Is psychological safety just some words that don't mean anything?

I once heard an excellent explanation for what psychological safety is:

It’s where the person with the least amount of power in an organization feels safe going to the person with the most power in an organization and saying, “I don’t agree with this”.

That’s a great philosophy, one that ensures staff can speak up about safety issues or culture issues. But here’s my problem: does it work in reality, or when the rubber hits the road, do those in power default back to the age-old “How dare you question my authority?”

Allow me to share a recent example. I had only recently started working for a new organization, and the entire Division has had some pretty poor staff survey results over the last few years. Through these surveys, staff had expressed that they were unhappy with management and did not feel safe speaking up. This resulted in a lot of workshops and follow-up surveys to find the root cause of this belief. I was impressed to hear senior leaders say that psychological safety was their highest priority, and that staff would be supported if they needed to raise an issue.

A few weeks later, one of my team members came to me because they’d received an email from my manager. The tone was quite abrupt; they were basically scolding my team member, but they also included several other people in the email that didn’t need to be included. They were upset that a senior manager had written an email with such an aggressive tone and that other people had been included. I told them that I had my weekly meeting with my manager that morning and would raise it with them, after all, this is a psychologically safe workplace.

The meeting started as friendly and helpful as they had in the past. Then I flagged the concern that my team member had brought up with me. This was an opportunity for my manager to reflect on the email and perhaps work to engage with my team member to provide them some reassurance. This was not what happened, however. My boss launched into a criticism of my team member and then the rest of my team. My team member had already accepted that the initial behavior they were being chastised for her issue had been the way the message had been delivered. I went to great lengths to explain this, but that wasn’t enough for my manager.

Next thing I know, she was pulling up the numbers for each of my team, trying to point out that they weren’t doing enough work. I was able to refute this because my manager didn’t fully understand how the work tracking system operates. As I continued to defend my team, who had been under-resourced for at least 3 months, my manager kept trying to find reasons to criticize their work, all after I’d raised a concern from my team member in what was supposed to be a psychologically safe workplace.

At that point, my manager dropped the line, “I don’t care if your team is unhappy with the way I speak to them”.

That was a bit of a red rag to me, so I replied, “Well, that’s a problem. You should care if the people who work for you are happy, because a workforce that is happy and feels valued puts in a better job”.

I did my best to get through the rest of that meeting without resigning. I was beyond frustrated that this was the reaction to some feedback in a workplace that wanted to hold itself out to be psychologically safe.

I went for a walk to cool down and then talked to a friend from the HR team. I told her what had happened; her response shocked me. She said, “This is NOT a psychologically safe workplace”.

That was the trigger for me to move on and find another job.

But the more I thought about my experiences, I realized that this was not something uncommon. Any time I’d had to talk to a manager or senior leader about their behavior, they would get defensive and sometimes aggressive, or even worse, try to justify their behavior.

It’s not easy to take constructive criticism from someone at the best of times, but it seems that when that feedback comes from those we manage, it’s almost an impossibility for leaders to accept it. Is this because of as a leader, we believe we should know more than our staff? Are we that arrogant to think that there’s nothing that the people we manage can teach us? Maybe it’s just that people feel it costs them face if they accept feedback from someone who works for them.

The more I work for lackluster leaders, the more I want to just work for myself. Or win the Powerball.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this observation, please like, comment, or tip (so I can just work as a full-time author). Also, please enjoy some of my other articles and stories.