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Psychological safety through a queer lens: what it really means to feel safe at work

A Pride in Leadership session with Joanne Lockwood, founder of SEE Change Happen

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Psychological safety gets talked about a lot. But for LGBTQ+ people, the concept rarely captures the full picture. It is not simply about whether you feel comfortable raising a concern in a meeting. It is about the dozens of small calculations you make every day: do I mention my partner? Do I correct that pronoun? Is it safe to push back here, or is it safer to say nothing?

In this session, hosted during Pride Month, Joanne Lockwood, founder of SEE Change Happen, explored what psychological safety actually looks and feels like for LGBTQ+ people at work and in wider society. Her starting point was an honest one: right now, for many of us, it feels diminished.

A shifted landscape

Joanne opened not with a framework, but with a feeling. Walking through central London during a far-right rally, surrounded by families and people from all walks of life, she described an unsettling realisation.

“There was a vibe in the ether that made me feel uncomfortable at that moment… It wasn’t anything particular. There was no trouble. There was nothing kicking off. What it was was just a vibe.”

That vibe, she argued, is inseparable from the conversation about psychological safety. The sense of hard-won progress being eroded. The Pride flag becoming contested. The calculation, which many LGBTQ+ people are now making, that visibility carries risk.

“There’s no advantage now for me to out myself. I am actually safer by keeping my mouth shut and not outing myself.”

This was not a counsel of despair. It was a grounding of the conversation in lived reality, something Joanne returned to throughout the session.

The four levels of psychological safety

Joanne walked through the four dimensions of psychological safety, applying each through a specifically queer lens.

Inclusion safety is the foundation: the ability to show up as yourself without having to mask, edit, or pretend. It sounds simple, but it is complicated by environments that assume everyone is cisgender and heterosexual by default. When the world around you constantly frames coupledom, family, and identity in heteronormative terms, simply existing authentically requires an act of deliberate disclosure. You have to out yourself, again and again, in small ways, every day.

Learner safety is about having room to grow, make mistakes, and use imperfect language without being shut down. Joanne was direct about the tendency, within LGBTQ+ communities, to police one another’s language and expression. “We can be quite brutal as a community to try and police our own members.” She argued for more equanimity: the ability to hold multiple perspectives, to understand why someone believes something rather than simply dismissing them, and to give people space to evolve.

Contributor safety is the ability to speak up and be heard without being cast as the educator, the spokesperson, or the ideological voice. Joanne pushed back on the dynamic where LGBTQ+ employees are invited to share their opinions but find those opinions are either ignored or treated as a box-ticking exercise. “We can’t dress this emotional labour up and call it engagement. It’s not inclusion.” Real inclusion means structured, consistent engagement, not a one-off lunch and learn during Pride Month.

Challenger safety is perhaps the most eroded right now: the ability to call something out, to whistle-blow, to say “this is not right” and be listened to rather than dismissed. Joanne noted that LGBTQ+ voices are increasingly being characterised as ideologically motivated, while less trans-positive views are treated as reasonable concerns. “We need to start being seen back at that top seat at the table again.”

How organisations get it wrong (without meaning to)

Joanne was generous in her reading of most organisations. The problem is rarely malice. It is confusion, inconsistency, and a tendency to react rather than lead.

“They’re flip-flopping. They’re overcorrecting. They’re looking at maybe the loudest voice. They’re reading the headlines. People are getting in their heads and they’re being pulled from pillar to post.”

Managers are frozen. HR teams are publishing policies without the infrastructure to operationalise them. And employees in different departments are getting entirely different versions of what inclusion means, depending on who is around them.

Her prescription was clear: fewer policies, better behaviour. “What we need is human interactions, human ways of working together, not bits of paper, not PDFs on shelves.” Culture, she argued, shifts when behaviour shifts. And behaviour is something organisations can actually manage, measure, and call out.

One important point raised by a participant in the chat: employers also have legal obligations here. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the evolving Employment Rights Act, organisations are now expected to proactively demonstrate that they have put mechanisms in place to prevent harassment and protect psychological safety. Awareness training alone is no longer sufficient.

From awareness to action

One of the most resonant exchanges came from a participant named Bry, who observed that LGBTQ+ people are often expected to advocate for themselves at exactly the moment they are least able to: when something has already gone wrong.

Joanne agreed, and pointed to what she sees as a persistent gap. “Pride is very good at awareness. Not so good for action.” She challenged organisations to think about what comes after the lunch and learn, after the lived experience talk, after the rainbow lanyard. Where is the measurement? Where is the accountability? Where is the curve from awareness to change?

Holding the rope together

Joanne closed with an image she has used before: a rope, being pulled through all of our hands. Right now, she said, many of us have blisters. But if we all hold on, we slow the erosion.

That means finding our allies, re-engaging with HR teams and colleagues, and grounding our contributions not in ideology but in lived experience. It also means being honest with ourselves about where we have genuine power, and where we do not.

For those in environments that are actively hostile to LGBTQ+ inclusion, she offered a harder truth: sometimes the most important act of self-care is choosing to leave. “You can’t change everybody. Just find the people who want to work with you.”

And for all of us, wherever we are, she returned to the personal.

“Change starts with me. I had the power to be lovable. I had the power to be liked. I had the power to be worthy of respect. That’s something I can change in me. I can’t make you love me. I can’t make you like me. I can’t make you respect me. All I can do is that work myself.”

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Joanne Lockwood is the founder of SEE Change Happen, a UK-based consultancy specialising in lawful, human-centred workplace inclusion. You can find out more at see-change-happen.com.

Pride in Leadership hosts regular events for LGBTQ+ leaders and aspiring leaders across the UK. Join our community of over 2,000 members at prideinleadership.com.

 

About the facilitator
Joanne Lockwood is the founder of SEE Change Happen, a UK‑based consultancy specialising in lawful, human‑centred workplace inclusion in high‑scrutiny environments. Joanne works with senior leaders, HR teams, and organisations across the public and private sectors to translate complex inclusion challenges into practical, defensible action. With particular expertise in LGBTQ+ and transgender inclusion, Joanne is known for her calm, realistic approach to psychological safety, focusing on how people actually experience work rather than how policies say they should.

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