How do you ensure psychological safety in your team?
Why This Is Asked
Interviewers want to see that you understand psychological safety—the belief that one can speak up, ask questions, or admit mistakes without fear of punishment or humiliation. They're assessing whether you actively create conditions for it through your behavior, norms, and response to feedback or failure.
Key Points to Cover
- Modeling vulnerability (admitting mistakes, asking for help, saying "I don't know")
- Responding constructively when people raise concerns or disagree
- Avoiding blame and focusing on learning from failures
- Creating norms where dissent and questions are welcomed
STAR Method Answer Template
Describe the context - what was happening, what team/company, what was at stake
What was your specific responsibility or challenge?
What specific steps did you take? Be detailed about YOUR actions
What was the outcome? Use metrics where possible. What did you learn?
đź’ˇ Tips
- Reference Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety if it resonates with you
- Give an example of when someone spoke up with a concern or mistake—how did you respond?
- Show that you distinguish between psychological safety and low standards—safety enables accountability
✍️ Example Response
STAR formatSituation: I inherited a team where people were afraid to raise problems. A previous manager had punished people who surfaced bad news. When we had a production incident, the post-mortem was superficial—no one wanted to admit what went wrong. I knew we couldn't improve without honesty.
Task: I needed to build psychological safety so people could speak up, ask questions, and admit mistakes without fear.
Action: I started by modeling vulnerability. In my first team meeting, I shared a mistake I'd made at a previous company and what I learned. I explicitly said: "I need you to tell me when something is wrong. I won't shoot the messenger." I changed how I responded to bad news—when someone raised a concern, I thanked them first, then we problem-solved. I introduced blameless post-mortems: we focused on systems, not people. I also asked for feedback in 1:1s and responded non-defensively. I made it clear that psychological safety wasn't about low standards—we still held people accountable, but we separated "what happened" from "who's to blame." I reinforced this in retros and all-hands.
Result: Within six months, we had our first honest post-mortem—someone admitted they'd skipped a test. We fixed the process. Incident rate dropped 30% because we were catching issues earlier. I learned that safety enables accountability—when people aren't afraid, they own their mistakes and help fix them.
🏢 Companies Known to Ask This
| Company | Variation / Focus |
|---|---|
| Amazon | Earn Trust — "How do you ensure psychological safety?" |
| Googleyness, collaboration | |
| Meta | Candor, moving fast |
| Microsoft | Growth mindset, collaboration |
| Netflix | Candor, direct feedback |
| Airbnb | Belonging, mission alignment |