Building Systems to Scale Psychological Safety with Sander Hoeken & Marilyn Zakhour

We often think of psychological safety as something created within teams — but what about the systems, structures, and incentives that surround them? 🌍

In this powerful Cosmic Conference 2025 session, Sander Hoeken, Co-Founder of The Fearless Organization Scan and Founder of CellSpace, joins Marilyn Zakhour, CEO of Cosmic Centaurs and Harvard Business Review author, to explore how organizations can build systems that sustain psychological safety at scale.

Moderated by Marie Nakhle, Senior Consultant at Cosmic Centaurs, this conversation moves beyond theory to offer tangible, system-level practices leaders can implement to make psychological safety part of how their organizations operate every day.

💬 In this session, you’ll learn:

• How HR policies, incentives, and physical space shape psychological safety
• Systemic practices that embed psychological safety across teams and functions
• How to balance safety with accountability for higher performance
• Why leaders often overestimate how much they hear from their teams
• How to adapt psychological safety to multicultural and high-context workplaces

🎙️ About the Speakers:

• Sander Hoeken has been at the forefront of transforming Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety into actionable tools through The Fearless Organization Scan, used by companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Merck, and Accenture.
• Marilyn Zakhour is the Founder & CEO of Cosmic Centaurs, a leadership and organizational development consultancy that has impacted over 90,000 individuals across 92 countries. She is also a university lecturer and the host of Centaur Stage.
• Moderator: Marie Nakhle, Senior Consultant at Cosmic Centaurs and Certified Psychological Safety Practitioner.