Psychological safety is often the missing governance layer in AI adoption. This post explains how fear-driven cultures lead to quiet noncompliance, undocumented workarounds, and stalled implementations-even when organizations invest in strong tools and AI literacy training. It outlines what psychological safety looks like in practice: employees feeling empowered to question AI outputs, raise value-alignment concerns, admit uncertainty, and participate in AI decisions. The summary connects these behaviors to stronger oversight, earlier risk detection, and more sustainable adoption aligned to the NIST AI RMF GOVERN function.