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I had a fascinating discussion with a session leader this week while interviewing him for a custom Business Leadership Simulation. The business leadership simulation is going to help build advanced leadership capabilities and one of the competencies it focuses on is creating an environment of psychological safety. My question was fairly straightforward; “Will you share with me a story or an experience where you or another leader did a great job of creating a culture of psychological safety.”

The leader paused for a moment and asked if I wouldn’t be offended if he slightly changed the wording of my question to include “equitable psychological safety.” I thought for a moment, because over the past few years while we have all been learning about psychological safety we’ve been taught that it is an important foundation for creating and maintaining equity and inclusion on teams and within organizations. But I think this leader was saying something different so I asked him if equitable psychology safety is different from psychology safety that supports equity and inclusion.