Hey Babs: Talking About Psychological Safety and Feeling Humiliated by Staff
Babs responds with, stop talking.
Hey Babs,
I’m part of an Executive Leadership Team (the ELT) in a mid-sized public sector organization where I have worked my way up through the ranks. I feel connected with the staff that I work with and consider many of them to be long-time friends.
When I joined the ELT this past January, I made a promise to myself that I would prioritize psychological safety for my direct reports and for the people who report into them.
At every meeting, in emails, and in one-on-one conversations in the hallways and in the break room I talk about the importance of psychological safety and how it guides my work.
But they just don’t seem to be getting it. Team meetings are filled with the same updates and ideas that we’ve been working with for the past 10 years. My one-on-ones with direct reports are the same and often include an added tension if I try to move towards talking about goals or innovation.
Then last week while at an all-supervisors meeting with the rest of the ELT, one of my direct reports stood up and said, “it’s hard to trust the ELT when we don’t know what you want, how to do our work, or which one of us is next in line to be let go”.
After all my promoting of psychological safety and my frustration of trying to get them to talk with me and to trust me, to then have MY direct report say this in front of everyone, was humiliating.
What am I doing wrong? Should I just give up on psychological safety?
J.J.
Dear J.J.,
That sounds like it was a tough situation and I thank you for sharing it with me to share here with others.
Psychological safety is important and I feel your commitment to it and encourage you to not give up on it.
I have a few thoughts on the story you have shared and an invitation for rethinking how you may want to do psychological safety.
The Thoughts
Talking about psychological safety isn’t psychological safety, it’s just talk.
The person who spoke about their experience of trust with the Executive Leadership Team, was exercising, perhaps imperfectly and even unwisely depending on their intention, a principle of psychological safety which is to speak up even when it’s uncomfortable.
Many of us have felt humiliation or some other form of “I wish this wasn’t happening” at work. These things happen, so we might as well work with them as growth opportunities and learn to let them go and move on.
Psychological safety, as a clinical psychology and then as an organizational leadership research and discussion topic, has been around for about 70 years. In recent years it has become yet another business buzz sensation open to misuse and misunderstanding. No matter your intention, some folks at your workplace may be experiencing this buzz as meaningless management-speak similar to “thinking-outside-box” (I was a bit surprised to hear this one at a conference recently), “leveraging”, “breaking down silos”, “circle back” and so on.
There is much more to be said about psychological safety - but not from me today. Thankfully we have Amy Edmondson and her large body of work that goes beyond the unhelpful, maybe even harmful, here’s-the-five-things-you-need-to-know about psychological safety blog or social media post. Her work reveals a much larger vision for leadership that is emotionally aware, caring, attentive, strategically nimble, and resilient.
J.J. , rather than giving up, I encourage you to dive in deeper and to get comfortable with all the ins and outs of psychological safety so that you may find yourself owning it and doing it, without having to say it.
The Invitation
I invite you to stop talking about psychological safety at work.
Unless directly asked about psychological safety, don’t say it, don’t explain it, and don’t make promises or expect others to make promises about it.
Instead take action on setting the conditions for psychological safety.
Ideal conditions for psychological safety, that you as a leader can influence or do, include:
a policy framework (for example, work place safety and anti-harassment policies and mental heath awareness and supports)
resources (for example, funding for a coach or a facilitator, updated software, and decent workspaces)
your consistent and ethical behaviour (for example, demonstrating self-awareness, awareness of others, trustworthiness, trust in others, responsibility, and accountability)
Building on the connection that Graham Allcott in his book, Kind: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work,* draws between kindness, truth, and psychological safety, what might happen if in your team meetings and one-on-ones you approached the expectations for new ideas and innovation with genuine kindness and with thoughtful truth .
The following are not scripts for you to run with; they are stilted performative examples so that we can imagine how, with purpose and time, kindness and truth create conditions for psychological safety.
Example 1: Team Meeting
“I care about you and your work (kindness) and the organization needs us, as a team and as individuals with job expectations and responsibilities, to do a, b, and c and for it to look like x, y, and z (truth). My role is to support you to be your best (kindness) and to ensure that we are all accountable to the needs of the organization (truth).”
Example 2: One-on-One Meeting
“I want to support you to be successful (kindness). In this organization success looks like a, b, c (truth). What do you need to be successful (kindness) and what can I expect from you that will move our work forward (truth)?
Celebrate!
As always, celebrate the good (and the good-enough).
As adults we don’t need balloons and sparklers. Celebrating can be a:
simple acknowledgement in the meeting
formal recognition in the office newsletter or in front of the CEO or Board
quiet word in passing
team workshop or retreat**
By celebrating we encourage:
speaking up
ideas and innovation
trying something new
learning from mistakes
giving thoughtful feedback
having healthy disagreements
J.J., don’t give up, but do consider doing it differently.
Babs
The Asterisks
*I liked Allcott’s book enough (just enough), but I’m weary of the swears as attention getters. My attention is best captured with good writing, credible evidence, and compelling stories.
**It is unfortunate how often I encounter an attitude of team workshops or retreats as punishment or remedial action rather than as events of joyful learning and growing together. Learning is celebrating!
***Yeah, you won’t find three asterisks in the post, but I just wanted to share with you that I am indeed a big promoter of psychological safety and I do think that it is key to a flourishing organization. So much so that I went and got a fancy gold embossed (well, digitally gold embossed) certificate in working with organizations and psychological safety. Even so, I’m making a point of talking about it less and around it more. :)
Thank you to the many honest and courageous people who share their leadership stories with me to share with others. Some I share in “Hey Babs” and many are found in other posts. All stories are edited by me for brevity and a level of anonymity. As with all my work, I hold dear your trust in my professional principles, including confidentiality.
You can find out more about my work as a leadership coach and facilitator at the Courageous Leaders Project. I currently have a few spots available for coaching and am booking retreats and workshops for the fall of 2025 (don’t delay, the calendar is filling).
Use the contact form on the website to set up a time for us to chat about how we might work together.
Image from Museums of History New South Wales on Unsplash