AUTHOR=Taylor Jamie , Collins Dave , Ashford Michael 

TITLE=Psychological Safety in High-Performance Sport: Contextually Applicable?

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sports and Active Living

VOLUME=Volume 4 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sports-and-active-living/articles/10.3389/fspor.2022.823488

DOI=10.3389/fspor.2022.823488

ISSN=2624-9367

ABSTRACT=High-performance sport has been subject to a number of ‘fads’ in recent years. Of late, there has been a rising interest in psychological safety, a construct with a strong empirical basis in the business context. As research and practice interest grows in psychological safety, there are early indications of practitioners and, to a lesser extent research, treating the construct as being universally transferable. We offer three central concerns with this situation. Firstly, it seems that a variety of different interpretations in use may limit practical application of the construct. Secondly, a concern that not all dimensions of psychological safety are transferable or applicable in the high-performance sport context, especially for athletes. Finally, emerging evidence from outside of sport suggesting potential downsides to the perceptions of psychological safety in a performance/selection setting. 
We suggest, that as with all theories and constructs, there is a pressing need for nuance and context-specific evidence in how researchers and practitioners approach transferability plus, perhaps, a little more understanding of the real-world high-performance context.