Hey Reader,

Think about the best leader you ever wanted to work with. Someone whose opinion you really cared about, whose projects you wanted to be on, and whom you wanted to impress. Maybe you’d been watching them from a distance for a while, waiting for the moment you’d finally get to work alongside them.

And when that moment came, it was different from what you’d expected.

They were as sharp as you’d imagined. They moved fast in meetings, spotted gaps in arguments, and set a high standard. But as you kept going, you realized the feedback they gave always stung a bit more than it helped. Everything you submitted felt like an audition to prove you could keep up with them. You’d find yourself triple-checking things so that they couldn’t find a fatal flaw.

You worked to a high standard, but the version of you working under that leader wasn’t your best. It was the version of you trying not to slip up.

It doesn’t take long to notice that same tension in the rest of the team. Everyone scrambling to do their best because making mistakes felt too costly. And so problems got managed rather than surfaced, and the small, honest conversations that would have made the work better just quietly stopped happening.

I've seen that dynamic play out over the course of my career, in different forms, in different teams. And one of the things that's always struck me about it is that the leader at the center of it usually has no idea. They're hitting their numbers. Their team is performing. When metrics get reviewed, everything looks fine. Great, actually.

What doesn't show up on any of those metrics is whether people trust them enough to tell the truth. And that’s one of the things that matter most in the long run.

As leaders, we’re evaluated on what’s measurable. Our quarterly numbers and annual goals matter, but if we get so focused on hitting every target, we start making compromises on how we treat the people around us. We stop being curious and start giving orders. We tell people how to do the work based on what’s been proven before. Keep doing that for long enough, and one day you’ll look up and realize people no longer feel comfortable bringing their ideas to you.

I want to be clear: high standards aren’t the problem. You can make it safe for team members to speak up and still achieve those goals. That's what psychological safety actually means in practice. Not that mistakes go unaddressed or that hard conversations get avoided. It means people bring you the problem before it becomes a crisis, because they trust that doing so won't cost them.

What that looks like day to day is less dramatic than it sounds. It's being the person who responds the same way whether the news is good or bad. It's asking questions you genuinely don't know the answer to. It's making it easy for someone to say "I got this wrong" without bracing for what comes next. If you want somewhere to start, some of the phrases I've found most useful for building that kind of environment are here.

Someone who’s been a big inspiration to me on this is a partner I’ve worked with for years, Tonya. She is genuinely brilliant at the measurable side of the job. She’s been a high performer for as long as I can remember. But that isn’t the only reason people want to work with her. What makes her stand out is that everyone knows, no matter who you are, Tonya is always going to call things as they are. If a junior teammate does something exceptional, she’s the first one to shout them out. If another senior leader makes a bad call, she’ll say so even if everyone else is more likely to stay quiet.

No matter what the situation is, everyone trusts that Tonya will be consistent, because she always has been. That consistency is probably the hardest part for leaders to build. It’s uncomfortable to push back against someone more senior than you or give your team honest feedback during a rough patch. Those are the moments where it’s easiest to make an exception and just say you’ll try again next time. But they’re also when you build more trust or lose it. Consistency isn’t a trait you either have or don’t; it’s a muscle that develops during those tough moments.

And over time, as you build up that regular psychological safety, everyone else starts to feel it too. Team members stop wondering how you’ll react to bad news. They trust you’ll help solve the issues instead of pointing the blame. They bring up problems earlier, they’re honest instead of saying what they think you want to hear, and that candor spreads out towards everyone else. Because of that, your team can do their best work.

Is there a leader in your career who made you feel that kind of safety?

Hit reply. I'd like to hear about them.

From one human to another,

P.s The human side of leadership is something I've built my keynote around. If that's a conversation you'd like to bring to your organization, you can find out more by clicking the banner below.