Why won't my team speak up
Most companies that say they want psychological safety actually want harmony. Those are not the same thing.
Real psychological safety produces more visible disagreement, not less, because people who feel safe enough to admit a mistake are also safe enough to say they don't think something is right.
A leader who is uncomfortable with visible disagreement wanted quiet, not safety. If your team is quiet, that quiet is data, it just does not yet tell you which of two very different things it means.
The fix starts with the leader, not the team: give a team a real goal instead of an answer, and start with just one person willing to go along with it.
What you get
- A four-sign comparison table: meetings, mistakes, pushback, and new ideas, harmony-version versus safety-version
- A grounded read on where the fear underneath silence actually comes from
- A prompt for one meeting to watch this week and what to do differently in it
Where should we send it?
One email with the worksheet. You can unsubscribe from anything else in one click.
On its way
Check your inbox. If it has not landed in a minute or two, look in promotions or spam, and add sam@startuppatterns.com to your contacts so the rest arrive.
Adapted from the Culture chapter of The Mindful Product Company by Sam McAfee.