Issue #10: Silence Is Costing You More Than You

The project launched. It flopped spectacularly.

And in the post-mortem, three people quietly admitted they saw it coming. Months ago. But nobody said anything.

You might think this is a competency problem. Hire smarter people, right?

Nope.

It's a psychological safety problem. And you might be the one creating it. (And you are certainly the one paying for it with that doozy of a flop!)

Now… you are not a tyrant. You don't punish people for speaking up. You probably say all the right things — "my door is always open," "no stupid questions," the whole playbook.

But here's the fine print no one reads: 

Your version of psychological safety isn't everyone's version.

The analyst who needs autonomy hears your "open door" as an invitation to more oversight. The designer who craves public recognition stays quiet because you give feedback in private. The engineer scanning for fairness watches you let the loudest voice "win" three meetings in a row and decides the game is rigged. (To be fair, who doesn't love winning a meeting, am I right my Type As?)

Your team and your peers are not withholding information to sabotage you — at least not consciously. Their brains are simply protecting them from what they've learned is an unsafe environment. And doing it on their terms, not yours.

This can also create the emperor-with-no-clothes dynamic. Well-meaning leaders — and sadly, some not-so-well-meaning ones — get insulated from truth because people have learned it's safer to stay quiet.

The most dangerous communication gap isn't what's said wrong. It's what's never said at all.

Innovation dies. Problems fester. Optimization becomes nothing more than a buzzword hanging in the shopfloor canteen. Silence becomes the most expensive decision you never knew your team was making.

Psychological safety is the first ingredient to a powerful antidote. 

But building it requires understanding that safety isn't about your intentions — it's about the gap between your visible behaviors and the invisible signals people receive. Which can be a lot of work because it also means developing other soft skills like listening, empathy, and maintaining eye contact… IRL… for more than a second (eek!)

But the effort is worth it. And the alternative is bleak. If you don't understand what safety looks like through their filters, you're never getting their best thinking. 

And those spectacular flops will keep coming.

Your Brain Is Bonkers (And So Is Everyone Else's)

Your Brain Is Bonkers (And So Is Everyone Else's)

Every time you consider speaking up, your brain runs a threat assessment.

Not "will this physically harm me?" More like "will this professionally embarrass me, isolate me, or make me the person who gets blamed when things go sideways?" And thanks to eons of evolution caring about our status with the tribe, most of us would actually prefer the physical harm over the mental and emotional damage of being potentially shunned. 

When the answer is "uncertain" or "probably not safe," your brain does what evolution designed it to do — it protects you. It keeps you quiet. 

Over time, that silence becomes muscle memory. 

Amy Edmondson, who literally wrote The Fearless Organization on this topic, defines psychological safety as "a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes." 

This belief takes over on a stage, in a boardroom, or in a 1:1 meeting. It takes mere microseconds to trigger, built on a lifetime of wiring shaped by culture, experience, and personality.

Notice what's not in that definition? Comfort. Agreement. Everyone holding hands and singing workplace wellness anthems.

What makes teams actually perform at a high level isn’t consensus. It's the ability to surface problems before they become disasters (like the five problems you are actively avoiding talking to your boss about right now). 

Charles Duhigg's reporting on Google's Project Aristotle found something fascinating: the highest-performing teams weren't the ones with the smartest people or the best resources. They were the teams where everyone felt safe to speak up, take risks, and admit mistakes without getting metaphorically pantsed in front of their peers. (Because metaphorically or actually getting pantsed is no bueno.)

The unlock for growth is not better talent. It’s better psychological safety.

Stephen Covey nailed it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: "Trust is the glue of life. It's the essential ingredient in effective communication." 

And trust doesn't happen because you say the right things in your all-hands meeting. It happens when you consistently prove that communication works on their terms, not just yours.

That means listening when it's inconvenient. Responding to criticism without getting defensive. Making it safe to be the bearer of bad news. 

When your team only tells you what's going well, you're not leading. You're presiding over a very polite disaster in progress.

Why Psychological Safety Works

This isn't feel-good leadership theory cooked up at some corporate retreat with trust falls and s'mores. (Kinda sad given my over-the-top love of all-things marshmallow.)

It's performance strategy backed by actual results — and neuroscience. Here's why creating environments where people feel safe to speak up transforms how you and your team operate:

Innovation Requires Risk — Tim Brown at IDEO and the teams at Google X prove that environments encouraging early, frequent failure yield sharper solutions and breakthrough thinking. When teams feel safe to experiment without fear of punishment, they don't just avoid disasters… they create purposeful disruptions — a euphemism for innovation. The best ideas don't come from people who play it safe. They come from people who feel safe enough to play it big.

Quiet Voices Hold Hidden Gold — The best ideas often come from the people most hesitant to share them. Junior team members who see operational realities leadership misses. Subject matter experts who spot technical flaws in strategic plans. The person in the back of the room who's been waiting for permission to speak since the meeting started 37 minutes ago. Psychological safety is an amazing amplification tool. 

Trust Is the Multiplier — Covey was really onto something. Trust multiplies everything. When people know their voices matter and even their mistakes are learning opportunities rather than career-limiting moves, something shifts. Collaboration deepens. Problemsolving accelerates. Simply put: You can do more with less. And last time I checked, that is a way more common business refrain than “Congratulations, here are all those resources you asked for.”

Try a Bite This Week

Building psychological safety isn't a destination you reach after the perfect off-site or the right leadership book. (Though I do know a pretty good one if you need one  ;) 

It's a practice — daily, messy, and imperfect.

Here are three ways to begin:

🍴 The Devil's Advocate Rotation — Assign someone each meeting to challenge the prevailing idea. Make it official. Rotate the role. (Yes, even when it's your idea. Especially then.) This normalizes disagreement and proves even the boss's ideas aren't sacred. Way more useful than everyone nodding at a plan with obvious holes.

🍴 The Vulnerability Jar — Kick off with an anonymous space to surface challenges. Work struggles. Unclear priorities. Interpersonal friction making collaboration feel impossible. When vulnerability becomes normal instead of exceptional, collective problem-solving becomes the default instead of everyone suffering in polite silence. Remote team? Use an anonymous form or digital board as your “jar.”

🍴 The "What If" Workshop — Host a session where no idea is off-limits. The absurd. The unconventional. The "this will never work but what if?" ideas. Most will flop. Some will spark breakthroughs. All of them send one message: creativity matters more than perfectionism here.  

A Final Thought

Psychological safety isn't about utopian workplaces where everyone agrees and conflict gets resolved with group hugs.

It's about building a culture where great ideas don't die in silence. Where problems surface before they become disasters. Where people say what they're thinking instead of what they think you want to hear.

It's about truth traveling up, not just down. About teams trusting you enough to say the hard things. About people feeling safe enough to warn you before you drive off the cliff.

I’ve missed these signals before. I’ve created rooms where no one spoke up. It’s not fun to realize, but it changed how I lead.

If you're hearing that in post-mortems or not hearing feedback at all, the problem isn't your team's silence. It's the environment that taught them to stay quiet.  

Add Your Spice

When was the last time you stayed silent when you should have spoken up — and what would have made you feel safe enough to say it?

Share it in the comments. Your silence might be someone else's permission to finally speak up.

If this resonated, share it with someone who wants to hear the truth before the postmortem.