Miscommunication doesn't destroy Psychological Safety: But your response to it can...

Psychological safety is a concept popularized by Amy Edmondson, and defined as a shared belief within a group or team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks.

In simple terms, it means people feel comfortable:

Speaking up with ideas or concerns
Asking questions or admitting mistakes
Challenging the status quo respectfully
Being themselves without fear of embarrassment, rejection, or punishment

In a psychologically safe environment:

Mistakes are treated as learning opportunities
Diverse perspectives are welcomed
Feedback is constructive rather than punitive
People are not afraid of being judged or humiliated

In contrast, low psychological safety leads to silence, fear of speaking up, reduced innovation, and hidden errors.

Silence… fear of speaking up… hidden errors… we also see this when people act like miscommunication is a problem.

What Happens When You Treat Miscommunication Like a Problem

Most teams don’t expect miscommunication. They expect clarity, alignment, and certainly that if they explained something clearly, people should understand it.

But then miscommunication happens anyway.
And the response is surprise, which often turns into blame.

Whether that emerges in our words…

“I thought I was clear. Why didn’t you understand?”
“I explained that already. Weren’t you paying attention?”
“How could you think that’s what I meant?”

or in our tone…

We communicate that miscommunication is a failure, and that failure is someone’s fault.

The problem is, once people learn that misunderstandings are met with blame, they begin trying to avoid being blamed. So people stop:

Asking questions that could bring clarity.
Challenging assumptions or decisions, even when they have valuable insight.
Raising concerns before small problems become big ones.
Admitting when they’re confused.

Wow. That sounds a lot like the loss of psychological safety…
And now we don’t know where the miscommunication is happening, so it will be harder to fix…

No one is intending to create an unsafe environment, but when people assume that miscommunication shouldn’t happen, they feel unsafe when it does. But miscommunication is an inevitable part of communication.

We need to plan for it and not allow it to be the wrench thrown into our communication that takes down the entire company. (First communication, then psychological safety, engagement, retention, customer satisfaction, all the way to profitability… It’s not a snowball fallacy if the literature supports it…)

The Shift: Expect Miscommunication

Now imagine starting with a different assumption: miscommunication is inevitable. It will happen. The only question is whether we catch it and fix it early or let it compound.

Given that assumption, the response to miscommunication changes completely.

When someone says “I’m realizing I misunderstood what you meant,”
you don’t respond with blame. You respond with interest. “Oh good catch. Let me clarify what I actually meant.”
When someone asks a clarifying question,
you don’t interpret it as criticism. You interpret it as engagement. “Good question. That helps me know I wasn’t as clear as I thought.”
When someone admits confusion,
you don’t see it as failure. You see it as the system working. They noticed the breakdown. They said something. Now you can fix it.

Over time, this response teaches a different lesson:
Miscommunication is normal. No one is a bad person because it happened.
Admitting to it is safe. Fixing it together is collaboration.

When we reduce the negative consequences of speaking up, we build psychological safety.

How to Build This

Name the expectation. I recommend using terms like Unmiscommunicating to have an easy shared language, but even without it you can set realistic expectations for your team: “We’re going to miscommunicate sometimes. That’s normal. When it happens, we’ll catch it and fix it together.” This reframes miscommunication from a failure to an inevitability.

When miscommunication surfaces, unmiscommunicate. Remember, unless this is a pattern of behavior, we don’t need to deep dive into the annals of history to figure out who to blame this on. Just get on the same page now and move forward.

Acknowledge clarifying questions as valuable. When someone asks a good clarifying question, tell them so. “That’s a really good question. It helps me understand where I wasn’t clear.” This reinforces the behavior you want to see.

Model it yourself. When you don’t understand something, say so. “I’m not sure what you mean. Can you walk me through it?” This shows that even leaders admit confusion and that doing so is normal.

Avoid yes/no questions. “Do you understand?” is not a productive question. People often assume they understand when they don’t. Ask them to tell you what they understand so you can listen for alignment.

Respond to confusion with help, not judgment. It can be frustrating when people don’t understand, I deeply understand. But since we know miscommunication is inevitable, we don’t need to judge anyone because it happened, nor do we want to take our frustration out on someone who is trying to gain clarity.

Separate the system issue from the person. “We’re on different pages” is very different from “You misunderstood.” One invites problem-solving. The other invites defensiveness. We don’t want to put people on guard, but instead collaborate in our efforts to get back on the same page.

When you expect miscommunication, catch it early, and respond to it with curiosity, people stop hiding it. That means:

Decisions get made faster because misalignments surface before work has been done incorrectly.
Conflict decreases because people aren’t operating on different versions of reality.
Trust increases because people experience that it’s actually safe to be confused, to ask questions, and to be wrong.

That’s going to increase psychological safety, employee engagement, retention, and productivity. And ultimately, company profitability.