Feedback, Pushback & Backlash

I think I’ve worked out a key blind spot in Amy Edmondson’s thesis on psychological safety.

Her definition works well in high-stakes error environments like hospitals or aviation. In those settings, people need to feel safe to admit mistakes without fear of blame. That’s essential, nobody should hide a surgical slip or a checklist error because they’re afraid of punishment. Edmondson’s framing covers that territory well.

But here’s where the model falls short: misbehavior is not the same as mistakes.

• A mistake is unintentional — it calls for learning, not punishment.
• Misbehavior, on the other hand, is about unfair feedback, dismissive pushback, or disrespectful behavior. Those aren’t slips of the hand; they’re choices in how we treat each other.

And misbehavior does require a form of fair backlash — not in the sense of retaliation, but in the form of accountability (See Wikipedia Psychological Safety v Accountability). If I misbehave, I should expect my team to call me on it and for me to own it. Without that, psychological safety turns into a license for bad behavior disguised as “openness.”

Amy Edmondson’s studies on psychological safety began in hospitals, where she found that teams reporting more errors weren’t less competent, they simply felt safe admitting mistakes without fear of punishment. Her definition grew from environments like healthcare and aviation, where mistakes matter most. But this framing doesn’t extend to misbehavior, where unfair pushback or disrespect requires accountability, not just protection to admit mistakes.

This is the flaw: Edmondson’s psychological safety offers protection around mistakes, but has no mechanism for addressing misbehavior. In fact, her Stoic “just reframe it” advice risks normalizing the very slights and unfair pushback that corrode trust.

That’s why I built SpatzAI. It doesn’t confuse mistakes with misbehavior. It gives teams a simple, structured way to address unfair feedback and behavior, using the Spatz 3-step Chat app: Caution → Objection → Stop, so accountability is baked into the system.

Because true psychological safety isn’t just the absence of fear to report mistakes. It’s the presence of fairness, and requires the right kind accountability that is fair and reasonable “backlash”.