Blog

Dogged inaction by leaders when staff raise issues is one cause of organisational silence (which I wrote about last week), and ultimately causes the destruction of psychological safety.

Dogged inaction is what happened to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs around the immigration detention of Cornelia Rau which lead to the 2005 Palmer Report. Rau, an Australian citizen, was illegally detained for ten months. Due to her mental illness her citizenship was not ascertained for all

While a lack of psychological safety means a team is missing out on the opportunity to take risks and innovate (as I pointed out last week), when the lack of psychological safety  becomes rampant, a much bigger risk develops. That risk is the deafening silence that descends on the organisation because no one will speak up. A situation termed organisational or employee silence.

I wrote about this phenomenon a couple of months ago when I reflected on my time at HIH Insurance and the need to sometim

There are more avenues to helping a leader realise they need to change to create psychological safety than I shared in my blog last week. While showing them what was happening is a good start, you also need to make sure they understand what they can have if they make changes. That is, answer the question “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM).

A good way to do that is to contrast what is happening now with the type of changes you are suggesting and the favourable outcomes they can expect. Here are three

Last week I wrote about Kate and her experience of “psychological warfare” which is a culture where psychological safety does not exist. Upon reflection, Kate realised that while she created psychological safety for her team she did not create it for herself. So when she spoke up, her boss and others on the executive felt threatened and reacted with an array of avoiding, delaying and blame-shifting strategies.

Kate and I spoke about how she could have done things differently. In hindsight, she re

I expect the term psychological warfare interests you because you are wondering which kind I would be writing about. Would it be about China, the US Election or state border restrictions in Australia? None of those. It’s about needing to operate in a culture where psychological safety is not just lacking, it’s non-existent.