Psychological Safety

Do people feel safe with you?

I’m privileged to spend time with leaders and groups frequently. While the topics, discussions, and ambitions often change, if I had to recap the issues most teams deal with, it always boils down to the same two foundational elements:

1. How do we build and grow trust between us?
2. How do we align ourselves and our teams with our ambitions?

When trust and alignment are absent, you will witness the following atmosphere within the organization:

• A lack of clarity regarding ambition, direction, and goals.
• A lack of collaboration within teams and cross-collaboration between teams. Often also paraphrased as silo thinking.
• A lack of collective thinking, robust conversation, feedback, creative and inspiring debates, and positive tension.
• A lack of time to communicate direction, decisions, stories, results, failures, and expectations to the broader organization.
• A lack of energy, enjoyment, engagement, and connection.
• A lack of ownership, commitment, accountability, and attention to results.

Clarity, Collaboration, Collective Thinking, Conversation, Creativity…