Why psychological safety matters for directors of sport
Psychological safety moves in two directions.
The role of a director of sport in a school is a distinctive one. They are responsible for the sporting culture experienced by students and coaches, but they are also staff members themselves, operating within a school's wider leadership structure. This means that psychological safety moves in two directions for a director of sport: they need to experience it in their relationship with senior leadership, and they need to actively foster it within their own teams.
Director of Sport
Leads the sporting culture
Staffroom
ToHeadteacher
SubjectConcerns about the fixtures cut
Hi, I wanted to raise something about
Any feedback on the new training timetable before Friday?
Seen by 11Upward
If a director of sport doesn't feel safe to raise concerns with their headteacher, it is much harder to create openness within their coaching staff.
Downward
If coaches don't feel safe to speak up, students experience the same.
The culture a director of sport builds starts with how safe they themselves feel to lead authentically.
Psychological safety test
How safe do you and the team you lead feel?
Take the free 3-minute Psychological Safety test.
Take the testWhat the research tells us
From leadership to students, safety flows down through a school.
What leaders do matters far more than what they say.
Research on psychological safety consistently identifies leader behaviour as the primary driver of team-level safety. What leaders do matters far more than what they say. Teams whose leaders model openness, invite input, and respond non-defensively to challenge report significantly higher levels of psychological safety.
Safe middle leaders raise concerns early.
Middle leaders in educational settings who report feeling psychologically safe in their relationship with senior leadership are better able to support their own teams and are more likely to raise concerns early, before they become significant problems.
Safe coaches stay, and create safer environments.
Coaching staff who feel psychologically safe within their team report greater job satisfaction, higher retention, and are better able to foster safe and positive sporting environments for the young people they work with.
Safe students stay in sport for longer.
School sporting environments where students report feeling safe to speak up, make mistakes, and be honest about how they are doing show better long-term participation rates, better wellbeing outcomes, and more positive relationships with sport beyond school.
References: Baars, 2017; Dorrell et al., 2022; Edmondson, 1999; Lee et al., 2022
How Creating Space can help
Creating Space works with directors of sport in schools to build understanding and practical tools around psychological safety in both directions of their role. Sessions are grounded in the reality of what the role actually looks and feels like, including the pressures that come from above, the dynamics within a coaching team, and the challenge of building and maintaining a positive sporting culture within a school environment.
Experiencing it upward
We explore what it means to experience psychological safety as a middle leader, including how to navigate relationships with senior leadership, raise concerns effectively, and advocate for sport and staff with confidence.
Fostering it downward
We also work on what it means to actively foster psychological safety downward, developing the communication and relational skills that allow a coaching team to function with honesty, trust, and genuine collaboration.
The connection
The connection between the two is always at the centre. A director of sport who understands their own experience of safety, and who has the tools to build it in others, becomes one of the most powerful drivers of positive culture in their school.
Directors of sport leave with
- A clear understanding of psychological safety and why it is relevant to their specific role in a school context
- Insight into how psychological safety operates in both directions of the role, upward to senior leadership and downward to coaching staff and students
- Greater confidence and practical skills for navigating their relationship with senior leadership, including how to raise concerns and advocate effectively
- Relational and communication tools for building a coaching team culture where people feel safe to speak up, give feedback, and handle difficulty constructively
- An understanding of how the safety a director of sport experiences and models cascades into the sporting environment for young people
- A sense of the small, consistent behaviours that build trust over time and the ones that quietly undermine it