Do you want psychological safety? You might have to give up control.

Imagine you’re watching a team during an emotional meeting.  Two team members are sharing their frustration with each other.  Then someone is tearing up as they come clean about how much pressure and stress they’ve been feeling.  Moments later, other team members are sharing their own fears about a new direction the team may be taking.

How does it feel seeing all this happen?  

Now, imagine that you’re the leader of this team.  Does that change how it feels? 

When I put myself in the leader's seat, I instantly feel more anxiety (how do I respond to this?), insecurity ( a “good” leader’s team wouldn’t have these emotions), and desire to control (I should move this into 1:1s).  Those are the kinds of emotions that cause us to respond, address, or fix (read: to control).  And, unfortunately, that’s when we unintentionally start damaging psychological safety.  

“Psychological safety” is the academic term for whether people on a team share what they ACTUALLY think and feel.  And according to Amy Edmondson, a professor of leadership at Harvard Business School, the research is “overwhelming” that it’s the number one thing high performing teams have in common.  And what can prevent people from being honest?  When they know the leader is going to respond.  It’s hard enough to share feeling pressured, scared, overwhelmed, uncertain, etc.  If you know the leader is going to try and “fix it” or respond in some way, you probably won’t share it at all.  Deep down, we want to feel seen and get things off our chest but we fear becoming the center of attention or “derailing” the meeting.

We help leaders and teams get honest with themselves and out of each other’s way – to stop controlling each other and make space for truly honest communication.  What we’ve found is that you can’t create safety through norms and commitments, people have to experience real honesty and see how good it can feel.  If you can give a team a container to get over their fear and share honestly, they can immediately feel the relief of not having to perform for each other, and the deep connection that comes from true vulnerability.   

But they need permission.  They need a space where there’s nothing to “achieve” and no judgment or evaluation of their behavior.  They may need help seeing the ways that they’re subconsciously trying to control themselves or others, and not being fully honest.