Ep. 28: What Your Team's Not Telling You And Why It's a Psychological Safety Issue
Hello, hello and welcome back to the People-Forward Leadership™ podcast.
Today we're diving deep into something that's become an important but misunderstood concept in leadership and that’s psychological safety.
Now, before you think, "Oh, I've heard this one before"—stay with me. Because the conversation I want to have today is about what’s at stake right now for you and your organization.
Right now, according to recent data, trust in senior leadership has fallen sharply from its pandemic peak. Glassdoor is reporting that mentions of "distrust" are up 26% year-over-year. Mentions of "misalignment" between employees and leadership is up 149%.
We're seeing what some are calling "the Great Detachment." Employees aren't quitting in droves, like they were a few years ago, but they're not fully engaged either. They're showing up, but they're checked out. They're present, but they're being very protective of themselves.
And in a climate of rolling layoffs, economic uncertainty, and constant change, people are running a very specific calculation in their minds every single day, asking themselves: "Is it safe to be here? Is it safe to tell the truth here? Is it safe to take a risk? Is it safe to be myself?"
If the answer is no, they don't necessarily quit. They just stop contributing their best.
That's what psychological safety is really about. And that's what we're talking about today in this episode.
But let's start with what psychological safety actually means, because I find there's a lot of confusion about this.
I'm certified in Dr. Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety, and here's how she puts it: psychological safety is a shared belief that this is a place where it's safe to speak up, take interpersonal risks, and be human without fear of embarrassment, punishment, or quiet retaliation.
Notice what's not in that definition. It's not about being comfortable all the time. It's not about avoiding conflict. It's not about lowering standards or even about being nice.
In fact, psychological safety should enable harder difficult conversations, not softer ones.
Here's how I like to think about it in everyday terms. Psychological safety shows up in the small moments, like:
Can I admit I made a mistake without rehearsing that conversation ten times first?
Can I take ownership of my work without my boss micromanaging me or critiquing me every step of the way?
Can I disagree with my leader or a popular colleague without paying for it later?
Can I say "I don't know," or "I need help," or "I'm at capacity” without being labeled as weak, difficult, or not leadership material?
When the answer is yes to those questions, people don't waste energy protecting themselves. They use that energy to solve problems, serve customers, innovate, and support each other.
Now, I often get asked: "What's the difference between trust and psychological safety?"
Here's how I put it: Trust is often experienced at the individual level. I trust you.
Psychological safety is experienced at the team and cultural level. It's safe to be myself and to take smart risks here. This is how we do things around here.
You can trust a colleague one-on-one and still feel like the broader system isn't safe. People-Forward Leaders™ pay attention to both.
For those of you who've been following this podcast, you know I talk about the People-Forward Leadership™ framework, which has three pillars: Leader Awareness, Empowered Ecosystems, and Adaptive Continuous Learning.
Psychological safety sits primarily in that third pillar, Adaptive Continuous Learning.
And here's why.
You cannot have an adaptive, resilient, learning culture without safety. Period.
Think about it. You can't run after-action reviews if people are afraid to say what really happened. You can't learn from failure if the goal is to make sure no one ever attaches your name to it. You can't build resilience if people spend all day self-editing, self-protecting, and being nice.
Think of psychological safety as the soil. Adaptive Continuous Learning is what grows from that soil—experimentation, reflection, feedback loops, innovation. And trust is the felt experience people have when they're standing in that soil every day.
Without healthy soil, nothing grows. Your strategies don't take root. Your change initiatives wither. Your best people eventually leave to find better ground somewhere else.
Or worse, you create an environment of toxic positivity where people smile and nod and say all the right things, but underneath, they're terrified to tell you the truth. The soil looks green on the surface, but nothing really grows. Problems fester. Resentment builds. And as the leader you’re the last to know something's wrong.
One of the top management consulting firms in the world, Boston Consulting Group, did a study of 28,000 employees across 16 countries and they found that when psychological safety is low and people don’t feel safe, 12% of employees are at risk of quitting within a year. When it's high that number lowers to only 3%.
Employees with high psychological safety report feeling 2.1x more motivated, 2.7x happier, and 3.3x more enabled to reach their full potential.
And here's something that doesn't get talked about enough: the impact is even more pronounced for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ employees, and people with disabilities. For these groups, when there’s high psychological safety it increases retention by four to six times!
Other research shows a 27% reduction in turnover, 76% more engagement, and 50% more productivity in psychologically safe environments.
And yet only 26% of leaders even see psychological safety as part of their leadership responsibility. It's not on their radar or it’s an afterthought. So it's no surprise that only half of workers say their managers are doing this well.
This is where trust erodes, innovation dies, and performance quietly flatlines.
Now, remember when I mentioned toxic positivity a minute ago? I want to dig into that a bit more because this is the version of broken psychological safety that's the hardest to spot. And I see it all the time in my work.
Here's what it looks like.
I've worked with organizations where on the surface, everything looks fine. People smile. Meetings are pleasant. There’s a LOT of superficial conversations, a lot of head-nodding and a lot of “everybody’s great” and “we all get along great here.” It’s almost like people are programmed to say it’s all good.
