Be Honest. Be Humble. Be Human.
How you show up as a leader matters for psychological safety
Psychological safety seems to be all the rage in corporate management these days.
If you’re not familiar with the concept (or just want to brush up on it), this 2023 Harvard Business Review article provides a good primer on the subject. Psychological safety asks us to consider one key question: how can we create a culture where everyone feels safe to speak up, take risks, and disagree openly—without fear of humiliation, retribution, or retaliation?
The question is a simple one; the answer is not.
I led a discussion on psychological safety this week with a team of managers from another part of my organization. We talked about all the usual stuff—what psychological safety is, different types of psychological safety, and strategies managers can employ to build psychological safety on their teams.
What fascinated me most in the discussion wasn’t the sudden realization that psychological safety is actually tiered, with one type of safety being a precursor to the next (similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) … although this was definitely an “aha” moment for me. Rather, it was the clear and consistent sentiment that the behavior of leaders is what matters most to the culture on the team.
I know what you’re going to say. Well duh, Rae—of course leadership behavior impacts the team.
But I’m talking about more than just the practices we employ as leaders, here. It’s who we are as individuals that matters. And how we show up in the workplace may just be the single most important thing we can do to foster psychological safety. Here are my takeaways from that conversation on the three behaviors that matter most:
Be human.
You are so much more than the sum total of your role and what you’ve accomplished in it. It was clear from our conversation that even managers wanted to know their peer managers and leaders as people, first. Get to know your team members as individuals and let them get to know you, too. One leader shared that—while naturally a private person—they’ve learned to open up about their personal life with their team because … it matters. Being your full and authentic self at work allows your team members to do the same, which is key to inclusion. And as it turns out, feeling included underpins all other (and deeper) levels of psychological safety.
Be humble.
At Amazon we might call this being vocally self-critical, and we view it as a necessary component of authentic leadership. If we want to create a space where it’s safe to make mistakes, we have to be first in line to do the same. Admit when you don’t know something. Acknowledge when you make mistakes. Apologize when you mess up. And do it all publicly. It’s okay for your team to see you as the not infallible human that you are (that we all are)—in fact, it’s essential to enabling your team members to not be infallible, too.
Be honest.
(I tried really hard here to come up with another “hu” word, but failed.) It sort of goes without saying, but you earn (or lose) credibility as a leader based on how you engage with others. Approaching every situation with honesty, openness, and transparency is (in my opinion) the best—and truly the only—option. People may not always like what you have to say, but they will always feel confident that they 1/ can trust what you’re saying and 2/ know where they stand with you. Being an honest broker will not only earn you trust individually, it will engender the trust on your team that is necessary for psychological safety.
I must admit … prior to leading the discussion this week, I hadn’t given psychological safety as an independent concept considerable thought—although I do a lot of work on things that underlie it, like inclusion. I found it an interesting and useful framework (and may write more about the four levels of safety in the future), but mostly, I found it a great reminder that what we do as leaders, and how we show up with and for our teams, matters most.
Bonus: Want to assess your own psychological safety, or that of your team? Check out this psychological safety survey. It’s quick, easy, and free for individuals (I took it!)—and provides interesting benchmarks and analysis for four drivers of safety.