20. Psychological Safety Starts With Your Leadership Team

Psychological safety is a buzzy topic every company claims to want—but only a handful actually achieve. Sometimes, it’s misunderstood as being about “niceness” or “politeness”, but real psychological safety is deeper and more complex than that. It’s an ecosystem of behaviors that add up over time to impact how your team shows up day after day.

Unfortunately, this misconception has a stranglehold on most leadership teams as well, who spend more time talking the talk than walking the walk. We’ve seen and worked with many executive teams over the years where people didn’t feel comfortable speaking up, challenging ideas, admitting mistakes, or sharing concerns without fearing retribution or embarrassment. When that’s happening inside the team responsible for some of a business’s biggest decisions, there are big consequences.

In today’s episode, Rodney and Sam break down why leadership teams often feel the most psychologically unsafe, how to move the needle on developing trust, and why a ropes course can’t solve a team or organization’s culture problems.

(Producer’s note: Ok, so we're zero for two this week with Sam's mic going rogue after Rodney's mishap last episode. Taylor's been working some major magic lately. Hopefully third time's the charm with episode 21 🤞)

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Mentioned references:

• What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (NYT, 2016)
• ”emperor has no clothes”
• ”leaders as org designers episode”: AWWTR Ep. 13
• ”hard vs soft power”
• team charter
• working agreements
• ”mundane episode”: AWWTR Ep. 19