But underneath? People are terrified to give real feedback. They're afraid to critique because they know they'll be seen as negative, not a team player, or difficult. There's a lot of triangulation, where people are talking around each other instead of directly to each other. Disrespectful things get said but never addressed and instead swept under the rug because pointing out bad behavior breaks the façade of 'everyone's happy.' There's this veil of safety, but actually, there's no safety at all.
Everyone is feigning positivity while the real issues fester.
And let me tell you, this is incredibly hard to unwind.
I've worked with one organization for three years. Three years. And we've finally seen a significant increase in psychological safety. But it took that long because once trust is gone, it takes time, commitment and practice to build it back.
Trust is the foundation of safety. And you can't build on a cracked foundation.
So if you're leading an organization where everything seems positive but no one is really speaking up, that's a red flag. That's not safety. That's silence wearing a smile.
So, as a leader, what do we do about this? Let me give you three practical shifts you can start right away.
Shift #1: Move from performative openness to structured voice
What I mean by that is it's not enough to tell people they can speak up. You have to create the routines and rhythms that make speaking up a normal part of how things work, not something that requires an act of courage.
Many leaders tell me, "My door is always open." And they mean it - they genuinely believe people can come to them. But here's what I see over and over, no one walks through that door. Not because they don't have anything to say, but because they already know what happens when they do. They'll be challenged. They'll be ignored. They'll be minimized. Or it just won't be well received. So they stop trying.
And the leader? The leader looks at that empty doorway and thinks, "Everything must be fine. No one's coming to me with problems."
That's not openness. That's a false sense of security.
So what does real openness look like? Well, you have to build the structure for it to live.
You can start your meetings with a quick round where everyone shares a win and a worry. Not just wins that can feed the toxic positivity we talked about, but also the worry. You can normalize it by saying, "Here's something I'm wrestling with," out loud. “Here’s where I got it wrong, and I decided to do about it. Anyone else have an event like that?”
Ask questions that invite honesty. One of my favorites: "What's one thing we're not talking about that we probably should be?" And then actually sit with whatever comes up. If no one shares, you throw something out to get the ball rolling.
And in your one-on-ones? Don't just ask, "How are you?"—that's a question people answer on autopilot. Try this instead: "What feels risky for you to tell me right now?" And then sit in the silence. Don't rush to fill it. Let them think. Let them decide if they trust you enough to answer honestly.
Building this type of structure signals to your team that their voice is not an interruption. It's part of how we operate here.
Shift #2: Normalize smart risk-taking and reframe failure
If you say "we want innovation" but only reward perfection, your people will get the message.
In an adaptive culture, failure is data.
Share your own recent misstep and what you learned from it. When someone tries something new and it doesn't work, debrief publicly: "Here's what we tested, what we learned, and what we'll adjust next time." Shift the question from "Who caused this?" to "Where did our system or assumptions break down? What can we learn from this for next time” (to let people know there will be a next time).
When you do this consistently, people stop hiding problems. They bring them to you early, when they're still fixable.
Shift #3: Close the loop
One of the fastest ways to destroy psychological safety is to ask for input and then do nothing with it. Or worse, to quietly punish the person who spoke up.
Now listen, you don't have to say yes to every request, you probably won’t be able to. But regardless of what you can or cannot do, you must close the loop. Honesty and transparency are the hallmarks of psychological safety.
And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Saying something like, ”Here’s what I heard. Here's what we're going to act on now, what we'll revisit later, and what we can’t change—and why. And here's how you'll see that show up in the next 30 to 60 days."
Closing of the loop is how psychological safety and Adaptive Continuous Learning connect. People see that their voice can create movement, not just noise.
Before I wrap up, I want to leave you with just a few questions to sit with. You don't have to answer all of them—just pick the one that resonates with you.
How does your team learn about bad news? Does it surface early, or only when it can't be hidden anymore?
Whose voice have you not really heard from in the last 30 days?
And the big one: If you asked your team, "Is it safe here to take smart risks, to say 'I don't know,' and to push back?"—what would they say when you're not in the room?
Here's what I want you to take away from today’s episode.
Psychological safety isn't about lowering standards. It's about raising relational and learning standards so your people can actually meet the demands you're facing.
You can’t build a future-ready culture on fear. And you can’t learn faster than your competitors if your people are afraid to tell you what's really happening.
But the good news is you have more influence over this than you think. Every time you listen without defensiveness, admit a mistake, or close the loop on feedback—you're rewiring what "normal" feels like in your culture.
That's psychological safety. That's authentic trust. And that's how your organization stops talking about being adaptive... and actually becomes it.
If you want to go deeper, I've created a Leader's Guide to Psychological Safety which is an introductory practical blueprint for this work, and I’ll drop a link in the show notes so you can grab it.
And as usual, if you found value in this episode go ahead and leave a 5 star rating and review for the show and share it with another leader you feel can use this. It helps other people-forward leaders™ find us.
And until next time, keep leading people-forward.
I'll see you soon.
