Rafael Chiusi

They understand your talking points, they address them, ask for more explanation.

Imagine you walk out of a meeting and the people there understood you were only talking about ideas, and because of that, they don't take personal offense.

That is what working in a psychologically safe team would look like.

There is something very, very powerful about knowing that you can talk in a safe space.

Also knowing that people will listen to your ideas and consider them.

Yet in a recent survey, workers confided that they did not feel safe speaking up at their workplaces.

They were afraid of being labeled as dissenters or receiving negative feedback or even lose their jobs.

Now think about for a second, what are the consequences of that?

How many ideas were discarded?

How many suggestions never happened?

How much innovation was lost?

How many lives could have been saved if only people felt safe enough to speak up and ask questions?

Now, some people might say, oh yeah, I do that all the time.

Don't worry about me.

I ask my team always, do you want to say something?

That is not that simple.

There's a little misconception about how this works.

to foster a psychologically safe environment, leaders must walk the walk and talk the talk.

Sometimes they are great with words, but they forget to act on it.

So for example, let's assume that a certain leader asks for their teams to speak up.