Project Aristotle, a two year study of 180 of its teams. Researchers set out to identify what separated its highest performing teams from the rest, and after testing several factors, they found that psychological safety mattered more than any other. Teams where people felt safe to speak up consistently outperformed teams that had every other advantage, from clear structure to talented individuals, but lacked that safety.

The stakes have only grown since then. Gallup’s most recent State of the Global Workplace report found that only 20 percent of employees worldwide are engaged at work, down from 21 percent the year before, now in its second consecutive year of decline. Gallup puts the cost of that disengagement at around 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity globally, or roughly 9 percent of the world’s GDP. Behind those numbers are people who do not feel able to bring their full selves, their concerns, or their ideas to their teams. Psychological safety is not a nice to have. It is one of the clearest levers organisations have for reversing this trend.

But psychological safety cannot simply be announced into existence. It has to be built, and it starts with something more personal: psychological flexibility.

What psychological flexibility actually means

Psychological flexibility is a person’s ability to act in ways that bring them satisfaction, even while uncomfortable thoughts or feelings are present. It is not about eliminating discomfort. It is about noticing that discomfort without being ruled by it, so that new behaviours remain available. Someone who lacks psychological flexibility tends to narrow down to a single response, often one aimed at getting relief from whatever feels uncomfortable in the moment. Someone with psychological flexibility can hold that discomfort and still choose the behaviour that actually serves what matters to them.

For leaders in particular, this matters enormously. A leader who can notice their own defensiveness, doubt, or irritation and still choose an open, curious response sets a standard the rest of the team will follow. Psychological flexibility in leaders is often the difference between a team that shuts down under pressure and one that stays engaged.

As Ireland’s only Certified ACT and ProSocial Matrix Facilitator, this is exactly the work I do with leadership teams: helping people build the psychological flexibility that makes real psychological safety possible, using a tool called the Matrix.

Introducing the ACT Matrix

The Matrix is a simple diagram split into two halves and four quadrants. The top half covers five senses experiences, everything a person can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. The bottom half covers internal experiences: thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations. The right side identifies behaviours that bring satisfaction, and the left side identifies behaviours that bring relief. Each quadrant holds one question, and walking a person or a group through all four is what builds psychological flexibility.

We start in the lower right corner with the simplest question: who is important to you? Answers vary enormously. Some people name a partner, others name their children, their colleagues, or a pet. Whatever the answer, if someone matters to you, it goes here.

From there we move to the lower left, where we ask about the uncomfortable internal experience that shows up, the things a person would rather not feel. Fear is the most common starting point, alongside boredom, self doubt, anger, or nervousness.

That discomfort usually triggers a response, which brings us to the upper left quadrant: what do you do to get relief from that uncomfortable stuff? There is nothing wrong with any answer here. In a team without psychological safety, one of the most common relief moves is simply staying quiet, trading the discomfort of speaking up for the short-term relief of silence.

Finally, we move to the upper right quadrant and ask what a person does to move toward the people who matter to them, the behaviours that bring genuine satisfaction rather than relief. This might be having a real conversation with a colleague, spending time with family, or working on something meaningful.

Once someone has worked through all four quadrants, we ask them to spend the coming week simply noticing these four things as they show up: who matters, what shows up internally, the relief and satisfaction behaviours. That noticing is what builds psychological flexibility. Moving from the bottom right to the top right is called a loop, and this individual loop is only the first of two.

From individual flexibility to group safety: the ProSocial Matrix

The second loop uses the same four quadrants, but shifts the focus from the individual to the group, and this is where the ProSocial Matrix comes in. Instead of asking who is important, we ask a different question: what is our shared purpose? For a team or an organisation, that is usually the outcome they exist to deliver for the people they serve.

From there, the same three questions follow, but reframed around the group. What uncomfortable feelings show up in social and team situations? What do people in this group do to get relief from those feelings, often at the expense of speaking honestly? And what do people do that genuinely moves the group toward its shared purpose?

When a team can see its own relief moves clearly, whether that is staying quiet in meetings, avoiding difficult feedback, or disengaging from decisions, it becomes much easier to choose differently. Naming a shared purpose out loud also does something subtle but powerful: it shifts the frame away from individual self protection and toward what the team is actually there to achieve together. That shift is where psychological safety starts to take hold.

Why this matters for leaders right now

Employee engagement is falling, not rising, and the organisations losing the most ground tend to be the ones where people do not feel safe enough to say what they actually think. The ACT Matrix and the ProSocial Matrix are not abstract theory. They are two straightforward tools that any leader or team can use to build the flexibility and the shared understanding that psychological safety depends on.

If your organisation is ready to have a real conversation about building psychological safety from the ground up, I would be glad to talk it through with you.