Harvard Business Review: How Leaders Fake Psychological Safety
Featured article for this week's Brief
Read time: 4 min
Photo by Rainy Wong on Unsplash
Big Idea
Most leaders want teams to speak up, but research shows only 26% build the skills to enable psychological safety; leaders often "fake" safety by feigning uncertainty, asking for feedback but not using it, or responding to failure with artificial empathy rather than accountable dignity.
To create real psychological safety, leaders must move through the messiness of truth-telling by regulating reactions, maintaining accountability without blame, acting on input received, and persevering even when uncomfortable; this enables dissent, analysis of failure, and honest feedback needed for growth, avoiding groupthink, and preventing disasters that unspoken issues can cause.
Top Thoughts
Psychological safety, where people feel safe speaking up about problems or new ideas, is critical for organizational performance.
Research shows only 26% of leaders effectively develop skills for psychological safety.
Leaders often want the benefits of openness but struggle to handle the truths and discomfort that come with it.
Well-intentioned leaders sometimes "fake" psychological safety through insincere uncertainty, asking for feedback but not using it, or artificial empathy after failures.
Feigning a lack of knowledge backfires when people know the leader actually has the answer already.
Asking for input without a willingness to consider untested ideas causes teams to shut down.
Seeking feedback without commitment to change convinces people you can't handle honesty.
Overly self-deprecating admissions make people less likely to share constructive criticism.
Suppressing reactions rather than regulating emotions openly during failures seems inauthentic.
True psychological safety requires working through messiness and discomfort of dissent, failure analysis, and unwelcome truths to enable growth.
Quick Quotes
"The critical element that determines if employees will use their voice is the presence of psychological safety… It's the ability to feel safe acknowledging failure, offering tough feedback, sharing unorthodox ideas, and telling the truth about difficult situations without fear of retaliation."
"While most leaders want teams to speak their minds, their underlying (often unconscious) ambivalence about actually getting the truth can unwittingly lead them to a performative version of psychological safety."
"Many smart leaders… struggle with chronic certainty, feeling the need to be the “answer ATM” for all of their team’s problems and questions… If that’s something you grapple with, acknowledging things you genuinely don’t know is an important step toward making others feel safe enough to offer their thinking."
"If you want those you lead to willingly volunteer their feedback, start by asking for it… Most leaders want the benefits of quality feedback; they just don’t want the experience of receiving it."
"By saying something like, “I know how driven I can be, and sometimes that can lead me to be insensitive," it helps people trust that your recognition of the issue means you want to change."
"Suppressing our feelings is different than regulating them…Leaders must learn to regulate intensified emotions honestly, while still focusing on the person and the failure."
"The only way to harmony, comfort, and equilibrium is through the messiness of disagreement, the emotional discomfort that accompanies hard news, and the disequilibrium that arrives when failure must be courageously and compassionately engaged."
Actionable Advice
Admit when you genuinely don't know something and need the team's input rather than feigning uncertainty. Being vulnerable invites openness.
Only ask for feedback if prepared to hear difficult truths without defensiveness. Then act on at least one piece of critical feedback right away.
When failures happen, take a breath rather than reacting hastily. Then respond with curiosity about what happened paired with accountability for correcting course.
Model speaking openly about your own leadership gaps first. This gives permission for others to share developmental feedback with you.
After meetings, reflect honestly on whether you used controlling behaviors that may have shut down open sharing. Identify one to improve next time.
Source(s)
Carucci, R. (2023, December). How Leaders Fake Psychological Safety. [Web Article]. Harvard Business Review. (link).